Take One (Nov 1977)

journalists. And if by some accident of naiveté you find yourself in this parlous situation, you don’t do shtik followed by grand exit; you hang around and talk to people and pretty soon they treat you like a person, not a star. lf aslightly condemnatory tone has snuck in here, let me correct that impression. | think it is entirely likely that: a) Diane Keaton is just as shy and insecure as she is painted to be in the Time interview, and b) she really is thoroughly ambivalent about stardom, and rightly so, and c) she really does want to be regarded as a serious actress rather than a mysterious celebrity. Maybe she also likes to work regularly and maybe she also would like as many people as possible to see her work. If so, she’s stuck in the dilemma of furious mass publicity that has destroyed or psychologically maimed scores of stars from Valentino and Clara Bow, through Hayworth and Monroe, on up to Rock celebrities. Supernovas collapse into black holes. Keaton is about to start her fifth Woody Allen movie. She has made only six without him and had a leading role in only three of those. If she wants to escape the identification with Allen and develop her own persona she must hope that she will be seriously considered for the precious few really interesting roles for women that come up every year. She won't be if she’s not bankable, and she won’t be bankable unless she’s a star, and she won't be a star unless she submits to the publicity game. The circle is vicious. Even Rothberg admits, ‘when you’re a female actress, you have to beg for parts. The only thing stardom gets you is maybe a chance to choose those parts and the directors and other people you work with.” That’s no small advantage. As it happens, Keaton is now, at this moment, actually bankable. Her name in a package will insure that a film is made. (“Every studio in town is desperately looking for a property for her, as am |,” says manager Rothberg.) This is more than phenomenal, it’s epochal. Ever since Doris Day faded away fifteen years ago, the only truly bankable female stars have been Streisand and Minnelli (and, for a while in Black films, Diana Ross)— anomalies: singers who strongly evoked a nostalgia for thirtiesand forties-style musicals. If Keaton can maintain this extraordinary position, she will do much, no matter what kinds of films she makes in the future, to redress the balance between men and women in the Hollywood fantasy version of our world. She is by no means in the vanguard. Perhaps more important than Looking For Mr. Goodbar in the long run will be its two companions in this fall’s current mini-pheno It you really don't like publicity you don't decide to become an actress. It goes with the territory. menon of—as Newsweek so daintily put it—“womanflicks” (on the model of “‘chickflicks’?). Julia and The Turning Point, two women’s buddy films, star Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, and Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine, respectively. All four of these actresses have reached (or passed) the age of forty. For the longest time, that birthday marked the end of a star actress’s career—at least temporarily, until the offers for low-budget horror flicks started turning up. If Fonda (40), Redgrave (40), Bancroft (46), and MacLaine (43) can bring it off, we may be looking forward not only to an era in which women can be people in the movies, but one in which older women have a chance, for the first time, to establish themselves in the movie mythos. At the moment, although there are a significant number of interesting American actresses working, very few, it seems, have real star potential. Certainly, kook characters (most of them associated with Robert Altman) such as Spacek, Chaplin, Tomlin, Duvall, and Kellerman don’t have it, no matter how interesting the roles they play. (‘Kookie” girls have always been safe; what we're looking towards, rather, is women who contro! films, actresses with power, in pivotal roles.) More likely, | think, the real stars (who are going to join lonely Mary Tyler Moore as role models in the late seventies and eighties) are going to develop out of the following group of a half a dozen or so: Keaton has been playing one of the more admirable kooks; Mr. Goodbar should help enlarge her range. Jill Clayburgh should also emerge from “girl” roles with the release of Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman next spring. Vonetta McGee did an extraordinary job in Brothers this past summer. (It remains to be seen whether or not a Black actress can get the roles necessary to “cross over.”) Talia Shire has established a good base and, | think, has the potential if she can get the roles. So has Jennifer Warren. Her work in Night Moves and S/apshot has been very much underrated. Her lawyer “Eloise Geech,” in the Kojak episode “A Question of Answers,” remains in the mind—the only woman ever to get a straight answer and honest respect from the prince of the Machos. A long shot is Meryl Streep, a young stage actress who’s had only small parts in films, but has such unusual grace and versatility that she may break through into star roles rather quickly. Other possibilities: Candice Bergen, if she settles down; Jacqueline Bisset, although she may have to wait until she’s old enough so that the intelligence outshines the physique; She won't be bankable unless she's a star and she wont be a star unless she submits to the publicity game. ay