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Something you never forget
While in England, Robertson decided to join the Fairoaks
Flying Club in Chobham, Surrey.
" Being involved in aviation is like meeting a beautiful
woman you never forget," he said.
There, he soloed in a Tiger Moth, a de Havilland biplane
that the English used in the late thirties to train
young RAF pilots. He had decided that if he could land a
biplane in a crosswind, he could land anything. He later
joined other aero clubs.
He also acquired his first Tiger Moth, which he flew
across the Channel to Normandy, France, to film "Up From
The Beach."
" I had it over there for a while during filming, and
then shipped it over," he said. "Then I worried about
parts, so I ended up looking around and finding another
Tiger Moth on the other side of the globe out at Clark
Air Force Base in the Philippines. It was for sale for
virtually nothing. I bought it thinking I could
cannibalize it when I needed parts. When it arrived in
San Pedro, we cracked open the case and it was in better
shape than the first one. I ended up getting a third for
the same reason. So, for a number of years, I was the
proud owner of three Tiger Moths."
While in England filming “633 Squadron” for United
Artists, Robertson became interested in the de Havilland
Mosquito bomber.
“ In the film, we had probably the very last Mosquito
bombers left,” he said. “We had five. I tried to buy
one, so I could bring it back to America, but I was
subverted by someone who will remain nameless, who
screwed things up so nobody got them.”
Robertson said that during the filming, one Mosquito
bomber was destroyed; the scene called for an airplane
to hit a truck.
“ To make it genuine, they had to make this bomber
explode on the ground,” he said. “Nobody was in the
cockpit, of course, but they had this special-effects
guy running behind it with long wires, so he was able to
trigger it off when it hit this truck. It exploded. That
broke my heart. Then we watched it burn. It was called
the ‘wooden bomber,’ because a lot of it was made out of
wood, which made it very light, and fast. That central
spar was made of very highly compressed wood. I watched
it burn for over three hours, and that spar was still
intact. It was amazing how strong it was.”
Although he wasn’t able to acquire a Mosquito, while
filming, Robertson learned that the Belgium Air Force
owned three Spitfires, another aircraft that attracted
his interest.
“ In World War II, they had been using them for towing
targets for jets,” he said. “That was the fastest thing
they could get, since they weren’t using jets to tow the
targets.”
When he got back to America, knowing there were very few
Spitfires left, he proceeded to see if he could buy one.
He was able to acquire one that had the Belgian
registration of OO-ARF.
“ I got my friend Neil Williams, who had been Britain’s
top aerobatic pilot and a test pilot for the Royal Air
Force, to go over and get it,” he said. “He virtually
begged me to let him fly it. Of course,
everybody--particularly every Englishman--would give
their right arm to fly a Spitfire, because there were
not that many left.”
He said that later, Williams (who was subsequently
killed while ferrying a Heinkel bomber from Spain to
England, in the mid-seventies) wrote him an emotional
and lengthy letter telling him what it meant to him.
Robertson said that the RAF was so desperate during
World War II that some pilots went directly from the
Tiger Moth, a very slow biplane, to a Spitfire, although
usually they went to an intermediate plane.
When asked if he ever flew the Spitfire, Robertson
grinned and said, “People ask me what it was like to fly
a Spitfire and I tell them, ‘Well, I’ll give you the
same answer I gave my insurance adjustor, which is, “Of
course I didn’t fly it!” That’s my answer, and I’m
sticking to it!”
Robertson had the Spitfire for about 20 years.
“ I was having it worked on some of the time, in the
States. When you get an airplane like that, it takes a
lot of upkeep. It’s a queen and you have to treat it
like a queen. Later on, I let Tom Poberezny keep it at
EAA, so people could see it,” he said. “I also had it up
at the Air Zoo, in Michigan.”
He said it was a similar situation to his Messerschmitt.
“ There’s a provision that we can fly it when we need
to,” he said. “I want the public to be able to see it,
because it’s a piece of history, but if I request it,
I’m allowed to take the Messerschmitt out and fly it.
That’s the provision we had with both Oshkosh and the
Air Zoo; that way we could keep it running and maintain
it.”
About five years ago, Robertson sold the Spitfire to
telecommunications pioneer Craig McCaw.
“ He respects the airplane as much as I do, because he
realizes it’s more than a fighter plane,” Robertson
said. “That airplane saved western civilization as we
know it today. People say, ‘How can you say that?’ Well,
long before the atom bomb, they had the Battle of
Britain, which turned the tide of World War II.
“ In the Battle of Britain, no matter how those pilots
flew, the Hurricane, which was a fine airplane, wouldn’t
have tipped the balance against the Germans. The
Spitfire did. Without it, they would have lost the
Battle of Britain, and all historians agree. Had the
Germans won the Battle of Britain, England would have
had to negotiate with Germany, and Germany would then
have been able to put its total forces against Russia,
and they would’ve won. Had it not been for that one man,
Mr. Mitchell, who designed it, the war would’ve been
entirely different.”
Giving to others
Robertson, a pilot of many thousands of hours, has
accumulated various aviation awards. He’s a recipient of
AOPA’s Sharples Award, given for “the year's greatest,
selfless commitment to general aviation by a private
citizen,” for flying humanitarian relief into Nigeria
during the Biafra Civil War. He was also presented the
prestigious Heritage of Freedom Award, and in 1987, the
Experimental Aircraft Association's highest honor, the
"Freedom of Flight Award," for his role in the
organization's "In Pursuit of Dreams" presentation.
Robertson's affiliation with EAA began a long time ago.
"I pull a long bow, back over 30 years," he said. "It
was back in the days when it was at Hale's Corners
(Wisconsin). I had heard about this remarkable guy named
Paul Poberezny and his lovely wife and their young son,
Tom. So, I went back there. It was snowing. All we had
was an indoor showroom, and she made us chili. It was a
very simple operation. Now, you get almost a million
people."
Years after becoming involved with EAA, Robertson
decided to give others the opportunity to feel the same
way he did as a youth in La Jolla. Within EAA, he
founded the Cliff Robertson Work Experience, in 1993.
" We have a contest where young people (at least age 16)
submit their desires to come to Oshkosh and work for 12
weeks, in hangars, doing all the dirty work that we used
to do as kids," he said. "In exchange, they not only get
their room and board and a little bit of allowance
money, but they also get flying lessons. The work ethic
is not dead yet. We've had wonderful success with it.
Some of our ‘graduates’ have gone on to West Point and
the Air Force Academy and some have gone on to fly with
airlines. It's been very productive."
Robertson also helped launch EAA's Young Eagles program,
organized in 1992, serving as its first national
honorary chairman, until 1995. At EAA AirVenture 2002,
he was presented with the inaugural "Key to the City"
Award, created by EAA and the City of Oshkosh to honor
distinguished personalities for significant
contributions to the promotion and support of EAA
AirVenture Oshkosh and the aviation community.
There’s nothing purer
Robertson said that to name one form of flying as his
favorite would be like naming a favorite child. However,
he does say there's nothing "purer than pure glider
flight."
" To be environmentally sensitive for a moment, that's
because you're not burning fossil fuels and you're not
bruising or abusing the environment," he said. "You're
working with nature, so there is purity there. There's
also a sense of pride that once you're up there, you're
on your own. You don't have an automatic pilot and if
you go as I did, for six hours and 20 minutes, on that
attempt for distance record, you have a sense of, 'Well,
I did something kind of special.'"
Robertson glides as often as he can, and does a little
aerobatics, but says it's "nothing to write home about."
It's not unusual for the resident of Water Mill, Long
Island, N.Y., and La Jolla, to fly across the country.
When he needs to get somewhere in a hurry, he takes one
of the "big aluminum tubes." However, when he's not in a
hurry, he prefers flying his twin-engine Baron, which
he's had for over 20 years, because he can give himself
two days, taking time to stop along the way at "a little
pokey airport" to reacquaint himself with his country.
He happened to be flying the Baron on Sept. 11, 2001.
" I was the only guy flying right over that holocaust,
at least that I know of, when it all happened," he said.
"I was flying alone, on the way to the West Coast. I got
right over the World Trade Center, climbing at 7,000
feet. I looked down and suddenly saw this great big
column of smoke puff up. I didn't see the plane, because
by that time it was inside the building. I just thought
it was an explosion of some kind."
Robertson said that after he had climbed to 8,500 feet,
and leveled off, the other plane hit.
" Again, I didn't see what caused it, but the air
traffic controller came on and I gave my call number,"
he said. "They said, 'We have a national emergency. Land
at the nearest available airport.' I'd never heard that
in all the years I'd been flying. I was hermetically
sealed for three and a half days in beautiful downtown
Allentown. I couldn’t take my plane out. I finally got
out on a commercial flight. Later, my buddy Craig McCaw
had one of his pilots, who was out on the East Coast,
fly the airplane back to me. I was up giving a talk at
an aviation conference in Oregon.”
The ups and downs of Hollywood
Robertson laughs and says he still recalls the plays in
elementary school, where children aspired to don
costumes for stints as vegetables and fruit--something
he wasn’t inclined to want to do. He also remembers his
third-grade teacher telling him that acting was “a
dodge.”
“ I still think it’s a dodge,” he says.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t put his heart into
whatever role he lands. He received an Emmy for Best
Actor for a guest appearance for the Bob Hope Chrysler
Theater's "The Game." Three years later, with ABC
Pictures, he co-produced "Charly," at the modest cost of
$1 million. His intense performance earned him the 1968
Oscar for Best Actor, over nominees Alan Arkin for "The
Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Alan Bates for "The Fixer,"
Ron Moody for "Oliver!" and Peter O'Toole for "The Lion
in Winter."
At the time the winner was announced, Robertson, who
didn't think he had a chance, was over 7,000 miles away,
in his trailer in the Philippine jungle, working on "Too
Late The Hero." He said he wasn't even listening for the
announcement, but Michael Caine and several other fellow
actors were hovering over a short-wave radio outside.
Caine soon burst into the trailer, exclaiming, "You won
the damn award!"
Robertson thought he was joking. Later, someone with a
camera took a picture of him being thrown up in the air
in celebration, in his military outfit and Scottish tam,
and it was sent around the world.
Even with winning an Oscar for "Charly," Robertson says
he's never been fully satisfied with his Hollywood
career--or with any of his other achievements, for that
matter. He says he has been "reasonably" satisfied, but
it could be better stated that he looks at his
accomplishments with "a degree of dissatisfaction," and,
when it comes to his movies, he is "less dissatisfied
with some than others."
" You always feel like you could do better if you could
do it over," he said. "Once you cross the Rubicon of a
certain age, you don't get satisfied, but you get a
little more mature. You say, ‘I guess I did the best I
could, given what I was given’--and given the time
limitations and some of the questionable characters
you're working with."
Robertson said he was partial to "J.W. Coop," released
in 1971, which he co-wrote and directed, because he was
able to write about something with which he was
familiar.
" It was about a rodeo rider and man's confrontation
with change, which is the antagonist in everybody's
life," he said.
Besides flying one of his Tiger Moths in the film, he
also did some bull riding. He says his experience in
that arena was "genetic."
" On my father's side, there were a lot of horse people
going way back," he said. "I think when you have a
genetic predisposition it gives you kind of an
ill-deserved confidence. I had an uncle who had a big
ranch in Colorado, about 25 miles from Walsenburg, in a
little town called Red Wing. He had 55,000 acres. It was
unbelievable. It was beautiful, like a little
Switzerland. I was married at the time and I'd take my
former wife (actress Dina Merrill) and my two daughters
out there in the summertime."
Robertson had the chance to fly in other movies,
including flying a DC-8 in "The Pilot," which he
directed, and taking to the air in "633 Squadron." His
film credits in the seventies included "Three Days of
the Condor," released in 1975, and "Midway," released in
1976, in which Robertson appeared as a pilot in a bar
scene that he wrote.
But the following year, his Hollywood career came to a
temporary halt when he blew the whistle on David
Begelman, Alan Hirschfield's right-hand man at Columbia
Pictures, in an embezzlement scam that became known as “Hollywoodgate,”
after Columbia's accounting department sent him a 1099
saying he owed taxes on money he never received.
" I hadn't even worked for Columbia," he said. "This old
Scot's not going to pay taxes on money he didn't earn."
After Robertson and his secretary began investigating
the statement of earnings, a supervisor at Columbia
looked up the Robertson file and found an endorsed check
made out to him. However, the signature on the back
wasn't his.
" In spite of a lot of sage advice and people warning
me, I went ahead and gave it to the FBI," said
Robertson.
Law enforcement agencies initiated further
investigations. More improprieties came to light and
Begelman "resigned." For Hirschfield, the Columbia
crisis ultimately came to a head at a July 1978 board of
directors meeting, when the board voted not to renew his
contract. However, Begelman and Hirschfield were soon
back at work in one capacity or another; Robertson
wasn't.
" After they broke open Hollywoodgate, I was blackballed
and didn't work for three and a half years," Robertson
said. "They were trying to send a message to other
would-be Don Quixotes. The FBI told me that the
unwritten covenant in Hollywood for 75 years has been,
'Thou shalt never confront a major mogul on corruption
or thou shalt not work.'"
Even with that outcome, Robertson said he’s proud of
what he did.
" They wrote me up in that congressional record," he
said. "I was given a lot of citations. All the writers
and the creative people were delighted."
Within two years, several other actors began confronting
corporate corruption and "creative bookkeeping."
The curse on Robertson was finally removed when a
"courageous director" named Doug Trumbull cast him in
"Brainstorm," Natalie Wood's last film.
" He said he wouldn't listen to those bastards,"
Robertson said. "He said, 'He's right for this role and
I'm going to hire him.' As soon as he did, it broke the
cycle."
Over the last 15 years, Robertson has appeared in
several films, including "Dead Reckoning" (1990), "Wild
Hearts Can't Be Broken" (1991), "Escape From L.A."
(1996), "Family Tree" (1999) and "Falcon Down" (2000).
More recently, he played Uncle Ben Parker in
“Spider-Man” (2002), and although his character met a
sad demise, returns in “Spider-Man 2,” opening in early
July. He recently completed Steven King’s “Riding the
Bullet,” which is his 72nd feature film.
" I have many friends in Hollywood, but I don't live in
LaLa Land and I don't embrace the lifestyle or network,
so I probably don't get some of the things done I'd like
to get done," he said. "I prefer living in the country
away from some of the glitz. I'm happy to run out here,
spit out the words, pick up the check and run, to go
back to my cat (“Halsey”) and make apologies."
He adds that he's never found it necessary to throw away
money on press agents.
" My former wife had them on both coasts," he said. "She
used to say, 'You're nuts. You're an Emmy Award winner,
Oscar winner and stage winner; you should have a press
agent.' I said, 'Nope. Work begets work, and I'm not
going to pay a lot of hard-earned money to get my name
in a column. I'd rather give it to charity.'"
Playing Hooky
Robertson says he’s always been obsessed with working.
For instance, when he was 10, he lied and said he was
11, to get a job selling magazines.
“ I had a newspaper route and then I had a little
skiff,” he said. “I'd get up in the morning and go out
and get my lobsters, at 5:30 in the morning."
One of the reasons for his obsession is that his father
was "to the manner born."
" He never worked a day in his life," he said. "I mean,
he did a lot of things, but he never worked."
Robertson attributes his “work-instilled ethic”--as well
as his contributions to myriad charities--to "Calvinist
guilt."
" I was brought up Presbyterian," he said. "A lot of the
old verities still hang in. You know, when you're a very
young dude, you kind of wander away and think you have
it all figured out. You flirt with being agnostic,
atheist or whatever. Then, when you've been around the
pike a few times, certain things begin to stack up, and
you think that maybe some people had it right."
Having a Calvinist conscience, says Robertson, also gets
in the way of taking himself too seriously. To be
Calvinist, explains Robertson, isn't as simple as
believing in predestination, or that all has been
planned.
" That's not quite right, but that's part of it," he
says. "There is a pattern. But the kind of perverse
aspect is, ‘If the medicine tastes good, it can't be
good.’ If it tastes bad, it has to be good!’ It's a
perpetual ‘hair shirt,’ but it does kind of give you a
work ethic, and kind of a good ethos."
Although a hard worker, Robertson takes the time to
“play hooky,” which could mean his annual visits to EAA
AirVenture, or traveling with Hilton to Alaska to fish.
He’s a regular visitor, along with others, such as
Carroll Shelby.
" Barron flies us up in his Citation," he says. "We go
up there regularly in the summer, and sometimes in late
spring. We all go fishing on Barron's boat."
Besides everything else he devotes his time to,
Robertson speaks around the country, through the
Aviation Speakers Bureau. Although he has plenty of
aviation stories to tell, he also draws from his
Hollywood experiences.
“ When you’ve done 72 films, you have a lot of stories,”
he said. “I have stories about movies, my own exploits,
other famous actors--and not famous actors. There’s a
wide matrix of subject matter.”
Robertson is writing a sequel to “Charly,” and enjoys
writing essays, both serious and humorous. He has indeed
collected a lifetime of stories, many that will appear
in an upcoming book, due out next year. Prior to that,
we’re happy to say, several will appear in Airport
Journals, in Robertson’s new column, “Cliffhangar.” |
