I’m currently two thirds of the way through Peter Biskind’s Beatty biography, “Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America,” and have found it to be an entertainingly salacious, if not entirely edifying, read. Much is made of Beatty’s sexual prowess, in fact Biskind devotes a whole page to the math of Beatty’s conquests, arriving at the number of 12,775 women, “give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.” In between the banging, Beatty’s behind-the-scenes filmic history is described in detail, revealing an emotional vampire hell bent on satiating his own needs at any cost. While I find Beatty to be a horribly manipulative and soulless bully, he certainly makes for good bio fodder.

So far my favorite section is where Biskind imbues Beatty with a sexual spidey sense. He is attuned to any and all sex around him, whether it be lurking at a hotel gift shop (Diane Keaton), sitting at a red light across from him (too numerous to mention), or Gary Cooper’s hand under Rita Hayworth’s skirt, as depicted in the following passage:

“One night, when he was still new to Hollywood, he went to a party where he ran into Gary Cooper. Beatty always speaks admiringly about Cooper’s touch with women, saying, “He chased way more pussy than I did.” Cooper was standing next to Hayworth, his hand on her bottom, under her skirt. It seemed to Beatty that Cooper had his finger buried deep inside her butt. How Beatty divined this is not clear. He was becoming adept at interpreting looks and glances, reading people. Wizard of penetration that he was, perhaps he just parsed the language of the bodies, or maybe he was projecting his own fantasies.”

As it turns out, Beatty falls prey to the cliché of the Don Juan - physically loving many women, but only capable of truly loving himself. Though what a list of women! Among Beatty’s conquests are Brigitte Bardot, Cher, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Janice Dickinson, Britt Ekland, Jane Fonda, Joyce Hyser, Diane Keaton, Michelle Phillips, and Natalie Wood. While these babes could arguably be counted as some of the most beautiful of their day, to get to the Chamberlainish number of 12,775, Beatty’s standards were lowered considerably. In fact, the term “mustachioed” is used more than once to describe some of Beatty’s consorts.

At one point during the filming of “Heaven Can Wait,” one of Beatty’s collaborators notices that the women hovering around his orbit are less than desirable and confronts him, saying, “‘You’re Warren Beatty, why don’t you get some standards? How can you let some of these girls blow you?’ Beatty looked at him blankly, as if he were speaking in a foreign language, and replied, “Why not?’”

And ultimately it’s a good question, not only because it exemplifies Beatty’s habit of answering questions with questions, but because why would someone who indulges their every whim feel the need to justify their behavior to anyone else?

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