When Bening met Beatty
Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 11:59PM 
Barry Levinson's gangster biopic Bugsy was the most nominated movie at the 1991 Oscars, ten nods in total, including Picture, Director, and Actor. While most of the big categories were won by The Silence of the Lambs, Levinson's picture still took home two statuettes. They were for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Costume Design, rightful rewards for a glamourous recreation of 1940s Hollywood and the nascent Las Vegas. Unlike Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh, and Albert Wolsky, the movie's star left the Academy Awards ceremony with no new little golden man of his own. Nonetheless, Warren Beatty might have gotten a greater reward out of Bugsy than any of the Oscared cineastes.
After all, it was during the shooting of Bugsy that the man once considered to be Hollywood's hottest bachelor finally met his match and future wife, the one and only Annette Bening…
While Beatty had been a Hollywood powerhouse since the 1960s, The Bening's career only started to flourish by the very end of the 80s. Milos Forman's Valmont was her big breakthrough in 1989, offering an effervescent take on the same character that had earned Glenn Close an Oscar nomination the previous year. Bening earned no such golden accolades for her Marquise de Merteuil, but things changed quickly. In 1990, Stephen Frears' The Grifters allowed the actress to channel both Gloria Grahame and Marilyn Monroe with a film noir sex kitten for which she'd score an Oscar nomination. It was around the same time that she was first contacted by Warren Beatty.
He was casting his latest grand opus, a brightly colored big-screen adaptation of the Dick Tracy comics, and Bening was a possible choice for his love interest. The part was ultimately won by Glenne Headly, though Bening didn't put up much of a fight. She didn't even show up for an appointment with Beatty, canceling it to meet her ex-husband in New York. Their first real meeting would happen only when they got involved with the Bugsy Siegel biopic. According to Beatty's own words, he was so enthralled by her, during an early work lunch, that he forgot the food on his plate. Even so, he's sworn that their relationship during production was strictly professional, and, only after they wrapped, did he ask Bening to dinner. She said yes.
Whatever the state of their personal affairs was by the time of the filming, their onscreen chemistry is scorching. Virginia Hill and Bugsy Siegel meet on the set of 1941's Manpower, but their romance depicted in Bugsy has a sexually charged dynamic that would have been hard to pass through the censors of a Hays Code-abiding Hollywood. Wrapped in clingy gold lamé (that is nothing like what the real Virginia Hill wore), Bening ends her first conversation with Beatty by telling him to jerk himself a soda. Later on, her reactions to the criminal's violent ways are nothing short of lustful ecstasy. So torrid is their combined screen presence that the actors generate a fascinating tension between the love-crazed characters and the glitzy old-fashioned stylings of the picture.
A month after Bugsy's December 1991 premiere, Annette Bening was giving birth to her and Beatty's first child. They were married by March 2nd, 1992, just in time to attend the 64th Academy Awards as a newly married couple. Still, for all their electrifying onscreen chemistry, both stars remained decidedly private and rarely capitalized on their actorly dynamic. During their near three decades of wedded life, Bening and Beatty have only shared the screen two more times, and in just one of those collaborations were their characters romantically involved. Weirdly enough, there's a stylistic, at least aesthetic, through-line connecting these three pictures beyond the pairing, including Bugsy.
As previously mentioned, the '91 flick indulges in the aesthetic of Old Hollywood glamour, but so do their latter projects. 1994's Love Affair is the third version of the story originally immortalized by Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in 1939, and by Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in 1957. What's most fascinating about that lachrymose romance is how director Glenn Gordon Caron indulges in antiquated cinematic mechanisms and romantic archetypes, to a farther extent than even the '39 movie. Just notice how Conrad L. Hall films the two stars, all soft-lighting and Vaseline smeared lenses, or how Ennio Morricone's tinkling score underlines every sentimental peak with unashamed schmaltz. As for The Bening and her husband, they're fine, but the movie's easily stolen by Katharine Hepburn in a one-sequence cameo as Beatty's elderly aunt.
Opportunities for the couple to work together dwindled after the 90s, as Beatty became increasingly removed from filmmaking. It was in 2016 that he returned to the movie business, both in front and behind the camera, with the romantic comedy Rules Don't Apply. In it, he plays an aged Howard Hughes during the late 50s, while Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich give life to a couple of ambitious youths under the employment of the millionaire. The movie's many connections to Hollywood history are fascinating and its aesthetic recalls midcentury melodramas. If midcentury melodramas had been cut by trailer editors on a cocaine binge, that is. Unfortunately, while Beatty may be a generous scene partner when acting with Annette Bening, he's not a very giving director or screenwriter. Indeed, saddled with the role of Lilly Collins' strict mother, The Bening is wasted in Rules Don't Apply.
I sincerely hope this isn't the last time the couple acts together because it's a rather dour note to end their screen partnership on. Would you be excited about a new movie starring The Bening and Beatty?
Bugsy is available to rent from Amazon, Apple iTunes, Google Play, and others. You can stream Love Affair on Vudu Free and Pluto TV, and Rules Don't Apply on realeyz.
Reader Comments (18)
Can’t believe she is still Oscarless!
She is PHENOMENAL in this. Very deserving of a nod that year, but I think she was probably in the dreaded 6th place.
Haven't unfortunately seen Bugsy (though it's now on my list), but I became enamored of "The Bening" in Being Julia. I also thought she was good in The American President. And very good in The Kids Are All Right.
I love Bening but I remember finding Bugsy to be a bit of a bore (saw it in the theater back in '91). I would be open to revisiting it again though, just for her!
Between Thelma & Louise and Silence of the Lambs there were only two open spots for Best Actress and a LOT of people competing for them. I'm not even sure i'd nominated Bening that year and i think she's absolutely terrific in the movie.
Beatty is GREAT in it too so i'm glad he was nominated. Such a pity that Beatty's career basically ended about then (with the one bright spot of BULWORTH thereafter) but he was never prolific to begin with.
I always feel he let her florish and he took a back seat,he obviously adores her and they make a great couple in Bugsy but it is a bore.
I maybe would have nominated her she is certainly better than Dern and Midler.
Then there's these to consider Mimi Rogers in The Rapture,Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2,Jessica Lange in Cape Fear,Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny,Judy Davis in Impromptu and Alison Steadman in Life is Sweet.
After dating practically every big actress in Hollywood, (Julie Christie, Diane Keaton,etc) Warren Beatty finally married and settled down. Was it her laugh? Was it the way she didn't take him too seriously? Annette Bening proved to be the perfect mate in real life, just not as much on screen.
I love them together in "Bugsy" but cringed at "Love Affair".
A modern update of "The Awful Truth" would have suited them better, but alas, they are too old for that now. Maybe a comic cameo part in some Coen Brothers film would work.
I think a lot about how Annette Bening was cast as Catwoman in BATMAN RETURNS but had to drop out when she became pregnant.
The fact that she nabbed one of Hollywood's notorious bachelors and then made him stay home for a bit (which I read he enjoyed) definitely gives her cool points. I do like Annette Bening though there's times where I can't stand her as she was overboard at times in American Beauty while was unbearable to watch in Running with Scissors (though I blame Ryan Murphy for that as that was an awful film), and I kind of thought she was overrated in The Kids Are All Right. I do like her still as I really enjoyed her performance in 20th Century Women.
I loved RWS esp Clayburgh.
They had great chemistry
I did like "Love Affair", especially the Ennio Morricone score and the retro cinematography. It's nothing great, just sweet and romantic.
I do wish Beatty, and Nicholson, could make that one last great Swan Song movie.
Katharine Hepburn merits an entry in the Almost There series for her single scene theft of Love Affair.
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and considering Cathleen Nesbitt was robbed of a nomination (in our weak previously Smackdowned year, so a win wouldn't be out of the question) we should have the role garnering nominations from all three iterations.
How exciting! Not only did someone read my post, the reader was inspired to pretend to be me and express an opinion!
Now I just need an imposter with better taste and knowledge of film history to recognize that Cathleen Nesbitt was a television and stage star with minimal film experience that does not justify an Oscar.
James, welcome to my world!
Great another imposter. Why would I deny an Oscar nomination to somebody just because their career is mostly in another medium? If you want to imitate at least use logic. No overdue/must pay their dues in film nonsense from me ever.