by Stephen Vagg
Our entry in this series on George Chakiris led to one on his co-star from the 1961 film of West Side Story, Russ Tamblyn, which has led to this one – another male actor from that film. Richard Beymer is probably even less remembered these days than Chakiris or Tamblyn, but for a red hot minute, he was going to be a huge name. Didn’t turn out that way, though he had a few chances. How come?
Beymer was born in 1938, in Iowa; when he was nine his family moved to Los Angeles and Beymer became a child actor, mostly on television. He couldn’t have had a classier movie debut: playing Jennifer Jones’ nephew in Vittorio de Sica’s Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953) co-starring Montgomery Clift at his peak (i.e. pre-car crash), produced by David O. Selznick. The movie is flawed – it doesn’t have enough story for a feature, Selznick liked to interfere, there were different versions – but it is interesting and was a great way for Beymer to kick off his film career. He was very busy on television and popped up in movies like the Disney Revolutionary-era tale Johnny Tremain (1957).
Beymer’s next big break came when George Stevens cast him in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) as Peter, the fellow inmate and love interest of Anne Frank (Susan Strasberg), who in real life later died in a concentration camp five days before it was liberated. The film – classy, heavy, capital “I” Important, moving – was distributed by 20th Century Fox who signed Beymer to a long term contract and set about building him into a star. He was one of several young Fox contract players who supported Bing Crosby in High Time (1960) – the others were Tuesday Weld and Fabian – and is actually quite funny in the film, playing a beatnik type.
Beymer received another big break, cast as Tony, the male lead in West Side Story (1961). This was one of the most sought-after roles in Hollywood – those who auditioned/met with director Robert Wise included Warren Beatty, Dean Jones, Roy Thinnes, Jack Nicholson (!), Robert Blake, Bert Convy, Keir Dullea, Saul Chaplin, Gary Lockwood, George Segal, Tom Skerritt, Mark Goddard, Richard Chamberlain, George Hamilton, Burt Reynolds, Ken Berry, Doug McClure, Richard Davlos, Scott Marlow, Russ Tamblyn, Corey Allen, and Robert Redford – but such was Beymer fever at the time, he was cast, despite not being able to sing or dance. And it’s got to be said that while he’s wet, and the weakest of the leads, he doesn’t kill the movie – wetness suits the part of Tony anyway. He definitely didn’t hurt it commercially – the movie was a big hit.
Before West Side Story came out, Fox used him in another comedy with Tuesday Weld, Bachelor Flat (1962), both of them, as in High Tide, supporting an older star (in this case Terry Thomas); Beymer got a lot of screen time and was quite winning. He supported Rosalind Russell in Five Finger Exercise (1962) for Columbia – a film that everyone seems to forget exists and no one saw. Lots of people however saw Fox’s epic The Longest Day (1962), in which Beymer had a large role, including being in the last scene with Richard Burton. It’s a mannered performance, full of inexperience and enthusiasm, but endearing in its own way.
Fox’s enthusiasm for Beymer reached a fever pitch just before West Side Story was released, when the studio cast him in the lead in Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1962), based on Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. No one much remembers this, but it was a big deal at the time: healthy budget, the Hemingway name, Martin Ritt directing, Jerry Wald producing, all-star support cast (including Paul Newman). Apparently, the choice for who would play Nick Adams came down to Warren Beatty and Richard Beymer, and Beymer got the gig. The film flopped and reviews for Beymer’s performance weren’t great. This movie is what really killed Beymer as a film star – it needed a strong centre to draw it all together and Beymer is no way near that. You can see Ritt trying to protect him in scenes by cutting away to other actors. Beymer simply isn’t up to the part. It wasn’t his fault – he never should have been cast.”
Having said that, he did one last movie for Fox – The Stripper (1963). This was, again, a classy movie: Franklin Schaffner directed (his feature debut – he’d made Dark December on TV with Beymer and Warren Beatty), Jerry Wald produced, based on a play by William Inge called A Loss of Roses (Beymer’s part had been played on Broadway by Warren Beatty and had been turned down by fellow Fox contractee Pat Boone.) The movie had originally been intended to be a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe (as Celebration) but Joanne Woodward stepped in (how much you enjoy the film depends on whether you think she’s miscast or not). Production was not easy – Wald died during the shoot, Zanuck recut the film – and box office was weak. Apparently, Schaffner’s original cut reduced Beymer’s role and Zanuck put footage of the actor back in. Still, it was a decent credit and if another Fox project was cancelled – Promise at Dawn with Ingrid Bergman – Beymer might possibly survive the backlash from West Side Story and Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man simply by virtue of being a handsome young male actor with some ability.
But he dropped out.
Beymer was not the most secure actor in the world – he never had formal training, had to learn on the job, and needed more careful nurturing from his directors than he got.
So, instead of trying to keep the momentum of his career going, Beymer studied at the Actors Studio in New York and went to do some voter registration work in Mississippi, making a documentary about it: A Regular Bouquet: Mississippi Summer (1964). He guest starred on television but made no movies, then after a while stopped acting altogether. It seems to have been due to a combination of dwindling offers, being choosy, a desire to protect his mental health, and wanting to pursue other things.
Beymer spent the 1970s doing the aforementioned other things. Like fellow child actors Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn, he got into the counter culture. He wrote and directed an experimental film, The Innerview (1973), lived in a commune, made documentaries in Switzerland, did a lot of photography.
Beymer returned to Los Angeles in 1982 to restart his career and did it with some success. He guested on a bunch of series, popped up in various movies, was a regular in Paper Dolls (1984) and had a big success as Ben Horne in the TV series Twin Peaks. The air started to go out of his career again in the late 1990s, so he moved back to Iowa. He kept active, making documentaries, wrote a fictional autobiography. He’s still alive, working as a visual artist and experimental filmmaker.
Richard Beymer had an odd career. Child star, documentarian, photographer, hippy, has-been, solid actor, artist, director, and, for a short time there, studio darling. Producer William Perlberg gave Richard Beymer as an example of a false dawn movie star. “A thing that periodically happens out here,” said Perlberg. “Somebody comes along and talk starts and agents and studios keep talking and talking. Like an avalanche, the talk gathers speed. Ultimately that ‘somebody’ turns out to be a big name in Hollywood only.”
Richard Beymer had no business being pushed as a movie star. Still, he was capable of good work, fought for civil rights, had an interesting life, and worked with directors as varied as Frank Tashlin, George Stevens, Blake Edwards, Martin Ritt, Franklin Schaffner, Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, Vittorio de Sica and David Lynch. Being a movie star was only a small chapter of his life, but as chapters go, it was pretty fascinating.
