in Arlington on North Liberty Street in their youth in the 1950s. Photo: John Thorp
Legendary actor/producer/director Warren Beatty was born in Richmond and went to high school in Arlington at what was then Washington-Lee, where he played football before graduating in 1955.
But the family roots of Beatty, now 88, and his older sister and actress, Shirley MacLaine, 91, stretch to the west side of the Blue Ridge mountains – mostly in Front Royal, but also in Shenandoah County.
“I grew up as a fairly Puritanical, Protestant, football-playing boy in Virginia,” Beatty once said, according to the 2005 book about his Academy Award-winning life by author Suzanne Finstad.
It was nearly 80 years ago that Beatty’s grandfather on his father’s side – William Welton Beaty – died in Staunton, on Feb. 28, 1946, according to a detailed family tree in the 500-page tome by Finstad called Warren Beatty: A Private Man. But according to an online genealogy site, William Welton Beaty passed away in Front Royal. He was born in 1872.
Henry Warren Beaty (the actor spells his name with two t’s), the father of William Welton Beaty, died in Winchester in 1923. Country music star Patsy Cline, who spent part of her youth in Staunton and Elkton, was born in Winchester in 1932.
Another relative on his father’s side, William Beaty, was born in Shenandoah County in 1801 and passed in Warren County in 1861 just months after the start of the Civil War.
The Rev. John Adams Beaty, another relative, passed in Warren County in 1849.
Many of the actor’s relatives are buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Front Royal.
Beatty, along with wife and actress Annette Benning and their children, made a visit to Front Royal about 25 years ago, according to the biography.
“There he walked them through the house the first Henry Warren Beaty built around 1901, pointing out where he used to climb out the window and down a tree at night,” according to the book by Finstad, noting the actor would spend time in Front Royal in the summers.
Beatty was 8 when the family of four moved from Richmond to Arlington in January of 1945. His father was slated to be a principal at Washington-Lee, but that fell through, and he took a job with the Arlington Juvenile Domestic Relations Court.
The biography of Beatty states he knew the name of every member of the 1949 Washington Senators baseball team.
His sister was a cheerleader at Washington-Lee (now Washington-Liberty), and Beatty was involved in football. He was part of a strong program, as the school won state titles in football in 1956 and 1960 soon after he graduated.
Beatty played a quarterback in the movie “Heaven Can Wait,” a sports fantasy drama that came out in 1978.
The house they grew up in is on North Liberty Street in Arlington, in the Dominion Hills neighborhood, and just south of I-66 and just north of Seven Corners.
MacLaine played baseball on a boys’ team in her youth, according to online reports.
While the brother and sister became Hollywood stars, their parents stayed in Arlington for many years. Their father, Ira Owens Beaty, died on Jan. 15, 1987 at a Baltimore hospital, while their mother, Kathlyn Corinne MacLean, a native of Nova Scotia, passed in Malibu, California, in 1993.
Famous alums
Beatty and sister MacLaine are just two of dozens of notable alums from Washington-Liberty.
That includes film star Sandra Bullock – who had a starring role in the football film “Blind Side” – as well as actor Forrest Tucker, who passed in 1986.
Clay Kirby, a baseball star at W-L, pitched in the Majors from 1969-1976 for the San Diego Padres, Cincinnati Reds and Montreal Expos. He was a member of the Reds when the team won the World Series in 1975, though he did not pitch in the Fall Classic.
NFL players from the school include Brian Blados, an All-Pro star with the Cincinnati Bengals; Jake Scott, who played in the Super Bowl with the Miami Dolphins; Eric Sievers, a 10-year veteran; and Reggie Harrison, part of two Super Bowl champions with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
W-L grad John Hummer was a basketball standout at Princeton and a first-round pick of Buffalo in the 1970 NBA Draft. He played in the NBA from 1970-1976; other members of Buffalo in 1970-1971 were Mike Davis, a star at Virginia Union, and Paul Long, who played at Virginia Tech.
The late Del Norwood was a long-time baseball coach at Washington-Lee. He is the father of former JMU and Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood. The elder Norwood was a manager in the minor leagues for the Minnesota Twins, and one of his players in the Appalachian League in 1961 with Wytheville was future Hall of Famer Tony Oliva.
But Beatty may be more famous than all of them, even though his athletic career mostly ended after he left high school for college at Northwestern – and then fame in Hollywood.