Then Again - Diane Keaton [49]
And he kept calling. In January of 1978 Warren and I started hanging out. I told myself it was temporary. I could handle it. Sure, he was smart, lawyer-smart. And, yes, he was still a mind-blowing dream of drop-dead gorgeous. I don’t know why I thought I could manage things—well, that’s not true, I didn’t think at all. I fell. And I kept falling for a long time. He grabbed me from the first moment I saw him in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel way back in 1972. I looked up, and in the distance I saw my dream come true in person. I also saw that there wasn’t a woman within close proximity he didn’t scrutinize, except me. He didn’t scrutinize me, not then.
To Die For
Warren turned out to be a far more complex character than I could have imagined when I saw him kiss Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass at the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana. I was in tenth grade. I’d never seen anything like Warren Beatty. By thing, I mean he wasn’t real. He was to die for. And Natalie Wood? Well, she was me. I was her. When Bud and Deanie were forced to part, I was devastated. I even wrote Mr. Elia Kazan, the director, inquiring why the parents were so opposed to true love. Could he have changed the ending? What was the big deal about different social classes? He did not respond. It’s ironic; a couple of weeks ago I caught a glimpse of Splendor in the Grass on TV. There they were again, Bud and Deanie, still tormented, still in love. My own romance with Warren was not destined for the long haul either. For us it wasn’t circumstance. It was character. I admit there was a smattering of two different worlds mixed in; after all, Warren was “The Prince of Hollywood” and I was, as my dad called me, Di-annie Oh Hall-ie.
Warren was infamous. We used to gossip about his conquests after Martha Graham dance class at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Cricket Cohen knew a girl who knew a girl he picked up and took back to his hotel room at the Waldorf Astoria. Oh, my God, how awful, how humiliating. We all swore we would never fall into that kind of trap. Not us.
What I didn’t know was, once Warren chose to shine his light on you, there was no going back. Within his gaze I was the most captivating person in the world. He fed on every nuance of my lopsided face and saw beauty. It was enchanting, but it was scary too. I was straddling two lives, in two different locations. I was with Warren, but because of Annie Hall everyone still thought I was Woody’s girl.
Warren opened every door with his bullshit detector fully charged. Always searching for what lay hidden behind the façade, he was the only person who was curious enough to ask me if my Annie Hall glasses were prescription. Nailed. While Woody encouraged my artistic endeavors with things like “P.S. Your new photos arrived. The best yet! Really!” Warren would look askance at one of my collages and say, “You’re a movie star. That’s what you wanted. You got it. Now deal with it. What is all this art stuff going to get you anyway?” That’s what I liked about him; he told it like he saw it. And he saw it with a lot of variables.
When I compare Mother’s relationship with Father to mine with Warren, there’s no question Warren’s promises were far more seductive than Jack Hall’s could ever be. After I confessed how terrified I was to fly, Warren surprised me as I was