Faye Dunaway is one of the great movie stars who act with their eyes — or perhaps that should be one of the stars who act greatly with their eyes — in a class with the ocular fireworks of a Bette Davis, as well as the glistening searchlights of the ever-vivid Joan Crawford.

Faye, of course, played Joan Crawford — quite notoriously — in Mommie Dearest, bringing to the proceedings a whole glary-starey madness that had nothing to do with the Joan feeling , that was all Dunaway, and yet captured the truth of the Crawford persona anyway — in the way that art can often say more with one bold stroke of color than with multiple daubs of nuanced photo-realism.

Like Joan, like Bette, like in fact all of the classic stars of the previous generation, Faye is a technical – rather than a method — actress. She produces special effects — vocal as well as ocular — rather than psychological states (as she demonstrated in Network, above, for which her mile-a-minute patter and Swiftian smiles won her an Oscar.)

Watching her in action brings to mind the old Lido Review at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas where everything was tits, feathers and tableau vivants. Faye too is all live waterfalls on the stage and sudden bonfires — her stage being her face. Even in minor roles, now, she puts on an extravaganza.

Young readers who know her only through the camp goldmine that is Mommie Dearest may be surprised to learn that the Faye face was once her fortune. Her beauty was of a supreme Vogue-model quality, with its subliminally Eurasian cast, the flat planes falling from the sheer cliff of her cheekbones, the eyes long and at times on a slant.

Let us now join one of our favorite pop-culture tour guides, Stephen Moser of the Austin Chronicle, in an exclusive to Nightcharm as he walks us through the fun-house that is Faye Dunaway, the Career and Faye Dunaway, the Experience — John Calendo

Oklahoma Crude (1973), Faye explains herself to George C. Scott:

GCS: You don’t like men much, do you?
FAYE: No.
GCS: Maybe you’re the kind who prefers women.
FAYE: No. Women are even worse; they try to be like men, but they can’t cut it. I’d like to be a member of a third sex.
GCS: Third sex? Mmm-hmmm. Well, which article would you have — the one that goes in, or the one that goes out?
FAYE: Both.
GCS: Well, which one would you favor?
FAYE: Both. If I had both sex organs, I could just screw myself, couldn’t I? Well, couldn’t I?

Like all great movie queens favored by gay men, Faye Dunaway has never needed a man to complete her — and that includes her high-profile partners off screen as well as on. Men are nothing more than accessories to Faye. She is omnipotent, imperious, cold – and it doesn’t really matter what role she’s playing: It’s all Faye, all the time.

Bonnie and Clyde equals Thomas Crown Affair equals Chinatown, Network, Eyes of Laura Mars and, of course, Mommie Dearest.  What is it about this 64 year-old icon that places her so securely in the Queer 101 Hall of Fame? The raw emotion, I think, that ripples neurotically under a veneer of sophistication. Misunderstood, yet fueled by self-will, she barrels on, her nerves worked to their very ends. There are no half-measures with Faye, and no small emotions. If she’s put-upon, she plays the most over-the-top put-upon girl on earth. But when she’s vengeful, she’s as stone-cold wicked as Medusa.

Dorothy Faye Dunaway, nicknamed Miss Faye, was just a simple Southern girl with a dream: Like so many of us, she wanted to win a beauty pageant.

Doubtless, Faye would have made a fierce beauty queen and there’s no question, based on her later portrayals, that she would have let nothing stand in her way. In fact, she nearly became the May Queen at Leon High School in Tallahassee, losing by a mere six votes. I like to imagine the scene backstage afterwards: young Faye gnashing her lovely teeth, ripping off her lovely gown, screaming "Christina, you bitch! Bring me that trophy or I’ll have your head on a platter!" Ah, sweet girlhood days!

At the University of Florida, Dunaway finally did score a beauty crown when she was named Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. By then a silly old college crown paled beside her new ambitions. She wanted to be a star, something much more personal than being a mere actress. Transferring to Boston University, and then on to the original training program at the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater in New York, she was greeted by early success. Offers came pouring in for the blond ingénue … including a starring role in the bedroom of foulmouthed comedian Lenny Bruce.

Her first movie role was as a white-trash slatern, playing second string to Jane Fonda in the dreadful Hurry Sundown, known as the worst film of 1967. This was followed by a crime spree in the form of a film entitled The Happening, remembered today only for the Supremes-sung theme, though not even Diana and her girls could turn this hippie trash into camp. To do that, it took Lucille Ball. Lucy appears in an uncredited cameo, showing up, of all places, in the bed of Milton Berle. The film was not intended as comedy, and Lucy, for one, was so mortified by the gales of laughter at the studio preview that she was reduced to going on Johnny Carson and saying she had done it as “a personal favor” to Uncle Milty.

Three Days of the Condor (1975), Faye shows spirit when she is home-invaded by CIA agent Robert Redford:

FAYE: You’re not entitled to personal questions! That gun gives you the right to rough me up; it doesn’t give you the right to ask me…
RR: Wh- wh- Rough you up? Have I roughed you up?
FAYE: Yes! What are you doing in my house?
RR: Have I? Have I?
FAYE: Going through all my stuff? Force…
RR: Have I raped you?
FAYE: The night is young.

But then just as things were looking darkest, Faye’s star rose, glittered and shone: Bonnie and Clyde (below) was released, making the biggest of all critical and box-office splashes. Even while it was filming, Bonnie and Clyde was the subject of speculation as the first film to be produced by the the most sultry prettyboy in Hollywood, Warren Beatty. But everything about the film turned out to be a sensation — the music, the direction, the hunkyness of Beatty and the slender beauty of its leading lady as the poetry-writing gun-moll Bonnie Parker. In snagging this role, Faye had aced out all the major names of the time — Natalie Wood, among them — thanks to her full-blown tenacity, her novelty as the new beauty in town and Warren’s dead-on eye for glamorous gals.

Bonnie and Clyde put Faye Dunaway on the map, making her a major leading lady in Hollywood, giving her first crack at choice scripts. More than that, it unleashed for the first time the neurotic, driven persona that she would play for the rest of her career, refining it as she went along, then finally blowing it up to Godzilla proportions in the post-Mommie years. Bonnie and Clyde established her as a Grade A fashion icon. With midi skirts, eyeliner, berets and page-boy hairstyles, the world fell in love with the Bonnie look, and with Bonnie herself.

In Part II, we’ll take a look at Faye’s wonder years, everything from Chinatown to Eyes of Laura Mars and even pay our respects to a certain mother-daughter bi-op where we learn how to organize our closets and are told never to treat $300 dressers like they were some dish rags.

Part II continues here.