Oscar-nominated Keaton forges comeback, stays true to Western Pa. roots
George Douglas Jr. often spends summer nights in front of his TV, watching the Pirates.
When an opposing player hits a long drive to the outfield, he watches as Andrew McCutchen sprints back to the wall, leaps and makes a game-saving catch.
And then, right on cue, his phone rings. Because regardless of where his brother is — on his Montana ranch, in southern California, or even on a film set — he's watching, too.
“He'll call and say, ‘Can you believe that catch?' ” Douglas said of his famous little brother, Oscar-nominated actor Michael Keaton. “I get calls from him all the time. He's watching. He's always watching.”
Keaton's public image might change dramatically tonight in Los Angeles. If he wins an Academy Award for his leading role in the film “Birdman,” he will join an elite club of iconic actors that includes Clark Gable, James Cagney, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.
Win or lose, nothing about the man will change, friends and family said. Keaton, 63, is no different from when he was an unknown kid with big dreams in Western Pennsylvania, they said. He remains humble and honest and never will forget his Pittsburgh roots.
“Mike has maintained this kind of essence of himself that hasn't changed,” said Ralph Vituccio, a Carnegie Mellon University assistant teaching professor and Keaton's buddy since high school. “He's retained this sense of just being himself. Mike would love to get the Oscar, but it's not in his character to focus on it. He's thinking about his next script, or when he's going to get up to his ranch.”
“He's a real guy,” said Richard Ferko, a Los Angeles attorney who has been Keaton's friend since first grade. “He's not a made-up character, a made-up person. With Mike, what you see is what you get.”
Michael Keaton — or Mike Douglas to friends and family — grew up in Forest Grove, a neighborhood of Robinson, the youngest of seven children.
“He was definitely the baby of the family,” his brother George said recently at his advertising business in Coraopolis, where family photos cover one wall. “He always had a vivid imagination. He would play with these little plastic cowboys and Indians, and he'd set them up all over the place. You'd be sitting there, watching a football game, and you'd get a cowboy on your shoulder. You'd try not to move because you knew he took the time to get it just right.”
A rising star, new name
Keaton's start in television came in Pittsburgh on the WQED set of “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.” A production crew member, Keaton quickly became known as a “class clown” who pulled pranks, even on the venerable Fred Rogers, said Frank Warninsky, the show's lighting director.
“That was Mike,” Warninsky said. “He was always joking around and trying to make people laugh.”
Keaton moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, eager to test his comedic skills. Several Pittsburgh friends moved west, including Ferko, a former Ohio State football player who played in two Rose Bowls and decided that southern California suited him. Keaton played gigs at comedy clubs while Ferko studied for the bar. They worked in restaurants, bars, theme parks — and Keaton once landed a short gig as a valet.
“One of the first cars was a Bentley, and he scraped it on a post,” Ferko said. “They told him to leave. He became an actor because he couldn't park cars.”
On stage, Keaton used his Pittsburgh roots as a comedic device.
“I moved down near the beach, down around Venice, you know, that area,” he said during an early performance. “I'm very unfamiliar with the ocean and anything having to do with the ocean. I'm from Pittsburgh, and there's very little marine life in Pittsburgh, you know? The occasional Chevy at the bottom of a river. That's about it.”
His first big break came when he landed a part in the TV movie “Klein Time,” with Robert Klein and Peter Boyle. Though he got the call on a weekday morning, the Pittsburgh friends decided to celebrate, Ferko said, first at a diner where they boisterously drank champagne.
“All these truck drivers are looking at us like, ‘Who are these punk kids?' ” Ferko said.
They went to a bar, where his agent arrived and told Mike Douglas to pick a stage name. Hollywood had a Mike and Michael Douglas.
A drunken debate ensued, Ferko recalled, ending with the group's unanimous declaration that Mike's stage name would be Bowie Hucks — “after his cat,” Ferko said. “Well, he got sober the next day and decided on Keaton, which was not a name we were kicking around.”
A Pittsburgher at heart
It wasn't long before Keaton became a movie star.
First, he stole the show in “Night Shift,” a Ron Howard film co-starring Henry Winkler. He followed that with comedic lead roles in “Mr. Mom,” “Gung-Ho” and “Johnny Dangerously.” He turned in an unforgettable performance as an outlandishly crude ghost in Tim Burton's “Beetlejuice” and later played serious roles to critical acclaim in “Clean and Sober” and “My Life.”
In 1989, he established himself as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood by landing the lead role in Tim Burton's “Batman.”
As his celebrity grew, Keaton stayed grounded by maintaining his Pittsburgh roots.
On annual fishing trips to his Montana ranch, his brothers made sure that Keaton got “no more attention than anyone else,” George Douglas said. “Which is as it should be. I mean, he's our little brother.”
On a trip back home in 2006, Kea-ton made headlines when he spoke on behalf of every bitter and frustrated Pirates fan by criticizing the team's management for failing to field a winning club. The timing of the barbs raised eyebrows: Keaton was a guest of the team, having been asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Local fans loved it. To them, it proved that even after decades in Hollywood, Michael Keaton was a Pittsburgher at heart.
“It was something that needed to be said,” Douglas said. “It might not have been the best time, with him being a guest of the team. But he said what everybody wanted to say.”
Longtime friend Chip Walter of Shadyside, an author who lived in Los Angeles while Keaton's career blossomed, said Keaton's outburst was honest and, therefore, perfectly in character.
“Look, he was raised a good Irish Catholic kid in Western Pa., and his value system is you tell the truth,” Walter said. “Mike does that in Hollywood meetings, too. He isn't going to lie. It's just not in his DNA, and that's because he's from Pittsburgh. ... One of the reasons I think Mike kept in touch with his Pittsburgh roots was because he knew he could rely on people to not (b.s.) him, and Hollywood is full of (b.s.).”
Hard-working and loyal
In Keaton's L.A. kitchen, he and Walter would talk for hours about everything from celebrity to fatherhood.
“From early on, (Keaton's son) Sean knew his dad was famous, and Mike was concerned about that,” Walter said. “We would talk about how do you handle that? How do you provide stability for your kid, but also fun? He was an extremely devoted father, a really great dad who put a lot of thought into it, at least as much thought as he put into his career. Probably more.”
Douglas said his brother got his sense of humor from their mom, Leona Douglas, who died in 2002, and his humility and work ethic from their father, George Douglas, who died on Christmas Eve 1977.
When Keaton won a Golden Globe last month for his “Birdman” performance, he aimed his speech to family, not agents or directors.
“My name's Michael John Douglas. I'm from Forest Grove, Pa. I'm the seventh child of George and Leona Douglas, and I don't ever remember a time when my father didn't work two jobs, when my mother wasn't saying the rosary or going to Mass, or trying to take care of seven kids in a rundown farmhouse,” he said.
The speech fit Keaton perfectly, friends said.
“He told a story about his family and his roots, and nobody ever does that,” Walter said. “It was a wonderful thing to watch, but I wasn't thinking, ‘Wow, where did that come from?' It was completely in sync with the way Mike is.”
When Keaton's son got married last summer, the actor invited his oldest friends from Pittsburgh, not A-list Hollywood actors.
“That tells you who he is,” Ferko said. “We get together and within minutes, we're talking about St. Malachy's, the Pirates, the Steelers, Myron Cope, Mike's brothers and his sister, Pam, and all the things we did as kids. ...
“He deserves this,” he said of the Oscar nomination. “I'll be disappointed if he doesn't win. I think he was wonderful in the movie, of course, but aside from that, he is so deserving. He's worked hard, and he's stayed loyal.”
Chris Togneri is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him at 412-380-5632 or ctogneri@tribweb.com.
