by Anne Edwards
On returning to the Coast, he had his marriage annulled, went to work as a stylist for Gene Shacove (the model for Warren Beatty’s hairdressing lothario in Shampoo), and wooed a client, actress Lesley Anne Warren who had appeared with Elliott Gould in Drat the Cat! and was the lead in the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1965 television production of Cinderella. Slim, dark, perky with a pleasant singing voice and manner, Warren had dreams of becoming a film star, which Peters encouraged. They were married in 1967 shortly after she was cast in a supporting role in the Disney musical The Happiest Millionaire, which starred Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson and Tommy Steele. Peters became her manager, promoter and agent. He believed he could make her into another Judy Garland, overlooking the obvious – that her voice was not memorable – and forgetting that Garland was a star when she married Sid Luft, who went on to promote her later career. Warren gave birth to their son Christopher in 1967 and her career, despite Peters’ constant promoting, merely ambled along. It was clear that though she had talent and was likeable, she did not have star quality.1
In 1970 the decade of the hairdresser entered in full swing. Peters became an entrepreneur. Los Angeles and Valley salons were fairly stodgy, not like the newer ones in Manhattan with their sophisticated black and white decor, where stylists, sans drab uniforms, wielded blow-dryers with the speed and grace of fencing experts. He managed to raise $100,000, opened two sleekly modern salons in upper-middle-class San Fernando Valley sections, a thirty-minute drive over the canyons from Beverly Hills, introduced the blow-dryer, hired only attractive young operators and stylists and became the American Vidal Sassoon, ‘cutting, cutting, cutting,’ which he claimed, ‘reached in me a creative side that had never been explored’.
‘Jon is smart, fucking smart, big-time smart,’ a friend elaborates. ‘He’s a fucking genius with money. He knows just how to parlay a small investment into a gold mine, how to raise money without putting a dime up himself. He was a college-of-one, self-taught. His mind is always working, never placed on hold.’
It did not take him long to see where the blow-dry action would pay the most. He opened the Jon Peters Salon on glamorous Rodeo Drive, one of the most famous high-priced streets in the world. His clientele were the young, the beautiful, the rich, the famous, the idle divorcees and the neglected wives of Hollywood CEOs. Have blow-dryer, will travel, was how he was described by many of his friends and peers. He became known in the short span of a year for his sexual prowess as much as for his chutzpah and business ability. Rumour mongers barked at his heels like hungry dogs (most of them clients he had not romanced), saying he was ‘having it off’ with many of the alluring actresses, models and Hollywood wives he attended. With three salons, a wig factory and two beauty supply companies he was, at twenty-five, the head of a $10 million empire with 300 employees, and estranged from a less-than-patient Lesley Anne Warren.
An old friend of Peters claims, ‘He comes out of the Hugh Hefner paradigm. Girls are sort of like, “I can have all this, so why not?”’
Walter Yetnikoff, who was head of CBS Records, put it more crudely. ‘We’re both equally crazy, but Jon is a better penis lapper than me – or so the reputation goes.’
Streisand took to Peters right away but she was wary. ‘Stop coming after me,’ she told him shortly after their first encounter. ‘You’re not my type.’ When he asked to see her the following Sunday she told him she was playing tennis. He had never played the game before but showed up with a racquet and, not even knowing how to score, beat her. ‘Then I told him I liked more distinguished men,’ she later recalled. ‘Men who smoked pipes. So he comes over wearing a velvet jacket over a T-shirt and jeans, glasses and a pipe. He even traded in his Ferrari for a Jag. Jon never lets up.’ And constantly he told her how great she looked; why didn’t she show her body more in the movies? He dug her body, thought she had a great ass, terrific legs. No one had told her that before.
Their sexual draw was powerful, her need to feel young and desirable – strong. She did, indeed, like the haircut he gave her and asked him to design the wigs she had to wear in For Pete’s Sake, agreeing he would have screen credit.
‘How about Mexican food?’ he asked after making a dinner date.
‘Swell. Love it,’ she replied.
‘Be ready at five.’
‘I usually don’t eat that early,’ she responded. ‘You usually don’t have to fly to Mexico first,’ he countered.
It was a bold move, very theatrical and she accepted. They flew down in a private plane that he had chartered to a picturesque beach resort near Acapulco. That was when she called Mitzie and Ken Welch.
With amazing swiftness their relationship moved from fling, to affair, to live-together lovers. Streisand was besotted. Sex played a major role, but there was more. She was ready for an affair that did not have to be hidden from the world. In the beginning she was rebelling against the restrictions of her recent relationship with a married man. After all, why should she – Barbra Streisand independent woman and star – align herself with a man who could never be fully hers? The survivor in her fought for better and won. Peters was one of the few men who was her emotional, if not her intellectual, equal. And even though she knew she could never dominate him, that they were certain to wage a power war if they were to become a couple, she sensed that under the bravado, the prima donna theatrics, the hustler’s moves and the streetwise patter, lay insecurity and that was something with which she could closely identify.
‘I came from the street, from jail and all that,’ he once said. ‘I’d go into the salon and see ladies with diamonds, sophisticated people from good families ... I used to throw up before work every morning because I was so frightened.’ He’d been that way in the boxing ring, and still fought a tough fight winning most of his bouts. Outsiders did not see him as insecure, any more than they saw Streisand in that light. Like her, he was the ultimate survivor, armour-plating his vulnerability with brassy self-promotion.
They spent whatever free time she had while making For Pete’s Sake on his ten-acre Paradise Cove ranch near Malibu, a hybrid mixture of frontier crudeness and Bel Air chic. Expensive country fabrics covered the large custom-made couches. There was a state-of-the-art sound system and hand-rubbed pegged-wood floors. A Jacuzzi whirlpool bath was constructed from an old wine vat. There were two corrals and a large riding paddock for jumping horses. Streisand, an urban creature who had hated camp and outdoor life as a child, learned to ride Cupid, the lively horse Peters gave her as a present. Spending less and less time in her Holmby Hills home, she worked in the garden he set aside for her at the ranch growing orchids, wore T-shirts and dungarees, helped to feed his pet lion which he kept in a cage but took for walks around the ranch on a chain lead, did her own laundry, baked bread and went on day trips to the public beach in Malibu with Jason, now seven, and Peters’s son, Christopher, who was five.
‘He makes me happy,’ she told close friends when asked Why, Peters? and who perceived him as a master con man, albeit one with certain appeal and quick intelligence. Some observers, who believed they detected an under-current of violence in his character, were fearful for Streisand. But there was no denying how much more relaxed, natural and content she appeared. She seemed transformed by an inner shine. ‘Jon is a very macho man,’ she proudly declared. ‘He’s got scars all over his hands from fighting.’ His seeming lack of fear and brazen disregard for social decorum filled her with admiration. He once carried her out of a party that he wished to leave, propped on his shoulders, refusing to let go of his hold on her despite her laughing but insistent protest.
He accompanied her on location to New York where For Pete’s Sake began shooting in September 1973, taking a suite at the Plaza Hotel while she officially occupied the Central Park West penthouse. Although separated, legally he and Lesley Anne Warren were still married. Professionally, he was responsible for Streisand’s wigs and hairstyles. Privately, he took charge of her appearance, choosing younger, sexier clothes for her, advi
sing her on projects, playing new music, new sounds for her to consider to record. They conferred a great deal on and off the set and the gossip columnists picked it up. By the time they returned to Hollywood their affair was an open secret and they gave a press interview where they admitted they were in love and were to be regarded as a couple. Streisand was glowing, happy, and let him do most of the talking.
Having successfully taken over her private life, Peters moved in to pilot her professional endeavours. Unlike her relationship with Elliott, she relied on Peters’s business and creative judgment. It would not be long before he would sell out his hairdressing empire at a good price and engage his talents for hustling and promotion in the film business under Streisand’s aegis. He warned her from the outset of For Pete’s Sake’s poor potential. The story was ridiculous. In the early rushes, which he attended with her, it was obvious that there was no on-screen chemistry between Streisand and Michael Sarrazin, her leading man. She had turned down the strong leads in Klute and Cabaret that had won respectively both Jane Fonda and Liza Minnelli Academy Awards. Clearly, Peters suggested, she needed guidance that she was not getting from Marty Erlichman, her agents, Freddie Fields and Sue Mengers or Cis Corman. The reviews when the film was released the following June proved his instinct about For Pete’s Sake was sound.
‘Streisand looks like Jerry Lewis with cleavage as she runs through the kind of silly plot that Lewis thrives on. But Lewis is a genuine crazy,’ Paul Zimmerman of Newsweek wrote. ‘Streisand, saddled with a script beneath burning, comes out an abrasive wise-mouth who cannot plead comic insanity.’
With Peters at her shoulder, Streisand had been striving to navigate her career into forward action since the previous December. He had sat in on the recording sessions for her solo The Way We Were single and the album with the same title,2 helping her dedde which tracks were best, offering suggestions which she respected and incorporated. Released in November 1973, the single reached Number One in the charts by mid-February 1974 and remained in the top ten hits for five months. By March 1974, the album was also Number One. The single won Streisand Billboard’s award as the top single of the year. The song was also given a Grammy as Song of the Year, and in April earned Marvin Hamlisch an Academy Award for Best Film Song.3
On Valentine’s Day, 1974, Streisand and Peters bought in addition to the ranch, a rustic eight-acre property in adjacent Ramirex Canyon, a gorge in the Santa Monica Mountains which rises out of the Padfic at Malibu. ‘It had aluminum sliding doors and it was white stucco. In other words, it was really crummy,’ is how she described the original house. The place did have beautiful views and seemed to offer them privacy which was impossible at the house on Carolwood Drive where fans peered over the gates trying to catch a glimpse of her. In a major renovation campaign to improve, enlarge and personalise the new dual-owned property, Peters hired a professional group of toy makers from Mill Valley, near San Frandsco, to work on the inside construction because of their wood-carving talents. They lived in the guest house (which would later also be restructured) as they worked, panelling the walls in old, scorched and oiled wood, adding clear and stained leaded-glass panels to many of the windows and building in beds, cupboards and cabinets. In a short time, the house took on the appeal of Geppetto’s workshop.
‘The kids’ rooms were all built in, which was so great,’ Streisand recalled. ‘Both boys had ladders to climb, one to a loft, one to a bunk bed. Each room was different. My son’s was in red velvet with the wood. And Christopher’s was done in an Aztec print.’
She was in a deeply romantic mode. At night she lit the house with dozens of candles and she and Peters curled up on an upholstered mattress that occupied the space opposite the twelve-foot stone fireplace wall in the living room. Lush bouquets of fresh garden flowers scented all the main rooms in the house. They made love, talked endlessly, fought fierce battles, Streisand almost always ending up in tears and with apologies the following day, scenes witnessed by friends surprised to see her be the one to give in. She listened to Peters’s advice, trusted his opinions on film scripts that were submitted to her, discussed the possibility that he produce her next record and that they both become involved in the production of her second film for First Artists. jon Peters was now in the Barbra Streisand business.
A small theatre production of Yentl in Brooklyn which she read about renewed her interest in the project, but no studio was yet ready to back an ethnic period picture with transvestite undertones, even with Streisand in it. She still owed one more film to Ray Stark, who sent her over a sequel to Funny Girl titled Funny Lady, written by Jay Presson Allen who had won an Academy Award for her adaptation of Cabaret. ‘He’ll have to drag me to court before I do this,’ she declared, refusing at first to read the script. Finally, when she did, and Peters had as well, she agreed to appear in the film. ‘This is better than Funny Girl,’ she said, reversing her dectsion. Unlike the earlier rejected version, Presson’s screenplay depicted an independent woman valiantly struggling in a man’s world, a theme with which she identified.
Principal photography would begin in the spring of 1974 just when she was settling into the remodelled house, now called the Barn. For the first time she felt resentment at having to be a mother and ‘wife’ with a career.
Moving into the Barn with Peters and the two boys gave her a seductive taste at what really being ‘Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady’ could be like. At heart she was an extremely private person, not much of a party-goer, terrified of crowds. Strangely, although it might seem that she had one of the most recognisable faces in the world, usually when she took the boys shopping or to the public beach, people did not know her. ‘They think I’m too small or too short, or what would I be doing on a public beach?’ she said. ‘If I were Barbra Streisand would I be on a public beach? So they look at me kind of funny, or they say, “Boy, you look a lot like her.” They don’t even ask me if I am her. And I say, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been told that before.” Sometimes I do these elaborate lies: “No, I’m not her. What would I be doing here if I were her? I wish I had her money. Ha, ha, ha.” Sometimes it’s easier to just tell the truth. “Yes, I am her.” But it is a pain in the ass to have to sign things.’
She had a small clique of close friends – Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Cis Corman and her husband, Marty Erlichman and his wife, Shirley MacLaine. They drove out to the Barn and she helped cook for them with her ‘beloved Grace’ – the housekeeper who had lived in her household since Jason was an infant and whose laughter and good nature filled her home with a sense of well-being. There was a Steinway in the large open living-room area but she never sang when people were there, it embarrassed her. ‘I feel them listening so hard. I feel my power, and it frightens me,’ she explained. ‘Somehow in a big place, when the lights are on you and it’s total blackness out there, you’re singing alone, it seems like it’s the place to do it, to do the thing I do. But I no more could sing a song in a room with my friends than jump off a bridge.’
Seaside picnics and domestic dawdling ended in April when Funny Lady went before the cameras. Once again, as with her first three film musicals, this was to be a big-budget movie and as the star and major asset, the studio’s investment would be on her shoulders. Where once marquees had glittered names such as Garbo, Hepburn, Dietrich, Hayworth, Turner and Crawford, in 1974 Streisand stood alone. Liza Minnelli, despite her Academy Award for Cabaret, had not proven reliable at the box office and jane Fonda, with her anti-war protesting was politically incorrect and currently off the screen.
‘Blame it on Vietnam,’ Funny Lady scenarist Jay Presson Allen theorised. ‘Any time there’s a war, sodety concentrates on its masculine qualities. For the past few years female audiences have been lost because there’ve been no stars they could identify with in a positive way – except Streisand.’
With Peters, now always at her side, at the wheel of the car on 1 April 1974 she drove through the gates of Columbia for the first day of production on Funny Lady. Budgeted at
$7.5 million, there would be a fourteen-week production schedule with locations in Atlantic City, Philadelphia and New York. Musical rehearsals had begun several weeks earlier. Herbert Ross, who was functioning as dramatic and musical director with his wife, Nora Kaye, former prima ballerina, as his assistant, had devised a drastic budget-cutting system. Fourteen musical numbers were filmed by multiple cameras in sixteen days.4 Columbia was still undergoing such finandal difficulties that they were on the brink of bankruptcy and David Begelman, Streisand’s former agent, and Alan Hirschfield were brought in to reorganise the company. Four years later Begelman would be forced to leave in the wake of an embezzlement scandal that rocked the industry. For now, Streisand believed in him and in the theory that having once looked after her interests he would protect them in his new position. Time proved otherwise.
James Caan, who had shot to near-stardom with The Godfather, was cast opposite her as songwriter, producer, entrepreneur Billy Rose. Omar Sharif returned as Nick Arnstein. The team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, composers of Cabaret, wrote the new songs in the score and Peter Matz was back on board as both arranger and conductor.5 Veteran cinematographer James Wong Howe, winner of two Academy Awards, came out of five years’ retirement to photograph the picture. And Streisand’s personal designer choice, Bob Mackie and Ray Aghayan, did her costumes. The story steamrolls through the years when Fanny divorces Nick, moves on to romance, marriage and divorce to super-showman Billy Rose, and finally to her hit as radio’s ‘Baby Snooks’.
Streisand and Stark fought constantly, mostly over her interpretation of Brice. Stark, still struggling to protect the image of his late mother-in-law, wanted her played more sympathetically. Streisand saw Brice rather as ‘a tough lady who hid her inner softness under a carapace of flinty wisecracks and never aimed to be lovable at the cost of her own personality. I’m not playing me any more,’ she added. ‘I’m completely relaxed.’ Peters was standing nearby to smile his agreement.