Robert Benton, Oscar-winning ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ filmmaker and screenwriter, dies at 92
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Robert Benton, the Texas-born filmmaker who surpassed the difficulties of severe dyslexia in his childhood to become the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter behind films including “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” has died.
John Benton, the filmmaker’s son, said the director died Sunday at his home in Manhattan of “natural causes.” He was 92.
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Robert Benton, during a career that spanned from the mid-1960s to the early aughts, was best known for projects that explored common lives and the connections between family and community, from the fallout of a divorce in “Kramer vs. Kramer” to the toll of loss on a single mother in “Places in the Heart.” He was nominated for seven Oscars (including a co-nomination with late scribe David Newman for “Bonnie and Clyde”) and won three, among them a directing award for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” He also received writing Oscars for “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart.”
Veteran actors including Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Sally Field also enjoyed Oscars glory for their work in Benton’s films. Newman received a lead actor nomination for “Nobody’s Fool” and Hoffman and Streep each won their first Oscars for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Field won the lead actress prize for her work as single mother Edna Spalding in the Great Depression-set “Places in the Heart.”
“I loved Robert Benton with my whole heart. He was a rare artist and equally rare human,” Field said to The Times on Wednesday. “I was lucky to know him. There will never be another. Rest, if you can, Benton.”
His Oscar-nominated projects also include “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Late Show” and “Nobody’s Fool.”
Robert Benton’s keen insight into the human condition has served him well for 40 years -- and counting.
Benton, deemed “one of our last remaining masters of humanist drama” in 2007 by former Times film critic Patrick Goldstein, was born in Waxahachie, Texas, on Sept. 29, 1932. He struggled with reading in his childhood and found comfort in drawing, which he said “allowed me to extend my attention span and rejoin the world.”
His passion for film and knack for storytelling can be traced back to trips to the cinema with his father. “I became a storyteller just watching the stories on screen,” he recalled in 2007.
He attended University of Texas and Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Before breaking into the entertainment industry in 1964 with the short film “A Texas Romance, 1909,” Benton moved to New York and was an art director for Esquire magazine. During his tenure, he helped the outlet launch its Dubious Achievement Awards with former colleague and “Bonnie and Clyde” co-writer David Newman.
He told The Times that his career in the editorial world encouraged him to move past certain creative inhibitions, which would later serve him in filmmaking, specifically for “Bonnie and Clyde.” The classic film, which premiered in 1967, was directed by Arthur Penn and starred Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the titular crime duo.
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“It taught you to be a lot less constipated about having a bad idea or being made fun of,” he said of his time at Esquire. “You’d just cut loose.”
After the success — and critical scrutiny of brutal violence — of “Bonnie and Clyde,” Benton made his feature directorial debut in 1972 with “Bad Company,” according to IMDb. He reunited with David Newman to co-write the western, which starred Jeff Bridges. For Benton, writing and directing films would prove lucrative and he would hold directing and writing credits for films including later projects “Still of the Night” (which reunited him with Streep), “Nadine,” “Nobody’s Fool” and “Twilight.”
“Kramer vs. Kramer,” which premiered in 1979, was an adaptation of Avery Corman’s novel of the same name. The film starred Hoffman as an advertising executive and Streep as his ex-wife who navigate the throes of divorce and its effects on their young son.
Despite often pulling double duty, Benton told The Times he saw himself “like Dracula — I don’t leave a trace in the mirror,” and said he is “shaped by who I collaborate with.” Notable collaborators included Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Radha Mitchell, among others.
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Later in life, Benton struggled to earn the same critical acclaim that defined his film career. “Nobody’s Fool,” which starred Paul Newman as an aging trouble-maker, earned Newman his second-to-last Oscar nomination and also starred Bruce Willis and Jessica Tandy. Benton was nominated for adapted screenplay.
The 2005 Christmas action-comedy “The Ice Harvest” was Benton’s final writing credit and 2007’s “Feast of Love,” starring Freeman and Mitchell, marked his final directing project. Ahead of the film’s release, Benton told The Times about his more laissez-faire approach to filmmaking.
“The gift of getting older is the gift of making things simpler,” Benton said. “I used to agonize over things. I worry a lot less today. You realize that what shows up in the process, that might take you by surprise, is often better than what you’d planned for.”
Benton, who briefly dated writer-activist Gloria Steinem, married artist Sallie Rendigs in 1964. She died in 2023 at age 88, according to the Hollywood Reporter. They had one son.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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