Suzanne Finstad - Warren Beatty: A Private Man

Warren Beatty

A Private Man

SUZANNE FINSTAD

Harmony Books
New York

contents

Prologue
ORIGINS OF FAME

Act One
THE GOOD SON

Act Two
ENFANT TERRIBLE

Act Three
A LEGEND IN THE MAKING

Act Four
THE PRO

Act Five
REDEMPTION

For my family and forebears, who formed me in ways seen and unseen

foreword

Early in my career as the New York Herald Tribunes second-string theater critic (actually I thought of myself as a handmaiden to God, in the person of the critic Walter Kerr), an off-Broadway actor approached my desk at the paper and said, To quote Groucho Marx, if I had a horse, Id horsewhip you. We settled our differences in the downstairs saloon, agreeing to disagree on the merits of his performance. Early in my career as the Tribunes film critic, Billy Wilder told an interviewer that inviting me to review a movie was akin to asking the Boston Strangler for a neck massage. I was flattered that the great filmmaker had noticed me.

Now, looking back at a forty-plus-year career as critic, I find Warren Beatty stands alone as the one movie star who thanked me for my negative reaction to his performance.

I had first seen Beatty in 1959, on the opening night of William Inges A Loss of Roses on Broadway, in Beattys firstand lastBroadway appearance. The reviews were generally negative, but Beatty, as the troubled son of a similarly troubled widow, was greeted by a few critics as definitely a find for the thin ranks of juvenile leads, earnest and attractive, and having exceptional skill as an actor. I certainly agreed enthusiastically with Walter Kerrs assessment of his performance as mercurial, sensitive, excellent. And I, of course, added very handsome indeed. I admired him as well on-screen in Elia Kazans (and Inges) Splendor in the Grass, which won him star status; The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone; and All FallDown.

But the first of his movies that I reviewed after becoming the film critic in 1963 was Lilith, Robert Rossens unintentionally ludicrous 1964 tale of goings-on in a sanatorium for the superrich, with Jean Seberg as a particularly nutty patient, Beatty an occupational therapist-in-training whos involved with her, and some theorizing about connections between love and madness. Beatty, I wrote, is noteworthy for his nonacting and his apparent inability to deliver a line without counting to ten. Its either super-Method or understandable reluctance, considering the lines.

John Springer, who had seen Beatty onstage and become his publicistand was an invaluable professional and personal friend of mine for forty yearsextended Beattys invitation to lunch at a steak house off Times Square. Id presumed that John was responsible for my first and last blind item in a gossip column, with Charlie McHarry, in the New York Daily News, asking the next day, What movie critic had a five-hour lunch with Warren Beatty? Suffice it to say that I remember a perfectly delightful encounter with a very bright, knowledgeable, and civilized young man with serious interests and ideas about movies. He also told me of a film he was working on with Arthur Penn, whom I knew well for his superb work as a Broadway director.

The last is relevant. Eleven months later, in September 1965, that film, Mickey One, opened the New York Film Festivaland I was the only critic who liked it. In fact, I loved it, declaring it a brilliantly original screen work, visually exciting and intellectually satisfying, a credit to everyone involved. On surface, the story of a nightclub comic on the lam from the syndicate, for me, is basically about fear; about the futility of flight from the unknown, about the self-appraisal that permits modern man to live with the nameless terrors of the unknown. Beatty, I noted, as the man guilty of not being innocent, revealed himself to be one of the remarkable young actors of our time. It wound up on my 10 Best list of that year, its setting, style, and score remarkable. I still think it a film far ahead of its timeand for all time.

Meanwhilewith my noting along the way that Promise Her Anything and Kaleidoscope did not show Beatty at his potential bestI became the movie critic for TV Guide and film-and-theater critic for the Today Show.

In 1966, I had served as chairman of the international jury for the Montreal Film Festival. I had had a fine time and kept in touch with its sponsors. The following June, Beatty and Penn invited me to see a rough cut of their second project, Bonnie and Clyde. It was passionate love at first sight. The Montrealers phoned me. They had loved Mickey One as I had, chairman Rock Demers saidand did I know about Bonnie and Clyde? They were looking for a blockbuster opener, since the festival was to be part of Expo 67, the international worlds fair, and, boy, did I have an opener for them! It was indeed a night to remember on August 7, 1967. Not officially anyones critic, I felt free to ride with my husband in a parade of antique cars from hotel to theater and to join a packed audience and its standing ovation at the end of the film. Bosley Crowther, critic for the New York Times and my newspaper-days rival, hated it.

In July, Vogue magazine had invited me to review a film, and my rave review of Bonnie and Clyde appeared in its September issue. When the movie opened in August, I was able to tell the Today Shows millions of viewers about the film. Among its many triumphs I noted that Warren Beatty, so often merely a promising performer, fulfills himself as Clyde, revealing every inward weakness and outward ferocity of the man for whom weapons and the drivers wheel provide potency. Bonnie and Clyde made my 1967 and all-time best-movie lists.

With only an occasional lapse thereafter, Beatty did, in my view, fulfill the promise of his youth. In McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Parallax View, and the superb Shampoo, he showed himself a master of characterfrontiersman-phony, investigative journalist, Beverly Hills hairdresser-cum-sexpotas well as a socially conscious filmmaker. He took time out for political activ-ity and returned to do a remake of Heaven Can Wait and, after another hiatus, fulfilled many roles in production, innovative structure, and performance in 1981s Reds. Another time-out of his, and I found myself enjoying 1990s