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Rating: 
Summary: BLAH
Review: As a Warren Beatty fan I didnt dislike it enough to not finish it but I remember thinking .. Is it over yet? Not much new information and mostly quotes from other books or articles. There seemed to be a good bit of information on other celebs (also quoted from other sources).I was left feeling as if I really didnt read a biography. In fact I left it at a friends house and I really feel no need to get it back. My advice would be .....SKIP IT but if you really, I mean really, think you want to read this, wait for the paperback or get it at a flea market.
Rating: 
Summary: Execrable
Review: Ellis Amburn continues his reign of biographical terror. In the same vein as his hideous Elizabeth Taylor biography, he now has penned the basic outline of the bedroom life of Warren Beatty, a guy whose teenage years extended well into his fifties. (Or until people stopped taking him seriously -- whichever came first) It traces the career of Barbra Streisand's old schoolmate, an emotionally-needy Don Juan who went to bed with just about any woman he came across, married or single, famous or not. He remained a heartthrob in Hollywood for many years, reappearing with a bang and a flash when critics had declared his career dead. He dated women like Diane Keaton, Madonna, Michelle Phillips, and finally settled on Annette Bening, whom he married. This book is less about Beatty's life than his bedroom life. We get extensive chronicling of, if not every woman he ever slept with, then quite a few of them. Most of these affairs add nothing either to the book or to our understanding of Beatty. And, as he did in "The Most Beautiful Woman In The World," Amburn is not satisfied merely to present Beatty's sexcapades: he does so for just about everyone else in the book. Madonna, Lara Flynn Boyle, Roman Polanski, and dozens of other people have their randy bedroom lives outlined in this book, usually with plenty of detail. Why? No reason. It makes for more titillating reading, I suppose. (The description of videotaped sex games by Sharon Polanski, who was stabbed to death while pregnant, and the first-person description of seduction of a thirteen-year-old, crossed the line into insensitive, tasteless, even pornographic) The actual writing style is plodding and repetitive. Like many bad biographers, Amburn feels the need to spread anecdotes about the main personality traits of his subjects throughout the book. He repeats constantly on the predatory attitudes of Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, or the strained relationship between Beatty and his sister Shirley MacLaine, or Madonna's liking for other women. Perhaps the most unforgivable aspect of this book is the lack of insight into Beatty's mind. There are a few half-hearted attempts to explain why he tries to bed all these women, to the point of threatening to rape one girl and stalking another, but it's skimming the surface. Near the end of the book, he inexplicably decides to grow up and be responsible -- but by that time, the readers may be so disgusted by him that they will no longer care. If you're hunting for a compendium of every tabloid article ever written about Warren Beatty, this is the book for you. But for a serious biography, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Is Shallow And Meaningless
Review: I agree with other reviewers that the book is shallow, disjointed, rambling, and too dependent on magazine profiles.
I would like to add that it is weird of author Ellis Amburn to assert that Beatty started sleeping with Natalie Wood while she was still married to Robert Wagner and that said adultery is the real reason for the break-up of that marriage.
Amburn refutes the claim by Wood biographer Suzanne Finstad that Wood walked in on Wagner while he was in a compromising position with another man and that this event ended the marriage. Moreover, Amburn knows "for a fact" that Natalie Wood was bisexual and that she and Wagner had an agreement that either one could cheat with a homosexual partner, but not a heterosexual one. Therefore, Warren Beatty wrecked the marriage. Right. I hope Mr. Amburn stays away from Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Oh, and I wish Mr. Amburn had presented more of Warren Beatty's early childhood in Richmond, Virginia. Warren, born in 1937, and sister Shirley MacLaine, born in 1934, are the only movie stars from that small city. Supposedly the place was a totally segregated southern city that remained unusually calm and non-violent during the entire civil rights era. It's no Birmingham.
Nonetheless, maybe white boys in Richmond were forbidden to discuss sex and they were told that black people combined dirty sex with devil worship in their music? It would be interesting to know if Warren Beatty was socialized this way and if it shaped the brief career he had as a honky tonk pianist before he got his big break in Splendor In The Grass. Did it also shape his and Shirleys' ultraliberal politics and Warren's friendship with Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart? Her liaison with Bella Abzug?
(Shirley was politically active as far back as 1968 when she was a delegate to the notoriously violent Democratic convention in Chicago. To what extent did her experiences in Richmond motivate her to do such a thing? Does she feel genuine compassion for disfranchised people or does she prefer to spend her time with the supernatural? How much of those traits are in Warren? Does he enjoy the supernatural?)
This book ignores those issues. All it gives you is shallow name dropping and sex acts. Don't waste your time or money on it. The only good thing that could come out of this book is that it might motivate Warren Beatty to run for president in 2008. As part of his campaign platform he could say that people are so sick of hearing the shallow stories of his sex life and Bill Clinton's that they are ready to talk about the really important stuff for a change.
Rating:
Summary: The Dumbest Book Alive....Junk
Review: This is a poorly written, slapped together (from lots of old magazine articles) Hollywood bio that COMPLETELY fails to explain one of the more complex, artistically daring figures of the film business. Of course, any book about Warren Beatty is going to have a lot of sex in it, but Amburn is not gutsy (like the late Julia Phillips) or salacious (like Kitty Kelly); his recounting of Beatty's numerous liasons is just recycled National Enquirer stuff. What really sinks this pathetic book is Amburn's inability to suggest just what makes Beatty tick: why does he take so long to make a film? why are his best films (Bonnie and Clyde, Reds, Shampoo, Bullworth) all about dreamers who wind up dead or deserted? Don't look to this book for the answers. Most annoyingly, the author seems to have scores to settle, having managed (appearantly) to live on the edge of the film/literary world. He constantly disses Shirley MacLaine, largely because she didn't pick up a check when they had a publishing lunch decades ago! His opinions of Beatty's films are frequently off the mark: he brushes off Bonnie and Clyde as too violent, paying little attention to the film's artistry, and he totally misreads McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Even if he hates the movie (and he does), Amburn should note that many consider it a classic. Beatty has spent much of his public life trying to appear as an enigma; Amburn has been unable to pierce the veil of secrecy, largely through his inept writing. Avoid this piece of junk and rent Splendor in the Grass or Shampoo instead. You'll have a much more rewarding evening.
Rating: 
Summary: Biography and film history opus as sexy as Beatty
Review: Warren Beatty's brooding face on the cover of Ellis Amburn's biography/film history opus indicates why he has achieved an iconic status that seems reserved for Hollywood rebels without a cause. Certainly, like Kevin Costner, his output has been eclectic and iconoclastic. Amburn makes the point that Beatty, like a Don Juan Forrest Gump, inserted himself into the tumult of the New Hollywood era, the era of Pacino, Nicholson, and Roman Polanski. The insight into politics and into actors entering politics, seems particularly timely in the wake of Hollywood (brain trust) protests against the Iraq war and Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful gubernatorial run.
Schwarzenegger is one of the many names and figures striking bold poses, vogueing like Beatty conquest Madonna, in Ellis Amburn's prose, which reads like a "Beatty's Complaint" crossed with 1001 NIGHTS AT THE MOVIES, mixed in with Scott Thorson's LIFE WITH LIBERACE, which portrays a hypersexual performer who never quite grew up (though unlike Beatty, Liberace had little to do with politics or social issues).
Never content to name-drop, Amburn skillfully probes, with love, exasperation, a certain detachment, and fascination, the inner life of an aging Lothario whose film career and political carrer haves been as mercurial as his love life. Interestingly, Beatty's lasting achievements, "Reds," "Shampoo," and "Bonnie and Clyde," parallel his most lasting relationships, specifically with Julie Christie and Annette Bening, as well as his male friendships, specifically with Jack Nicholson (his relationships with gay filmmakers make an intriguing twist.) Has Beatty the rebel been tamed by Annette? If so, we'll always have the bad-boy image on the cover.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and entertaining
Review: While this book doesn't exactly go deep into the mind of Warren Beatty, and probably castigates him too much for his sexual desires and the numberous paramours he has had, it's a great book about a truly enigmatic genius, who should go down as a much better actor, director, producer, and writer than he will ever be given credit for. While it details his difficult relationship with men, his sister, and the numerous women he has spent time with, it never gets to the core of Warren Beatty and what is truly on his mind. I have to give this book 5 stars because no one else has ever even come close, and this book makes a hell of a stab....Worth the time if you are a fan of Old Hollywood.
Rating:
Summary: Unoriginal Mishmash
Review: Wretched writing makes this biography almost unbearable. In fact, as I went along, I read it more for the astonishingly amateurish, ripped-from-the-headlines writing than I did to find out anything about Warren Beatty. Not only are most of the quotes and factoids easily found in any interview that Beatty ever gave to a magazine or television program, but the organization of the book is very poor as well. Pointless quotes and asides are dropped into the middle of sections, while cardboard attempts at psychological insight are made about many personalities such as Jack Nicholson. The author drools over almost any salacious story he could get on anyone in Beatty's circle (sometimes, for several pages at a time). And, last but not least, the author doesn't even get some basic facts right - e.g., on p. 284, after dismissing Diane Keaton with a mean-spirited quote, he writes that, "By 2001, her son Dexter was five years old, and she had adopted yet another boy, Duke, six months old." Seeing as how the author did most of his research reading readily available magazine interviews and the like, it is astonishing that he didn't know Dexter is a girl. Any college writing assignment is held to higher standards than this.
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