Robert Redford was an acting idol best known for starring in some of Hollywood’s most classic titles like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “Out of Africa” and “The Sting.”
Prior to being a cinematic legend, he was just a local kid.
Redford was born in Santa Monica and raised in Van Nuys. It turns out KTLA had quite an impact on him growing up in Southern California.
Ordinary Bob opened up about it in a 2013 interview with our dear friend and colleague, KTLA entertainment anchor Sam Rubin.
Just as the pair started talking about his movie “All is Lost,” Redford said he wanted to talk about the station.
“I’m a kid. I grew up in Los Angeles. It’s the end of the Second World War. Just after the Second World War. I’m maybe 9, 10 years old. There was no television. This thing called television came out. People were talking about television. We didn’t know what that was,” he explained. “We didn’t have a set, but we found out that if you wanted to see this thing called television, you would go to an appliance store, because there were certain appliance stores around Los Angeles that would have a TV in the window, and you could go there at night and watch something happening on this thing called television.”
He said his family drove to an appliance store in Torrance to just “stand outside with a bunch of people” to look “in a window to see a guy” talking on television.
“All I remember was KTLA. That was, I don’t know if it was the first, it could have been the first TV station ever,” he said looking back fondly. “There was a guy named Bill Welsh.”
Angelenos know Welsh as “Mr. Hollywood,” who made his television debut on KTLA in 1946.
KTLA 5 is the first commercial television station in L.A., airing its first commercial broadcast on Jan. 22, 1947. It’s also the first west of the Mississippi River.
“So in my head, the origins of television in my life have to do with KTLA,” he said.
Redford passed away on Tuesday “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah–the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved. He will be missed greatly. The family requests privacy,” his publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement to KTLA.
He was 89 years old.