While Robert Blaisdell has traveled the world, it’s a local homage that may be his legacy.

Robert Blaisdell, age 90, rarely ventures out from his home in Carmel these days. He lives by the Carmel Foundation that supports older adults like him, very content with his full life.

He’s had it all: Blaisdell photographed and filmed the world, lived in an actual Monterey adobe, saw Point Lobos bare before protections let the tree canopy fill in, had a cottage at Garrapata Canyon and a studio underneath the stage in the Sunset Center. He worked with Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe and Woody Allen. He played bassoon for the Monterey Symphony, hung out with the Westons, Ansel Adams and Robinson Jeffers and impromptu interviewed Henry Miller. The list doesn’t end there.

The Henry Miller interview in 1966 turned into what eventually became Blaisdell’s most special achievement and a true gift for his community, a film titled Big Sur: The Way It Was – a big portrait of old Big Sur. While the movie was finished in the ’70s, it sat on the shelves before being put to video in 1995.

Weekly: Your life sounds like a movie.

Blaisdell: I was very lucky.

Let’s go over your childhood.

I was born in Berkeley and moved down when I was 2. I went through all the schools in Monterey, which was back then all about fishing. I got my first camera from my mother when I was 6. She gave a camera to me and my brother, who also, later on, became a photographer. My mother got interested in photography around 1912 and started taking photos of everybody and everything around. But when I went to Monterey Peninsula College, I studied music. I wanted to be a concert musician before I realized that photography is more important to me.

Was your family from here?

No. My father was in the engineers during World War I. He ended up in San Francisco and met my mother, whose family has a resort on the Russian River. Until 1929 my father had a gas station. He lost it. But he knew Senator Joseph Nolan, who offered him his first parks job. In 1933, my father came down here to put together Pfeiffer State Park and Point Lobos [State Nature Reserve]. He became a superintendent of the whole coast.

So you had a chance to sleep at Point Lobos, famously a daytime park?

I told you, I was lucky. I worked at Point Lobos each summer vacation since high school. There was a cabin there right on the cove. Point Lobos was a completely different place back then. The whole peninsula was a different place. Carmel was really for locals and local artists. They would move around, drawing no attention, this big group of photographers here in the ’40s and ’50s. There was no real estate, just local businesses.

So pretty much you say Carmel was better then.

I saw Monterey torn down, I saw Carmel torn down. Things really changed when Clint Eastwood became a mayor [in 1986] – very briefly, but all the media came here. People came, developers came. Eastwood was somewhat involved in the history of making Big Sur: The Way It Was.

How so?

He was there when Doug McClure got interested in my footage of Big Sur. I was telling Eastwood if he would be interested, but then McClure said he would be interested and we put the film together with him as a narrator. That was it. But even then, nobody wanted it.

What was the idea for the film?

I interviewed Henry Miller in 1966, but the idea for a film came later, maybe in 1971. I kept interviewing people in Big Sur, such as “Lolly” Fassett of Nepenthe or [artist and Henry Miller’s friend] Emil White. Many others.

OK. So the film is on the shelf. But life keeps going. Can we go back to the moment you come back to Monterey after World War II?

Yes, I was in Coast Guard reserves but that didn’t help me. I ended up serving in the Charleston Harbor.

When I moved back, I got straight into photography. I was everywhere. I was doing educational films, films for Tor House, I was shooting Monterey Jazz Festival, Laguna Seca. Eventually I started freelancing for Lee Mendelson Productions. After that, I was on the road all the time, flying all over the world.

And suddenly in 1995…

Carmel Martin Junior, a lawyer interested in Big Sur, called me. He helped me to put it on video and with distribution. Big Sur: The Way It Was became a local hit for a while. And it was recently shown during the 2024 Carmel Film Festival.