Done her way
By Michael J Roberts
“God is in the details. I want to get it right. The fact is a man can be difficult and people applaud him for trying to do a superior job. People say, 'Well gosh, he's got a lot of guts. He’s a real man.' And a woman can try to get it right and she's a pain in the ass.” ~ Faye Dunaway
In the Summer of Love a fresh and entrancing face made its way onto cinema screens in the form of Faye Dunaway, a Florida native who had cut her teeth in New York theatre a few years prior. Dunaway grew up in a peripatetic childhood as an army brat before deciding acting was the path for her, getting into it via the then common route of beauty pageant winner. She joined Elia Kazan’s Lincoln Centre Repertory Company and was soon working in Broadway productions of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and After The Fall.
Hollywood came calling in 1967, and small parts in The Happening and Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown put her on the radar for Arthur Penn, then casting Bonnie and Clyde and having passed on Jane Fonda, Ann Margret and Natalie Wood et.al. Dunaway needed to extract herself from a long term contract with Preminger, whom she despised, in order to be available to star opposite Warren Beatty – the rest, as they say, is history. Dunaway’s immortal turn as the Depression Era criminal turned her into an A-List star instantly, one with her pick of the scripts. She wisely chose a Norman Jewison film for her next project, The Thomas Crown Affair, a coolly stylish caper film co-starring Steve McQueen. She more than held her own against the experienced megastar and consolidated her status as a box-office draw.
Ignoring commercial considerations (a recurring theme as we'll see), she next went to Italy to work for legend Vittorio De Sica in A Place For Lovers. International co-productions were still in vogue and Dunaway plied her wares against World Cinema heavyweight Marcello Mastroianni, in the artistic and commercial flop. The silver lining was a long love affair with the Italian actor who, years later she would call ‘The love of my life.’ She next signed up with her old Lincoln centre boss, Elia Kazan for his indulgent but interesting The Arrangement, opposite veteran star Kirk Douglas. Dunaway went with A-list director John Frankenheimer for the very flat and completely (justly) forgotten war film The Extraordinary Seaman, opposite veteran David Niven.
She was so keen to work with Arthur Penn again that she took a small but telling role in Little Big Man, a Dustin Hoffman tour de force, and in need of a hit she made the choice to make a gritty, indie type project in Puzzle Of A Downfall Child with director (and boyfriend) Jerry Schatzberg, playing a disturbed character who could never appeal to mainstream audiences, but she won a second Golden Globe nomination nonetheless. She then went to Frank Perry’s offbeat western Doc, before exploring a European psychological thriller directed by legendary René Clément with The Deadly Trap, where she was again a mentally disturbed character. Dunaway was finding appropriate film work difficult to find so she made a TV film, did a Harold Pinter play and appeared as Blanche DuBois in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, before veteran director Stanley Kramer cast her opposite George C. Scott in a big budget, sprawling if uneven adventure Oklahoma Crude. She worked in the light, period drama The Three Musketeers for Richard Lester which did respectable box office but didn’t test her skills.
Her profile was raised again and Hollywood recognised her talent when Roman Polanski directed her in the immortal Chinatown, opposite the hottest star of the day, Jack Nicholson. Producer Robert Evans wanted Jane Fonda but Polanski insisted on Dunaway and knocked heads with her for his troubles. She was sensational in the Oscar nominated role and it revitalized her screen career leading to a role in the all-star blockbuster The Towering Inferno, playing Paul Newman’s wife. Sydney Pollack tapped her to star opposite Robert Redford in the classy thriller 3 Days of The Condor, before she took a sabbatical from acting to concentrate on her personal life.
Dunaway returned with Stuart Rosenberg’s brilliant and controversial The Voyage of The Damned in 1976 and capped it with her Oscar and Golden Globe winning triumph in Sidney Lumet’s scathing media satire, Network, opposite acting heavyweights William Holden and Peter Finch. As befitting her roller-coaster journey, she followed up her career highpoint with three nondescript films, The Eyes of Laura Mars, The Champ and The First Deadly Sin (opposite ageing Frank Sinatra) before she took on a role she is forever associated with, Joan Crawford in Frank Perry’s Mommy Dearest. Dunaway, by then, had a reputation as a difficult woman and it solidified in her note perfect rendition of the controlling Joan and it was an image that took decades to shake.
Incredibly, 20 years into a solid career, where she was one of the finest actors of her generation the great roles disappeared. Women in the entertainment business in every era have struggled to find great roles once the first flush of youth has vanished, but Dunaway would not be in demand even when she crossed over to the veteran, character actor category. She was, of course, excellent in everything she worked in, even if the directing or production or the script were second rate – and sadly that was often the case. She was noteworthy in Barbet Schroeder’s 1987 drama, Barfly, opposite Mickey Rourke and fine in Arizona Dream opposite hot newcomer Johnny Depp in 1993. She re-teamed with Depp two years later, playing Marlon Brando’s wife in Don Juan DeMarco and was excellent in The Chamber with Gene Hackman, but the roles were lesser, which was also true of the James Gray film, The Yards, in 2000.
Faye Dunaway will be forever associated with New Hollywood, that chimeric time when American film took chances and made films for grown-ups. She was as much a force of nature as an actress and made an indelible mark in American and world cinema, a free spirit not afraid to duke it out with the power players to have her voice heard – even at the detriment of her career and reputation. She fought every inch of the way and finally her journey was put into proper perspective in Faye, a comprehensive documentary on her life and career in 2024. It tells of her struggle with bipolar, a condition that was not admitted to during her ‘struggles’ and gives her audiences a better understanding of the issues she was dealing with in being one of the world’s most beautiful women in a male dominated business. If nothing else it makes you want to watch more of her films. One of the best.