Warren Beatty

Actor-director Warren Beatty and his wife, actress Annette Bening, have listed their ivy-clad home in Beverly Hills for $6.995 million. The Mediterranean-style mansion of 10,594 square feet includes a media room, a library, a gym, an office, maid's quarters, six family bedrooms and eight bathrooms in two stories. The acre-plus site contains a separate guesthouse, a swimming pool with spa, mature trees and expansive lawns. Beatty, 75, is known for his leading roles in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)

Steve Franken, a veteran character actor whose long career included playing the spoiled young millionaire Chatsworth Osborne Jr. on the popular situation comedy "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" in the early 1960s, has died. He was 80. Franken died of cancer Friday at a nursing and rehabilitation center in Canoga Park, said his wife, Jean. In a more than 50-year career that began in New York, Franken appeared in scores of TV shows and several movies, including "The Party," "The Americanization of Emily," "The Missouri Breaks" and the Jerry Lewis comedies "Which Way to the Front?"

Warren Beatty for president? I'd sooner vote for Ronald Reagan. STUART STAMPKE Northridge

Whether it's as sellers or landlords, actor-director Warren Beatty and his wife, actress Annette Bening, are up for new roles. They have listed their ivy-clad home in Beverly Crest for $6.995 million. The house, built in 1992, had been for rent last year at $27,500 a month and is still available for lease at $19,995 a month. The Mediterranean-style mansion of 10,594 square feet includes a media room, a library, a gym, an office, maid's quarters, six family bedrooms and eight bathrooms in two stories.

Of all the many jaw-droppingly dishy anecdotes in Peter Biskind's new biography, "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," I found myself especially astounded -- in a "what would a therapist make of this?" kind of way -- by the saga of Beatty's on-again, off-again early '60s affair with Natalie Wood. It was a soulful romance, even if Beatty wasn't exactly faithful, but the strangest events occurred after Beatty had moved on. The coda to the affair, according to Biskind, occurs in the mid-1960s, when Beatty began dating Maya Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina who, inconveniently, was already married and didn't speak a word of English.

Warren Beatty has scored a legal victory in his fight with Tribune Co. over the television and movie rights to square-jawed comic-strip crime stopper Dick Tracy. Both sides had requested summary judgments in the long-running dispute in U.S. District Court. Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the Central District of California on Thursday granted Beatty's motion and rejected Tribune Co.'s request. Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other media properties. Beatty, who acquired rights to the character from Tribune Co.'s Tribune Media Services in 1985 and made the 1990 movie "Dick Tracy," starring himself and Madonna, filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles in 2008 after Tribune Media Services said those rights had reverted back to it. "At the present time we are reviewing the judge's opinion and evaluating our options," a Tribune Co. spokesman said in response to the ruling.

In the introduction to "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," Peter Biskind calls Beatty an "indecently gifted" artist whose work has "enriched the cinema." But that's just foreplay. Here's the first sentence of Chapter 1: "On a hot summer night, in 1959, Warren Beatty and Jane Fonda were having dinner at La Scala, on Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, when Beatty spied Joan Collins at a nearby table." Within the next few pages of this totally entertaining, giddily salacious book, we're hearing how the 22-year-old Beatty took calls while making love to Collins "relentlessly."

Boss: Here are the notes from my interview with Warren Beatty. As I said, even though the two hours he promised me turned into nine hours and a Chinese dinner, I didn't really get a chance to ask him many of the questions I'd prepared. He took the interview away from me in the first minute and by the time I got it back, it was midnight and my mind was as weak as the batteries in my tape recorder. I'm not complaining about the assignment.

Imagine a man who is a law unto himself, for whom the ordinary rules of life don't seem to apply. A charming egotist concerned with looking good who has a relentless eye for the ladies. Someone who considers himself both a visionary and a creator in a strictly money business. Is it Benjamin Siegel, gangster extraordinary, or Warren Beatty, the movie star's movie star? Or is it both of them?

To appreciate an actor you must have seen his work. To know a movie actor, you must have been moved when his films were new. It is impossible now to feel all that Lillian Gish meant before 1920, or Garbo in 1930. The excitement turns camp nearly as quickly as ripe cheese becomes inedible. It is enough to make a picture actor wonder whether it is worth working.

Actor-director Warren Beatty and his wife, actress Annette Bening, have listed their ivy-clad home in Beverly Hills for $6.995 million. The Mediterranean-style mansion of 10,594 square feet includes a media room, a library, a gym, an office, maid's quarters, six family bedrooms and eight bathrooms in two stories. The acre-plus site contains a separate guesthouse, a swimming pool with spa, mature trees and expansive lawns. Beatty, 75, is known for his leading roles in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)

It was always the fragile balance of opposing forces that made Diane Keaton's face so remarkable - those tilted melancholy eyes above that frequent and infectious smile. She seemed in a perpetual state of emotional contradiction, which is one of the things that made her such a perfect match, at least on film, for Woody Allen, who as history's most hopeful pessimist is a master juggler himself. So it's not surprising that Keaton's memoir, "Then Again," is also an elusive sort of work, part autobiography, part daughterly paean, part love letter to her own children, a book in which portions of her mother's journals and details of her parents' travails in old age far outnumber the on-set anecdotes and glamour shots.

Once upon a time, Barack Obama understood the power of a good story. His campaign mantras — "Yes we can" and "Change we can believe in" — inspired voters, especially young people, blacks and Latinos, and propelled him into the White House. But once in office, Obama lost the thread of the plot. He abandoned his original message and embraced compromise and bipartisanship rather than pushing for dramatic change. That narrative hasn't gotten far with a recalcitrant Congress, especially Republicans, who have their own high concept to pitch: Just say no to Obama.

Warren Beatty has scored a legal victory in his fight with Tribune Co. over the television and movie rights to square-jawed comic-strip crime stopper Dick Tracy. Both sides had requested summary judgments in the long-running dispute in U.S. District Court. Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the Central District of California on Thursday granted Beatty's motion and rejected Tribune Co.'s request. Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other media properties. Beatty, who acquired rights to the character from Tribune Co.'s Tribune Media Services in 1985 and made the 1990 movie "Dick Tracy," starring himself and Madonna, filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles in 2008 after Tribune Media Services said those rights had reverted back to it. "At the present time we are reviewing the judge's opinion and evaluating our options," a Tribune Co. spokesman said in response to the ruling.

Turner Classic Movies has lined up screenings of such films as "Citizen Kane," "Taxi Driver," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "An American in Paris," "Shaft" and "La Dolce Vita," and appearances by such performers as Warren Beatty, Leslie Caron, Hayley Mills, Richard Roundtree and Jane Powell for its second TCM Classic Film Festival, which will run April 28-May 1 in Hollywood. The festival will screen more than 60 films and will feature salutes to Gregory Peck, Roy Rogers, Bernard Herrmann and George and Ira Gershwin.

Ricky Gervais' humor might have polarized the crowd at Sunday night's Golden Globes award ceremony, but as soon as the show wrapped, grudges seemed to have been checked at the velvet rope and the Beverly Hilton morphed into a party-hoppers' paradise. A-listers streamed out of the ballroom ? Scarlett Johansson, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale (alongside the real-life Temple Grandin) ? into the hotel lobby, which was awash in a flowy mess of peach, red, emerald and black formal wear.

Of all the many jaw-droppingly dishy anecdotes in Peter Biskind's new biography, "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," I found myself especially astounded -- in a "what would a therapist make of this?" kind of way -- by the saga of Beatty's on-again, off-again early '60s affair with Natalie Wood. It was a soulful romance, even if Beatty wasn't exactly faithful, but the strangest events occurred after Beatty had moved on. The coda to the affair, according to Biskind, occurs in the mid-1960s, when Beatty began dating Maya Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina who, inconveniently, was already married and didn't speak a word of English.

Star How Warren Beatty Seduced America Peter Biskind Simon & Schuster: 628 pp., $30