‘Glorious, glamorous and that old standby, amorous’: the late blossoming of Diane Keaton's romantic comedy career

Abstract

In recent years, following films such as Something's Gotta Give (2003), Mama's Boy (2007) and Because I Said So (2007), Diane Keaton has emerged as ‘the poster woman’ for a body of newly inflected romantic comedies, films which have placed the desire of and for an older woman heroine at their centre. Through textual analysis, particularly of Something's Gotta Give (which was widely touted as her ‘comeback’ vehicle) and media discourses surrounding both this film and Keaton more broadly during this period, this article explores how Keaton returned to such prominence, specifically in this genre and at an age when it is typically presumed most women actors will have receded from the spotlight. I suggest three key themes emerge from this analysis. First, for many audiences, Keaton carries what we might call a heightened (and gratifying) sense of history, that is, that her oeuvre has built over the course of some four decades to shore up a recognisable performance style and to enable numerous reflexive connections across her films. Second, Keaton is a star whose performance style and characters are recurrently received or understood as being enmeshed with the ‘real’ Diane Keaton. Third (and linked to both of these), over time the theme of motherhood emerges as increasingly significant to both her film roles and the media coverage of her. What, then, might her later career and the blossoming of her romcom persona have to tell us about the contemporary Hollywood film industry, about the romcom genre and about the place of older female stars within all this?

Keywords:

• ageing
• romantic comedy
• motherhood
• Diane Keaton
• Something's Gotta Give

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Stacey Abbott and Janet McCabe for insightful comments as always.

Notes

1. I use inverted commas on ‘older’ here advisedly in recognition of how inescapably subjective the term is, particularly for women working in Hollywood where anything after twenty-something can become fraught; the actors playing older romcom heroines in the films noted here, for example, range from 40 to 60.

2. For more on ageing female celebrity, cosmetic surgery and internet gossip sites, see Kirsty Fairclough's article in this edition.

3. As this edition was about to be sent to press in November 2011, a news story emerged which impacts further on how one reads Keaton‘s slender body, since the press coverage surrounding the publication of her memoir (described below) disclosed that she had admitted to suffering from bulimia in the 1970s; this body is thus revealed to have experienced a great deal of a certain kind of ‘graft and diligence’ in order to stay slim.

4. For more on the rise of the ‘cougar’, see Betty Kaklamanidou's essay in this collection.

5. Furthermore, at the time of writing, the importance of motherhood as a theme in the public's grasp of Keaton‘s persona is set to take on another inflection as she publishes her book, Then Again (Fourth Estate), described on the Amazon website as a ‘memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother... To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives’.