by Anne Edwards
Their son’s birth seemed to have brought his young parents closer together. Although she claimed she was not the maternal type, Streisand was caught up in the excitement and the thrill of having brought a child into the world. There were a nurse and a nanny. The small nursery was decorated in purple and lavender. Three months after Jason’s arrival she was to leave for rehearsals and costume fittings in Hollywood. Jason would go with her. Elliott had been cast in Jules Feiffer’s Little Murders which was to have a limited New York run, and would join them on the coast when the play, a brilliant but non-commercial vehicle, ended. This had been her dream, to be a Hollywood star. Yet where would Elliott be once she had established herself as she knew she would do?
Their marriage was almost a retelling of the Fanny Brice story. Like Nicky Arnstein Elliott was a gambler. Intense therapy had not cured him of his habit, and he was unable to earn anywhere near what she did. The library walls of the penthouse were crowded with her gold records – seven of them – that had made over $1,000,000 each. She had earned several hundred thousand dollars on the tour, and she would receive $200,000 for her role in Funny Girl, which was scheduled to go before the cameras in May.
‘I remember two things about this time,’ Arthur Laurents recalled. ‘She was giving a party in the penthouse apartment and she called and said, “The party’s just for friends. Why don’t you bring Lena?” Which I thought was odd because she didn’t know Lena Home very well and I said, “Well, she really doesn’t like to go to parties.” I went up there without Lena thinking it was just going to be friends and there was Ava Gardner and George C. Scott, who at that time [in their affair] were busy beating each other up and Ava was all black and blue and he was bruised. I remember we all fell on the floor playing “Spoons” – it’s a game like musical chairs except you do it with spoons. Everyone grabs for a spoon when the music stops. And she had a set of new silverware and she screamed, “Oy! You’re bending my silver!”
‘Another time, not long before she filmed Funny Girl, I went up there and the living room was swarming with men in blue suits – her business manager, her accountant, her attorney, her agent – and I knew it was over’; the young woman he had known had become a superstar and more a product than a person. ‘I said, “Barbra, I’ll see you,” and I left.’
In February 1967, before departing for California and pre-production duties, she recorded an album of standards, Simply Streisand, singing straight, no characteristic vocal embellishments. An interesting recording that would eventually form part of the Streisand legacy with songs such as ‘When Sunny Gets Blue’, ‘Lover Man’, ‘More than You Know’, it also contained a new suggestive interpretation of the Rudolf Friml/Oscar Hammerstein II song, ‘Stout Hearted Men’, from the operetta Rose Marie. Streisand sang the number openly imitating Mae West’s insinuating, breathy phrasing as she camped her way through it. When released as a single, it became a huge hit in gay bars across the country.
Mae West, the bosomy blonde icon of camp, had influenced Streisand since her youth in Brooklyn and would continue to do so for years to come. This star of a bygone age of Hollywood glamour evoked empathy and admiration in her. Mae West was an original, and although Streisand parodied her well, it was a great mistake to do so as it took away from her own distinct individuality.
In early March she returned to New York just to film her third CBS special, eventually titled The Belle of 14th Street. The show was a misguided journey back to the turn of the century. This time Streisand had two guests: the actor Jason Robards and old-time black vaudevillian John Bubbles appearing in a distasteful, blatantly racist song and dance dressed as a chicken. The spedal misfired, but the concert section, which constituted the last third of the show – especially a definitive rendition of ‘My Buddy’ – was classic Streisand, at her very best. Physically she was in amazingly good shape considering Jason’s recent arrival. She danced, ‘flew’ à la Peter Pan across the stage in one number and in another did a partial striptease wearing a breakaway costume. She also brought out her Mae West parody again with a provocative rendition of ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’.
The Belle of 14th Street proved that Streisand had been right in her original determination to appear solo on her earlier television spedals. At last she had yielded to CBS’s request for a variety theme. Never an ensemble player, she was unable to enter into the team spirit evident with other vocalists on television, stalwarts such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Nat King Cole or Andy Williams. She was not good at making small talk or cracking jokes that tried to sound unrehearsed. Every word she spoke had to be scripted. And she drew the line when it came to having another singer as a guest, for she recalled all too well how she had been able to appropriate the limelight for herself during her early guest appearances on television with Garland and Shore.
Ray Stark meanwhile met Gene Kelly in Hollywood about directing Funny Girl, but Kelly’s schedule would have delayed the production. Gower Champion, a superb dancer and choreographer, was considered. Although he had directed such Broadway hits as Bye Bye, Birdie, Carnival, I Do! I Do! and Hello, Dolly!, Champion’s only directional film effort had been My Six Loves, a syrupy theatrical story starring Debbie Reynolds. Streisand insisted that she needed someone more experienced in film who could help her with her acting performance and film technique. Stark turned to Sidney Lumet, the son of a veteran Yiddish theatre actor who was known as a sensitive director with a serious approach to story. Lumet had directed The Group and Sidney Buchman enthusiastically sang his praises to Stark.
The story of Funny Girl was not any easier to adapt to the screen than it had been to the stage. Fran Stark’s restrictions still prevailed, Nicky Arnstein would remain one-dimensional. Sidney and I tried to give him more depth of character within these limitations, to make the scenes between Fanny and Nick more confrontational. Funny Girl was to be a familiar backstage drama that had been told and retold many times before. It would succeed or fail on Streisand’s performance.
Buchman and I had reinstated the role of Georgia, the showgirl and mistress to the great Ziegfeld. The character, who becomes an alcoholic in the course of the film, provided an opportunity for Fanny to show her compassion while at the same time giving her someone understanding to play off and advance the story line. Sidney predicted, ‘Georgia’s scenes will end up on the cutting room floor. Streisand will shoot down any female competition as quickly as she can.’ He was right. She would have dead-eye aim with the male members of the cast as well.
The first draft screenplay was completed in August 1966. Sidney flew to New York for script discussions with Ray Stark. Letters (in Sidney’s minuscule handwriting), telegrams and telephone calls went back and forth between us. Everything was all right, Sidney assured me. Not to worry. Then he called, a little less confident, and asked me to fly over. Nicky Arnstein’s role was to be drastically pared. A scene that we were particularly attached to was the first to go. In it Fanny visits Nicky in jail, finds him dressed not in prison clothes but as stylishly as ever and playing a high-stakes game of poker with other inmates. Although reminiscent of a Rhett Butler episode in Gone with the Wind, the story was based on one Brice had recorded in her autobiographical tapes. Our first draft of the screenplay had started with this scene, played entirely from Fanny’s point of view. Realising that Nicky is never to change, Fanny leaves the prison in her chauffeured car, and studying her image in the rear view mirror utters those famous word, ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ and then the story flashes back to her youth.
We also reinstated the roller-skating number and, using the original ‘Baltimore’ number as a basis, a new scene had been created in the Baltimore railroad station, introducing the great black performer Bert Williams as a character (he was in the Follies with Fanny). Williams, though a Ziegfeld star, is not allowed to sit in the same car as Fanny and Georgia and the other players with whom he is on tour, which was the unvarnished and ugly truth. Nicky shows up, tells Fanny he is going to Europe t
o recoup his gambling losses and wants her to go with him. She says no. As she stands in the vast, Victorian-style station waiting to board her train, she changes her mind, leaves the show, goes to New York, takes a tug boat to reach the ship he has boarded and is helped on to it as it moves out to sea. Most of this sequence survived.
In January 1967, because of a strong personality clash between star and director, Lumet left the project. Within a few weeks, William Wyler was brought on board. Wyler had received three Academy Awards for Direction and Best Picture: Mrs Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and Ben Hur. Four actresses, Bette Davis (Jezebel), Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress), Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday) and Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver), had each won the Academy Award for Best Actress under his direction. Wyler was a Hollywood legend, his work known and admired around the world. A meticulous craftsman, he revolutionised the look of films in the 1940s by using a deep-focus shot perfected by cameraman Greg Toland which allowed him to film long takes in which characters appear in the same frame for the duration of entire scenes. Called ‘90 take Wyler’, he was a hard taskmaster, and one of the most innovative of Hollywood’s directors. He had never before made a musical but it was certain that he would be able to turn Streisand into a major film performer if she co-operated with him.
Wyler made it a condition of his contract that a choreographer be placed in charge of all musical sequences. Herbert Ross, who had worked with Streisand as the choreographer on I Can Get It for You Wholesale, was signed. Production on Funny Girl was now scheduled to start in July, but there would be musical rehearsals preceding this date. Elliott remained in New York ostensibly on business for one of their companies while Streisand, Jason in her arms, Sadie on a lead, arrived in California on 2 May to settle into a house that had once belonged to Greta Garbo.
Footnotes
1 Streisand’s London understudy, Usa Shane, did take over the role of Fanny Brice for one performance when Streisand was suffering severe nausea due to her pregnancy. Enraged when Michael Craig announced the cast change before curtain, a good section of the audience left for a refund. Shane received good notices the next morning, but the incident convinced the producers that the show would not survive long once Streisand left the cast.
2 Funny Girl was still playing at the Winter Garden in New York with Mimi Hines in the role of Fanny Brice. It closed on 1 July 1967, after a total of 1,348 performances. Hines then went on the road with the show, which travelled across the United States for the next six months. Two summer stock presentations, one starring Edie Adams, the other Carol Lawrence, were presented in 1968. In 1982 the show was optioned for a London revival, which never materialised. 1997 New York revival is scheduled.
16
DUSK WAS SETTLING as the limousine that had met Streisand at the airport cut through Beverly Hills in the direction of Sunset Boulevard. The studio representative sat in the front seat with the driver, the nanny, Jason and Sadie with her in the rear. Most of her baggage was to follow in another car. The day had been one of unusual warmth for early May and sprinklers whirled and cascaded water over the rich green front lawns of houses that they passed. The car turned on to Sunset, drove past the sprawling, gaudy pink stucco Beverly Hills Hotel, its grounds rimmed in palm trees, took an immediate right to the entrance of Benedict Canyon and then into the driveway of 904 North Bedford Drive, one house removed from the corner of Sunset. They paused before the garage gates where a code was pressed to allow them to pass inside.
The house was set in a pretty white-walled garden, with masses of deep burgundy bougainvillaea streaming down one side. Garbo had once cut down most of it with her bare hands, but that was nearly two decades before. None the less, her celebrity had given the property an aura and star maps sold by vendors on the boulevard still listed it as her residence, a curious inclusion as her address had been kept secret during the years she had lived there; even her mail was sent elsewhere.
The inside of the house, built in the Spanish style, was larger than Streisand expected. There would be plenty of room for herself, Jason, Elliott and a nanny, although as it had been rented fully furnished, the decoration was not entirely to her taste – a combination of California casual and Hollywood decorator chic. As soon as Jason was settled she began to rearrange things more to her liking. It was almost impossible to believe. She was here in Hollywood, preparing to star in a movie and living in a house once occupied by Garbo.
Four days later the Starks gave her a welcoming party at their Holmby Hills estate. For the girl from Brooklyn, meeting Hollywood celebrities was a heady experience. The next day she was shocked when the studio demanded she make a screen test. New trepidation had arisen as to how she was going to photograph. She was furious, first refused, then, fearful she might lose the role after all, agreed.
‘We were all very unsure that Barbra would succeed with a film audience ... because, at the time the movie was made, her very special qualities were still relatively unfamiliar and certainly nobody in the history of film had ever had that particular combination of – what Barbra did,’ Herb Ross recalled. ’So, we did a very, very careful screen test of her. And once we saw her on the screen – and I was the one who did that test – we knew that she was able to project on film as well as she projected on stage. In fact, the medium was even more flattering to her than the stage.’ The studio’s enthusiasm was greater than Ross indicates.
On 16 June, a Friday, she flew to New York, where she gave a one-woman concert in Central Park the following evening. The event was free to the public and was televised in a condensed hour-long version by CBS in September. The Six Day Arab-Israeli War had ended on 10 June after Israel launched a massive air assault. They now controlled the Sinai peninsula, Jerusalem’s Old City and had gained a hold on the strategic Golan Heights. Not surprisingly Streisand had received several threats and was thus justifiably terrified to appear before 135,000 people in an open area where she could not be fully protected. The possibility of cancelling was discussed, but the Central Park concert had been announced long in advance of the Arab-Israeli hostilities and there was a recording and television contract to be considered. CBS promised Streisand she would receive the best protection they could obtain. CIA and private security personnel were stationed close to the stage and throughout the audience.
She looked especially lovely, a summer breeze causing the voluminous chiffon gowns, designed by Irene Sharaff, that she wore in the two segments to billow gracefully as she glided across the stage and up and down a ramp during the two-and-a-half hour concert. Her fear never subsided although the audience was unaware of her anxiety, which gave an edge to her spectacular performance. When she walked off the stage after her final bow she collapsed in sobs in Elliott’s arms. This frightening experience would affect her decision not to do concerts again for many years.
Once more Elliott remained in New York to handle business matters as Streisand returned to California the following Monday to resume music rehearsals. The movie would have sixteen songs (approximately one hour of music, 40 per cent of the picture). When Fanny was in performance in the Ziegfeld Follies, there would be band and period music. In anything apart from the theatre sequences Walter Scharf, the musical director, was using full, contemporary orchestrations and up to eighty musicians. The pre-recording sessions were to end on 3 August; studio photography was scheduled to start on 7 August, a Monday.1
Wyler was demanding more and more revisions. Streisand had her say, Fran and Ray Stark theirs. Sidney and I were off the assignment. We returned to Europe. Ben Hecht and John Patrick were consulted and, finally, Isobel Lennart was called back into service.2 It was, according to a letter Lennart wrote to Garson Kanin, ‘the worst time of my life’. She now looked back on the months on the road with the show as ‘strangely happy’.
The casting of Nicky Arnstein remained unsettled. The role had never been allowed to develop. Attracting a star for what was essentially a supporting part had proved difficult, almost insurmountable. However, Wyle
r was noted for his ability to turn a secondary role into a noteworthy performance as he had done with Montgomery Cliff in The Heiress. Funny Girl was already well into pre-production and music rehearsals begun before Wyler cast Omar Sharif, who had starred as Doctor Zhivago and a most unlikely choice, in the part.
Sharif was making a Western in Hollywood – Mackenna’s Gold, and he was seated at lunch in the studio commissary every day at the next table to Ray Stark and William Wyler. ‘They were getting ready to do Funny Girl and were looking for a co-star,’ he later related. ‘That wasn’t an easy assignment. The screenplay was built around Barbra. What actor would agree to play her straight man? Fanny Brice sang, cracked jokes, fascinated the audiences; Nick Arnstein had to content himself with looking good in a tuxedo. Apparently it was no cinch to find an actor who could look relaxed in a tuxedo. I just happened to be one of those rare individuals, something that started people in the studio canteen joking: “Why not Omar Sharif?”’
Sharif, an Egyptian, playing the Jewish Arnstein?
‘Well, why not Omar Sharif?’ countered a desperate Wyler. ‘Think about it,’ he said, turning to Sharif. ‘It’s not such a bad idea at that.’
Sharif was available and keen to remain in Hollywood. With its $8,800,000 budget, and the great William Wyler directing, Funny Girl would be a major film. Sharif would receive co-starring credit equal to Streisand’s. ‘A few days after I signed my contract Arabs and Israelis were locked in the Six-Day War,’ he recounted. ‘All the investors in the production were Jewish. The atmosphere at [Columbia] was pro-Israel and my co-star was Jewish. And I was an Egyptian. An Egyptian from Nasser’s regime. There was fear of a pro-Israel backlash against me, and subsequently, Funny Girl.