Two significant roles in "The Natural" are uncredited - Darren McGavin (as Gus Sands) due to a contract dispute; and director Barry Levinson (as the film's play-by-play announcer).
Robert Redford was 46 during filming, but he played Roy Hobbs at 19 and 35. In Reel Life: When Roy makes it to the majors, he's 35 years old. In Real Life: Redford was 46 when the film was made, and even plays Roy as a 19-year-old in the movie.
But it was McGavin's role as the tenacious reporter of the macabre, Carl Kolchak, in the made-for-TV horror movie "The Night Stalker" (ABC, 1972) that would forever endear him to an entire generation of young television viewers.
The Natural (6/8) Movie CLIP - Let it Ride (1984) HD
Did Robert Redford do his own hitting in The Natural?
I loved playing baseball and I loved the Boston Red Sox and Ted Williams and I wanted to go in that direction [as a ballplayer] if I could, but never could until this.” Johnson confirms that Redford did all of his own batting for the film, and made some solid hits.
Why did Harriet shoot Roy Hobbs in the movie The Natural?
Roy was a big shot as a teenager, and he believed he had a promising future ahead of him. Harriet thought so, too, which is why she only shot Roy after he answered her question about whether being the “best there ever was,” was an accurate assessment. Roy doesn't hesitate, confirming he would be the best in baseball.
The surnames MacGavin and McGavin are Scottish surnames, which are possibly variations of the surnames McGowan and MacGowan, which are Anglicised forms of the Scottish Gaelic MacGobhann and Irish Gaelic Mac Gabhann, meaning "son of the smith".
Death. A breast cancer survivor, Browne died of natural causes on April 8, 2003, in Beverly Hills, California. She was 73. She is buried as Kathie Browne-McGavin at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles County, California.
The Reason Paul Newman And Robert Redford Never Got To Make A Third Movie Together - IMDb. Though 11 years apart in age, hailing from entirely different parts of the country, Paul Newman and Robert Redford were a big-screen match made in movie heaven.
The two eras of the film show Roy Hobbs at age 19 and age 35. Robert Redford was 47 at the time of filming. The filmmakers scouted the country for a stadium to use in game scenes. They needed something nondescript with a pre-World War II feel, and found it in Buffalo's War Memorial Stadium.
When he was young, Redford didn't love school, so he pursued his interests in art and sports. He had a great talent for baseball and spent his years at Van Nuys High School on the baseball team, where his teammate was future pitching legend, Don Drysdale.
Despite the love, McGavin was very frank about the difficulty he had during the show's original production. He commented, "There was a lot of friction between myself and the production entity. We ended up spending so much money on scripts that were totally unproducible. There were scripts we just threw away."
In addition, he was regularly guest-starring in dozens of TV shows, including Gunsmoke (1955), Dr. Kildare (1961), Mission: Impossible (1966) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
At birth, Darren McGavin was William Richardson. He took up acting after being a Hollywood set painter. Around 1946, he moved to New York to further his career. McGavin never wrote memoirs, and no full biography has appeared, so why he chose “Darren McGavin” as his stage name is a mystery.
She had appeared on the series twice before, as different characters, in 1961 and 1962, but was cast as the pretty widow, Laura Dayton, in 1963, appearing in 4 episodes broadcast between December 8, 1963 and May 17, 1964, which was the penultimate show of the season.
She got her break in TV after appearing in a Los Angeles production of Tennessee Williams's play, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", making her TV debut in 1957 in The Gray Ghost (1957), The Sheriff of Cochise (1956), and Gunsmoke (1955).
Roy Hobbs is perhaps unique among the Malamud heroes: he is left in tears, having learned his lessons too late. He decides to be a father to Iris's son, realizing that redemption is the work of a lifetime.
The Natural focuses on the redemption of Roy Hobbs, who figures out that he has something to prove - and sets out to do it. And, as he rounds the bases amidst a shower of sparks in a scene that could only happen in a Hollywood-born field of dreams, he knows he has accomplished his goal and fulfilled his dream.
'That's enough': Robert Redford announces his retirement from acting. Robert Redford is calling it a career after nearly 60 years as one of his generation's most iconic actors. Redford, 81, announced to Entertainment Weekly on Monday that his upcoming film, "The Old Man & The Gun," will be his final acting job.
Robert Redford originally agreed to play Blue and backed out at the last minute. He was sued by Paramount and afterward refused Roman Polanski's offer to play Guy Woodhouse in Paramount's Rosemary's Baby (1968).
Baseball star Hobbs' signature bat, Wonderboy, was carved from the wood of a tree that was struck by lightning at the same time his father (Robert Rich III) suffered a heart attack. This bat is matched to the scene where Roy entered the dugout and placed the bat in its case.
