Digging up Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty's past

The last week, I've been going to the Central Library of Arlington, VA and looking up stuff in the Virginia Room (which is their county archives), for a grad school study project, and while I was there I thought, what the hell, I'll look up info on Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine. They are part of my hometown but I’ve never known much about their connection.

It was an interesting reveal.

So first let’s get the two last names out of the way.  They’re both Beattys but Shirley MacLaine must have been found enough of her middle name back then to include it in the yearbook because she’s listed as Shirley MacLean Beatty. She later substituted her middle name for her last name on the spot at one of her first theater auditions because a casting director couldn't pronounce "Beatty" and altered the spelling.

The two had no other siblings growing up and were pretty close. A positive relationship has been alluded to in interviews the two have given as adults although Shirley wishes her brother was less of a philanderer.

Both siblings were noted to be trouble makers in their pre-adolescent days which must mean they did some truly outrageous things (considering all kids are pretty capable of mischief). They would evidently lie on the street and stop traffic and play neighborhood pranks that were reported to their dad. Their dad was a principal of an Arlington middle school and admitted to being a little ashamed of their antics.

Shirley was a cheerleader at W-L and participated in ballet in high scchool. She went to Broadway the summer before her senior year where she had bit roles. The next summer after graduation she went back to Broadway and landed a role in the Pajama Game that got her discovered by Alfred Hitchcock. Soon she was cast in the film “The Trouble with Harry” within one year of graduating W-L. Not long after that came “Around the World in 80 Days” which was one of the most expensive and profitable films Hollywood had made to date and led to an extensive career that earned her five Oscar nominations and one win among many other accolades.

Beatty was a star football player in high school and the class president senior year. His high school yearbook pictures are a lot more amusing to look at than his sister's because of his crew cut. He was also his senior year class president.

He got into the theater the summer before his senior year when his sister recommended he do it as a stagehand at the National Theater in D.C.  Still, it was his football playing that stuck out. He got somewhere in the ballpark of 10 scholarship offers but he turned them down to study acting at Northwestern University.

So that’s the story so far. There are obviously many more files in the library, so I look forward to doing some more digging…