Everybody Loves Diane Keaton

Now that Stan and I are in our 70s, hearing about someone’s death always prompts us to ask, How old were they? Admittedly, we want them to be older than us. Even if they are in their 70s, 80s, or 90s we still say, Wow! They were young! (OK, early 90s.)

But everybody seems to agree that at 79, Diane Keaton was too young to leave us. My only claim to this universally loved woman is that from time to time I have the pleasure of being told I look like her. It started in high school. The movie was Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam (1972). Yeah right. I thought, And Woody Allen is just like Humphrey Bogart. I didn’t get it.

In college the comments came again from the movie Annie Hall (1977). I still didn’t get it. We didn’t have the same eyes or nose. She had style. I had none. She was eight years older and three inches taller. I could have been her squatty little sister, perhaps?

But by the time she had matured into Something’s Gotta Give (2003), playing the love interest of Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves, I was beginning to realize it looked like we had the same dentist. By then, Keaton, at 57, was becoming an iconic symbol for women of a certain age while actually playing characters of her age. I was sure she would keep pioneering for older women into her 80s and 90s, revealing more and more of our uniqueness at every age. 

Now that I feel it’s my humble duty to take up her mantle, I decided to read her memoir, Then Again (published in 2011). We really had more in common than I thought. She was raised by non-divorced, church-going, middle-class people. She was the oldest among siblings she loved, and was a self-described C-minus student. Me too.

I went into a fog in first grade. By third grade, I was convinced I was one of the dumbest people in the class. But one day, we were asked to write a story on a single piece of paper. Mine came back with a Very Good at the top. Then, I was asked to read it to the PTA! This infuriated Marilyn, the smartest girl in the class. It didn’t exactly turn my life around, but it was something. 

I’m absolutely sure that part of what made Diane Keaton complex and quirky was that she felt smart in a learning environment that was not designed for her. Also, like me, her parents didn’t help her with her academic struggles. Perhaps, like mine, they were too overwhelmed with younger siblings. Keaton managed to find her daylight in drama. 

Her mother did encourage her there in school performances. She helped blacken her two front teeth for the song, All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. It apparently went over quite well. Diane and I both thought our mothers were prettier than we were. Diane’s mom was crowned Mrs. Los Angeles in 1951, when Diane was 6. My own mother was Miss Hospitality 1953 of Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi a year before I was born. 

Back in the ’50s and ’60s, public schools gave us IQ tests to measure our intelligence. Keaton, like me, did not expect to do well. But she also noted that she scored remarkably high in an area involving her ability to reason through complex, multi-faceted issues. She hung on to that as a sign of her own intelligence. 

I remember, around fourth grade, getting the results of my IQ test. We were told to take them home and not to share them. Of course, Sara, the smartest girl in the class that year, immediately wanted to compare hers with mine since I was one of the dumbest. Mine was higher. This prompted my mom to meet with the teacher. They decided I was smart but lazy. I wasn’t lazy. I was overwhelmed. It was exhausting. 

Much has been written about Diane Keaton’s three famous loves: Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and Warren Beatty. They were all brilliant and quirky like her. All struggling with their ability to manage their own brilliance, fame, and riches into real-life scenarios, like marriage, family, and children. All made Diane laugh. After her death in October, Woody Allen included in a beautiful tribute to her: “"I first laid eyes on her lanky beauty at an audition and thought, 'If Huckleberry Finn was a gorgeous young woman, he'd be Keaton.'"

Keaton is often quoted as saying that she is, in the end, happy she didn’t marry. But at other times she said her big mistake was falling for these iconic figures in the entertainment industry. In retrospect, she said she could have just found a regular, sweet loving person and settled down. Instead, she improvised.

Who adopts two children after 50? Diane Keaton. What was her favorite role in life? Mom. My favorite role of hers was that of older woman. She owned it and the world let her get away with it. I was shocked to realize that Something’s Gotta Give has been around for 23 years. That’s a huge chunk of life to write off as just old. Keaton would want us to keep our humor, to always be ready to improvise, and whatever your age, not let anyone tell you you’re dumb.