A LITTLE HELP
ELLEN IN WICHITA was troubled that her husband, Jim, and three boys (eleven, fifteen, and sixteen) took advantage of her cheerful nature, expecting her to put a good dinner on the table every night, and not spaghetti but things like stuffed pork chops and creamed potatoes, and also to keep their three-bedroom home bright and attractive, and to be a warm and funny person—all of this on top of her full-time job in sales! She resented their expectations, which, being unspoken, were hard to argue with—especially for Ellen, who believed that love is meant to be given without reservation.
Then the phone rang one night after dinner, while Jim was watching the finals of a professional fishing tournament on television and Ellen was up to her elbows in dishwater. It was Richard Gere. “I want to speak with Jim, please,” he said.
Jim was on the phone for twenty-three minutes and all he said was “Uh-huh” and “Sure, I can see that,” and when he hung up, he was pale and shaking. The young star of Breathless and An Officer and a Gentleman had given him a dressing-down he would never forget, pointing out his insensitivity to Ellen’s needs. If she had told him about it, he would have shrugged it off, but coming from Gere, it made a deep impression on him, and he decided to change. Thanks to one film star who cared, a family started to function as a team.
The call was no random shot in the dark but a carefully planned and researched project of Hollywood Calls, an organization of screen luminaries who want to use their influence to do good. Of course, movie celebrities have always been active in good causes—endorsing charities, appearing at fund-raisers, speaking out on public issues—but many of the younger stars feel that they can have more impact on a personal basis, and dozens of them spend as many as three hours daily on the phone, speaking up for persons like Ellen, whose problems tend to be overlooked by the Red Cross and other major organizations. Unlike the older Hollywood idols, who plunged into well-publicized humanitarian efforts in order to assuage intense guilt for amassing fabulous wealth and fame, the young stars feel that they are “actors, no different from anyone else” and prefer little unsung acts of charity; as one says, “How I spend my time is my business.” Few outsiders are aware of the good these celluloid giants do.
It is known that Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford work tirelessly in behalf of young victims of misunderstanding—teen-agers regarded by friends and family as “ordinary” although they are filled with deep longings, passionate feelings, and inexpressible thoughts; Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton devote countless off-screen hours to women suffering from poor self-image; Dustin Hoffman is working to get men more involved in early child care; Clint Eastwood is on the phone every night with men who have lost their individuality in large corporations.
“He cares deeply,” a source close to Mr. Eastwood says. “The corporate lifestyle is so all-encompassing that after a few years a man who fails to acquire real clout feels terribly diminished. Many of these men relate to Clint, and a few minutes on the phone with him can really turn things around. It’s nothing that he tells them necessarily but just the fact that he’s there, listening, sharing feelings, responding as one man to another.”
“Acting is not an expository skill, it’s an illuminative art,” says one Hollywood Caller, “so an actor can sometimes clear up a problem with one phone call when years of intense therapy haven’t helped. I dial a number and say, ‘Hello, this is Warren Beatty and I want to talk about you and Janice,’ and instantly they see the importance of the relationship, they see where they’re at with it, it’s almost electric.” Beatty is referring to Janice and Mike’s relationship, a marriage of ten years that was threatened by her training in auto mechanics and karate and his inability to accept a shift in sexual roles. Why? Mike didn’t know. He knew it was right for her to expand her skills, that his feeling of inadequacy came from fear and was trivial compared with the incredible richness she brought to the relationship, and yet he couldn’t get beyond it—until Hollywood called. A top box-office draw saved a marriage. It’s as simple as that.
A top draw, it should be said, who himself had failed thus far to make a lifelong commitment to another person. A top draw whose multiple romances filled gossip columns but never gave him the sense of bonding he sought in the shallow, fast-moving film world.
“When I call up these people, ordinary people, middle Americans, and assist them with a problem, I always receive more than I give,” he says.
Beatty had no idea how much he would receive until a month ago, when the white phone rang in his Malibu hideaway—the ultra-secret phone, the number of which was known only to six persons—and he answered it. “Warren, this is Julie Dittman, in Muncie, Indiana,” said a soft and yet incredibly strong voice. “I want to talk.”
His first thought was to hang up, but something—her sincerity, perhaps—attracted him to her, and he sat down and listened for almost two hours as she poured out her concern for him, not as a screen star but as a human being.
“You’re defensive, and of course you have to be, with so many unscrupulous people trying to get a piece of you, and yet it has left you hungering for real intimacy in a relationship built on absolute trust,” she said, and instantly he knew she was right. She sounded wonderfully close and real as she said, “I hate to intrude on your privacy, and yet, when I sense hurt, how can I distance myself? How can I pretend that it’s not my problem, too?”
He was moved by her concern, moved in a way he had always wanted to be moved and yet had never dared to ask to be moved, and instinctively, not taking even one second to think about it, he asked her to marry him.
She hesitated, wondering if at this point in her life her own growth as a person might be threatened by marriage to the sexual fantasy of millions of women, and then said yes.
It turned out to be the best thing either of them had ever done in their entire lives.
In the fuzzy photograph of them emerging from a Santa Monica laundromat that appeared in People recently, Julie Dittman appears to be no starlet but a fifty-one-year-old divorced mother of three who could stand to lose a few pounds. Yet to Warren she is a woman of fantastic vitality, a deeply caring woman, a woman who loves sunsets and children and laughter and long conversations and cats and quiet dinners and going barefoot and listening to Vivaldi, and he nurtures her, accepting his half of all household chores—even though she protests, “No, darling! You have commitments, multi-picture contracts, development deals, artistic obligations!” The forty-five-year-old screen idol scrubs floors, shops for fresh vegetables and fruits, repairs appliances, even cleans the oven.
“Warren has thrown away his career,” says one old pal, but has he? Or has he found a new one? One thing is sure: no pal of his dares criticize Julie to his face. Jack Nicholson called her “dumpy” once, and he and Warren didn’t speak for days. To Warren, she is the source of happiness. She now takes all his calls, and even if you’re a top producer, if she thinks you’re phony or stuck up or only trying to use Warren and not really caring about him, you may as well say goodbye right then and there.