While reading Gerald Kolpan's "Etta," an intriguing novel about Etta Place, the mystery woman who travelled with Butch and Sundance, I thought of the intriguing Katharine Ross who so memorably played Etta alongside Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the 1969 romp "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Ross used her low forehead, curtain of hair, sensual underlip and intelligent inscrutability to great effect in a number of film classics, most famously "The Graduate" (1967), "BC&TSK," and "The Stepford Wives." She is one of those actors who communicated more without dialogue than with.
Her fans -- and who is not? -- can enjoy a Ross triple-dip on April 18 when Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will show "Butch Cassidy," "The Graduate," and "Tell Them Willie Boy is Here " (1969), Abraham Polonsky's underknown film about a Paiute who kills in self-defense. The Native American is Robert Blake and Ross is his Paiute girlfriend. While Ross turned up on the evening soap opera "The Colbys" in the 1970s and was lately seen as Jake Gyllenhaal's shrink in "Donnie Darko," she is not a prolific actress. For 25 years she has been married to the gravel-voiced actor Sam Elliott.
My favorite Ross role is Etta. Yours?
love her in "Murder by Natural Causes" (1979) my fave made-for-TV movie, from the team behind "Columbo." She plays the wife of a big-deal mentalist (Hal Holbrook!) and plots to scare him to death. can he read her mind? great twists/turns. I suppose many folks will mention "The Stepford Wives," but i've always found the premise/promise of that film better than the actual finished product.— bob ickes- I liked the sprightly sense of humor Ross brought to in James Goldstone's underseen "They Only Kill Their Masters" (1972) and her playful chemistry with James Garner in the same film.— Pash
- Her performance in The Graduate. I always enjoy her, but it was the first time I saw her and that made it special.— ccjroberts
- Ditto Pash. i really like that movie.— JDM
- The Final Countdown. Great film.— Echo
Comment removed.- As I read your post, I had a hazy recollection of a made-for-TV movie about Etta Place from the 1970s. A quick check at IMDb confirmed there was indeed such a beast: "The Sundance Woman" (a.k.a., "Mrs. Sundance," which is the title I remember). Oddly enough, Herschel Gordon Lewis co-wrote it - a strange bedfellow to "Miss Nymphet's Zap-In" or "She devils On Wheels." I'm pretty sure I saw "Mrs. Sundance" when it aired in 1976, but I don't have any clear memory. It would be fun to see it again, and see how Ross developed her most famous role.— wwolfe
- For me its a tie between Elaine in The Graduate and Etta in Sundance. BTW, also love the Gerald Kolpan book Etta!— socialgrace
- Wow, I had forgotten all about Katharine Ross. Does Anne Hathaway count as a cinematic descendant, or are her roles all too quirky?— drogow
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