8月2日
Jack Will Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
The flag is almost at half mast. For whom, you ask? Those elder sex machines, the "Geezer Roués."
"[Jack] Nicholson comes at the end of a long and distinguished Hollywood lineage of Geezer Roués: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., David Niven, Rex Harrison, Robert Evans, Darryl Zanuck, Alan Jay Lerner, Jimmy Van Heusen. On this coast you had Bill Paley, Nelson Rockefeller, Huntington Hartford, Taki Theodoracopulos, even The New Yorker’s Brendan Gill. (This was a time, dear young’uns, when male literary lads ran barefoot through the typing pool rather than setting up house in a comfy Brooklyn brownstone.) Mr. Nicholson’s compatriot roués—Warren Beatty, Michael Douglas—have been tamed, to some extent, by much younger wives and the recognition that perhaps it’s better to go gently into that saggy night. If you want to see a Geezer Roué manqué, have a look at deflated Bill Clinton as he plays the Good Boy on his wife’s campaign trail.
"Not so long ago, it was not uncommon to encounter silver-haired womanizers, stinking of Bay Rum, wolfishly a-prowl in Manhattan. What distinguishes the roué has always been his impeccable manners—wealth and success, to be sure—and more importantly, the sense of artistry with which he approaches his life’s ambition: to love and be loved by women. It was less about sex and more about sensibility. Especially if that sensibility had great legs and was significantly south of 30.
"But a moment of silence, please: the bell tolls for the Geezer Roué.
"Rarely if ever anymore do you see that nattily clad, well-tanned if slightly creepy gentleman leaned up against the end of the bar. Theories abound as to what confluence of conditions has this once proud beast limping toward extinction."
Read more about Jack, Peter Beard and and an interesting curiosity Shirley MacLaine expresses towards her brother, reformed roué, Warren Beatty. Oh, to be a man.
--posted by Kim