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The old-fashioned appeal of Heaven Can Wait gives the film some of its glow. It is easy to imagine Beatty spending his boyhood watching double features at the neighborhood movie palace. That was not the case. Growing up in Richmond and later Arlington, Va., Beatty (then spelled with one t) was a bookworm. His father, a high school principal, taught him to read at the age of four. He had a formidable sister, Shirley MacLaine (MacLean is Mrs. Beaty's maiden name). Three years older than Warren, she was the tomboy. Today she feels that both children were greatly influenced by the powerful personalities of their parents:
"Dad had this Southern talent of commanding attention in any room with his storytelling; Mom would react to him in an intense way. Though not social or gregarious, they were like a vaudeville team at home, and Warren and I would sit there and watch. It made both of us rather shy, and one of our quests in life has been to overcome that shyness with self-expression."
As a teenager, Warren threw away the books. He was only a fair student but was captain of his high school football team and president of his class. He quit Northwestern University after his freshman year and moved to New York to study acting. Then as now, Beatty kept professional distance between himself and his sister. He told interviewers that "nobody likes to be in somebody else's shadow." He was also far from certain that he wanted the flashy career she already had.
"I wanted to be a stage director—that was legitimate!" says Beatty, "and I wanted to write for the theater. I sort of backed into acting as a way of learning the theater." In New York in the late '50s, he worked at odd jobs, such as playing "bad cocktail piano" at a dim midtown club. After appearing in a few stock and live television productions, he got a screen test with Director Joshua Logan; another novice movie actor, Jane Fonda, auditioned with Beatty. Nothing came of it, but three months later MGM offered Beatty a five-year contract at $400 a week. He moved to Hollywood and, at 22, sized up the pitfalls of the studio system in record time. Without ever unpacking his bags, he borrowed money to buy his way out of MGM. Back in New York, he landed a supporting role in a William Inge play, A Loss of Roses. Though the show flopped on Broadway, Elia Kazan happened to see it. "I liked Warren right away," the director recalls now. "He was awkward in a way that was attractive. He was very, very ambitious. He had a lot of hunger, as all the stars do when they are young." Kazan signed Beatty immediately for Splendor in the Grass; to this day, Kazan remains Warren's favorite director.