STAR: The life and wild times of Warren Beatty
by Peter Biskind
(Simon and Schuster, R120)
Not many young readers will realise the impact of this Hollywood old-timer not too many years back. And those who know and spotted him at the recent Oscars at the side of his wife, Anette Bening (who was nominated for a Best Actress award) would have been surprised to see this once uber-super playboy as the ageing spouse.
It couldn’t have been more contradictory to his previous life, the one which fortunately happened before the internet turned every star’s life into something of a nightmare. While Beatty’s reputation was that he bedded almost every female star in Hollywood, he was however able to maintain his privacy and stayed out of the spotlight which could have turned quite nasty.
But this is a man who made movies like Reds and Bullworth, had long-term relationships with Julie Christie and Diane Keaton, who is, among other things, the brother of the weird and wonderful Shirley MacLaine and a power-broker of note in Hollywood. He was someone who could persuade those with money to allow him to make movies his way.
How he got away with it is still hard to understand. Even with his reputation for working like a demon and doing an unbelievably large number of takes, he was still given movies like Ishtar, which was problematic from the start and failed big time.
The fact that he got quality pictures made is quite astonishing given his methods and style of operating, which had even close friends turning their backs.
What is fascinating is that even though this seems like an authentic attempt to try to get a handle on Beatty, someone who is notoriously guarded, there’s an element of what feels like gossip, a kind of he-says-she-says but one isn’t quite sure of the source.
Given this is Beatty, who wasn’t going to talk about himself, it is likely that most of his friends who were willing to let something slip would only do it anonymously, but it leads one to wonder how the author could quote some-thing said between two people in private.
Not that one doesn’t enjoy every sentence about this astonishing life. This is a man who came from nowhere and like Michael Douglas (who had a Hollywood background), produced a movie early in his career that changed the essence of moviemaking.
A film like Bonnie and Clyde was light years ahead of its time and because Beatty not only produced but also starred with Faye Dunaway, his future was guaranteed. There’s much to learn about the people and the places, the way films were made, the people that become embroiled in battling for a product and a way of life that is no more.
This was a time when the stars ruled and when a Warren Beatty, given the talent and the clout, could almost get away with murder. For some of those who worked with him on a movie, it felt like that, but when the end product was proudly screened, all of that floated away and the indulgent film-making would go ahead with the next one and the next.
He is a fascinating man and tested his friendships to the limit. Bening seems to have tamed her man, but many will feel Beatty was blessed to find this wondrous woman. Read this one and weep – but joyously. It’s the story behind the scenes of a time in Tinseltown that is no more.
In today’s world, a star with similar power does one crazy jump on a couch as he oozes forth about his latest fair love and then he disappears, seemingly for ever.