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Such tales about Beatty are legion. He rarely, if ever, is on time for any kind of appointment: Agent Sue Mengers, a friend inured to his late arrivals, says she now "plans buffet entertaining if Warren is coming to one of my parties." Wealth makes him uncomfortable. He would rather hear Mabel Mercer sing in a quiet club than boogie at Regine's; he owns a Cartier watch, but prefers to wear a Timex. An articulate man who refuses to use either Hollywood lingo or the latest L.A. hip-speak, Beatty likes to take long pauses in the middle of sentences to make sure that he doesn't say more than he intends. In action, he is fast and effective. Lillian Hellman describes Beatty as a "foul-weather friend," the first person to call in a crisis. Says Mike Nichols: "He can make 65 calls in three hours and plan anything." Beatty is also a health-food enthusiast and, as Nichols notes, "a postgraduate hypochondriac." He tells of the time that Beatty crossed wires making a call and overheard two strangers discussing the symptoms of a friend who was about to have her gall bladder removed. Beatty listened and then broke in: "Hey, she doesn't have gall bladder problems; she should be tested for hypoglycemia." Sure enough, he proved to be right.
In business, Beatty is a tough operator. He will collect industry gossip without offering his sources any information in return. Says Beatty: "You never really know whether you are being perceived as a monster if you are a star." A few of his colleagues do see him that way. Says one highly respected studio head: "Warren won't make commitments and negotiates forever, trying to get his fees up. I wouldn't wish a negotiation with him on anyone." Buck Henry takes a more benevolent view: "Beatty is psychotic about the possibility of overlooking anything. If he could, he would be up in the projection booth of the theater showing his movie, pushing the projectionist aside, still trying to cut or add frames, humming music he might have forgotten to include in the sound track. 'Easygoing' is not a quality he has. You know how Presidents age in office? If Beatty were President, either he would be dead after the first year or the country would be dead, because his attention to detail is maniacal."
His romantic commitments are, as ever, ephemeral. Says his sister: "Neither of us would have a conventional marriage because of the intensity of the marriage we witnessed every day as children. We need more breathing room in our lives. I can't imagine Warren with children. When he first met my daughter, he examined her quietly as though she were just a specimen of human life instead of his niece."