This was the beginning of an intense, nearly year-and-a-half affair, during which he took over her life, evincing a need for control that would characterize his behavior in future relationships. He urged her to stop smoking and take vitamins as he did. He called her repeatedly, at her count eighteen times a day. And it wasn’t just her. He lived on the phone, making two, three dozen calls between the time his eyes opened in the morning and the time he closed them at night. He had remarkably good recall and committed many of his most frequently dialed numbers to memory after hearing or seeing them just once. (Ten years after they would break up, she ran into him at a party, and he still remembered her number on Shoreham Drive.)
Once Beatty and Collins connected, they were always together. He haunted the set where she was shooting Seven Thieves. The love-struck couple whiled away the time languishing on the beach. He wrapped himself around her, licked the salt off her lips, her fingers, wherever, as the breakers gently lapped the sand. In the evenings, they went to restaurants, clubs, and piano bars, exchanged fond glances, held hands, kissed, and canoodled. He made love to Collins relentlessly, although every now and then he would accept calls while he was inside her. Unlike Jack Nicholson, with whom he would become fast friends, he was not subject to premature ejaculation, but on the contrary would become famous for his staying power, his ability to go on and on and on, giving his partner multiple orgasms before coming himself. But for Collins, it was too much of a good thing. One Sunday morning, exhausted, she stumbled out of bed. Dragging on a forbidden cigarette, she said, “I don’t think I can last much longer. He never stops—it must be all those vitamins he takes.… In a few years I’ll be worn out.” Later, a skeptic asked her if they really had sex seven times a day. She replied, “Maybe he did, but I just lay there.”
Some of her friends found their relationship strange and unhealthy. He was too callow, they said, unknown and impecunious, using her to kick-start his career. But she was deaf to their doubts, impervious to their warnings. As a teenager, Beatty had been struck with George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun (1951), with its story about a handsome but penniless young man on the make who sees his pot of gold within reach when he secures the love of a beautiful heiress, but who has to get rid of his pregnant and very inconvenient lower-class girlfriend. One can only speculate about the significance this story had for him in the context of his romance with Collins, who was way above him on the ladder to the stars. “Warren was 21 [sic] when I met him,” she observed. “He was just desperate to become famous.”
True, Beatty was struggling, but his career had been showing signs of life. His agents at MCA, Music Corporation of America, toiling on his behalf, had succeeded in securing him a five-year nonexclusive contract at $400/week from MGM on the basis of his screen test with Fonda. “When I got out here you know. I didn’t have any money,” Beatty recalls. “Suddenly I was under contract to MGM. That was just tremendous. I rented a little one-bedroom house near Coldwater Canyon. I had a car, a convertible. There was an orange grove beside the house which I thought was amazing, to see oranges growing on trees. There was nothing to do at the studio. Nobody complained that I was picking up this check.” He had been nearly incapacitated with a bad case of hepatitis—he lost thirty-five pounds—but thanks to a doctor who had put him on a nutritious diet and discouraged him from drinking, he had steadily improved. Not that he was inclined to drink anyway, having grown up with a father who had an alcohol problem. As MacLaine described their father, “He’d come home drunk, set something on fire, leave again until the wee hours, then return and sleep til noon.”
The hepatitis scare, along with nascent hypochondria exacerbated by a wannabe actor’s vanity, left him with what would become a lifelong fascination with things medical. He even became a surprisingly good amateur diagnostician. “Can Warren talk medicine?” asks Dick Sylbert, rhetorically. “He can go on about cholesterol numbers the way racing drivers talk tread thicknesses. Obsessed. The amount of attention that these stars demand is extraordinary. Warren once had a little rash. He went nuts. He’s so careful, he’s got no dirt on him, no antibodies. He gets a cold, he’s knocked down, goes out. Like a baby, for weeks.”
Collins was still entangled with Englund, who was in Hong Kong with Marlon Brando, prepping The Ugly American. When he returned, he tried to reclaim her. She reluctantly agreed to meet him at the Cock and Bull, a faux-British pub on Sunset Strip. Beatty peevishly asked her how long it would take her to send him on his way. Trying to assuage his anxiety, she said she imagined no more than an hour. Nervously scribbling shapes on a scrap of paper, he sourly imagined she would decide it was Englund she loved, not him. Enfolding him in a warm embrace, she reassured Beatty, but he was already on the phone before she was out the door. Englund pressed her to dump him. He echoed her friends, reminded her that for all his self-assurance, Beatty was barely out of short pants, while she was a woman of the world, a movie star, for Christ’s sakes! She wavered, thought, Warren is pushy, awkward. Englund reminded her that he was divorcing his wife for her, and gave her a week to make up her mind. After one hour had turned into three, she jumped up from the table and left. He followed her to her car and kissed her with some passion.
Minutes after Collins got back to her apartment, Beatty arrived, furious, by her account. Apparently he had been circling the restaurant in his car while she was with Englund, frantic with jealousy. Pulling off his glasses and tossing them on the sofa, he shouted, “I saw you, necking in the parking lot.”
“We weren’t. He kissed me goodbye, that’s all.”
“Oh, sure.”
He tried to intimidate her, but sans glasses, he was so nearsighted as to be almost blind, and fell over a stool. They abused each other through the wee hours, shouting hurtful things. But the next day, following a session with her psychiatrist, she chose Beatty. They celebrated at La Scala with MacLaine.
BEATTY HAD arrived in New York City in 1956, when he was nineteen, after leaving Northwestern, where he was enrolled in the Speech and Drama Department. His big sister had made the same journey four years earlier, when she was eighteen. “I remember the morning I left home,” she wrote. “Warren had skipped football practice. He sat down at the piano to beat the hell out of it.… He was tall and handsome by now and didn’t need me any more to finish his battles. I wondered when I’d see him again. I wondered when he’d decide what he would do with his life. I didn’t know then (because he was as shy about his inside self as all of us) that every afternoon… Warren was in the basement acting out his soul to every Al Jolson record ever made, and memorizing in detail every play Eugene O’Neill ever wrote.” She continued, “Warren and I might have believed we were not from a show-business family, but… because we both lived out the unfulfilled fantasies of our parents, I think we had a greater inspirational motivation than the Barrymores or the Redgraves.”
Beatty found a $13 a week apartment on West 68th Street, previously occupied by a junkie. He lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, worked at odd jobs, including dishwasher, bricklayer’s assistant, construction worker, sandhog (in the Lincoln Tunnel), and piano player at Claven’s on W. 52nd Street. He even had something of a singing voice. When the hepatitis hit, he lay in bed for weeks. It was a dark time; he feared he would never get better, never work as an actor again.
One day, as Beatty recalls, “A friend of mine asked me if I would audition with him in a scene for CBS. Which I did. And I was offered a job on one of the dramatic religious shows they used to have on Sunday mornings. I did that. And then agents started to see me and offer me things and I began to work.”
This led to that, as it has a way of doing. “I needed money, and I wasn’t that good a piano player and I was not what you’d call the world’s outstanding sandhog,” he recalled. “It began to occur to me that I could make money acting and that I could find in the theater a tool for expressing myself.” He worked his way through shows like Studio One, Playhouse 90, and the Kraft Theatre. He did summer stock
. In the course of his education, he began to recognize the names that were on everybody’s lips—Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, who starred in A Place in the Sun. He heard that they mumbled, so he mumbled.
Beatty had done some TV show and was eagerly awaiting some response from his friends. In his words, “There was an ancient and very beautiful actress of twenty-six with whom I had become, let’s say, friendly. I mean very friendly. She was in California, she called, and said, ‘Hi.’
“‘Hi.’ I waited.
“‘Well, you really looked terrific.’
“I said, ‘What does that mean?’
“‘You’re gonna be a big movie star.’
“‘Yeah, you thought I was good?’
“‘You just looked wonderful.’
“‘But what’d you think of my work?’
“‘Well, I had a little trouble understanding some of what you said. But you looked so good.’
“‘What do you mean you had trouble understanding what—’
“‘Let’s not get into that. The thing is, this can all open up for you—’
“‘Just tell me, what do you mean, you had trouble understanding what I said?’
“‘I don’t think that’s productive.’
“‘What percentage couldn’t you understand?’
“‘What percentage? Don’t be ridiculous.’
“‘Just give me an idea.’
“‘Don’t get me into this, because, you know, it’s not fair.’
“‘How much, like 10 percent?’
“‘No.’
“‘What, 20 percent?’
“‘Don’t do this. Take it from me, you looked terrific, and that’s what’s gonna be important for you.’
“‘What, 30 percent?’
“‘Don’t do this!’
“‘So what are you saying, you lost half of what I said?’
“‘If you don’t stop…’
“‘I’m not gonna stop.’
“‘Okay, 90, 95 percent.’
“‘You missed 90 to 95 percent of what I said?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘That’s not possible.’
“‘Did I tell you there was no point in saying this?’
“‘Oh my God… ’”
Eventually, Beatty decided he might benefit from some formal instruction. He recalls, “A friend of mine saw me walking up Eighth Avenue one day in 1957, and said, ‘Where’ya going?’
“‘I’m going to such and such an acting school.’
“‘You can’t go there.’
“‘Why not?’
“‘There’s only one person for you to study with. Stella Adler.’
“‘Who’s Stella Adler?’”
Beatty enrolled in her class. “She was an amazing, flamboyant figure,” he continues. “I came to the first day, and Harold Clurman, who used to be married to her, stood up and gave the opening speech, a sort of call to arms. It was mesmerizing. There was a seriousness of approach to the study of acting that came out of a resentment with the superficiality of the commercial theater of the 1920s and the early 1930s, as well as the influence of the revolution in Russia, of Chekhov, and Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater, that worked its way into the Group Theatre, which Clurman presided over. And out of that came Stella and Lee Strasberg and Sandy Meisner. Stella used to tell a story about when she and Harold would be wrestling around in bed at night. She would punch him and say, ‘Harold, don’t sleep like a great man. Just sleep.’”
Despite his admiration for the politics and passion that drove the Group Theatre and its heirs, Beatty didn’t last long with Adler, with whom he got off to a bad start. Adler, apparently convinced that he was getting by on his looks alone, took a dim view of him. One day, he was a few minutes late to class. When he walked in, she announced, grandly, “Here comes Mr. Broadway.” He was embarrassed, did some shit-kicking, hemming and hawing, but she had an attitude toward him that she never got over and he never understood. He directed Rita Gam in a scene from A Hatful of Rain. When they presented it, Adler, in Gam’s words, “criticized Warren for being mannered and uncommitted.” Beatty lasted about eight months. He never went back, although he always speaks about Adler with admiration.
Logan had first glimpsed Beatty on stage at the North Jersey Playhouse in Fort Lee in December 1958, when the actor was playing Richard Loeb in Compulsion. The audience was packed with agents and casting directors trolling off-off-off Broadway regional theaters for the next big thing. A young Mart Crowley was assistant to the director. (He later went on to write Boys in the Band.) Crowley recalls, “Warren always wanted to discuss and discuss and discuss his part. And he didn’t like people calling him ‘Beetie.’” He was fond of saying that his name rhymed with “weighty,” not “Wheaties.” Even then, when he changed the spelling of the family name from “Beaty” to “Beatty,” he revealed the caution that would govern his behavior throughout his life, as well as his taste for endless toying, tinkering, tweaking. Unlike his sister, who got rid of her father’s surname entirely, exchanging it for her mother’s, he merely fiddled with it.
Compulsion ran for two weeks. Beatty got good notices. Logan was close to William Inge. Inge, along with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, was among the big three American playwrights in the 1950s. He had had four Broadway hits in a row: Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1953), Bus Stop (1955), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957). He had a thriving Hollywood career as well; all of these plays had become wildly successful movies.
Inge, a nondescript middle-aged Midwesterner with thinning hair who looked like a dry goods salesman, was gay. Even more than his friend, he was captivated by Beatty. “Inge was in love with Warren Beatty on sight,” Logan observed. “Warren’s career was assured. ‘I absolutely must have him,’ Bill said.” Wags used to refer to Inge as Beatty’s “fairy godfather.” Inge was looking for an actor to play the lead in a script he was writing for director Elia Kazan called Splendor in the Grass, and decided that the young man would be just the thing.
Inge invited Beatty to his home at 45 Sutton Place South, in Manhattan. The actor had just gotten out of a sickbed, down with food poisoning. When he finally made it to Inge’s apartment, he introduced himself as MacLaine’s brother, an indication of the state of his nerves, since he was determined to make his own way, not ride on his sister’s coattails. Inge told Beatty that he would try to get him the lead in Splendor, and in his new play as well, A Loss of Roses. From the actor’s point of view, there was no smarter career move than to attach himself to a writer like Inge, on the one hand, and hot directors like Logan and Kazan, on the other.
Beatty was most likely aware of his effect on Inge, and would exploit it, but it is doubtful that they had an intimate relationship. Says photographer Michael Childers, who was director John Schlesinger’s partner and later shot stills on several Beatty productions, “How smart of Warren to become a little coquette in order to ingratiate himself with Inge and Logan. Of course they were in love with him. I think Warren was smart enough to play it for all it was worth. Why not, if it was gonna get him a better part, or make his life easier. No sex was involved.”
Inge introduced Beatty to Kazan, who was favorably impressed. “I liked Warren right off,” he said, adding, “Warren had never been in anything before. He had been a high school football player, uncertain but charming.” Later, he wrote, Warren “wanted it all and wanted it his way. Why not? He had the energy, a very keen intelligence, and more chutzpah than any Jew I’ve ever known. Even more than me. Bright as they come, intrepid, and with that thing all women secretly respect: complete confidence in his sexual powers, confidence so great that he never had to advertise himself, even by hints.”
Beatty arrived on the scene at an opportune moment. Rarely had the movie business been afflicted by such a scarcity of young leading men. The older generation of actors, men like Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Lancaster, was headed for the Motion Picture Ho
me. James Dean had been famously killed in his Porsche Spyder in 1955, while Montgomery Clift was more or less sidelined with a disfiguring car accident of his own the following year. Marlon Brando was thirteen years older than Beatty and had already begun his descent into an auto-de-fé of self-parody. Paul Newman was twelve years older, and Steve McQueen, seven.
The late 1950s produced a sorry crop of new faces, the likes of Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, and R. J. Wagner, as well as a slew of good-looking actors who failed to break out, like Michael Parks, John Philip Law, Richard Beymer, and Brad Dillman, but only Tony Perkins, five years older than Beatty, had any real talent, and he was a niche actor, insufficiently masculine to play romantic leads. Dennis Hopper was too crazy to make it until much later, when he settled for being a character actor. Even Robert Redford was buried in the pack, his star lagging Beatty’s by nearly a decade. Clint Eastwood was struggling in B-movies, hoping someone would notice him. Rock Hudson was wooing Doris Day. Sean Connery, also behind Beatty, would become trapped in James Bond hell. “There was this period between 1960 and 1967, where I don’t think there were any young actors that were bankable,” says Beatty. “I didn’t have a lot of company.”
Kazan was looking for new faces. He liked to work with young actors, because they were hungry and full of enthusiasm. “They say that fighters come to fight. These guys—Dean, Brando, Beatty—they came to act. You couldn’t stop them,” he observed. Kazan appeared ready to give him the lead in Splendor.
Inge summoned Beatty to his apartment once again, this time to read for the lead in A Loss of Roses. It was set in a small Midwestern town in 1933. Beatty would play a young man, Kenneth Baird, deeply attached to his mother, but distracted enough by her old friend, an aging actress, to have an affair with her. Eventually, he leaves both behind for a life of his own. Inge thought Beatty was perfect for the role of Kenny, whom he described in a letter as someone who so luxuriates in his masculinity it was as if “he feels a wreath has been hung on his penis.” Inge wanted Kazan to direct, but he begged off, and the playwright was obliged to put Roses on hold. Meanwhile, Logan failed to get Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh for Parrish, and dropped out, leaving Beatty high and dry. (Logan later made the film with Troy Donahue in the role slated for Beatty, while Claudette Colbert and Karl Malden played the parents.)
Star_How Warren Beatty Seduced America Page 3
