Warren Beatty\u2014who co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Towne\u2014sends up his reputation as the movie industry\u2019s most prolific ladies\u2019 man by playing George Roundy, a dim-bulb hairstylist popular among Hollywood housewives for far more than his skills with a pair of scissors. One of the running gags is that because of his profession, every male character in the movie assumes George must be gay. (This is to their peril, leaving their wives alone with Warren Beatty.) George says he spends all day, every day, hearing from his clients \u201cabout some guy who fucked them over.\u201d He isn\u2019t very bright, but he listens. George makes women feel pretty, and to most of them, he\u2019s a harmless plaything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s also got to be the most innocent lothario you\u2019ve ever seen in a movie, a smiling naif who\u2019s eager to please but never quite sure exactly what the score is. There\u2019s nothing conniving or deliberate about his constant cheating on his long-suffering girlfriend Jill (one of the actor\u2019s real-life exes, Goldie Hawn), it\u2019s just that this stuff just seems to keep happening to George. Beatty\u2019s biggest comic gift has always been for befuddlement, and he plays every scene a beat or two behind his co-stars, his fuzzy attention only snapping into focus when the subject turns to women\u2019s hair. George desperately wants to open his own beauty parlor, but nobody serious is going to lend this flake any money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, maybe Lester Karpf will. A slightly shady money manager played by Jack Warden, he has no idea this \u201cfruity\u201d fellow is sleeping with his wife, Felicia (Lee Grant, who won an Oscar for her performance.) She\u2019s the one we see in George\u2019s bed during the opening scene, when he interrupts their assignation to answer the telephone. One of the stipulations to the loan offer is that George first needs to act as a beard that evening for Lester\u2019s mistress, Jackie (played by another of Beatty\u2019s real-life exes, Julie Christie) at a function where all the town\u2019s top muckity-mucks will be watching the election returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another thing that Lester doesn\u2019t know\u2014and there\u2019s an awful lot to which he isn\u2019t privy\u2014is that George and Jackie used to be a thing. In fact, George never really got over her, and the McCabe and Mrs. Miller<\/em> reunion proves once again that Beatty was never more endearing then when helplessly pining for Julie Christie. (And really, who can blame him?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s Election Night in 1968, when the country was coming apart at the seams in a maelstrom of assassinations, protests, and political unrest. Not that you\u2019d be able to tell from Shampoo<\/em>, in which not even the Vietnam war stands a chance of penetrating this Beverly Hills bubble. (The closest it comes when George\u2019s employer\u2019s son\u2014a soldier\u2014is killed, but notably in a traffic accident, not combat.) One of the slyest jokes in Beatty and Towne\u2019s screenplay is that the characters move freely between Karpf\u2019s Republican fundraiser and a cool counterculture party in the Hills. The only difference is that the latter plays better music. Both have valet parking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The political significance of Shampoo<\/em> has perhaps been overstated by folks who aren\u2019t comfortable admitting just how much they enjoyed a crackerjack sex comedy. Indeed, the language in the picture broke all sorts of taboos\u2014as had Towne\u2019s blisteringly profane script for The Last Detail<\/em> two years before. The difference here is that the dirtiest words are uttered by the women, with Christie announcing a particular intention that made the movie briefly notorious. Even more shocking by today\u2019s standards is a 17-year-old Carrie Fisher as Grant and Warden\u2019s blas\u00e9 daughter, her words taking the form of a bored sigh when asking Beatty \u201cWanna fuck?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet Shampoo<\/em> is not a smutty film, nor a mean-spirited one. It has the gentle, shambling worldview we associate with director Ashby, extending a real generosity to characters who in any other film would be simple villains. I have a soft spot for Tony Bill\u2019s unflappable Johnny Pope, the low-ranking Hollywood player determined to put the moves on Hawn\u2019s Jill, but Warden\u2019s Lester Karpf is the film\u2019s biggest surprise. It\u2019s a great performance by an actor you were always happy to see. The wonderful morning-after scene, in which Lester confronts George with all he\u2019s learned, finds the poor guy flummoxed by just how much he likes the man who screwed his mistress. And his wife. And his daughter. (Just thinking about this part of the movie makes me smile.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hawn\u2019s character describes her boyfriend as always running around but never getting anywhere, and the sadness of Shampoo<\/em> is that we know there will be no happy ending for George Roundy. Setting the film on the night of Nixon\u2019s victory is a none too subtle sign that the party\u2019s over for these hapless libertines. The filmmakers couldn\u2019t have foreseen the Reagan Revolution that was looming only five years away, but you can spot the former governor of California\u2019s portrait in a key scene. Meanwhile, poor George is left abandoned by the side of the road. A discarded plaything.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Shampoo” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/shampoo-1024x768.png\")
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