by Anne Edwards
She gave new meaning to the words – ‘chronic worrier’. When asked by a business manager if she would like to hear the good or bad news first, she said, ‘Tell me the bad news first. Then when I hear the good news I’ll know what else I should worry about.’ She had a team of well-paid business advisers. Marty Erlichman diligently worked on behalf of her career. All sights pointed to success, but everything still came back to her ability to become more than just a one-movie, one-role star. She was well aware of the vagaries of the picture business and the men who ran it, whose motto was ‘You’re as only as good as the box office returns from your last movie.’ Funny Girl looked as if it would be a hit. She was not that sure about Hello, Dolly!
Ray Stark led as Streisand and Elliott made their way with him into the auditorium. Above their heads was the cathedral-like dome ceiling from which hung an enormous chandelier of Egyptian design, all wrought in shades of gold with golden iridescent rays emanating from an ingenious system of concealed lights, giving the effect of a colossal sunburst. She shielded her eyes as she glanced up at it and then laughing, whispered something to Elliott, who smiled broadly. Possibly she was making a comparison to the chandeliers in their New York apartment. They remained talking with the Starks until almost everyone else had taken their seats, and then were ushered down the aisle to a roped-in section towards the front of the theatre. Once she was seated, the lights dimmed and then went out. There was silence. The film began. Barbra Streisand was alone in the dark with a giant image of herself as once she had shared a similar darkness with her movie idols from the balcony of a Brooklyn theatre.
The experience of seeing oneself on a screen in a darkened movie palace with 1,500 pairs of eyes watching with you is surreal. Many film actors find the event so painful they refuse to subject themselves to it. Streisand’s reaction was contrary. Guests seated in the row behind her say she leaned forward, watching intently, whispering comments to Elliott, on the aisle to her left and Stark, on her right. And she had not removed her hat. The person seated directly behind her, too embarrassed to ask her to do so, angled himself to one side.
When the lights came on again there was enthusiastic applause as there always was at the end of a Hollywood première – good or bad. People rushed down the aisle shouting their congratulations. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Otherwise her face was almost sphinx-like, her pleasure entombed behind steely glances as she slowly made her way towards an exit and, bodyguards and Elliott once again forming a phalanx, went out of a side door across to the tented parking lot. Inside the circus-sized tent, the lower East Side New York in the early 1920s, where Fanny Brice had lived, had been recreated. The bar from the Brice family saloon, used in the movie, had been set up on one side. Each corner of the enormous tent had a New York street sign – Henry Street, Washington Square, Second Avenue, Delancey Street – serving as guideposts so people could locate their tables. These were centred with potted ferns, each supporting a dozen bagels on a stick, a jarring sight, misguidedly meant to create a New York deli atmosphere.
As Streisand entered the band played a chorus of ‘Funny Girl’, the obligatory new song (with the same title, but not the same melody as one cut from the stage production) that was added to the score of the film. Omar Sharif had flown back from location for the première and posed with Streisand for the press, Elliott glowering in the background. Sharif, holding hands with his newest lady friend, actress Anjanette Comer, had also attended with the Goulds the New York première at the Criterion Theater two weeks earlier and the post-movie fund-raiser held in a similar tent constructed on the parking-lot site where the old Astor Hotel had recently stood. That sumptuous affair had been utter chaos as about 1,300 people, including scores of famous people from both social and entertainment circles, had been invited, over 100 more than could be seated. Irate guests, having paid $100 for the privilege of being there, shouted insults at the staff, demanded other people who were not on the grand list be removed and their seats given to them. Men came close to throwing punches. The Starks gave up their seats and wandered from table to crowded table. Some people shared chairs, others remained standing. Streisand, elegantly garbed in a flesh-coloured gown set with sprays of rhinestones, her hair hidden beneath a striking wig that added several inches to her height and escorted by a wary Elliott, was seated with him at the table marked 1 along with Marty Erlichman and Diana, but she appeared ill at ease.
There was no such mayhem at the Hollywood post-movie festivities. As the New York critics had already endorsed her performance as a knockout, there was little suspense. For Streisand, the one thing she enjoyed more than being at a party with the movie legends she had so long ago adored, was being the toast of it.
‘I always wanted to meet Marlon Brando,’ she recalled. ‘I wanted to say to him, “Let us speak to one another, because I understand you. You are just like me. So ... somebody comes up behind me and starts caressing my shoulder and nuzzling my neck. And I turn around and there he is! It’s Brando! And he says – you know kidding – “I’m letting you off easy,” and I laughed and said, “Whaddaya mean easy? This is the best part!” I don’t know – what the hell was there to say? It was kind of sad, because he wasn’t just like me at all. He was a real movie star, a legend and somehow I didn’t want him to be real.’
When the evening was over, there was no doubt that her performance had scored bi-coastally, but she still did not feel like she belonged in that Valhalla of movie idols.
‘Bravo!’ Pauline Kael, The New Yorker critic wrote. ‘Streisand has the gift of making old written dialogue sound like inspired improvisation; almost every line she says seems to have just sprung to mind and out. Her inflections are witty and surprising, and, more surprisingly, delicate; she can probably do more for a line than any screen comedienne since Jean Arthur, in the thirties ... It is Streisand’s peculiar triumph that in the second half, when the routine heartbreak comes, as it apparently must in all musical biographies, she shows an aptitude for suffering that those clever actresses didn’t. Where they became sanctimonious and noble, thereby violating everything we had loved them for, she simply drips as unself-consciously and impersonally as a true tragic muse.’
Streisand had evolved into a thoroughly original self-invention, resembling no one else. She was a heroine with ‘a particular desperation all her own’. Much as she decried her Brooklyn roots, she had made them her special territory. To the public she had become ‘a regular person with a genuine past from a real place. She had this Jewish problem, and this homely problem ... she was pure oddball’, Joe Morgenstern reported in Newsweek.
The energy she displayed in her performance was limitless. Yes, some co-workers, like the disgruntled Anne Francis, faulted her for being ruthless, but she had also been courageous and taken artistic gambles without hedging her bets. Although the score of Funny Girl had been pre-recorded,1 she decided to take the risk of having ‘My Man’ recorded live which gave the number tremendous presence. After dreadful arguments with Irene Sharaff over a striking wine velvet dress she had designed for the scene, Streisand wore a black gown and stood against a black background so that only her face and two hands were visible as she sang in a soft, poignant voice. At the end of the first chorus she stepped into an arc of light as her voice gained strength and soared defiantly. She had lost Nicky Arnstein but she had sung herself back into being. To hear her sing this song is to believe that she is the character she is playing and it is that amazing ability that makes Funny Girl, with its feeble story, implausibly credible.
‘The audience’, she ventured, ‘cannot be lied to. I mean ... the slightest tinge of falseness, they go back from you, they retreat. The truth brings them closer. They don’t know why, they can’t intellectualise it, but they know the moment is right or wrong ... I guess my best attribute is my instinct. Elliott’s grandmother, who is about eighty-five, said she liked me because I was so natural – so natchel.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Acting is like music,’ s
he continued. ‘I believe in rhythm, you know? Everything is so dominated by our heartbeats, by our pulses, when one goes against certain rhythms it’s jarring ... I mean I hear it! I read a script and just hear and I see what the people are doing, and I’ll have an idea right off the bat, and it’s always my first instinct that I trust.’
Perhaps that was true, but Funny Girl had occupied four years of her life. She had been able to fashion the character into a clone of herself, very much the same young woman millions of viewers had come to know through her television specials and guest appearances. And she had already familiarised her audience with the album of the show and numerous other recordings where she had included ‘My Man’ along with some of Funny Girl’s score. Few in the audience came into the movie theatre cold, having to be won over by an actress playing an unknown role. She had the advantage that seasoned and well-loved film stars held over audiences – that of simply being who they were, the character and the performer fusing into one person in their mind. Cary Grant was one such example, but it had taken him years to ingrain his personality so deeply upon movie audiences. The same could be said about Cagney, Bogart, Lemmon and Matthau among a score of others. Streisand’s experience was unique in that Funny Girl was her first picture.
The studio’s estimates were that Funny Girl would gross $65 million in the United States alone.2 If it did it would make Ray Stark a huge fortune as he received 10 per cent of the gross plus 50 per cent of the net, an almost unprecedented profit margin. ‘Barbra also stands to make a million dollars from her salary and subsidiary rights [the record and future television and video rights] and she’s worth one-half of every cent of it!’ he quipped to Variety, adding: ‘I’m only kidding.’ Streisand did not find Stark’s comment amusing. She believed, rightly, that she was as responsible for the success of the film version of Funny Girl as she was for the stage production. And although $1 million was not to be minimised, it no where compared with the $20 million or more that Ray Stark eventually stood to make.
Yet had it not been for Stark and Funny Girl, Streisand’s climb to fame might well have taken considerably longer. When Stark first signed her for the stage version, he gambled on a young woman who had not yet proved that she could carry a show. A prototype of the new style of movie producer: a man who puts together star, story and director as a package to make a picture, a friend remembers him as ‘a little guy who would run up and down Sunset Boulevard, waving a contract and shouting: “I got a deal! I got a deal!”’ Before he returned to California for the West Coast première of Funny Girl, he told Vincent Canby of the New York Times: ‘I’m making this deal [for another movie] and we have this far-out script ... I mean, I read it and frankly I didn’t understand it, but it could be fantastic!’ He did not reveal the name of the property, but his next picture would be The Owl and the Pussycat.
Streisand could be angry at Stark on one level, but the sheer chutzpah of the man appealed to her. He was, she claimed, ‘the great Oz of Hollywood’, and she forgave him many things because this quality of his so fascinated her. Having settled his lawsuit against her enabling her to make movies independently of his company, they had reached a detente, and she would soon start production without him on her third film (this time for Paramount Pictures), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
A good portion of the picture was to be shot in England. This meant being separated for eight weeks from Jason, but she could not see taking him with her as they would have so little time together. She had recently bought and moved into a house on Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills near the Gregory Pecks. Jason had settled in and was attached to his nanny. It seemed wrong to uproot him. She called Elliott and he promised to fly out to California and spend as much time as possible with his son.
The bi-coastal lifestyle they had carved out for themselves had failed. Neither of them seemed able to handle the tremendous pressures on their marriage. They were living separate lives, gathering private memories. Elliott was treading water as he waited for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice to be released. He was finely tuned, frazzled, expectant, fearful, doubtful, on edge, living in an extravagant style paid for by his wife and gambling again with heavy losses (over $50,000 that year, he was later to admit). He saw other women and felt instantly guilty. Streisand managed to blind herself to her marital problems, to lose herself in her work, in the swift ascent of her career, her business enterprises, and in Jason. Yet, she remained strongly bound to Elliott. In some way he represented her past and she was not ready or able to let him go.
Paramount had paid $750,000 for the rights of On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, and were now contracted to pay Streisand $1 million, astronomical figures for Hollywood in the 1960s. Despite her current popularity, the studio was fearful that they had acted hastily. With period costumes and foreign locations involved, the budget had soared to an unrealistic $20 million and the story, about a naïve Brooklyn girl, Daisy Gamble, who under hypnosis relives an earlier existence as an English seductress, Melinda Tentrees, was anything but mainstream. The Broadway show had been placed in the eighteenth century. The film was pushed forward to the early nineteenth century in Regency England to avoid the use of powdered wigs and more cumbersome costumes. Alan Jay Lerner, the author and lyricist of the show, was currently taken with the idea of reincarnation. Lerner, who had recently ended his long association with composer Frederick Loewe,3 worked this time with Burton Lane, composer of the very successful Finian’s Rainbow.
‘When Alan came to me with On a Clear Day I thought the premise simply wonderful,’ Lane said. ‘The story in the past was too heavy-handed and not joyful, but it did have such wit and imagination that I finally got excited about it. How that score ever turned out as good as it did is a mystery to me. [It was] the worst two years of my life. Alan was on drugs and I don’t know how to deal with people who are on liquor or anything else.’
The show lasted only 280 performances on Broadway, starring Barbara Harris in the dual role of Daisy and Melinda, but Streisand greatly admired the score and viewed the double role as a rare opportunity to display her acting ability. In October 1968, just days after the East and West Coast premieres of Funny Girl, Streisand began rehearsals, working closely with Lerner on her role.
Lerner was a tortured man, Stef Sheahan, his secretary, told his biographer, Stephen Citron. ‘If he was really working hard on a lyric, he could lose about six pounds in a day. You could feel him burning it off in the room. He’d just be there with his white gloves on, which he always wore to keep himself from biting his nails.’ Highly strung, heavily addicted to drugs that kept him in a state of agitation, his marriage to his fifth wife shaky, he was in a perpetual state of nerves. None the less, Streisand was able to get the most from their collaboration. Her voice stirred Lerner, her phrasing of his lyrics gave him new ideas. He held her in a kind of awe, believed she was the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century. He tailored the filmscript to her special talents, her dialogue as Daisy containing more of the sound of her own manner of speaking although he was careful to omit any Jewish overtones. He left Melinda as originally created, trusting his instinct that Streisand could, if well directed, project – as Garson Kanin had also believed – the necessary elegance the role demanded.
Vincente Minnelli, former husband of Judy Garland, father of Liza, who had directed the film versions of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon and Gigi, was to direct. Arnold Scaasi was hired to do the modern costumes; Cecil Beaton, the period costumes. Scaasi flew out to Los Angeles from New York to consult with Streisand. ‘We spent a whole day going over the styles she was to wear as Daisy,’ Scaasi remembered. ‘By eight o’clock I was ready to quit. I had been invited to the Minnellis’ for dinner, so I stood up and said, “Barbra, I must leave, I have a previous engagement.” She lifted her eyes from the sketches and very quietly said, “Arnold, why did you come out to Los Angeles?” I immediately realised what she meant and agreed that she was right. I was there on business, not on a social call. I phoned Vince
nte Minnelli and excused myself from dinner.’ And he added thoughtfully, ‘She has this uncanny eye for detail. Once when I sent her an embossed invitation to the opening of my collection, she wrote me a note explaining that she would be out of town on that date and she added a postscript to call my attention to a misprint in the invitation.’
Ten days before production was to start, Streisand stopped off in New York on her way across the Atlantic for the London and Paris premières of Funny Girl. To her shock, she learned that Elliott was living with Jenny Bogart, the waif-like eighteen-year-old daughter of director Paul Bogart. Despite her own transgressions with Chaplin and Sharif, knowledge of his affair deeply cut Streisand. She asked Elliott to break off the relationship, to come with her to Europe. Elliott could not see his way to do that. Jenny needed him, he told her, she was so young, so helpless; he thought he had something to give her, a feeling that someone cared. Angry, sad, in pain, Streisand insisted they draw up a separation agreement and threatened to file for divorce. She left New York for Funny Girl’s London première deeply distressed. Omar Sharif stood by his leading lady’s side, the ashes long cooled on their relationship, and Marty Erlichman was her escort at a gala post-première dinner party, also attended by Princess Margaret.
As she prepared to fly to Paris before returning to California to start shooting the studio scenes for On A Clear Day, she learned she was one of the five nominees for Best Actress at the upcoming Academy Awards. She had also signed a $5 million contract with the new Las Vegas International Hotel, the highest sum ever paid for a night-club engagement, and she had just met a fascinating man to whom she was instantly drawn and who appeared to be similarly attracted to her. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, a brilliant, utterly charming, 48-year-old bachelor who had won his election the previous year largely on the youth vote. They met at a small dinner party at the home of a mutual acquaintance the night before her departure. ‘Sparks flew,’ a guest recalled.