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BEYOND TWIN PEAKS Richard Beymer George Richard Beymer is no longer the youthful gang leader of the blockbuster musical "West Side Story." Nor is he Sherilynn Fenn's sinister dad on TV's "Twin Peaks."
"George is the part of ourselves we don't want to show." Beymer cryptically told PEOPLE Online. By the time he was given the to-die-for starring role of Tony opposite Natalie Wood's Maria in 1961's "West Side Story," George Richard Beymer -- as he was born -- was already the 22-year-old Richard Beymer, an experienced actor who had been in films from the age of 14. Born in Avoca, Iowa, in 1939, Beymer moved to Los Angeles with his parents before he was 10. "There was a huge migration from Iowa when men came home from the war and had seen another world," he recalls. Tap dance lessons and living next door to a choreographer led to Beymer's appearance on a live, LA TV show. "We were lucky to get through it without the camera breaking," he says. The incident kicked off his show business career. His first film was shot abroad: Vittorio DeSica's 1953 "Indiscretion of an American Wife," a U.S.-Italian production made in the Rome train station and starring Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones. Beymer's memories of it seem vague, except that "it was very difficult because we had to work at night." He has stronger recollections of playing Anne Frank's boyfriend in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959). "George Stevens, the director, was wonderful and I could relate to the character." After he made "High Time," a 1960 Blake Edwards film starring Bing Crosby, Beymer nabbed what should have been the role to bring him to stardom -- Tony in "West Side Story." The big-budget film version of the 1957 Broadway show had everything: an esteemed reputation, high visibility, a Romeo and Juliet story, a Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score and colorful gang members dancing on New York streets. "West Side Story" was a prestigious box-office champ that won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Although George Chakiris and Rita Moreno won Best Supporting Actor Oscars, their careers -- and those of the other performers -- were ultimately not served well by the film. (Chakiris all but disappeared afterward.) The elephantine movie musical was simply bigger than the actors who were in it -- and Beymer's reviews upon its release were mixed at best. "I had my chance, and it didn't click. The movie did," Beymer agrees. "It was hard to make. I realized I was in over my head with what I was asked to do. I was a kid from Iowa playing a street gang leader from New York. I needed a lot of help, and I wasn't getting it as I had with 'Anne Frank.' I knew it was lost, and I had no technique to fall back on." He blames the divisions of powers on the set: "We had two directors on that film. Jerome Robbins was let go early on. Robert Wise was left to direct. Jerry choreographed the dances and all the sequences leading in and out of the musical numbers. So he set the camera and did everything. I believe Jerry was the talent when it came to guiding actors who needed it. If he had directed the acting scenes, he would have scared me. But he would not have settled for what came out." Of his lack of on-screen chemistry with co-star Natalie Wood, Beymer says, "Natalie and I rarely spoke. I can count the times on one hand. We were equally distant from one another. The result was an alienated couple. We never even had lunch together." It was well-publicized at the time that the "voice of the stars," singer Marni Nixon, did Wood's warbling. (She was Deborah Kerr's ghost-soprano in "King and I" and would go on to dub Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady.") Did Beymer do his own singing? With good-natured frankness, he says, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And if you don't believe me, let me sing a few bars. My singing was done by a man named Jimmy Bryant." After "West Side Story," Beymer says, "My acting career dwindled to a memory. I gave up acting in 1963 and went to New York to study at the Actors Studio. In our country at that point, everything was breaking apart. It was a time of psychedelics, of moving to the country. I did not resist the '60s temptations, and I began a life having nothing to do with Hollywood. I got involved in underground filmmaking. It used to be called independent filmmaking, but now you need $4- or $5-million to do that. It was about experimentation and art."
Beymer became something of a social activist, taking part, in 1964, in a drive to register black voters. "I worked on the Mississippi Summer Project, on which the film 'Mississippi Burning' was based," he says. "I thought it would make a great film. I spent the summer documenting it and nine months learning to edit. My documentary has been on PBS a lot. And PBS has just talked to me about going back down there." Through the '70s and '80s, he worked as a cinematographer, editor and filmmaker, doing small films, after-school specials and documentaries. His 1974 movie, "Innerview," took him seven years to make and debuted at New York's Whitney Museum. "I have no idea what 'Innerview' was about," he says. "It was one hour and 50 minutes of falling into a dream." In the '80s Beymer found himself drifting back into the occasional acting job. He did a stint as Mimi Rogers' husband on the short-lived nighttime soap opera "Paper Dolls" in 1984. In 1990, he was cast in director David Lynch's bizarre series set in a Pacific northwest logging town, "Twin Peaks." Although it only ran from April 1990 to April 1991, "Peaks" is a cult classic and has been replayed several times on Bravo. And it has not been forgotten by its fans -- dozens of web sites are devoted to it. Memorable "Ben and Jerry quotes" can be found at The Twin Peaks Humor site. Beymer played the substantial role of Benjamin Horne, owner of the Great Northern Hotel. With a grin, Beymer says, "'Twin Peaks' was the best job I ever had. Everyone was perfectly cast -- it was right on and a great experience. I had a lot of fun finding that character."
Beymer, a vegetarian who meditates regularly, devotes much of his time to music made his acting debut in 1949 on a local television show, "Fantastic Studios Ink." Throughout his teenage years, he acted sporadically in various films, among them, "Indiscretions of an American Wife" and "So Big," while attending North Hollywood High School. At 19, his performance in "The Diary of Anne Frank" won him a long-term contract at 20th Century Fox where he starred in such Fox productions as "Bachelor Flat," "Five Finger Exercise," "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man," and "The Longest Day."
Richard wrote, directed and shot some educational films for Universal, including "Innerview" for which he composed his own music-- his instrument of choice in subsequent work on musical pieces has largely been the synthesizer.
Beymer work as a cinematographer and editor included films for television with actors such as Meg Tilly, Judge Reinhold, Joan Chen, Emilio Estevez, and Laura Dern. Assignments included "The Soup Man," "Who Loves Amy Tonight?," "Girl on the Edge of Town," "A Step Too Slow," "To Climb a Mountain," "The Trouble with Grandpa," "Leadfoot," "Hang Tight, Willy Bill" and "Clay Feet."
Screen credits include guest starring roles on "Murder, She Wrote," "Dallas," "Buck James," "Generation," "Moonlighting" "The Bronx Zoo," appearances in various incarnations of the Star Trek series and in the "X-Files", among others. His most recent big screen appearance was in the teen flick "Foxfire" released in 1996. He began shooting a video in 1974 which he describes as "an exploration of George" which has evolved into an autobiographical, fantasy-script book called "How to Make Hollywood Movies ...with your new Bell & Howell." (Bell & Howell made home-movie cameras, in the days before videocams.) His concept derived from "thoughts, ideas, dreams, free form, talking into a tape recorder and collecting stuff." Producers are considering the film's future. Single, self-effacing, tall, thin and still brunette, Beymer divides his time between a 24-acre farm in Iowa and a home in LA -- symbolic, perhaps, as is his work as a filmmaker, of his George-Richard struggle. As he says, with a sigh, "Hollywood is about entertainment, not art. Art versus entertainment -- that's been my conflict my whole life."
-- 'Ben and Jerry Horne' in Twin Peaks
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