Warren Beatty [Actor]

[HWBL]

Okay, so you won't have to go through all that luke warm eye-candy anymore>

Vital Stats and trivia:
Born: March 30, 1937
Height: 6'2"
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Blue/Green
Trademarks: stutters, mis-aligned eyes (SVZ LOVES that term )

[HWBL]

Originally Posted by Chatteaux

HWBL

Splendor in the Grass is it for me. And no one loves Ishtar more than me. I laugh and laugh everytime I see it. I might have to buy it.

Remember when he was sitting at the piano? I was crying from laughing so hard. My kind of silly humor.

Wardrobe of Love (lyrics and music by Williams)

She said come look there's a wardrobe of love in my eyes

Take your time look around

and see if there's something your size


Oh, and Reds. Reds....

Hey Chatteaux,

Glad to see another person who understands and appreciates the insanely hilarious, self depreciating humor and - really - political and social commentary of Ishtar. I doubt it, though, that you could possibly love this fantastic movie more than me It's one of my all time faves.

For those of youse who only know from hearsay about Ishtar, that it's one of the worst movies ever made..... impossible, certainly if you've seen any movie starring the likes of Mariah Carey, J.Lo, Madonna, David Hasselhoff (hehe), Pauly Short. The reason why this movie, after leading the box office for two weeks, bombed was none other than a political game playing at the top of the studio that distributed it. There was a change in management, and the new boss had a personal issue with the movie's director Elaine May, stemming from years earlier and also had inherited a studio that needed to be streamlined. Ishtar, made by one of his least favorite people, was the perfect scapegoat, and all promotion was cut from the budget to set a new - financial/budget - standard for all productions to follow. Granted, May had gone overboard with her budget, but this movie was axed from within the studio that produced it. Favorable critiques in the first two weeks soon turned around and before the participants knew it, the movie was pulled and written off as one of Hollywood's greatest failures, with media soon parroting each other's "opinion", even of those who hadn't even seen it.

Ishtar is a fantastic, hilariously funny movie about two completely untalented "songwriters" and "Simon & Garfunkel" wannabes, Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman). Lyle is a borderline retarded, insecure, sweetheart of a big lug of a guy, married to his highschool sweetheart since they were 17, who moved to the big city so his career as a songwriter could take off. Until that happens, he's selling icecream. During one of his routes he comes up with this beauty:
"Hot fudge love, cherry rippled kisses,
lip smacking, back slapping, perfectly delicious...."
All sung in that wonderful kid's voice of his

Chuck Clarke is as big a loser as Lyle is, only he believes he's an underestimated and under-appreciated musical genius. He has a "living apart" relationship with a girlfriend he sees once a week, and he writes great songs for golden wedding anniversaries about old lovers, soon about to die and "leaving their love in their will" to the remaining partner.

They meet and click and soon are off on a whirlwind of inspiration, coming up with fantastic songs like:

Telling the truth can be dangerous business.
Honest and popular don't go hand in hand.
If you admit that you can play the accordeon,
No one'll hire you in a rock 'n' roll band.

But we can siiinnnngggggg - our hearts out (all night)
And if we're lucky, then no neighbors complain.
Nobody knows where the beginning part starts out (sing all right)
But being human we can live with the pain.

Because life is the way we audition for God;
Let us pray that we all get the job.

Cryin' out loud gets you pointed and laughed at
Be like a baby. Only babies should cry!
Somebody tell me how that rumor got started.
Some things I know that only God knows why.

But we can siiinnnngggggg - our hearts out (all night)
And if we're lucky, then no neighbors complain.
No body knows where the beginning part starts out (sing all right)
But being human we can live with the pain

Of course the creative process is quite long and hard to come to such a fantastic end result:

Discarded lyrics for Dangerous Business:

Telling the truth can be bad news
good news
bad idea
difficult problem
scary predicament
bitter herb
dangerous tunnel
dangerous business
why? because
if yourself
you don't know
if you don't know yourself then you don't know why

But I digress.
They get an agent and go to a talent show. After seeing them he tells them they have no act, no hook. They decide to make their "show" flashier, resulting in a hilarious version of "Little Darlin'" with the guys adding "dance" to their "show". But, the agent is right, the only place where anyone will ever be crazy enough to book them is abroad, either Honduras or Ishtar, a tiny country near Morocco. Since both their sweethearts have left them, because of their impossible dreams to make it big in showbiz, Chuck decides they should go on tour in Ishtar, because it's safer What they don't know is that Ishtar is in the middle of a political uproar, the rebels are about to commit a coup against the Emir. From the first step they set on Ishtar soil, Chuck and Lyle are, unwittingly, right in the middle of political intrigue, even making the CIA keeping their eye on them. Through it all they remain blissfully unaware, idiots that they are.
It truly is an unbelievably funny movie for reasons like the hilarious lyrics, Warren's kiddie singing and speaking voice and outrageous dance moves, Dustin being the "hot, self assured, ladies man (in his own mind)" and Warren being the shy, unexperienced, near retarded farmboy.

One of my all time favorite scenes is the "schmuck" scene:

Lyle Rogers: What a smuck I was...
Chuck Clarke: Schmuck! It's not smuck. Schmuck!
Lyle Rogers: Smuck!
Chuck Clarke: [loud] Schmuck!
Lyle Rogers: Sssssssssmuck!
Chuck Clarke: Say "ssshhhh"
Lyle Rogers: Ssshhhhhh.
Chuck Clarke: Now say "muck".
Lyle Rogers: [soft] Muck.
Chuck Clarke: Now say "ssshhh" and "muck" together real fast.
Lyle Rogers: Smuck!
Chuck Clarke: ...Closer.
Lyle Rogers: You really know the lingo.

I watch my DVD regulary, only wish it would have outtakes. I know Dustin and Warren had a hilarious time making it and it secured their deep friendship that lasts to this day! All clickable images! Warren was 50 and Dustin 49 when they shot the movie. Co-starring Isabelle Adjani (then Beatty's girlfriend) and Charles Grodin, funny as ever!

[LunaShar]

Awesome post hwbl

[HWBL]

Originally Posted by Chatteaux

HWBL - you're killing me here! Thank you. I laugh at just looking at the pics.

He went out with Isabel Adjani too? Is there a brunette that he missed?

Never knew that.

Who was his woman right before her?

I totally forgot about the "schumuck" scene. Omg.

I'm buying the dvd.

LOL, you're welcome! Isn't this one gutsplittingly funny movie? Oh man, I think I'll put it in the DVD player again tonight, if only to hear that voice say brilliant things like "Are these breasts?"
Or conversations like these:
Lyle Rogers: You didn't have to leave with me, now I've spoiled the night for you.
Chuck Clarke: You gotta give yourself a break! You've never been out with anyone but your wife.
Lyle Rogers: Yeah, but you gotta have the looks, Chuck. I mean, you walk into a place like that and girls just want ya, ya know, ya got that kinda face. Kinda mean lookin' but with character. And the way you walk, you can only do that with a small body! Didya ever hear of a big sports car? I mean, if I'd look like you.......
Chuck Clarke: Oh, you so idealize me!

Chuck Clarke: You mean you bought a camel?
Lyle Rogers: No, I didn't really buy it. They SOLD it to me!
Lyle Rogers: Oh no. I think that something went wrong and now I own a blind camel. A blind camel!

I think it's easier to name the women he DIDN'T date or have an affair with, even though he plays down his own image/reputation all the time.

He dated Adjani somewhere around 1985-1987, so he probably had some unknown ladies in between and the last famous one, that I know of, before her probably was Diane Keaton, but another one may have slipped through the cracks
Here he is ducking away from the paparazzi in the summer of 1985 with Adjani in his car>



Here's a few pics of him with several of his better known lovers>

In it you'll recognize Diane Keaton, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Joan Collins, Michelle Philips, Julie Christie, Lee Radziwil (sp) and some model from the seventies that was quite well known, forgot her name.
Besides those he's been with Goldie Hawn, Madonna, Isabelle Adjani, Margaret Trudeau, Britt Ekland, Elle McPherson, Cher, Carly Simon, Candice Bergen, Joni Mitchell, Diane Sawyer, Bianca Jagger, Susannah York, Judy Carne and so on and so forth.

One of his most famous quotes, however, is that if a woman says she had an affair with him, she hasn't and if she says she hasn't, she has. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I've only mentioned the names of the ones I KNOW he's had something with before he married Bening, but the list is about three times longer than that, and that's only the famous women he allegedly bedded. There's tons of unknowns in between. I think it's a miracle he's still alive!

Originally Posted by LunaShar

Awesome post hwbl

Oops, missed this the first time around. Thank you!

[HWBL]

Hey peeps, don't forget to post a small item called vital stats and trivia about your fave guys (like I did with Warren, and a few other guys I knew something about). It's just cute to have a little info along the pix you post of them.

Warren Beatty Vital Stats and trivia:
Born: March 30, 1937
Height: 6'2"
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Blue/Green
Trademarks: stutters, mis-aligned eyes (SVZ LOVES that term )

[HWBL]

Yeah, it's about time for another round of Beatty

The year 1991, the movie "Bugsy", an acting tour de force for Warren Beatty
who was 53 when the movie was shot, and 54 when it's released in 1991.
Without a doubt this is one of Beatty's best roles. He plays the maniacal
Ben "Bugsy" Siegel perfectly.
Charming and seductive one second, raging murderous lunatic the next.

Of course, as was the case with Bonnie & Clyde and many (if not most)
other movies about real people and real events, the story is not completely
historically accurate. But it doesn't matter, because it's still a fantastically
entertaining period piece.
The wardrobe, sets, props, hairstyles are all fantastic, not to mention the
great cast. Ben Kingsley as Meyer Lansky, Harvey Keitel as Mickey Cohen,
Richard Sarafian as Jack Dragna, Elliot Gould as Harry Greenberg, Bill Graham
as Charlie Luciano, Wendy Philips as Esta Siegel.
The only ones that are a bit off are Annette Bening - who probably never
looked better in any movie - as Virginia Hill, because she's sometimes a bit
too "Jessica Rabbit" femme fatal-ish and Joe Montegna who's a good actor,
but totally miscast as George Raft.

Warren produced this movie and had given screenwriter James Toback the
task of writing a script on Bugsy, six years before shooting began.
It's a great movie to watch, even if you're not into gangster movies, simply
because it's so beautifully shot and dressed and to see Beatty really pull out
all the stops. The movie's point of view is the impossible, volatile,
romance between the married Siegel and the close to nymphomanic Hill.
Beatty and Bening have some steaming, sexually, violently and verbally,
scenes together. Beatty has some chilling scenes in which his mood changes
within a blink of an eye as well as some humoristic, self depreciating, scenes
that he obviously enjoys doing.
One of the most chilling scenes that best show his character's insanity, is
the one where he almost beats and kicks one of his co-gangsters to death.
While he's doing that, he catches his reflection in a window and notices his
hair is all messed up, because of the fighting. So, he straightens his hair,
while checking his reflection, while he continues kicking his helpless victim.
(see screengrabs).
Of course the movie was also the big turning point in his private life, as he and
Bening fell madly in love during the shooting of the movie, her ending up pregnant
with Beatty's first (of ultimately four) child, daughter Kathlyn (named after his mother).
They married in March of 1992, two months after her birth.

Here's a full Washington Post review:

"Bugsy"
Director: Barry Levinson


By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 20, 1991

"Bugsy," the exuberantly elegiac new Barry Levinson film starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, is a great gangster picture, with all the visceral excitement of a classic mob saga. But that's just its jumping-off point. It's also a salute to old Hollywood glamour, to the genre and the movies in general, and an elegant eulogy for the passing of those glory days. Not since the "Godfather" films has a gangster movie had this kind of spirited intelligence and depth, or worked on so many levels. It's a lofty, intoxicating achievement, smoothly polished, thrilling and funny.

The movie's opening scenes hit you like an amphetamine jolt; they're jagged and lean, with a greyhound's turf-gobbling pace. And the stylized gangster patter that screenwriter James Toback has given the characters comes spitting out of their mouths like verbal machine gun fire.

Beatty's Benjamin Siegel (don't call him Bugsy) sloshes around at the film's center like a beaker of nitro. A Brooklyn-born, Jewish dead-end kid, Siegel has a wife, Esta (Wendy Phillips), and a couple of kids in Scarsdale, but he doesn't shrink from the spotlight like his soft-spoken boyhood pal Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley); he's a dapper hood with bespoke tailoring, a soft spot for the ladies and a vicious flair for the dramatic. He likes to make a scene. Calling on a Los Angeles kingpin whose operation Siegel's East Coast partners have their eye on, he gives the boss two choices. The first choice is he can go to work for Siegel. "And the second choice?" he asks. "You can shoot me," Siegel answers, handing the man his gun. "You've got 5 seconds to make up your mind."

Money doesn't interest Siegel; he's flamboyantly reckless with his cash, picking up a lavish Beverly Hills mansion and a snazzy roadster for a stay in California that's scheduled to last four days. Siegel conducts his life as if he were the star of his own gangster movie, and when he arrives in Hollywood, the land of dreamers, he feels right at home.
After watching his friend George Raft (Joe Mantegna) at work on the set of his new film, he's enraptured by the business; he even thinks that maybe he ought to give this acting thing a tumble. During that sound stage visit, though, he lays eyes on a bit player named Virginia Hill (Bening), and immediately his thoughts are otherwise occupied.

You have to reach back a long way into movie history -- to, say, the sassy first meeting between Bogart and Bacall in "The Big Sleep" -- to find an opening romantic salvo as sexually supercharged as this one. After first establishing that he's married, Hill says, "Now, what exactly does Mr. Esta really want from Miss Virginia?" To which he whispers back, "Mr. Esta is having a great deal of difficulty trying to imagine anything he doesn't want from Miss Virginia."

This jousting match takes place against the artificial backdrop of a film set, and it underlines the reverberations that Toback and Levinson have created between real life and movie life. The picture isn't simply about Siegel; it's about the symbiosis between the famous mob figures and their Hollywood counterparts, and the ricochet manner in which art imitated life and, in return, influenced life when the gangsters themselves began to ape the flashy moves they'd seen on screen.

But not only is "Bugsy" a hall of mirrors, with Raft imitating Siegel imitating Raft. The famous mobster's grandiose -- and ultimately fatal -- dream of building a luxurious casino in the vast nowhere of Las Vegas can be seen as an allegory to the megalomaniacal follies of visionary filmmakers. It could be seen as the Francis Ford Coppola story "Tucker" with tommy guns.
Siegel's initial deal with his mob partners is to build the "Flamingo" for $1 million. But soon, 1 million becomes 2; 2 becomes 4; and 4, finally, 6. To finish his dream project, he sells everything he owns, including 400 percent of his own shares. So what if he has nothing left in the end. It's the idea of the thing. "If you're going to do something, you might as well do it right," he says.

Both Beatty, who was scoffed at as mad when he put himself on the line to make a 3 1/2-hour epic about an American communist, and Toback, who wrote about his own gambling obsession in his script for "The Gambler," are working from firsthand experience. The movie bears their personal stamps (though, perhaps, their smartest move was to place their story in the hands of an accomplished pro like Levinson).
Ever since "Fingers" (1978), Toback has been obsessed with the idea of the gangster artist, and as writer here he accomplishes what he could never pull off as a director. Siegel is Toback's ultimate psychopathic genius, the killer who creates.

Bugsy is an artist without an art, and he enters into the project with missionary zeal. His partners think he's crazy, and undoubtedly he is, though not about Vegas, which ultimately turned out to be a gold mine for them. Vegas was Siegel's masterpiece -- but giving birth to it killed him.

Maybe because Siegel's story has so many parallels with his own, it brings out the absolute best in Beatty. After "Dick Tracy," it seemed that Beatty was finished as an actor; as the comic strip hero he seemed to want to hide from the camera, to flinch whenever it drew him into focus. But "Busgy" refutes that notion completely.
Beatty has never shown as much sheer delight in performing as he does here. As Bugsy, he's completely uninhibited. Beatty's never played a character that allowed him to show as many sides of himself as this one does. He can be ferociously scary, with the veins in his forehead dangerously close to exploding; or -- particularly in his scenes with Bening -- a smooth romancer; or a flouncing, self-parodying buffoon. In one extended sequence -- perhaps the movie's best -- he chases around in a ridiculous chef's hat, a consummate farceur. It's a hilarious performance, but the dangerous, loony edge is always there.

The rest of the cast is equally superb. As Lansky, Kingsley is drolly subdued, but with a formidable twinkling gleam of intelligence in his eyes. As Mickey Cohen, Siegel's right-hand man in Hollywood, Harvey Keitel gives a hair-trigger performance as a volatile tough guy. Mantegna's performance is a small but memorable one, and the late Bill Graham is equally vivid as Charlie Luciano. Even Elliott Gould makes a swift but indelible mark.

The classiest of the bunch, though, is Annette Bening. As the also-ran starlet, she's slinky and enticing, but she's been both before (most notably in "Valmont" and "The Grifters"). Here, she's playing a woman with a voracious appetite for life, and she shows something new. As Hill, she reveals both the uncompromising toughness of a woman who's used sex to get what's she's wanted out of life, and the vulnerability that comes from knowing you can go around the track only so many times before the mileage starts to show. Siegel is a romantic, but there's not an ounce of dewy-eyed nonsense in Hill. And this is what makes them such a fascinating movie couple. Maybe she loves him and maybe she doesn't, but never once is there any doubt who has the upper hand.

"Bugsy" is one of the year's most bracing, entertaining movies; even though its gait falters some when the scene shifts to the desert, there's a palpable tension in nearly every scene. Levinson's direction is as expert as it is self-effacing; he squeezes every drop of juice out of Toback's script. And his actors too. "Bugsy" is the story of a tragically flawed hero, and without Levinson in charge it might have been a tragically flawed movie. As it is, it's darned near perfect: violent, sexy and knowingly smart.

And now some screengrabs

[HWBL]

^ Oooh yeah, baby. Thanks for sharing, Chatteaux. You know the photographer called the second photo "Beautiful Dreamer"? I think it was taken in the early nineties, so he was already in his fifties there.

I've got a nice "perfect profile" pic of 1990 (age 53) for your mom here


And a 1991 posed pic (age 54) that is reminiscent of a scene of one of his sixties movies "Mickey One" (I think that was shot in 1965 when he was 28).


PS. I keep forgetting to tell you your signature is insanely funny!

[HWBL]

Old fart Beatty with his son Benjamin who, unfortunately, resembles his fugly wife Annette Bening, OY.

[calendargurl]

eeeek that is a fugly kid.

[youknow]

Isn't he the one that Carly Simon sung the song "You're so Vain" about?

[HWBL]

Originally Posted by youknow

Isn't he the one that Carly Simon sung the song "You're so Vain" about?

No he isn't, see this thread>
Carly Simon's music cures the sick

[youknow]

Thanks. I heard that it was but wasn't sure.