Number of Nominations: 4 – Supporting Actor (Jack Warden);
Supporting Actress (Lee Grant); Original Screenplay (Robert Towne and Warren Beatty); Art
Direction (Richard Sylbert, W. Stewart Campbell and George Gaines)
Number of Wins: 1 (Supporting Actress)
Several months ago, around the time Rules Don’t Apply was released to thunderous waves of indifference,
I was surprised to find myself having to explain who exactly Warren Beatty is
to a few younger people. This wasn’t an isolated incident and, while I don’t
think any of the people I spoke to would necessarily describe themselves as
hardcore movie buffs, they certainly aren’t entirely ignorant of film history.
They were very aware of Beatty’s contemporaries, including Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. But Beatty and his work had made little to
no impact. By the time the Oscars rolled around, social media reactions to this
year’s Best Picture snafu confirmed what I already suspected: an entire
generation has grown up without a single clue who Warren Beatty is.
As I rattled off titles of Beatty’s most famous films to
these twenty-somethings, it gradually occurred to me that it was no wonder
they’d never heard of him. He’s only made half a dozen pictures since around
the time they’d been born in the early 1990s and none of them really lit the
world on fire. His biggest hit, 1990’s Dick
Tracy, didn’t leave much of a footprint after it left cinemas. Today, it’s
warmly regarded by certain fans as sort of a cultish curiosity but nobody has
clamored for Dick Tracy Returns in
the years since (except, perhaps, for Beatty himself and he’s in no hurry).
Both Bulworth and Bugsy have their admirers and supporters
but that isn’t the same as having fans. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find
anyone willing to speak up for Love
Affair or Town & Country, the
latter of which is the nadir of multiple careers.
But even the movies that made Warren Beatty an icon have had
surprisingly little staying power. Odds are the first movie that jumps to mind
with Beatty is Bonnie And Clyde. But
Beatty was already a huge star by the time it came out in 1967. He struck it
big in his debut, 1961’s Splendor In The
Grass, a soapy potboiler that really has not aged well. None of his other
movies of the decade made much of a mark (although some are worth checking out)
until Bonnie And Clyde. That film’s
impact should not be underestimated but, for whatever reason, it’s no longer a
movie many people check out just for the hell of it. I first saw it myself in a
film history class. It wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to see. It was
something I was required to see.
As both a movie star and a filmmaker, Warren Beatty is
inextricably linked to the late 60s and 1970s. Many of his movies were very
popular at the time of their release but they remain trapped there in amber,
occasionally revisited by those who experienced them first but rarely
discovered by new audiences. There is no better example of this than Shampoo, Beatty’s first venture as
hands-on star-as-auteur following the success of Bonnie And Clyde. It was one of the biggest hits of 1975, was
nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes, and is even ranked at #47 on AFI’s 100
Years…100 Laughs list of the best American comedies. But while I was certainly
aware of it, I’d never actually seen it until recently and, judging by its
relatively low popularity ranking on such sites as Letterboxd and IMDb, I
suspect I’m not alone in that.
Beatty (who also produced and co-wrote the screenplay with
Robert Towne) stars as George, a Beverly
Hills hairdresser whose talent as a stylist is equaled
by his proficiency as a lover. He’s eager to open his own salon but when the
bank won’t take his request for a loan seriously, he agrees to meet with Lester
(Jack Warden), the conservative business tycoon husband of his client/lover
Felicia (Lee Grant). Lester, who assumes George is gay, agrees to consider the
partnership. He asks George to escort his mistress Jackie (Julie Christie) to
an election night dinner party he’s hosting, unaware that she used to be George’s
girlfriend. Meanwhile, Jackie has become something of a mentor to George’s
current girlfriend, Jill (Goldie Hawn), and invites her to come along as well.
Shampoo is an
unusual film in many respects. Beatty and Towne took William Wycherley’s
Restoration comedy The Country Wife
as their inspiration and it’s easy to see how Shampoo could be translated back to the stage. The action takes
place in a tight 24-hour time span and the characters and their histories are
woven together in the style of a classic sex farce.
The film takes place during the 1968 election and televised
results feature prominently throughout. The deliberate foregrounding of the first
Nixon/Agnew victory, coming just a year after Watergate and Nixon’s
resignation, calls attention to the fact that Shampoo is a period piece, albeit one where the “period” was less
than a decade earlier. But America
had changed substantially in those seven years in both mood and style. Beatty,
Hawn and Christie don’t even look the way they do in the movie on the poster.
There, they’re given a contemporary makeover that looks more like the cover of
a 1975 issue of Esquire than a bit of
movie marketing. But this is very much a movie about the end of the 60s and the
counterculture, the rise of conservatism, and the ultimate failure of both of
these value systems. I can almost imagine a remake of Shampoo set during the Trump/Pence election coming out in 2023,
although who knows what the world will look like then.
But while Shampoo
is explicitly political and the sympathies of noted lefties like Beatty and
director Hal Ashby aren’t exactly difficult to crack, its sexual politics are a
bit harder to pinpoint. I do think it’s a mistake to view art of the past
through the prism of today’s societal attitudes. So while Beatty’s casual
dalliance with Grant and Warden’s sexually aggressive teenage daughter (played
by Carrie Fisher, no less, in her film debut) probably wouldn’t pass without
comment in today’s world, the fact that it does here shouldn’t necessarily
ruffle too many feathers.
Also, while the movie isn’t exactly progressive in its views
of homosexuality, it’d be a stretch to call it homophobic. George certainly isn’t
bothered by the fact that Lester and other men think he’s gay. Indeed, it’s in
his best interest that they do. And only once does Beatty start to edge toward
the clichéd, limp-wristed flamboyantly gay caricature that most movies would
use as their default mode and even in that moment, he stays a safe distance away
from it. But actual gay people are pretty much invisible in this movie. This is
homosexuality as a plot contrivance, not as a way of life, which may be
offensive in its own way to some but it isn’t really what the movie’s about.
On the other hand, the movie is very much about women and
that’s where its perspective gets a bit muddled. You’d be on thin ice if you
called Shampoo a feminist movie.
Sure, the women here are all sexually liberated and sleep with whomever they
please, whenever they please. But for the most part, they all want to sleep
with Warren Beatty and define themselves based on how much Warren Beatty wants
to sleep with them. Goldie Hawn’s Jill is a model (or an actress…even her job
is vague) weighing a job offer that’ll take her to Egypt for a few months. It’s
annoying that she even has to think about it. There’s no indication that George
loves her even half as much as she seems to love him and Jackie tells her as
much.
George eventually realizes that Jackie’s the one woman he’s
ever truly loved but that epiphany comes too late for him. Unfortunately, it
isn’t because Jackie realized she doesn’t love him. It’s because Lester has
decided to divorce his wife and run away with her. Jackie defines herself
entirely by the men in her life, ultimately aligning herself with the one most
likely to take the best care of her.
The film’s only Oscar win went to Lee Grant for her
supporting turn as Lester’s wife, Felicia. Grant had been nominated twice
before in this category, for her debut in 1951’s Detective Story and in Ashby’s The
Landlord in 1970, and would be once again the following year for Voyage Of The Damned, so it’s fair to
say that the Academy had been wanting to give her one for awhile. A victim of
the blacklist after she refused to testify in front of the House Un-American
Activities Committee, there was likely an element of Hollywood Survivor Reward
to her victory. Her competition included Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin, both
for Nashville
In many ways, Warren Beatty’s insistence on controlling
nearly every aspect of the films he agrees to do is what has prevented his
legacy from reaching new audiences. For one thing, he is not a fast worker and
in Hollywood ,
out of sight does often translate to out of mind. But more importantly, other
filmmakers haven’t had the opportunity to collaborate with him and use his
persona and talent in new and interesting ways. One of Beatty’s best roles is
in Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs.
Miller but it’s hard to imagine him agreeing to be in that picture if it
had been made even five years later because he wasn’t the one calling the
shots.
I’m sure even Hal Ashby would concede that Warren Beatty was
the driving creative force behind Shampoo.
And in the end, the film isn’t much more than a very interesting, intermittently
entertaining time capsule, simply because the star at the center of the action
fails to recognize that he is the least interesting thing about his own story.
Shampoo is
available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
