Sept. 8, 1964 - Richard Beymer (pictured bottom row in Mississippi), a young actor who turned his back on a promising movie career two years ago, is back making movies again — this time as a writer-producer of documentaries.
Before his angry departure from Hollywood, Beymer had starred in 11 films, including “West Side Story,” “Diary of Anne Frank,” and “The Longest Day.” Two years ago, however, the 25-year-old actor became disgruntled both with the roles being offered him and with his own talents as an actor.
He left for New York, enrolled in Lee Strasberg’s private classes and then in the Actors Studio. Last spring, he left the Actors Studio to work in the Mississippi Summer Project, helping to register Negro voters and teaching in “Freedom Schools” for young Negro children.
His Mississippi experience so impressed Beymer that he raised the money to make a documentary on the Summer Project. He is now completing the editing and hopes to use the material for a theatrical documentary.
In addition to these projects, Beymer also will be the master of ceremonies at a Hollywood Bowl program to raise money to fight Proposition 14, a state initiative that would repeal California’s fair housing laws.
Beymer says he has no immediate plans to make a comeback as an actor and is not eager to do so unless an unusually challenging role comes along. “Most actors are motivated by a continual need for acceptance,” he says. “I think I’ve grown out of that.”
In looking back on his film career, Beymer takes a highly critical view of his own performances. He believes he was “just plain bad” as the male lead in “West Side Story” and “terrible” in “Five Finger Exercise.”
“All that was ahead of me in Hollywood was a series of roles casting me as a teenage glamour boy,” Beymer says. “I would have ended up starring in those surfboard bop movies.”
Beymer asserts that he went to Mississippi “for the betterment of me. I wanted the experience, and I wanted to find out what was happening down there.”
Although he was threatened several times by the police and by local “rednecks” and was almost killed by a bomb that misfired, Beymer carried away no visible scars from his work in the South.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
Comments