Post by Ace on Aug 4, 2003 15:34:45 GMT -5
Beatty vs. Hepburn: Their Botched 'Love Affair'
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93676,00.html
There was a lot of excitement about A. Scott Berg’s book “Kate Remembered” when it was published last month. Most of it had to do with Katharine Hepburn’s revelations about Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart.
But now that I’ve read the book, I have to say I was most surprised by Berg’s recollection of Hepburn’s close encounter in 1993 with Warren Beatty. It is a most unflattering portrait, one that can’t have gone down well at all with the Oscar-winning director and actor.
Hepburn, you may remember, took a cameo role in Beatty’s remake of “An Affair to Remember,” called “Love Affair.” The movie, released in 1994, was a flop critically and financially. Hepburn played the aunt of Beatty’s character.
At the time, Dominick Dunne wrote a fawning portrait of Beatty for Vanity Fair promoting the movie. Dunne praised Beatty for coaxing Hepburn out of retirement.
But it turns out there was a witness to Beatty’s seduction. According to Berg, who is a respected biographer and the brother of the head of International Creative Management, Beatty used him to approach Hepburn. Berg’s observations of Beatty’s approach to Hepburn are priceless, and worth skipping to before finishing “Kate Remembered.”
If Berg is correct, Beatty wasn’t interested in Hepburn because she was a living legend or our greatest actress. His main interest was in seeing if he could get her to agree to be in the film.
“Nobody’s coming to this movie to see Hepburn,” Berg remembers Beatty telling him right before her scenes were to be shot. Beatty, Berg says, also referred to himself as “Warren Beatty, the movie star,” and later as “the world’s greatest living director in the world."
Berg writes: “I looked for even a suggestion of irony.” He didn’t find one.
Indeed, Beatty wasn’t the credited director on "Love Affair" — “Moonlighting” director Glenn Gordon Caron was — but Caron was evidently banned from the set when Hepburn arrived.
“I stood in the wings, alongside a slightly forlorn, sweet-faced, heavyset man who was also watching the screen intently, as Warren directed Hepburn in the scene. ... When the scene was finished, the man by my side introduced me and thanked me for my part in getting Hepburn to Los Angeles. Then I realized I was talking to the director [Caron], who, evidently, was not allowed on the set during Hepburn’s scenes.”
Hepburn, Berg indicates, was already suffering from senile dementia by the time "Love Affair" was released in 1994. But the really sad part of “Kate Remembered,” so far not addressed by book reviewers, is that the great actress’ mental condition worsened over the years.
By Berg’s account, Hepburn nearly died in 1996 and again in 1997. From then on — which would make six years or more — she was completely incapacitated, her short-term memory gone, and her communication skills mostly impaired
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OK maybe it isn't completely off topic (maybe I'll move it... ) Afterall, PB was in Love Affair, Warren Beatty drove him nuts, and poor Glenn Caron (1st year RS writer & producer and later Moonlighting creator) was credited as the director when Beatty would let him actually direct. Basically, just more fuel to the fire that Beatty is an a@@, if any was ever needed.
Ace
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93676,00.html
There was a lot of excitement about A. Scott Berg’s book “Kate Remembered” when it was published last month. Most of it had to do with Katharine Hepburn’s revelations about Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart.
But now that I’ve read the book, I have to say I was most surprised by Berg’s recollection of Hepburn’s close encounter in 1993 with Warren Beatty. It is a most unflattering portrait, one that can’t have gone down well at all with the Oscar-winning director and actor.
Hepburn, you may remember, took a cameo role in Beatty’s remake of “An Affair to Remember,” called “Love Affair.” The movie, released in 1994, was a flop critically and financially. Hepburn played the aunt of Beatty’s character.
At the time, Dominick Dunne wrote a fawning portrait of Beatty for Vanity Fair promoting the movie. Dunne praised Beatty for coaxing Hepburn out of retirement.
But it turns out there was a witness to Beatty’s seduction. According to Berg, who is a respected biographer and the brother of the head of International Creative Management, Beatty used him to approach Hepburn. Berg’s observations of Beatty’s approach to Hepburn are priceless, and worth skipping to before finishing “Kate Remembered.”
If Berg is correct, Beatty wasn’t interested in Hepburn because she was a living legend or our greatest actress. His main interest was in seeing if he could get her to agree to be in the film.
“Nobody’s coming to this movie to see Hepburn,” Berg remembers Beatty telling him right before her scenes were to be shot. Beatty, Berg says, also referred to himself as “Warren Beatty, the movie star,” and later as “the world’s greatest living director in the world."
Berg writes: “I looked for even a suggestion of irony.” He didn’t find one.
Indeed, Beatty wasn’t the credited director on "Love Affair" — “Moonlighting” director Glenn Gordon Caron was — but Caron was evidently banned from the set when Hepburn arrived.
“I stood in the wings, alongside a slightly forlorn, sweet-faced, heavyset man who was also watching the screen intently, as Warren directed Hepburn in the scene. ... When the scene was finished, the man by my side introduced me and thanked me for my part in getting Hepburn to Los Angeles. Then I realized I was talking to the director [Caron], who, evidently, was not allowed on the set during Hepburn’s scenes.”
Hepburn, Berg indicates, was already suffering from senile dementia by the time "Love Affair" was released in 1994. But the really sad part of “Kate Remembered,” so far not addressed by book reviewers, is that the great actress’ mental condition worsened over the years.
By Berg’s account, Hepburn nearly died in 1996 and again in 1997. From then on — which would make six years or more — she was completely incapacitated, her short-term memory gone, and her communication skills mostly impaired
=====================================
OK maybe it isn't completely off topic (maybe I'll move it... ) Afterall, PB was in Love Affair, Warren Beatty drove him nuts, and poor Glenn Caron (1st year RS writer & producer and later Moonlighting creator) was credited as the director when Beatty would let him actually direct. Basically, just more fuel to the fire that Beatty is an a@@, if any was ever needed.
Ace
