I’ve been waiting for years to find a decent YouTube clip of Warren Beatty as Milton Armitage, the snooty and in almost all ways superior nemesis of Dwayne Hickman in the first season (’59-’60) of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Only now with the entire series recently released on DVD can the full flavor of Armitage be re-appreciated. What a shit, and yet a shit whom Beatty (along with the writers, of course) labored mightily to mock at every turn.

When Kaleidoscope was released in mid 1966, Beatty was seemingly floundering. He hadn’t starred in a sizable hit since Splendor in the Grass and his serious/ambitious films of the last few years — Lilith, All Fall Down, Mickey One, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone — had underwhelmed or gone thud and another frothy thing, Promise Her Anything, had also fizzled. But at the time of this What’s My Line appearance Beatty was hard at work on Bonnie and Clyde — a 1967 film that was nearly killed in the crib due to atrocious parenting from Warner Bros. But Beatty pushed for a re-release and when it came back and made money Bonnie and Clyde elevated Beatty’s rep, turned his career completely around and gradually became celebrated as a landmark film of the ’60s.