Unsung Auteurs: Robby Benson

By Erin Free

FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: 1970s youth superstar Robby Benson, who toplined Jory, Jeremy, One On One, Ice Castles, Walk Proud and Ode To Billy Joe.

When you think of Robby Benson, you likely don’t think of an auteur. If you’re familiar with this gifted multi-hyphenate, you’ll more likely think of his big, blue eyes; his sensitive manner; his boyish good looks; and the role of “teen heartthrob” that he somewhat reluctantly played in the 1970s and 1980s. But like the other actors that we have included in the Unsung Auteurs column (Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Jones), Robby Benson appeared in a string of films with such a sense of thematic and stylistic connection that they feel like career choices made by an auteur, and not just by an actor choosing the roles from the ones that landed on his manager’s desk. In the 1970s, Robby Benson’s career felt truly curated, like he was making choices and picking films based on an internal mission statement. He had something to say about being young and slightly confused in a difficult world, and he said that through the films he appeared in.

The now 69-year-old Robby Benson has indeed had a fascinating and widely varied career that has traversed the fields of acting (with excellent performances in strong films like 1980’s Tribute, 1981’s The Chosen, 1983’s Running Brave, 1984’s Harry & Son, and more, including the current Apple+ TV hit Severance), directing (he has worked prolifically in television, as well as helming features like 1988’s White Hot and 1990’s Modern Love), writing (he has penned novels and screenplays) and musical composing (he wrote the song “We Are Not Alone” which was performed by his longtime wife Karla DeVito, and was featured in the famous scene where the detention kids dance in the library in the 1985 John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club).

On top of all that, Robby Benson is also a longtime activist in the field of heart research, having undergone four open-heart surgeries since the age of just 28 to correct congenital aortic valve defects and the related damage that caused. In 2012, Benson published the very well-received memoir I’m Not Dead…Yet!, which recounted his often-traumatic medical history. More? Benson has also been a professor at New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts, The University Of Utah, The University Of South Carolina and Indiana University. So, in short, Robby Benson is a very talented, richly charismatic guy who’s lived an extraordinary and very, very creative life.

For the Unsung Auteurs column, however, we are going to focus on the seven-or-so years that really defined Robby Benson’s subsequently long and winding career, and saw him crafting a compelling body of what would now be called “Young Adult” work, all with a decidedly literary bent. “I was into show business straight from the womb,” Robby Benson once said. Though born in Texas, Benson’s parents were both in the arts – his mother Freda Ann Benson was a singer, actor, and business promotions manager, and his father Jerry Segal was a writer – and he moved into the entertainment industry quickly.

Robby Benson with BJ Thomas in a vintage lobby card for his debut feature lead *Jory*.

After a part on the TV series Search For Tomorrow, Benson made his credited big screen feature debut with the lead role in the 1973 western Jory. Now largely forgotten, this low-key effort from acclaimed Mexican director Jorge Fons sees Benson’s fifteen-year-old title character join a cattle drive after his father is killed. Finding unlikely mentors in the drive’s trail boss (John Marley) and a laidback cowboy (singer BJ Thomas in a rare acting role), Benson’s Jory comes of age on the cattle drive and eventually proves his worth to his older, tougher riding colleagues. Filled with warmth, rollicking humour and action, Jory’s distinctive coming-of-age qualities also set something of a template for Benson’s upcoming string of definitive films.

The first of Robby Benson’s seminal 1970s films was Arthur Barron’s Jeremy, a sweet, authentic drama in which Benson’s title character – a shy, bespectacled high school cellist – experiences the delirious highs and crushing lows of first love when he meets enchanting ballet student Susan (played by the singularly lovely 1970s ingenue Glynnis O’Connor, who would soon work again with Benson). A million miles from the T&A teen flicks that would proliferate in the 1980s, Jeremy is a film about intelligent, sensitive young people with agency in their own lives, and writer/director Arthur Barron treats them with the respect that they deserve. It’s also a deeply moving film on a purely emotional level.

Glynnis O’Connor & Robby Benson in *Ode To Billy Joe.*

Benson and O’Connor teamed again for 1976’s Ode To Billy Joe, directed by Unsung Auteur Max Baer Jr., best known as Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies, and also for writing the 1974 drive-in hit Macon County Line. Believed to be something of a first, Baer Jr. purchased the rights to country music legend Bobbie Gentry’s mournful, doom-laden story song “Ode To Billy Joe” with an eye to turning it into a film. Unheard of at the time (and a precursor to the songs-to-movies likes of Harper Valley PTA and The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia), it proved a fruitful decision, with the commissioned screenplay by Herman Raucher (who penned the 1971 youth classic Summer Of ’42) resounding with emotion and sensitivity. Sensitively directed by Baer Jr. with a real sense of backwoods poetry, the young love experienced by Benson and O’Connor in this dark-hued drama is far more tragic than that in Jeremy, and this lends the film a lingering, haunting sadness. Benson is superb in the title role, and his chemistry with Glynnis O’Connor is truly voluble.

Benson moved from the backwoods to the college campus for 1977’s delightful One On One, which the actor co-wrote with his father Jerry Segal. Directed with a sure hand by the underrated Lamont Johnson (1973’s masterful The Last American Hero), this is a terrific take on the classic youth sports film, as Benson’s smalltown high school basketball star experiences a major culture shock when he arrives in college, now a small fish in a much bigger pond. Benson’s uncertain and very likeable Henry battles horribly with his mean-spirited, hardnosed coach (the great character actor G.D. Spradlin in one of his best performances) as he tries to make it on the court, but receives a very comely ally in the gorgeous form of Annette O’Toole’s sociology tutor. Funny, touching and once again authentic of the youthful experience, One On One still stands as one of Benson’s most purely enjoyable early films.

Young love was again at the centre of Benson’s next film, but in 1978’s unfairly maligned Ice Castles, the young actor plays more of a back-up role, with the lead really going to actress Lynn-Holly Johnson, who plays a gifted ice skater beset by tragedy. Benson nicely plays her ice hockey player boyfriend, but this is not as strong as the actor’s previous films, though its tragic themes are certainly consistent with them. Though now clouded by a recent and most-welcome advancement in cultural sensitivity, Benson gives one of his best – if unlikeliest – performances in 1979’s Walk Proud, in which the decidedly non-Hispanic actor plays Emilio Mendez, a deeply conflicted young man caught up in LA’s Chicano gang scene. This kind of casting would thankfully never happen in today’s cinematic world, but Benson does undeniably soulful work here, and he even looks pretty cool with his long hair, bandannas, and brown contact lenses. If you can get past the of-its-era cultural insensitivity, Walk Proud is actually a compelling drama, and another in Benson’s strong run of youthful angst pictures. He also sings the movie’s theme song “Adios Yesterday” for good measure.

The picture of 1970s youth that Robby Benson carefully crafted in Jory, Jeremy, Ode To Billy Joe, One On One, Ice Castles and Walk Proud was backed by a series of strong telemovies (1974’s Remember When and All The Kind Strangers, 1975’s Death Not Be Proud and especially 1977’s devastating The Death Of Richie, in which Benson plays a drug addicted teen killed by his own father) that solidified his status as the decade’s most essential youth star. Though Benson would certainly work again effectively within the coming-of-age concept in films like Tribute, The Chosen, Running Brave, and Harry & Son, those titles don’t have the singularity of theme and purpose that his 1970s dramas do. For those bright, beautiful, soulful and deeply emotional seven-or-so years in the 1970s, there was a true throughline in the work of Robby Benson, marking him as something of a surprise Unsung Auteur…