Obituary: Robert Benton

The writer and director of “Kramer Vs. Kramer” died on Mother’s Day at 92

May 22, 2025

After attending my dearest friend’s 90th birthday party, I learned that screenwriter and director Robert Benton died on Mother’s Day at the age of 92. Today’s news is so shallow, flimsy, compartmentalized and devoid of what matters that news of his death had escaped my notice. This obituary skims the surface. I’ll write with greater clarity and purpose in the future. I met, knew and worked with Robert Benton, who became an admirer of my fiction writing. At his best premise, Robert Benton was an artist.

Benton’s movies changed my life—some in a profound and thoughtful way. Robert Benton is a thinking moviegoer’s movie director. His films flicker, provoke and enchant. I haven’t seen, watched or properly contemplated every one of his films, though I’ve gone deeper than most in learning, knowing and understanding a selection of his movies. Among the first is a movie I didn’t enjoy, don’t enjoy and discussed with him in detail. The 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde radically changed American cinema and culture. The film, which he co-wrote with David Newman, reflects his own violent past in Texas. Among the last is a movie I did enjoy, do enjoy and discussed with him in detail. The 2007 motion picture Feast of Love counters what became of American cinema and culture. The film, Benton’s final movie, reflects his reckoning with trauma, violence and death.

During my years as a movie site columnist, writer and editor, I had the pleasure of watching, reviewing and interviewing Mr. Benton about his last three movies (and his career). After the website sold out and I launched a blog, I watched or rewatched, reviewed and interviewed Benton about two of his indelible movies. I met or spoke with him several times after the turn of the century, including while he was at home in New York City, promoting movies in Santa Monica, Hollywood and mid-city Los Angeles. Eventually, I reached out and invited him to read my short stories, which he did. Benton gave notes with enthusiasm that he loved my fiction writing. Before he died, the Oscar-winner recommended my fiction in a ‘blurb’ for promotional purposes in the event of my fiction writing’s anticipated publication.

I’ll include an index herewith of several reviews and interviews from various sources, mostly from my author website. My review and interview regarding his 1979 motion picture Kramer Vs. Kramer is my favorite because I think these capture his rare, intelligent and ingenious approach to storytelling in movies. Benton’s wife, Sallie, an artist and painter who precedes him in death, once wrote to me that she values my Kramer Vs. Kramer interview because she learned things about her husband and his artistry that she had not previously known. I had interviewed Sallie Benton’s husband, who is survived by his son, John, in the same Hollywood hotel where Oscar’s first ceremony took place. We’d been attending a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) classic film festival where Benton was a featured and honored guest.

Robert Benton adapted literary works for film and was passionate and enthusiastic about the movies. Benton had a hand in crafting some of Hollywood’s most poignant or powerful movies—including the marvelous 1978 version of Superman starring Christopher Reeve in the title role—and his films catapulted, launched or revived careers and legacies of Streisand, Hackman, Witherspoon, Paul Newman, Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Art Carney and Faye Dunaway. Benton was born of adversity and became the quintessential self-made American, achieving an interesting, provocative arc from voice of the counterculture to expressive voice of reason. Benton held steadfast and true to his vision of what the best of his generation pitched as peace and love. Benton was a gentle, decent man with a wild streak—and a loving family, particularly his loyal assistant, Marisa Forzano—and he leaves a legacy of art that moves and lifts you up. This is an achievement.

Benton was not the new intellectual. To his eternal credit, he recognized the value of the new intellectual for the future and he acted upon this knowledge, foresight and wisdom. This makes Robert Benton—who created films depicting the new masculine ideal of a strong, vulnerable father and the self-made family based on love, not blood—a man of the future in his own uniquely triumphant way.