Customer Reviews

Warren Beatty: A Private Man

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I read this book while wearing two hats. The first hat was my "settle down with a good book" hat, worn when I am just looking for a good story that I can pick up and put down and won't make me think too hard. But once I started with "Warren Beatty, A Private Man," I didn't want to put it down! I was absolutely fascinated by his beginnings -- the mix of Canadians and Virginians, the artistic bent that ran through the family, the disappointment of his father, etc. The author layered it so beautifully and painted such a clear picture of Beatty's childhood, I really felt I knew all of them personally. Warren and Shirley were kids I could easily have grown up with. And, ironically, I had a rather close (though non-romantic) friendship with Warren when we were both working on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." Unfortunately, there were times when I found it difficult to recognize the charming, amusing and polite young man I knew - and who Ms. Finstad captures so well --in the man who went on to become a Hollywood heartthrob and seemingly ruthless heartbreaker. All the pick-ups, the orgies, the conniving.... . And the difficult side of him when he started getting jobs, all the takes, mumbling, etc. Why would anyone hire him a second time? But I have to say he knew exactly how to deal with people who could help him advance. Although I admire people who work their way to the top (rather than having it handed to them), I found this particular side of Warren very unlikable.
My second hat, my writer's hat, was paying attention to the boundless research Ms. Finstad did, and was awed by the very real picture she painted of such a complicated man. I am familiar with research; my book, "The Tsar's Woman," required 15 years of poking through books, traveling to Russia, watching documentaries, etc. in order to get a handle on Russia's first tsar, Ivan IV, who became known as "Ivan The Terrible." I think she did an absolutely spectacular job, both in finding the man and explaining him to the reader in an easy, page-turning way.

It took me days to finish this book, and I'd say you get your money's worth by halfway through, and the rest is gravy. Oddly enough, however, the book feels a bit topheavy, so that the bulk of it is spent on Beatty's difficult period between meeting William Inge and making LILITH about four years later, and then all of a sudden the last 40 years are rushed through at a clippety clop.

WB isn't quite as entertaining as Suzanne Finstad's previous biorgaphy, the sublime NATASHA, which really did bring Natalie Wood alive again for her fans; and it's likely that the parts of the present book with the most emotional resonance are the years Beatty spent with Natalie, trying to cheer her up after Wagner betrayed her. Finstad does an admirable job of showing us the psychological underpinnings of Beatty's affairs with Joan Collins (almost persuading us that Collins is a real person, not just a glitzy British sex bomb--almost, but not quite), Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, and Julie Christie. But when she gets down the list to Michelle Phillips, her pretense at analysis ends. She doesn't even try. I wonder if the book wasn't originally twice as long, and she was asked to curtail the later years into a series of briefer chapters. I mean, she could have written 100s of pages on Mary Tyler Moore and Isabelle Adjani, but instead they're reduced to ciphers.

As a boy, Beatty was enraptured by the original cast album of OKLAHOMA! by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Finstad successfully shows us that, subconsciously or not, Beatty succeeded again and again in replicating the Curly-Laurie romance in his own adult life.

It does seem as though Beatty was propelled to stardom by a clutch of gay visionaries including Inge and Tennessee Williams, and crypto gay figures like Joshua Logan, who signed Beatty to a personal contract and had him screen tested kissing Jane Fonda from morning to night. Inge wrote not only SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, but A LOSS OF ROSES and ALL FALL DOWN for Beatty, and apparently never asked him for a thing in return. The stage production of A LOSS OF ROSES turned out to be a true nightmare of conflicted egos and desperate desires, what with Barbara Baxley threatening to jump off the cliffs of Malibu if replaced by Carol Haney, and Shirley Booth quitting on opening night. Joey Heatherton, the one and only, was also fired, thus setting the scene for a long and poignant second act that never quite came.

Would Joan Collins have been effective in the movie version of DH Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS? Would Warren have succeeded playing Tony in WEST SIDE STORY? The book gives us crazy dreams of movies that might have been. Afdera Fonda, the former wife of Henry Fonda who dallied with Beatty briefly in 1963, said that he was "naughty, charming and playful. He smelled like honey, and he came and went like a shadow in the night."

Confession: I borrowed the book from the library, and do not own a copy.

I have always been fascinated by Warren Beatty, and the way he interpreted his movies. He is a considered thinker, and that comes across in all his movies (You might disagree with the way he interprets it, but he does put in a lot of thought into his projects.) I still have vivid recollections of "Red," and "Dick Tracy," is a movie that my husband watches quite often.

What this book revealed was how Beatty's childhood shaped his persona. This, I think is one of the strong glimpses that you get of Beatty, the private man. And this revelation perhaps helps you better understand the actor's personality.

An intelligent child with a musical gift (he played the piano), Beatty followed his sister Shirley McLaine's footsteps and joined the film industry. Most of the films he made were shaped by his interests and passions that date back to his childhood.

The book could have been condensed into a slimmer volume, and made it easier on the reader. But, other than that if you like reading biographies then this is a good one to read in your spare time.

Everything a great bio needs - a compelling subject, exhaustive research, good storytelling - is here. There are flaws, but they are largely outweighed in this excellent book that really made me think.

True, it's a bit repetitive at times, and like so many chronological works, falls into the trap of being front-loaded. The biggest casualty here is Bening - a woman worth a more thorough treatment in the book in the context of what the relationship says about Beatty.

In the end, I disagree with two of the author's main themes (one of the best things about this book is that it's thought provoking): first that Beatty was driven by a fear of failure. I simply can't believe that a man who has failed so spectacularly and so publicly so many times, in his relationships, his business ventures and his political causes, is afraid to fail. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite.

I also don't think Beatty is any more "private" than most of us, and what appear to be the characteristics of a private person are in fact clues into what makes him so successful. Being elusive with the media is not necessarily about privacy - in fact I was surprised at the number of very personal statements cited from media interviews over the years - it's about control.

He does what the most seductive people do so well - he makes every person he encounters, professional or personal, feel like they are special, a theme repeated throughout the book by the many people who have known him. His self-created image only furthers the seduction, as everyone he touches flatters themselves that "he's a very private man; I know him better than you do."

He even achieves this illusion at a very public level by presenting a series of autobiographical films - leaving each person to decide if he's George Roundy or Jay Bulworth or John Reed or Bud Stamper or Joe Pendleton or Dick Tracy, or some complicated combination of all of them. That's not a private man - that's a man who knows how to manipulate his own image, and to get what he wants out of life in the long run, both personally and professionally.

Loved the book, really made me think, will now read others by the same author on this basis.

This biography is unique because of its penetrating psychological analysis of Warren Beatty from birth. The first sentences relate to what shaped and formed his pysche and continue thrillingly so right up to his entrance into the world of acting. You'll find yourself often re-reading his growing years to edify his absolutely fabulous career in this absolutely fabulous and best Beatty bio ever.

Author Suzanne Finstad has graced us with a laboriously detailed look into Warren Beatty's family history, interpersonal and intra-familial relationships, and his career path. It seems she left no stone unturned.

Much of the first fourth of the book is devoted to his family tree. Finstad leans a bit heavily on the literary device of foreshadowing, and peppers nearly every family history moment, genealogical trait, or childhood moment of Beatty's as a portent of things to come. A few here and there would have been fine, but she really lays it on thick.

The author also pays a lot of creedence to how the various influences of religion, lifestyle, environment, and profession of many of his ancestors had a profound influence on Beatty's development and life. Call my cynical, but I don't necessarily believe that all those individual ingredients will necessarily so deeply impact a person one to three generations down the road. They certainly can and might, but not likely to the degree that Finstad asserts. Beatty is very much "his own man", as Finstad herself would say. Seems a bit presumptuous to try to pinpoint the motivations for so many details in a person's life to his ancestors when the man himself is the product of his own life experiences first and foremost.

Regardless of that, the book is a pleasant read and reveals a good number of Hollywood trivia tidbits that would fascinate and delight movie and theater fans. Beatty's sister Shirley Maclaine gets a fair amount of ink in this book too. And true to Finstad's writing style, if she says once that Beatty deliberately decided not to trade on the success of his famous older sister as he struck out on his own, she says it a hundred times.

Is an objective look, at the man who captivated audiences around the world. Beautifully written, honest and poignant, the book takes the reader deep into the lives and backgrounds of a family that spawned not only one star-but Two. Suzanne Finstad's "A Private Man" gives the reader perspective as it takes you through the inner workings of a boy's life as he grows up to be one of Hollywood's most charismatic and influential leading men. Gracefully structured and truly the definitive Warren Beatty biography...A Must Read! J.J. Gillock (Easy Company Productions)

Gets really boring at times. Jumps all over the place and keeps on repeating......... But otherwise informative.

Finstad's exhaustively researched book (average: one footnote per sentence!) is repetitious, repetitious, repetitious. Oh, and did I say she repeats herself? Beatty is a fascinating and complex subject. He deserves a cogent, readable, examination of his life and work. This isn't it.

Further, Finstad's absorption in Freudian constructs to explain ALL behavior is facile and annoying. Does she mention that Beatty is a control freak and pleasure junkie because his father drank? Oh, yeah, just every page or so. Does she discuss the "fact" that Beatty did not want to achieve fame through the agency of his sister, Shirley MacLaine? About every other page, I'd imagine. Was Warren a "Virginia gentleman" conflicted by the temptations of Hollywood in conflict with his "strict Baptist upbringing"? Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

Ironically, Finstad acknowledges her "editor." Too bad no attention was paid to editing. Read it if you have a high tolerance for aggravation and little else to do.

I love and collect biographical books. This book was totally disappointing. The entire book was an effort to "elect" Warren to some future office. I had hoped to gain some insight to his personal life and was left entirely with mindless minutiae. A total disappointment for such a large book...little or no new information of any value.