Streisand

by Anne Edwards

  ‘A wave of panic swept over the set. Ray Stark spoke of breaking my contract. Fortunately William Wyler, who was also Jewish, reacted strenuously. “We’re in America, the land of freedom,” he said. “Not hiring an actor because he’s Egyptian is outrageous. If Omar doesn’t make the film I don’t make it either!”’

  Streisand reserved judgment. The dreamy-eyed Sharif possessed a suavely charming manner and his dark good looks allowed him to pass for Jewish, but as an Egyptian he might feel antagonistic toward Jews and that would impede their working together. A lunch meeting was arranged. Not only was Sharif an anti-nationalist who disapproved of religious fanaticism and bore only contempt for racism, he had potent seductive powers to which she was not immune.

  ‘You don’t become really famous until you’re a movie star,’ she once had said. Well, here she was in Hollywood, starring in her first film. The fantasy was now reality. She felt a shivery thrill each time she drove her large Chrysler Imperial through the front gates of Columbia Studios and heard the guard say, ‘Good morning, Miss Streisand,’ and parked in her private space near her specially decorated dressing-room trailer. She was fascinated with every aspect of the studio and claimed she suddenly felt at home. Then there were times, like when she met Marlon Brando at lunch one day, that she became insecure. ‘How can I be a star when he’s a star?’ she questioned later. She acknowledged their introduction with a mumbled greeting as she found herself almost unable to speak.

  On 7 August, when the film first went before the cameras, Streisand treated Wyler not unkindly but with a certain hauteur. ‘At that point, I think I knew more about Funny Girl than Mr Wyler,’ she later said. ‘I had played it a thousand times and had read all the revisions of all the scripts – for the movies and the play.’ To a reporter during the first week of shooting she explained, ‘He [Wyler] does things one way, I do them another.’

  ‘My principal concern’, Wyler confided, was to present her under the best possible conditions as a new star and a new personality. She was terribly eager, like Bette Davis used to be, to do different and new things. She wanted everything to be the very best. The same as I do.’ Wyler was a man of infinite patience. He celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday on the first day of shooting, but had made his debut as a director at the age of twenty-three, shortly after arriving from his native Alsace. He had directed a plethora of difficult female stars and been married to one – Margaret Sullavan. Streisand’s mishegoss, her compulsive behaviour, lateness on the set, her need to be involved in every aspect of the film, barely fazed him; he had been through it all before. Short and feisty with grey-speckled hair, Wyler had a charismatic smile and a merry glint in his blue eyes. Clouds of smoke curled upward from the cigarettes he chain-smoked as he sat in his director’s chair watching a scene in progress. When he spoke he never wasted words. He had lost the hearing of one ear during World War Two, as the result of high-altitude flying, a disability he had learned to use to his advantage; he turned his hearing aid off when Streisand, or any performer, was being troublesome.

  ‘I don’t just expect obedience. I don’t like an actor or actress who says, “OK, boss, what do you want me to do?”’ he said of himself. ‘I say to them, “What do you want to do? You’ve read the script and you know what’s in it so you show me.” The actor has to put himself in another person’s skin and think like somebody he isn’t. I can help and guide but he has to do it finally. Barbra responded to direction very well.’

  Streisand took another view. ‘I feel we had a great sort of chemical relationship. Willy can’t, um, dissect a scene for you. I mean, he would go, “Oomph, a little more oomph,” and I’d say, “OK, I know what you mean.” And I would give it a little more oomph. He let me see the rushes with him and I’m supposedly the first actress who’s seen them. He knows I’m not destructive. I’m very objective about my work.’

  She spoke the truth. Able to view herself with cold objectivity, she would often ask to reshoot a scene the next day if she did not like her performance or the technical work in a scene. But she saw things in relation to herself. At such times, Wyler stood firm. They had battles, more in the first few weeks of shooting than as the production was well underway. He insisted that a Henry Street waif (Fanny) in 1910 would not have two-inch Mandarin fingernails. ‘Why? Why not?’ she kept screaming. ‘The Chinese have worn them for centuries!’ Wyler gave in, which was a mistake as her feline claws present a jarring image on screen with the period costumes.

  Wyler admired Streisand, thought she was a true artist and encouraged her passion to learn all she could about making films as fast as she could. He also knew exactly when to display his sharp edge, but he gave her suggestions serious consideration and often reshot a scene if she showed good cause to do so. A studio worker on the set was heard saying to another, ‘Willy shouldn’t be so hard on her. After all, this is the first picture she’s ever directed.’

  One time, after Wyler had her repeat a scene in rehearsal for the ninth or tenth time she came over to him, her voice ear-piercing, her hands ‘going everywhere, like an Italian woman explaining a traffic accident to a cop’. Wyler held up an open palm. ‘Just tone it down,’ he ordered sternly. ‘They looked at one another,’ an observer on the set noted. ‘Everyone waited for her to explode and say the hell with you! Streisand nodded and walked back out on to the cold cement rehearsal floor.’ This time she gave Wyler what he wanted and he flashed a broad smile of approval.

  Funny Girl took four months to shoot. Streisand loved making the picture, being the star. She never wanted to leave the studio. She brought Wyler ‘eleven versions of each scene. Things that we had tried out in Philadelphia and Boston or that had been left out of the show.’

  This was the living enactment of her dream. ‘See, Ma, you were wrong. The homely kid from Brooklyn made it to Hollywood and is a movie star.’ Of course, she loved to see those nightly rushes. There she was in the darkness, watching herself up on the big screen, her image filling it, looking like she always dreamed she would look – different but beautiful.

  Elliott joined her in Hollywood a few weeks into the shooting schedule. Streisand was having terrible clashes with Ray Stark, who wanted her to commit her next film to his company and go straight from Funny Girl into a second film for him, although she had the contractual option of making an outside film first. She did not like the project. Elliott took on the position of mediator. Wyler was privy to some of these rather ugly confrontations and saw how Elliott had dealt with her after she emerged from them, fuming, near hysteria. It reminded him of his marriage to Margaret Sullavan, ‘But Elliott handled these things a lot better than I did. He came in and sort of straightened things out. He was very good at that.’ Still it was obvious that things were not harmonious in the Gould household.

  Elliott was trying to develop projects for Streisand’s television production company other than those that would star his wife. ‘I had good ideas that would have worked if they could have been executed,’ he remembered. ‘But the television companies were impossible to deal with. I failed completely. I had no track record. I used to deal with all the no men at the networks – a bunch of fucking pigs. I hated them and I hated myself and I hated going someplace with an idea two notches above things that had been done again and again and being strung along and then rejected ... I never sold any[thing]. Meanwhile my wife was starring in Funny Girl and was the biggest thing in the business and I had all this spare time on my hands ... I had more self-respect when I was a teenager, operating the night elevator in the Park Royal Hotel on 73rd Street [in New York].’

  His life took an upward turn when, just two weeks after he had arrived in California he was cast in The Night They Raided Minsky’s which would feature Jason Robards, Norman Wisdom, Bert Lahr, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott and Britt Ekland. His role was not large, but it was showy. However, the movie was to go immediately into production in New York. Alone in California with Jason, Streisand felt deserted and turned – as she had once be
fore – to her leading man. Sharif was married to an Egyptian actress who had not accompanied him to the United States. He had a reputation for having affairs with his co-stars. He said he worshipped ‘a certain type of woman. The kind who can use both her intelligence and her femininity.’ Streisand seemed ideal casting. ‘As for carnal love,’ he added, ‘they’ve never found a substitute for it.’ And she was ready for an amorous adventure.

  ‘Barbra struck me as being ugly at first,’ Sharif ungallantly recalled. ‘Gradually she cast her spell over me. I fell madly in love with her talent and her personality. The feeling was mutual for four months – the time it took to shoot the picture. We spent our evenings, our weekends at her place. We led the very simple life of people in love. We used to cook. When I’d used up all my Italian recipes [learned from Sophia Loren] – Barbra would heat TV dinners. We would enjoy simple food, relax in armchairs, watch television and make love.’

  Eventually they ventured out to the home of friends like Gregory Peck and his French wife, Veronique. ‘Like everyone else [in the beginning], Greg knew nothing about the affair Barbra and I were having, and he had invited me over,’ Sharif remembered. ‘So I asked him if I could bring somebody with me. I knew he wouldn’t let the news out.’ Sharif was a man who played at life as he would at cards or dice, without counting the cost. He lived in an eternal present. ‘They say I’m pathologically unfaithful. No. I’m never unfaithful,’ he argued. ‘I simply fall in love a lot, often and fast.’

  ‘Did I love my wife?’ Sharif questioned and then answered. ‘Yes, in the Middle Eastern way. My marriage wasn’t a marriage of love, in the sense of passionate love. It was a marriage of compatibility, affection, friendship.’ Faten Hamama was ten years older than he, one of Egypt’s most famous and beloved stars, the Shirley Temple of the Near East in her youth who had grown into a beautiful leading lady. Eclipsed by his wife’s fame in their native country, Sharif sought work abroad, finally succeeding with his role as Ali, the Arabian friend of Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. He had gone on to play the title role in Dr Zhivago.

  When Elliott was in New York, Streisand and Sharif were together most evenings. ‘He made himself quite comfortably at home,’ one of Streisand’s personal staff said. Members of the Funny Girl company were aware that Streisand and Sharif were lovers, although Elliott later claimed he did not know what was going on. He spoke to Streisand every night. She regaled him with her problems at the studio, on the set, with Ray Stark. Despite these complaints she claimed she loved Hollywood, the weather, the space, the studio; Elliott hated it, the artificiality, false values and ‘what really got me down was the loss of my second name. As Barbra’s husband, I was either Mr Streisand or Elliott who?’

  Not taken in by Hollywood’s glamour, Elliott understood, where Streisand did not, the Eldorado lifestyle in which careers and fortunes could shoot up or plummet down on no more than rumours, the hint of scandal, the news that a film was about to bomb. Hollywood was a closed and inbred society which existed and thrived entirely on its own myths. A killer instinct prevailed, like the tennis pro who specialised in smashing his opponent’s serve. No one believed in playing the game. Winning was all that mattered. Frankly, Hollywood scared the hell out of Elliott and he tried, to no avail, to convince his wife not to make it their permanent home.

  Although he flew back and forth to the Coast, Elliott spent most of the time in New York, giving Streisand the opportunity to pursue her affair with Sharif, who became progressively more possessive. On the set, his hands rested comfortably on her waist, her shoulder. ‘I make women happy with the tenderness, love and thrills I give them,’ he proclaimed. ‘I get any woman I want because I give all of myself. And who can refuse so much human warmth? Giving, consoling, protecting, guiding – these are a man’s privileges. Take them away and you take away his male prerogatives. The woman, on her part, must give the impression that she needs the man, even if she’s perfectly capable of running her own life. A woman mustn’t contradict me openly. I can contradict a woman because I’m a man and because arrogance is in the nature of men.’

  Streisand appeared to find Sharif’s macho attitude amusing. She smiled a lot at him, complimented him on a scene or how it looked. Meanwhile his role was shrinking on a daily basis. On the set, she would take him aside and they would talk in hushed voices and she would giggle like a naïve adolescent when he whispered something into her ear.

  Sharif portrayed Nicky Arnstein as part saint and part Dr Zhivago, a seductive gaze in his huge dark eyes as he played to Fanny/Streisand, the camera and any woman who had business to be on the set. Nicky Arnstein was buried beneath a starched shirt front and a bow tie. What was left was a one-dimensional character. After the first rushes there was talk of replacing him. Streisand would not hear of it. She liked the way she played off him, could feel the sparks, the sexual vibes as Fanny fell in love with him on screen. Wyler agreed that this was true – no dialogue was needed to understand why Fanny was so in love with Arnstein. It was pure carnal desire. More of Sharif’s scenes were cut. ‘If it was Barbra’s plan to keep Funny Girl a one star picture, she was being devilishly clever,’ a member of the cast said. ‘She got what she wanted and Omar as well.’

  Sharif was fascinated by American women. ‘The self-confidence, superiority and independence of American women! These very beautiful women whom I wanted to seduce and perhaps dominate. These women so different from the ones I’d known. These women who dared to breathe without the artificial lung of the male!’ He called himself a Europeanised Middle Eastern man. ‘For me,’ he confessed, ‘the bed is the holy table. One love drives away another and the woman who’s inspiring that love at the time fills my entire world.’ Stories circulated among Sharif’s many former mistresses of how he could hold an erection for hours using the mind-control ancient Arabic art of imsák, also practised by the well-known playboy, Aly Khan.

  Caught up in her passion for her lover, the contradiction in Streisand’s character was startling. A woman with a fierce streak of independence, she was besotted with a man who demeaned her sex by reducing them to love objects. Yet, at no time during the making of Funny Girl did Sharif gain the upper hand. His lust for her gave Streisand a heightened sense of her desirability. It also increased her ability to manipulate and control scenes in which they played together. He was, in fact, the one being used.

  Her affair with Sharif stimulated her appetite for European culture. She became a dedicated collector of information, details, facts. ‘TolsteiGorgolTurgenevetheGreeksChekhovMolièreRacine,’ she rattled off at breakneck speed to an interviewer, ‘I’m reading them all. My attention span is very short, I get involved with one book and then I move to another, then I go back to the first. Ya know what I mean?’ She shifted from one area of film-making to another with this same configuration, able to retain bits and pieces first, and then a working understanding of each field with amazing grasp. She was a college student body of one, hand-selecting the top studio expert in lighting, sound, cinematography and editing as her professors.

  The more knowledgeable she became, the more she tested her power. Wyler was amused by her at first, then he realised she was a genuine force to be dealt with. She had come to Hollywood where people did things like robots, she told Elliott in one of their daily coast-to-coast telephone conversations, but then added with pride, ‘I have the courage to talk back.’

  ‘Every day, Barbra would see the rushes,’ Anne Francis, who had been cast as Georgia, recalled, ‘and the next day my part was cut or something else was cut. Barbra ran the whole show – Ray Stark, Willie Wyler, Herb Ross. She had the Ziegfeld Girls scenes changed – one day she told Wyler to move a girl standing next to her because she was too pretty, and the girl wound up in the background. Eventually, the Ziegfeld girls’ scenes were eliminated altogether.

  ‘She told Harry Stradling how to (photograph] her and Wyler how to direct ... It was all like an experience out of Gaslight. There was an unreality about it. Only the c
rew was terrific. They were so kind and friendly ... I had only one unpleasant meeting with Barbra the entire five months of rehearsals and production. But the way I was treated, it was a nightmare. And my scenes were whittled from three very good ones and a lot of other ones, to two minutes of voice-over in a New Jersey railroad station.’

  Although Streisand and Elliott still shared their New York apartment, they appeared troubled and he did not accompany her on location in New Jersey when the company moved to an East River pier near the Manhattan Bridge to photograph the ferryboat scene for ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’.

  For that sequence Streisand had to run down the length of the pier several times in her high-heeled shoes holding two suitcases and a bunch of roses. ‘Boy, am I going to sue you,’ she ribbed Ray Stark who was watching the progress of the scene. ‘My back hurts. My feet hurt. This is the hardest work I’ve ever done. I’ll probably get sick on the tugboat and I got thorns in my fingers from all these damned roses!’

  She returned to Hollywood without Elliott and was reunited with Jason, who had remained there in the care of a nurse and a nanny. It seemed not to disturb her that she was disliked by the majority of the cast. A member of the chorus was heard to say after one difficult day when she was particularly hard to please, ‘Who does she think she is, Joan Crawford?’ Newspaper columnists railed her about being a ‘girl monster’. It was not easy for her to take. But Streisand was fearful that this was her one and only chance. If she did not make it as a big movie star with Funny Girl, if it bombed and she went down with it, it would be almost impossible to regain the kind of momentum she now had. The smallest detail mattered: a wisp of her hair creating a shadow, an item on a table distracting the eye. She had to be lit perfectly and having learned which spots flattered her, she kept after the cinematographer, Harry Stradling, to make sure they were used in all her scenes. No person or object could upstage her in a scene. Her costumes had to be spotless, seamless. She insisted on still another take even when Wyler or Ross were satisfied. She worked with the sound men and mastered the technique of dubbing. She brought her own make-up kit on to the stage and touched up her face when the make-up men were done.