It wasn’t Annie Hall that made me fall in love with Diane Keaton. By the time I saw the classic romantic comedy, I was already a fan. My love affair with Diane Keaton started with her performance in 1991’s Father of the Bride. In Charles Shyer’s interpretation of the Vincente Minnelli classic, Steve Martin takes on the role originally played by Spencer Tracey as the neurotic father, doubly exasperated by the rising cost of his daughter’s wedding and the prospect of losing his little girl. Martin was joined by Martin Short as Franck Eggelhoffer, the furiously flamboyant, if murky, European wedding planner.
Keaton rounded out the comic trio as Martin’s onscreen wife. The screenplay, a frivolous concoction whipped up by Shyer and his then-wife Nancy Meyers, cast Keaton as the straight man to the comedic antics of Martin and Short. Yet, even if she didn’t get her own comic highlight, I fell head over heels. She provided a much-needed sense of calm and grace. She glided through the film with broad, warm smiles. She had a vision of genial browns, beiges, and whites. She was beautiful.
The incredible power in Diane Keaton’s genius is that she was all loveliness and light. She didn’t need a comedy bit to be funny or appealing. She was enough.
When I finally saw Annie Hall, I was already thoroughly convinced of her particular brilliance, having seen her in Father of the Bride, Baby Boom, The First Wives Club, and The Lemon Sisters. In Annie Hall, Keaton made an indelible contribution to cinema history. The word performance feels inadequate when describing her work in the film. She embodies the role. Woody Allen wrote the script with his long-time collaborator, Marshall Brickman, inspired by his relationship with Keaton, which had ended by the film’s 1977 release. Although they were no longer romantic partners, they were artistic partners.
Annie Hall tells the story of Alvy Singer, a comedian who is trying to figure out what went wrong with his relationship with the titular heroine. The structure of their failed love story is a nonlinear excavation of what happens when lovers can no longer make it work. Annie Hall, and by extension Diane Keaton, was emblematic of the exciting and fresh New Hollywood. Emerging from the crumbled ruins of the old Studio System, actors from the New Wave of Hollywood jolted audiences with grittier, more lived-in performances.
As Annie, Diane Keaton practically lives on the screen. In one of the most memorable moments from the 1970s film, Annie and Alvy engage in stilted, hilariously awkward small talk after a friendly meeting for a tennis game. In the lobby of the health club, Alvy is gathering his belongings and sees Annie enter, wearing her signature boho chic uniform of oversized men’s clothing. Annie is a bit of a dithering mess, unable to get through her stammered speech, twisted in embarrassment because of her obvious attraction to Alvy. As she searches for something to say to rescue her from embarrassment, she sings the iconic line, “la-di-da”.
La-di-da. So much in a nonsense utterance, yet in Keaton’s delivery, there are several conflicting emotions and feelings, all conveyed with her wide, abashed smile. She’s brave, self-effacing, funny, and shy. Not content to wait for Alvin to approach her, she summons up the courage to do so, even if she’s intimidated and anxious. A thoroughly modern woman, Annie makes the first move.
Despite being seemingly good for each other, the relationship is doomed because Annie outgrows Alvy. He wants to be a Svengali to Annie. He wants to teach her and guide her through pressing literature, art, cinema, and therapy. Annie wants to be a singer. She wants to be a photographer. She wants to be creative. Annie outgrows Alvy.
It’s an apt metaphor for the shifting balance between Keaton and Allen. By 1977, the two had worked together on stage, and they co-starred in three films before their landmark collaboration. Their inspired partnership resulted in two more films, the last being 1979’s Interiors, before a 15-year break during which she established herself as one of the most popular and bankable female comedy stars of the 1980s and 1990s.
Like Annie Hall, Diane Keaton outgrew the limited role of Woody Allen’s muse. Though the two made excellent films together, she was poised to become a major movie star and a force in the film industry in her own right.
In the 1980s, Keaton not only affirmed her place as one of cinema’s funniest comedy queens, but she also proved to be a surprisingly versatile actress, succeeding in domestic dramas. The 1980s were a golden era for top-billed female movie stars. Somewhat reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood, 1980s film was marked by a glittery array of proven box-office titans who happened to be women. Keaton joined the ranks of Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher, Kathleen Turner, Barbra Streisand, and Meryl Streep.
In the midst of a flurry of roles, Keaton starred in the historical epic Reds (1981, directed by Warren Beatty), Shoot the Moon (1982, directed by Alan Parker), Mrs. Soffel (1984, directed by Gillian Armstrong), and Crimes of the Heart (1986, directed by Bruce Beresford). In these films, Keaton demonstrated remarkable flexibility that supported her idiosyncratic and distinctive acting style.
Like Katharine Hepburn, an actress she was often compared to, even if Diane Keaton was able to perform many roles, she always remained resolutely faithful to her screen persona. Just as in the 1970s, Keaton was a symbol of the widening possibilities of American women, freed and liberated by the sexual revolution, the introduction of the pill, and the women’s movement, the 1980s saw Keaton evolve with the times, and become a major powerhouse, ascending with other women who, like Keaton, were flourishing in careers that men dominated.
In what is perhaps one of her most charming and quintessential performances, Keaton is a comedic gem in Charles Shyer’s 1987 comedy Baby Boom. It’s an admittedly dated movie, but one that truly represents why Diane Keaton is the legendary comic superhero. In the film, she plays J.C. Wiatt, a high-powered Manhattan yuppie who must question her values when she ‘inherits’ a baby from a distant relative. J.C. is coined the Tiger Lady, and her colleagues either respect her or fear her.
Though the film is formulaic and commercial, Keaton’s performance has moments that reach her heights as an actress and will remind viewers of the brilliant work she did in Annie Hall. Baby Boom is the definitive Diane Keaton vehicle because its screenwriters – Shyer and Nancy Meyers – understand just what audiences love about their star and write a script that gives her moments in everything.
She’s funny, touching, biting. She’s a feminist. Yet, she also learns to be maternal. There are legitimate quibbles about the film’s pat resolution that has J.C. reconsider her new life in rural Vermont with her baby when tempted with a return to corporate Manhattan, but Keaton’s performance carries the film. The film – a moderate success upon its release – has found an enduring audience since, with viewers reveling in Keaton’s hilarious work.
When honoring her close friend and co-star at the American Film Institute, Meryl Streep summed up the long-lived appeal of Diane Keaton by gushing, “I can’t imagine the 1970s, the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s without you.” Like Streep, Keaton experienced a pleasant late-in-career revival when she reunited with Nancy Meyers for 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, a spirited and jovial romantic comedy that featured the actress embroiled in a love triangle with Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves.
Keaton earned her final Oscar nomination (her fourth) for the film and won several industry awards, including a Golden Globe for her work as Erica Barry, a thinly veiled autobiographical avatar for Meyers. She wrote Erica as a successful and important playwright (possibly an affectionate nod to Wendy Wasserstein and Nora Ephron) who is so charming and intoxicating that men fall over themselves to rush to her.
Diane Keaton is tremendous in the role. Like her other work with Meyers, Something’s Gotta Give is smart, well-placed fluff, but the actress finds layers of truth and light in the characters she plays. With the honeyed wisdom of middle age and experience, Keaton remains everyone’s favorite. Her renewed commercial success accompanied a new appreciation for her evergreen beauty as Meyers filmed her star beautifully. In his review of the film, critic David Haviland opined, “Keaton looks fantastic, to the extent that when Keanu Reeves’ charming doctor persistently pursues her, we’re not in the least surprised.”
Her final notable work in her long and storied career was yet another improbable hit movie, which brought her success as she continued to work into her 70s. Teamed up with fellow female cinema icons Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen, Keaton found herself the belle of the ball yet again in 2018’s Book Club. Like when she was cast alongside Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in her smash hit comedy The First Wives Club (1996, directed by Hugh Wilson), Keaton was similarly cast as the ultimate best girlfriend: the funny and sage pal who was witty and fun and a blast to hang around with. In a career marked by numerous highs, it was yet another achievement that proved her appeal and star power undiminished.
Though many film critics and historians would agree that Keaton owes much of her career to Woody Allen (“He gave me everything,” she declared in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel), the famed director regularly gave credit to his former co-star, suggesting that she was a significant influence on him. He admired her work as a comedienne (ranking her as the best, just under Judy Holliday). In response to her death, he penned an essay in tribute, writing, “A few days ago, the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it’s a world that does not. Hence, it’s a drearier world. Still, there are her movies. And her great laugh still echoes in my head.”
Allen is right. We still have her movies. I have watched Manhattan Murder Mystery about a hundred times. It’s probably my favorite movie of all time, mainly because of Diane Keaton. She’s so funny in the film as a bored, restless Manhattan housewife who remedies her feelings of ennui and Empty Nest boredom by involving herself in a murder mystery. It’s a movie that lets Keaton do what she does that makes her so great. She delves into physical comedy and slapstick, reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball. She gets to be swoony and romantic. Tart and sarcastic. She’s marvelous. She will always be marvelous.