Robert Redford remembered for film shot in Colorado Springs, time in Boulder
Robert Redford has departed the earthly plane, but he leaves a lasting mark on the Pikes Peak region.
In 2016 Robert Redford and his longtime friend and acting partner Jane Fonda alighted in Colorado Springs to film the 2017 Netflix film, “Our Souls at Night,” based on the 2015 novel by Colorado author Kent Haruf. The movie is still available on the streaming platform.
The movie star didn’t only shine his light on Colorado Springs, but also Boulder, where he worked as a janitor at the popular burger joint The Sink while attending University of Colorado in 1955. The Sink’s website features a mural from the restaurant of Redford.
The Academy Award-winning Redford died Tuesday. He was 89.
Exactly nine years ago, Redford walked our streets and gazed at our mountains. After film crews took over two quaint homes on a quiet stretch of West Pikes Peak Avenue near Old Colorado City, starstruck gawkers set up camp for hours and days across the cordoned-off street, hoping for a peek of their beloved blond hunk, star of such iconic films as “The Sting,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “Three Days of the Condor,” and, of course, “Barefoot in the Park,” which he starred in alongside Fonda in 1967.
The homes were used as residences for the film’s two main characters, a widow and widower who live in a small Colorado town and abscond to each other’s houses under the cover of night for companionship that soon blossoms into romance.
Patient fans got what they came for, as Redford was periodically seen gallivanting in and out of the houses and ducking into cars driven off by crew members.
Production filmed in the west-side location for about a week and a half. Other shooting locations in the Springs included UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central and a neighborhood around Mosquito Pass Drive in the northeast part of town. Crews also used Eleven Mile State Park near Lake George, spots in Cañon City and several locations in Florence, including Main Street, 2 Sisters restaurant and the “Remember When” parade during the 89th annual Florence Pioneer Days.
Redford was married twice, according to The Associated Press, most recently to Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom have died — Scott Anthony, who died in infancy, in 1959; and James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020.
James Redford, and sibling Shauna, both graduated CU Boulder in the 1980s.
