by Anne Edwards
Originally conceived for two characters, a black woman and a white man, the Broadway production of The Owl and the Pussycat had starred Alan Alda and Diana Sands, with whom Streisand had appeared in Another Evening with Harry Stoones. Streisand’s co-star was George Segal. They worked magically as a team. In a farcical inversion of the movie cliché, Segal played the reticent maiden to Streisand’s incorrigible seducer. As one writer astutely noted, they illustrated ‘Schopenhauer’s theory that the ideal couple is the one in which the man’s feminine components equally match the woman’s masculine traits’.
In the story Segal’s character, Felix, a bookstore clerk with pretensions to becoming a writer, is distressed by the late-night sexual activity of his neighbour, Doris, a hooker who calls herself a model and actress. Felix reports her behaviour to their landlord. Doris is evicted and, with no place to go, brazens her way into Felix’s apartment, refusing to leave. Verbal battles lead to sexual seduction. The dialogue is fast and witty; the romantic ending as Doris abandons prostitution and Felix accepts his future as nothing more than a bookstore clerk, is thoroughly satisfying.
Except for the sudden death of her much-relied-upon cinematographer, Harry Stradling,2 during the making of The Owl and the Pussycat, Streisand’s first film for Ray Stark since Funny Girl, was a happy working experience. She was thrilled to be cast in a straight romantic comedy, to prove that she could succeed without singing a note. And she liked and understood the character she played. This time she and Stark got on well. Her old friend Herbert Ross directed the film. Robert Greenhut, who would go on to produce most of Woody Allen’s movies, was production manager and always helpful. And she had an exceptional rapport with George Segal whose offbeat personality appealed to her. Segal was not only an actor who could move deftly from drama to comedy and from stage to film, he was a dedicated jazz musician, singer and conductor (under his baton, his Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band would perform in 1981 at Carnegie Hall).
The movie, which began shooting on 6 October 1969, was filmed entirely in New York using the city streets, Doubleday Bookstore on Fifth Avenue, Riker’s Restaurant, Club 45 and Central Park for locations, and a small studio on West Fifty-Sixth Street for all other scenes. Fearing Streisand might create problems if she did not have a luxurious dressing room, Stark had the film’s production designer John Robert Lloyd create a suitable one for her. Lloyd completely mirrored the walls, ‘put in thick white carpeting, and all kinds of funny things – beanbag chairs, things that were faddish. And I made her a special dressing-room table with those three-fold dressing-room mirrors with lights around them like the old-fashioned dressing rooms used to have. And I put a star on the door.’ Streisand was pleased with the result and except for one scene, where she was to be filmed topless, she was never difficult.
‘She only calls me “Herbie” when she’s uptight,’ Herbert Ross explained. ‘Otherwise I’m Herbert. For that scene, as soon as I heard “Herbie, I gotta talk to you,” I knew she had big reservations even though I thought we’d worked them all out. She got me into a corner and said, “Herbie, I can’t. I’ve got goose bumps and they’ll show. Herbie, I just can’t. What would my mother think?”’
Arguments went back and forth for nearly an hour. ‘Oh, what the hell. I’ll do it once!’ she finally exclaimed, disrobed and crossed the set bare-breasted to where Segal waited on the bed.
‘Cut! Print! Beautiful!’ Ross shouted.
When she saw the rushes, although her nudity revealed a splendid, sensual body, she insisted the scene be cut, claiming it destroyed the impact of the scene that followed. Reluctantly Ross acquiesced and turned over, at Streisand’s request, the negative frames in which she had been topless.3
This was during her romance with Pierre Trudeau, which more than possibly had influenced her decision. Her association with the Prime Minister deepened her interest in politics and provided her with another stage on which to exercise – not just her ego – but her enormous intelligence. None of her films had allowed her to express her concern for social ills, or dissatisfaction with the status quo. In her first two years in Hollywood her main efforts were to establish herself as a superstar. Having accomplished this, she was now feeling intellectually dissatisfied. She detested the loss of privacy that fame had extracted. She was followed by paparazzi wherever she went. Fans seemed to feel they had the right to intrude on her private time – attending a children’s movie with five-year-old Jason, dining with friends. Becoming more actively involved in politics afforded her the opportunity to use her celebrity to validate her beliefs.
So much had happened to her and the country since she had first gone to Hollywood in 1967 that it hardly seemed possible that only three years had intervened. An American space ship had landed on the moon. Richard M. Nixon, a man she loathed, was President. Unrest spread on college campuses as the Vietnam War dragged disastrously on. There were over 44,000 American casualties, another 300,000 men had been wounded, bombing had been intensified, Cambodia invaded and a unit of the US army in Vietnam had massacred 347 civilians, women and children included, in the tiny village of My Lai.
Vigorously anti-war, while she was in New York making The Owl and the Pussycat, she became involved in the Congressional campaign of Bella Selitsky Abzug, a stocky, middle-aged lawyer, with a forthright style, belting voice, and a taste for large, slouchy hats who was not only staunchly anti-war but a dedicated proponent of women’s rights. Abzug was a true original, employing a New York confrontational style with a talent for outsized theatrics. As a young woman she had been in the Stalinist wing of the Democratic Party. Although her views had mellowed, she was a fighting liberal as, in fact, was the Democratic Congressman from New York City, Leonard Farbstein, whose thirty-year tenure as the representative for the 19th Congressional District she was challenging in the 23 June (1970) Primary.
The Abzug–Farbstein contest grew ugly. Farbstein accused his opponent of being, among other things, a Communist and anti-Israel (neither accusation correct) and Abzug charged him with being against the women’s movement and more hawk than dove (also not exactly the truth). Streisand met Abzug through Cis Corman. The two women hit it off straight away. ‘They shared a kind of mirror image,’ one near observer said. ‘Bella nursed fantasies of being a great performer and Barbra of political power.’
Streisand’s views were to the far left, but certainly not radical in a time when Leonard Bernstein hosted fund-raisers for the Black Panthers and there was a nationwide protest when four students were killed by Ohio National Guards-men during an anti-war rally at Kent State University. Streisand, seldom neutral, was a sometime antagonist, meaning that she believed in the liberal issues, lent her celebrity, donated money and helped to fund raise, but her career and her personal life took precedence. She was also not against the publicity value and the means to attract new fans that her association with such meaningful, newsworthy causes generated. The ideal of female equality was, however, deep-rooted in her consciousness. And as new role models such as Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan (who asserted, ‘This is not a bedroom war. This is a political movement’), came on the scene, she joined with them in a spirit of community.
Reacting to the excitement of the city during political campaigns, Streisand decided she wanted to return to New York but not to her old apartment. On 31 March she bought a town house for $375,000 (the asking price had been $420,000) at 49 East 80th, circumventing board approval on co-op apartments. But she was quickly disenchanted with the house. ‘I would much rather have the seventeen rooms horizontally than vertically – or on two instead of five levels,’ she admitted only weeks later, adding that she would sell ‘if a buyer could be found and I could purchase a suitable co-op in an apartment building where I am welcome’.
The house on East 80th Street was built in 1929 when the art deco movement was at its height. The residence was an impressive stone structure entered through an iron-and-glass front door from a walled courtyard. Streisand had the fro
nt windows replaced with leaded glass panels from a Victorian gazebo that she had bought from a set of On a Clear Day. She took the Russian-born well-known art deco artist Erté on a tour of the house and incorporated some of his ideas – a 1920s period mural in the dining room and indirect lighting which had been popular at that time. The décor, however, was to incorporate Regency, Victorian, art nouveau, deco and contemporary influences, to include the furnishings from the penthouse and to showcase the many stored pieces of antique furniture, paintings, and objets d’art she had been collecting over the years.
Working with an architect and a decorator she redesigned the new house to her needs and liking. Jason would have a suite of rooms. His bedroom was to be fashioned around a colourful, contemporary Frank Stella painting and filled with white furniture. The adjoining playroom would contain the Victorian shop furnishings she had bought when she was filming On a Clear Day in England, and included an ice-cream parlour bar, a gum machine, and penny candy and toy cabinets. The library was to be a repository for her art nouveau furniture, turn-of-the-century art glass, German Expressionist art works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and Czech artist Alphonse Mucha’s celebrated art nouveau posters. She was having structural work done in the kitchen – ‘everything in stainless steel, white and red – I love red,’ she said, adding: ‘I hate the kitchen being in the basement. Well, I’ll have to leave a supply of cup cakes on every floor.’ Her own suite was to be in shades of rose. The bed that she and Elliott had once shared was to be replaced by a 1920s satin-tufted model.
While all this was being prepared, she remained with Jason at the Ardsley. By the middle of May it became evident that the renovations would take longer than she had hoped and as the house would have to remain empty for the workers she agreed to open it to the public on Tuesday evening, 9 June, for a fund-raising party at which paying guests would meet Democratic Congressional hopeful Bella Abzug.
Three thousand invitations were sent out, urging all who wished to contribute $25 to the cause of ‘sending to Washington next January that very special lady running for Congress who is dedicated to peace’ to drop in between 5 and 8 p.m. ‘There will be stars of stage, screen and radio! – drinks, canapés but no furniture!!’ Bella-Boosters, as campaign helpers called themselves, worked for a week to clean up the house, scrubbing and waxing floors, washing windows. ‘Hey! Now I can see the sycamore out front!’ Streisand exclaimed as she came by to see how things were going.
Wearing a bright yellow pants suit, her hair loose and soft about her face and very little make-up, Streisand appeared in high spirits the evening of the open house although she remained fortified in a corner of the walled garden. Numerous staff members and Bella-Boosters were at hand so that very few of the guests could make their way through to greet her, and there was tight security at the doors. About 2,000 people came to support Abzug and to see Streisand and her house and as the premises were not large enough to accommodate such numbers, lines formed at the front door and queued down the street. Waiting supporters complained loudly, especially when well-known personalities were seen to circumvent the lines and enter through a side door. None the less, the publicity given the event was tremendous and there could be no doubt that Streisand’s endorsement of Abzug was strategically successful. Photographs of the two of them together appeared in all the New York City newspapers.
For almost as long as Hollywood has existed, politicians have been aware that movie personalities create deeper and more immediate bonds with the public than they can, that seeing that the stars whom they admire respect a candidate is a great vote-getter and the more famous the celebrity or cultural icon – as Streisand was now– the better the politician’s chances of claiming a large block of votes. Abzug garnered a comfortable lead at this stage over Farbstein. The election in November would present Abzug’s next challenge and Streisand agreed to lend her name and to appear at a pre-election concert to be held on Sunday evening, 1 November, at the Felt Forum at Madison Square Gardens.
The same week that Abzug won the Democratic nomination, On a Clear Day premièred. Initially envisioned as a three-hour-road-show presentation, the film had been cut mercilessly. Any narrative flow Vincente Minnelli’s direction had given it was lost in the elimination of fifty minutes of footage. Jack Nicholson’s character was so abbreviated that it was hard to know what he was doing in the picture. Yves Montand was charming but strangely unpersuasive as the psychiatrist who falls in love with Daisy’s former incarnation and he sometimes spoke lines and sang lyrics as if he was doing so phonetically. And yet Streisand was delightful as Daisy and mesmerising as Melinda, and I have to agree with Vincent Canby of the New York Times that the high point of the picture and one of the most graceful Streisand moments ever put on film, is the royal dinner ‘at which Minnelli’s camera explores her in loving, circling close-up while her voice is heard on the soundtrack singing “Love With All the Trimmings”.’
‘She looks grand as Melinda, stroking her breast with a cool crystal goblet of white wine to arouse a man ogling her at dinner (the gambit would work equally well with red wine),’ the critic at Newsweek wrote. ‘She’s a thoroughbred clothes horse for Cecil Beaton’s costumes. She flashes lightning-like between Melinda’s airs and Daisy’s earthiness and when her Daisy admits to possession of various psychic powers she does so ruefully, as if it were a curse and she were Mrs Job.’
The picture, one of the last of big-budget Hollywood musicals, is beautifully filmed. Streisand is hypnotic at times, pure joy at others, and she looks spectacularly beautiful as Melinda. Despite the butchery that took place once it was in the cutting rooms, On a Clear Day is a visual delight. The score is not up to the standard of either Alan Jay Lerner’s or Burton Lane’s best shows, but it has some fine songs, tailor-made for Streisand’s voice. However, the public was simply not interested in a movie about hypnotism, psychics and reincarnation even if it starred Barbra Streisand. Her fans were content to buy the original soundtrack album where they could listen to her sing in her distinctive voice in more intimate surroundings, and the film had a poor return at the box office.4
Elliott had met Streisand in New York shortly before the open house for Bella Abzug and taken Jason to his first circus. Elliott’s film M*A*S*H had taken the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. His career at this moment lapped Streisand’s. Elliott was, in fact, number five and Streisand rated in ninth position – the only woman – in the Top Ten Box Office Stars for 1970. She was having renewed thoughts about a reconciliation and asked him the status of his relationship with Jenny Bogart. He told her that Jenny was pregnant with his child.
The news of his mistress’s impending motherhood shook Streisand and, much distressed, she asked Elliott to file suit for divorce as soon as possible.
He flew to the Dominican Republic, which had recently passed a law permitting foreigners to obtain a divorce in seven days. Jenny, now five months’ pregnant, accompanied him. On 6 July the deed was done. Streisand was a divorced woman. ‘I remember the various court officials in their donnish robes and hats,’ Elliott later recalled. ‘They said in Spanish, “Are you sure you want to go through with it?” My better self thought no, I don’t. But I had to follow through. I did it for Barbra’s sake, it was what she wanted,’ a cold and cavalier attitude towards Jenny considering her condition.
Streisand – and even Elliott, himself – did not realise how serious his drug addiction had become. ‘I didn’t know how dangerous acid was,’ he says. ‘I never tried to kill myself but I think I came close. Acid opened up a lot of things. Maybe it opened my mind up too much.’ Almost immediately following his trip to the Dominican Republic to obtain their divorce, he started a film under the aegis of Warner Brothers, A Glimpse of Tiger, an original screenplay by Herman Raucher, on which he was both producer (with Jack Brodsky) and star. The story was about a big bear of a man, on drugs, who is growing progressively mad, but funnily so. He works the subways pretending to be blind and meets a prim young woman who
is taken with his far-out humour and his daring. The two are drawn into a bizarre affair and in the end the man murders the woman. Despite its dark subject, the script was crisp and funny, and even the dénouement more black comedy than horror.
As shooting progressed, the times Elliott was on acid increased. He became impossibly aggressive and Anthony Harvey, the director, quit. To ease the tension and believing he was being funny, Elliott came on to the set the next morning ‘wearing his M*A*S*H helmet, a stocking over his face and sucking on a baby’s [pacifier]’. When Harvey returned, lured back by the film company executives, Elliott became enraged and had to be restrained from attacking the director.
Kim Darby, his co-star, was terrified that he had gone mad and demanded security guards be hired by the movie company to protect her in case he became violent. A week later the film was cancelled. Worse was to follow. The company, to collect their insurance, had amassed a file on Elliott’s bizarre behaviour during the weeks of production. He was examined by two psychiatrists who certified him mentally unbalanced, permitting the company to collect $1,500,000 in insurance.
Although M*A*S*H and Getting Straight were in general release and Move and I Love My Wife being readied for production, Elliott’s meteoric rise to fame, a matter of two years and six major award-winning box-office successes, would come to a numbing and almost sudden end. He was no longer financeable. Two years later he was able to return to work and would star as Raymond Chandler’s fictional detective Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye and in 1976 with James Caan in the farcical Harry and Walter Go to New York, but his short reign as a cult hero and box-office star was over. He was, he says, ‘skirting insanity, skating through it’.