Warren Beatty - A Private Man

Zusatztext “Undoubtedly the best star biography of the year.” —Christopher Silvester! The Sunday Times (London) “Finstad discovers that Beatty is even more sensitive! gentlemanly! and astute than had already been realized.” —Janet Maslin! New York Times “[A] compelling biography. Beatty is that rarest of human beings! a man blessed with many gifts: good looks! charm! talent! drive! and sex appeal. Beatty’s life has something to teach people about eluding fame’s snares.” —Deirdre Donahue! USA Today “A serious! fact-rich look at a serious artist.” —Peggy Noonan! The Wall Street Journal “A detailed and admiring account of Beatty’s life and loves. Finstad’s book gives plenty of insight into the gentleman and perfectionist she says lies behind the Virginia-raised actor’s mask.” —Reuters News Service Informationen zum Autor Suzanne Finstad received the Frank Wardlaw Prize for her first book! Heir Not Apparent . Her most recent! Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood ! was a New York Times bestseller and named the best film book of 2001 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Several of her works have been made into films. She lives in California and has a law degree. The year 1959 clearly was meant to be Warren Beatty’s moment in time. On the same February day as Beatty’s first screen test with Jane Fonda, the head of production at Warner Brothers in Los Angeles sent a letter to Elia Kazan, who was rehearsing Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway, promising to “alert the boys here” to look for a boy of nineteen to twenty-one to star in Splendor in the Grass. Kazan wanted to start filming in August, unless he was contractually obligated to Twentieth Century Fox to direct the film Wild River first. The timing coincided with actress Natalie Wood’s return to Warner Brothers that February after a seven-month suspension. The studio had resolved its dispute with the former child star using the lure that she could play Deanie Loomis, the fragile teenager in Splendor in the Grass whose first love ends in tragedy, a role with painful parallels to Natalie Wood’s own life. Natalie Wood was drawn to Deanie as a moth to the light, just as she was to “Gadge” Kazan, whose psychologically nuanced work she revered. William Inge, who already had cast Warren Beatty mentally as Deanie’s athlete boyfriend, Bud, was at first “dubious about Natalie,” whose promise in Rebel Without a Cause seemed to flicker after Warner Brothers put her in a pair of shallow movies with Tab Hunter that featured only her beauty. “But Gadge wanted her,” Inge said later, “and he was right.” After meeting privately with Wood, the director discovered she was “disgusted with her image” and had a “desire for excellence” in her work. Kazan preferred to cast actors whose personalities matched the characters they were playing, and he quickly assessed the vulnerable and intelligent Natalie Wood as “true blue with a wanton side held down by social pressure,” similar to the sweetnatured Deanie. Inge was still rewriting the screenplay, further refining the part of the high school football hero to fit Warren Beatty, who continued to visit the playwright frequently at his apartment on Sutton Place. Jane Fonda, who had become pals with Beatty while they were preparing to costar in Parrish, thought at first that he was Bill Inge’s boyfriend. After both Beatty and Fonda were famous, she often would be included on the long list of his girlfriends, but their relationship was more like brother and sister. “Warren and I became friends—not lovers, but friends,” said Fonda. Beatty’s intimate circle recognized the distinction. “He did only hang out with Jane,” affirmed Verne O’Hara, who still sometimes shared her husband’s hotel suite with Beatty, and was thus able to observe his bedroom partners firsthand. In O’Hara’s evaluati...

Product details

• Authors: Suzanne Finstad
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.10.2006
• EAN: 9780307345295
• ISBN: 978-0-307-34529-5
• No. of pages: 587
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 222 mm x 38 mm
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet