In what would be one of the last interviews ever given by a so healthy-appearing Burt Reynolds (that’s the thing about cardiac arrest though, it can take you by surprise in all your ostensible vigor) for promotion of his film, The Last Movie Star, for The Today Show, the subject of the great love of his life was broached. Of course, this leads one to ask if the interviewer wasn’t slightly possessed by Charlotte York in her line of questioning. But whatever her devil’s advocate motive, Reynolds was in a confessional enough mood to admit that it was “Sally,” after giving the caveat, “I’m dead in the water no matter what I say.” Getting a touch sentimental, he describes how he petitioned for her to be his co-star in Smokey and the Bandit, the film that would commence their five-year long relationship, over the course of which they made four movies together. As he recalled, “I wanted her really bad for Smokey and they said, ‘Well she’s not sexy.’ And I said, ‘You don’t get it. Talent is sexy.'”
And his feelings on this subject are evident in every scene the two share together in Smokey and the Bandit. Even in their adversarial phase, after Carrie (Field) apprehends Bandit (Reynolds) in the middle of the road in a wedding gown while he’s on the run from “Smokey” a.k.a. Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), there is an undercurrent of overt affection and amorousness. And right when he reluctantly but upon her wishes takes her to the train station (in between which time she has switched out of her wedding dress in one of many iconic car scenes of the movie), he can’t help but ask, “Frog, you gonna be all right?” Frog being the nickname he’s given her because–in true sexist 70s fashion–“you’re always hoppin’ around. And you’re kinda cute like a frog, and I’d like to jump ya.”
She accepts the nickname, and when queried as to whether she’ll be okay, she turns eagerly and smiles, “Yeah. I’m always all right.” But alas, there’s just something about Bandit she can’t shake, even if the entire reason behind Justice’s pursuit is to get revenge for Frog dishonoring his only son, “Junior” Justice (Mike Henry), by leaving him at the altar. That Bandit’s friend and business partner, Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed), is also carting four hundred cases of Coors (it was, for some bizarre reason, illegal to sell it east of the Mississippi River at this time) from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia isn’t helping the cause of shaking old Smokey (a generic term given to all cops over CB radio at the time for the resemblance of their hats to Smokey Bear’s).
But helping even less (or maybe making the job slightly more bearable) is the distraction of Frog, who softens with each passing mile, eventually inquiring of Bandit if he thinks they’d get along if they were stranded on an island together with no one else to talk to (considering she loves musical theater, Stephen Sondheim and Elton John, and he doesn’t). He reckons they would, and then insists that he only takes his hat off for “one thing and one thing only.” Eye rollingly, Frog insists, “Take your hat off…if you want to.” It was this combination of forcefulness and gentleness that perhaps gave Field the power in real life to momentarily “tame” Reynolds, something of a Warren Beatty type when it came to affairs with women.
Frog’s sarcastic bite can leave a mark at times, however, like when she says, “Yes, have a smoke. It seems to help.” That Reynolds died of cardiac arrest adds a bittersweetness to that line. But not nearly as much as, “Mr. Bandit, you have a lyrical way of cutting through the bullshit.” Because that is exactly what Reynolds was always capable of doing at any high or low in his career–at any peak or valley of stardom. And this, in truth is what 1) makes a great star and 2) makes a great love.
