Robert Redford made a golf movie in Beaufort and Bluffton: ‘He was such a nice guy’
Robert Redford, the iconic actor and film director who died at age 89 on Tuesday, was in Beaufort 26 years ago filming a golf movie titled “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”
He made a big impression on Dan Rogers, senior project manager for the South Carolina Film Commission, who was Redford’s driver for two days as the actor and his team began scouting locations in the Beaufort area.
Rogers recalls picking up Redford, known for his good looks and acting and directing chops, at the city’s famous Rhett House Inn, a 200-year-old antebellum house on Craven Street.
“Beaufort was the first place they came together as a team,” Rogers said. “They were trying to gauge where they were going creatively with all of this. And he was a down-to-earth guy. He said, ‘This is great.’ It helped him to understand his vision for that film, and it all started in Beaufort.”
The 1930s period film is about a down-and-out golfer, played by Matt Damon, who finds his swing and the meaning of life with the help of a mysterious caddy named Bagger Vance played by Will Smith.
Filming began Sept. 23, 1999.
The McLeod Farmstead, a historic farm near the tiny town of Seabrook on U.S. Highway 21 just north of the Beaufort, was used in one scene. Seabrook served as the birthplace for Bagger Vance.
“It had a great look,” said Rogers.
Rogers recalls the property owners walking down from the house to make their introductions and finding Robert Redford waiting. They had been told only that they would meet the director, not who the director was.
“They were very surprised,” Rogers said. “He was very congenial.”
If memory serves him, Rogers said, the property owners had a picture taken with Redford. But he may have just signed an autograph.
Finding golf courses that evoked the architecture of the period was daunting for Redford and his crew, according to the production notes of the film, which Rogers still has.
“Today, everything is so controlled and manicured, completely unlike the ‘30s,” Stuart Craig, the production designer, said at the time.
Fortunately, the production notes say, the filmmakers discovered courses designed by the renowned Pete Dye, which resembled courses of old and respected the indigenous nature of the Lowcountry.
While the Jekyll Island Club Hotel in Georgia served as the fictional Krewe Island in the film, many of the golf scenes were shot at the Colleton River Club in Bluffton. The famous scene at the end of the movie where the golfers battle each other was filmed at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island south of Charleston. Rogers said Craig designed the final hole so it could be shot when the sun was setting.
Scenes for the movie also where shot in Savannah and Edisto Island.
Filming occurred from September through December 1999.
Those were heady days for Beaufort, which already had been the backdrop for numerous Hollywood movies including “Forrest Gump,” “Jungle Book,” “Something To Talk About” and “The Prince of Tides,” based on Beaufort native Pat Conroy’s book.
In fact, Redford’s “The Legend of Bagger Vance” was filmed at the same time as the blockbuster film “The Patriot” starring Mel Gibson, which also was made in several Lowcountry counties.
Both films came out in 2000.
When Rogers learned of Redford’s death, he immediately texted this siblings. He told them he had spent two days with the Hollywood superstar in 1999.
“I was like, ‘oh my gosh,’” he said. “Was it really that long ago? It didn’t seem like it.”
Besides being down-to-earth, Rogers recalls Redford as being very professional and “on the phone a lot.”
“He was such a nice guy,” Rogers said.
This story was originally published September 18, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
