(Hal Ashby, US 1975, 109 min.)
Warren Beatty, produced, co-scripted (with Robert Towne), and stars as Beverly Hills hairstylist George Roundy. On the eve of the 1968 presidential election, George, who got into the hair business to meet women, juggles three separate affairs with the vibrant Jackie (Julie Christie), homebody Jill (Goldie Hawn), and married Felicia (Lee Grant, in her Oscar®-winning performance). Funny and politically minded, Ashby’s satire of the sexes was a ’70s smash, and just as relevant and entertaining today.
Program Notes
Chiming with a post-Watergate disillusioned American audience, the movie Shampoo unfolds over 48 hours around election eve 1968. We follow the numerous sexual exploits of George (Beatty), a Beverly Hills hairdresser, with his more than willing female customers, over a background of political dinners and Nixon speeches. The story plays as both a sex farce and a subtle satire on the shallowness of American, and, especially, Hollywood values. The film was a great success on its release, becoming Columbia’s biggest grossing film to date and turned out to be the third-highest money earner of the year, behind only Jaws and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Given his involvement in Shampoo’s production, it may not be surprising that critics of the time drew many parallels between this story of a modern day Don Juan and the much-publicized personal life of the film’s producer, co-writer and star Warren Beatty.
Written primarily by Robert Towne, work on the Shampoo script (then under the working title of Hair) was begun in 1967. Beatty, who met Towne when he was working as an uncredited script doctor on Bonnie and Clyde, was beginning to tailor his own projects as producer and star. Towne was hired to develop a story he had been working on as a vehicle for Beatty. It was an updating of sorts of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy, The Country Wife (1672), which told the story of a man who convinces his friends he’s been rendered impotent by his doctor. The man carries on affairs with impunity because husbands believe he is a “safe” companion for their wives. In Shampoo, Beatty’s character George is mistaken to be a homosexual because of his line of work. This allows him certain privileges which he takes full advantage of.
Work on the script dragged over many years. Towne proved to be an unreliable screenwriter, unable to finish drafts on time. His initial script also turned out to lack structure. Beatty commented: “Robert had written a script that was very good in atmosphere, and in dialogue, but very weak in story, and each day the story would go in whatever direction the wind was blowing” (Biskind, 1998). Beatty stepped in and made his own rewrite, rearranging the narrative and adding new scenes. As he was operating as an independent producer and was investing his own money, Beatty could maintain full control of his projects. He fully cast the picture and hired many of the key personnel before the script was even fully finalized. Among the cast members was Carrie Fisher making her film debut as Lee Grant’s feisty daughter who seduces Beatty in record time. Reportedly Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, was furious with her for taking the role when she found out.
Last hired was director Hal Ashby in December 1973. Towne, Beatty and Ashby worked intensively to finish the script. In order to get all of the lead actors together at the same time and to avoid further financial burden, the script needed to be ready to shoot within the following six weeks. Towne described the enduring process: “The work on that final draft was the most intensive I’ve been through in a long time. We’d start about nine in the morning and work until about eleven at night, then sleep and start again” (Brady, 1981). The script was finished in time, although rewrites continued through the shooting.
Upon release, critical response was mixed. Of the positive reviews many praised the witty dialogue, sharp comic abilities of the actors, and the keen sardonic vision of its director. David Ehrenstein, writing in Film Quarterly, found that “the wit’s not in the words themselves but what lies between them – intonations, gestures, glances. The film is full of situations in which people, even though speaking on the same wavelength, are thinking at cross purposes.” He goes on to compare Shampoo to the masterful ensemble work of Robert Altman. Pauline Kael agreed, claiming that the film is “the most virtuoso example of sophisticated, kaleidoscopic farce the American moviemakers [have] yet come up with; frivolous and funny, it carries a sense of heedless activity, of a craze of dissatisfaction.”
Shampoo went on to garner four Academy Award nominations, including a third consecutive nomination for Robert Towne’s screenwriting (following The Last Detail and Chinatown). The Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was won by Lee Grant for her role of Felicia.
~James Layton, Student, L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation
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