![]() ![]() ![]() When De Niro wore this brown fedora to read for the role of Johnny Boy, the neighbourhood punk, Scorsese knew De Niro was his guy, he told New York magazine a few years later. The hat, and the role, marked the start of one of cinema’s most enduring and powerful collaborations, between De Niro and the director Martin Scorsese. Photograph: Harry Ransom Center Fedora from Mean Streets Robert De Niro's fedora from Mean Streets. For example, he might say he was in a touring play, but we know he performed a scene at Stella Adler or something.” “It does look like he was probably padding résumés. “The existence of these résumés was really interesting to me,” Wilson says. Maybe I said I was in a play or had a role in a play, and I’d just done a scene.” Wilson says the CVs helped the archivists date some of the items from early in his career, including his old make-up kit, which holds used brushes, tubes and cosmetic sticks that helped De Niro get into character during his early years as a student, before he went to work onstage and in dinner theatre. De Niro says he remembers typing those résumés, and when I ask him if he maybe, possibly exaggerated anything, he says, “I think I may have. The black-and-white photo of a very clean-cut young De Niro is accompanied by one of his early acting résumés, back when his film roles had names such as Friend of Lead. Photograph: Harry Ransom Center Early headshot and CV Here are a few treasures on display, with insights from De Niro and the centre’s curator of film, Steve Wilson. The Robert De Niro Papers show, which runs until January, features a portion of the 537 boxes, 601 bound volumes and 147 folders of items De Niro donated. “His strength comes from what he doesn’t say.” “I don’t know, if you’re spelunking around in there, if you’re going to be able to find the secret of his power and what he does,” Streep says in her speech. The film critic Leonard Maltin is acting as master of ceremonies, and Meryl Streep has hopped over to Texas to honour her long-time friend and colleague with a speech. He’s in town for the show and for a gala celebrating the centre’s 65th anniversary. “I wanted to keep it for my kids and I wanted to keep it all together,” De Niro tells me just after viewing an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin showcasing part of his archives. ![]() He did not want his Taxi Driver script notes to wind up deteriorating in a stranger’s closet, he sought out a place where the archivists and staff would care for and preserve each piece, including the red boxing gloves and leopard-print robe he wore as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull and the pages of letters that he and his Last Tycoon director, Elia Kazan, wrote each other. This was around 2006, and De Niro had been looking for a place to donate the extensive collection of props, costumes, scripts, letters and mementos he had accumulated through his six-decade career. How could such an important cultural artefact, created by an acting icon, a true artist, be as easy to bid on as an old pinball machine or a Las Vegas coffee mug? When Robert De Niro heard that Marlon Brando’s personal, annotated Godfather script was for sale on eBay he was not too happy. ![]()
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