by Anne Edwards
‘She’s God’s bell,’ says exercise guru Richard Simmons, one of her most steadfast admirers. ‘In the eighth grade I was two hundred pounds. And I saw her emerge from not the most beautiful girl in the world to the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. She helped my self-image.’
Her own self-image was another matter. Nothing was ever enough. She had to prove herself over and over and over again. It was an obsession. Something ate at her from the inside, drove her on. No one who worked with her could ever match her pace. In mid-July 1994, she returned to Los Angeles to complete the four concerts at Arrowhead Pond. Rumours had preceded her that she might cancel. The weather was unduly hot and humid. She was once more having some trouble with her throat. She did, indeed, appear to the overwhelming enthusiasm of her audiences. On the final night Hollywood turned out in force, a great many of those who had already attended the Las Vegas, New York or earlier California concerts, returning to hear her again. She received standing ovations from the time she stepped out on to the stage. After the final number she asked the audience if they cared to remain while she performed for the television cameras. There was a scramble as the majority raced back to their seats.
While the taping ensued friends and VIP guests had been escorted backstage to an airless, white-walled room to wait for Streisand and pay her homage. They sat restlessly as they watched her on the large monitor, hearing again ‘that crystalline voice rising, rising – and then, at the break where almost every other singer goes reedy, blazing higher so that you feel [as Marvin Hamlisch puts it] that she’s pulled you through’. Warren Beatty placed his arm around an exhausted, very pregnant Annette Bening. Elliott and Jason were there with Diana, seated in a wheelchair, and Shirley MacLaine squatted, Indian style, as she talked to her. (It is rare that Beatty and MacLaine, though brother and sister, ever attend anything together.) Caleigh stood patiently beside her father despite the lateness of the hour. Finally, the screen went blank. The filming session was over and it was very late. A chosen few of those waiting were escorted into Streisand’s adjoining white carpeted, heavily mirrored dressing room where silver-framed photographs of Jason and Caleigh were displayed.
‘You did good,’ Diana said grudgingly. ‘I’m proud of you.’
Still looking glamorous and appearing fresh, Streisand replied ‘Thanks, mom,’ her words spoken so softly she could barely be heard.
The next morning she was at Sony Studios by ten o’clock, editing footage for the television special and mixing tracks for a projected album of the concert (actually an accretion of several of the concerts). Home Box Office expected that the televised concert would, like the tour, break viewer records. She swore she would never do a tour again. ‘You have to put make-up on, comb your hair. You have to wear high heels. My feet get cramps!’ she complained.
As soon as she came off the road Streisand immersed herself in work once more on The Magarethe Cammermeyer Story, now planned as a made-for-television movie, under the title Serving in Silence. She had begun Serving in Silence in the fall of 1992 after reading a newspaper article about Lieutenant-Colonel Cammermeyer, a highly decorated Army nurse for twenty-six years who had been discharged for revealing in a security-clearance interview that she was a lesbian. The highest-ranking military official ever discharged for homosexuality, she had become a leader in the fight to overturn the military’s ban on homosexuals.
‘Barbra had a passion about wanting to do this project,’ Cis Corman said. ‘It was such a blatant case of discrimination and prejudice.’ Convincing the Colonel to have a film made of her story was not easy, not even for Streisand. Finally, she conceded, and Streisand pressed forward with Craig Zadan (a former close associate of Stephen Sondheim) and Neil Meron, who had produced the Emmy-nominated Gypsy with Bette Midler, as producers, while she remained the executive producer. What the project needed was a star to play the Colonel. In the spring of 1994, Glenn Close had just left the Los Angeles cast of Sunset Boulevard and had time in her schedule before preparing for the November opening in New York. Streisand was about to depart for England. She believed that Close would be superb in the role, bringing both the strength and the feminine qualities of Cammermeyer to it. Close, one of the screen’s finest actresses, thought so too, and agreed to become part of the project, both as star and as co-executive producer with Streisand. The two women had immediate rapport and a writer was hired and the enterprise set in motion.
Presenting a major story about lesbians on the small screen seemed on the face of it to be insurmountable. Advertisers were reluctant to buy time, there was concern at a possible viewer boycott. But the potency of the involvement of Streisand and Close was enough for Lindy DeKoven, NBC’s senior vice-president of mini-series and motion pictures for television, to accept the project.
‘What the network ordered and what it got were two different things,’ Craig Zadan recalled. ‘The network assumed it would be predominantly courtroom scenes. But what evolved in the writing was a love story. Glenn told us, “Under no circumstances are you to take out any of this love story. Otherwise, as an actress I’ll have nothing to play.”’ The script was not as graphic as what was suggested for The Normal Heart, but it did contain impassioned scenes of two lesbians embracing and kissing.
The movie was being shot on location in Vancouver, Canada when Streisand ended the tour. A group in New York called the Family Defense Council had already raised the spectre of an advertiser boycott unless the lesbian kiss was cut. Close’s co-star, Judy Davis, was threatening to quit, fearing her role would be sacrificed to satisfy the hostile group.
Not only was Streisand working on the controversial Serving in Silence, she was engaged once again in rewrites with Larry Kramer on The Normal Heart and with Richard LaGravenese on The Mirror Has Two Faces. The last seemed to be developing more into a commercial property, one that would not present as many problems as the Kramer vehicle did. Dedicated though she was to The Normal Heart she desperately wanted to be able to show a studio that she could make a simple commercial film and bring it in on budget and on time. But time was the very thing Kramer did not have. If Mirror should go into production first he would be difficult to deal with. She did not want this to happen, nor to lose The Normal Heart. She was going to have a juggle the two in such a way that Kramer could be appeased. But it appeared that Streisand had walked right into the eye of a hurricane.
Footnote
1 That figure does not include the money earned from concert merchandise, the HBO special, and the royalties from the concert album. However, the expenses of the tour were high – $20 million on the road and $4 million in Las Vegas, Streisand claims.
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‘I‘M A SHY person,’ she told an interviewer for the Los Angeles Times who asked if she had plans for another tour, ‘and I don’t have to go out on the road again. I lost weight and sleep. I thought I would disappoint people, that I wasn’t good enough. It all worked out. It was right for me to gain this confidence to feel absolutely at ease onstage, to feel I belonged there and deserved to be there, that I could give and receive the love of those audiences. I really am grateful to those people. For too many years I didn’t appreciate my own singing ... But it’s not my love; my love is making movies.’
The process of film-making, the idea that she could create people, lives, realise her visions, had intrigued her since the very first days when she worked with Willie Wyler on Funny Girl. As an actress she had been able to become Fanny Brice, but the vision had been Wyler’s. Being able to function as both her own producer and director, as she had in Yentl and The Prince of Tides, had given her additional power over the script, budget and production. She made the major decisions, chose material that personally involved her, could make a statement or live out a fantasy, but she had to be strongly motivated, the story and characters absolutely clear to her. She was not alone in the category of actor-director. Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh and Jodie Foster also starred in major films under their o
wn direction and none of them had faced strong resistance from the critics as had Streisand. Recognition and acceptance was of major importance to her, rejection, criticism cut deeply.
Columbia was pleased that she had chosen to work on a commercial project such as The Mirror Has Two Faces. The character she was to play bore some similarity to Katie Morosky in The Way We Were, the intelligent woman, plain to look at but with inner beauty who after a struggle wins the love of the handsome hero. For years she had been pressing Arthur Laurents, without success, to come up with a story line for a sequel. For a time Robert Redford held the rights and had been equally enthusiastic and had also approached Laurents to no avail. Now she had a project on a similar theme and one with the same chance for commercial success. ‘I think I’m always drawn to films about the mystery of appearances,’ she told the press. ‘The Mirror Has Two Faces is a really charming love story. But it has serious overtones about vanity and beauty, the external versus the internal.’
LaGravenese had sent her his first revised draft while she was on tour. She thought it took a wrong turn and asked him to rewrite. When she received this version she decided she liked the first one better, although it required more work. After several weeks of unsatisfactory story meetings with LaGravenese she called in Carrie Fisher, who had successfully adapted for the screen her novel Postcards from the Edge, believing Fisher might give her character sharper focus. Fisher’s fee for the work was higher than the budget allowed and Streisand went back to LaGravenese with more detailed suggestions and he began work on what would become the final shooting script.
The Normal Heart was once again placed on a back burner and she was caught between Kramer’s wrath and her own guilt. Not only did she love the project, she had great sympathy for Kramer’s physical situation, his fear of dying before the film was made. Kramer was also a dose friend of Jason’s, and as one of the country’s leading gay activists almost always got press coverage when he chose to speak out on any related topic. She knew he would be furious that she was, yet again, delaying the project and would not be silent in his protest. She anticipated trouble and it came just as soon as it was announced that The Mirror Has Two Faces was to be her next film.
‘Why are you doing this piece of shit?’ Kramer, unable to contain his anger, yelled at her when she told him her plans.
‘It’s not a piece of shit!’
‘It is a piece of shit. Everyone I know says it’s a piece of shit.’
‘Who said it’s a piece of shit?’
‘Well, Jason said it’s a piece of shit.’
‘Jason says it’s a piece of shit?’
‘Yes. He did.’
‘She seemed suddenly reflective and I pressed my point,’ Kramer recalled. ‘“This is the peak of your life. You don’t have two years to waste your time and your energy and your intelligence making a piece of shit,” I continued. “That’s not how you create a great body of work.” She was troubled and I hated having to hurt her.
‘“I’ve already created a great body of work!” she defended. “I’ve tried so hard not to be so hard on myself. Why are you doing this to me? I want to try to make a movie without going through so much sturm und drang. I want to do it as an exercise to show I can go in, make a movie fast, not drive everyone nuts including myself and get out and on with the next one. Anyway, everyone is pressuring me to do it.”
‘“No one has more power than you.”
‘“That’s what you think. It’s not easy. I’ve said I’d do it – and Jeff Bridges will kill me [the actor who was to play opposite her].”
‘“Why don’t you send him the script of The Normal Heart?”
‘“Oh, he’d be wonderful, but I couldn’t do that!”
‘In Hollywood, they don’t live in the real world,’ Kramer commented after telling this story. ‘And so, she scheduled The Mirror Has Two Faces first and The Normal Heart was to be delayed until after it was finished.’
Meanwhile, Serving in Silence was being prepared for television release and she was directly involved in the final work. Ironically, in view of her expressed feeling at a previous time that there were great differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals, she now offered an altered opinion to the press, ‘I would like people to identify with the people in the story [the Colonel and her lesbian lover]. We’re basically more similar than different.’ She worked extremely well with Glenn Close, whom she greatly admired for her ‘dignity and integrity’. The show was not to be aired for ten weeks, but the press was already publishing caustic articles about the project proclaiming that the network took it on only because of Streisand’s and Close’s involvement and because they would then get the right tore-air Streisand’s HBO concert special.
‘Why is it,’ Colonel Cammermeyer inquired, ‘that every time I see something written about her [Streisand], it’s never without some negative connotation. What is it about the fact that she’s talented, enriching, caring, gives of herself emotionally and financially to the things she believes in – what is it about that that is so offensive to people?’ A parallel, Cammermeyer believed, existed between her ‘own experience as a lesbian in the military; both worlds are ruled by boys’ clubs that close ranks against women who don’t toe the line’.
Serving in Silence was aired on NBC on 6 February 1995 to generally good reviews and high ratings and was nominated for Emmys in several categories including Best Original Film Made for Television and Best Actress in this classification, but did not receive an award. Streisand was always disappointed and bitter when her work with film was overlooked for awards. But by this time her energy and enthusiasm had been channelled into the development of Mirror, although she continued working with Kramer on The Normal Heart, and attempting to find financing and a star to play opposite her so that she could schedule the film to follow Mirror. For the time being Kramer, whom she genuinely respected and cared for, was appeased.
In November 1994, she was occupied with fund raising in support of California Democrats running for state or national office, no concerts but luncheons and galas at which she was, along with numerous others, a celebrity guest. She took time out from her political activities to attend a gala in his honour when Prince Charles arrived in Los Angeles, his first visit in twenty years. They had only a brief opportunity to talk, but a close observer once again noted their ‘terrific eye contact. It was like Pow!’ Charles was staying at the elegant and secluded Bel Air Hotel situated in Stone Canyon which weaves through the mountains above Sunset Boulevard in West Los Angeles. With its enchanted gardens, eleven acres of private parkland, ancient trees, and its graceful artificial lake – home to a bevy of swans – the hotel resembled a French country château and the stunning accommodation mirrored this theme. A few days after Charles and Streisand spoke at the gala, he arranged a private meeting in his luxurious suite of rooms, where they spent an hour alone together.
By this time a few pressmen, having picked up word of her visit, had gathered at the front gates. Hair flying in the cold November wind, head down, huge dark glasses hiding her face and wearing a belted coat and high boots, Streisand hurried into a waiting car which whizzed her away. The idea of Streisand and Charles ever being romantically involved seemed bizarre enough somehow to make sense. Charles is a fan, that is true, and they had got on well when they had seen one another, however briefly, in London during her tour. But there was more than a breath of romance in the secrecy and the lack of other participants attending the encounter to arouse the interest of the media.
As Christmas 1994 approached there was still no one special man in her life. She remained in close contact with Peter Jennings and sought out his advice on political matters that concerned her, items she read about in the newspapers and wanted to hear about in greater depth. Jennings had charm, warmth, a fine intelligence and his own sphere of fame. But he was also dating a younger, very attractive television producer – Katherine Freed.
Why was she not able to find a soulmate, a man who would love her dee
ply and to whom she could return the depth of that love? She was no longer the fame-hungry girl who had married and divorced Elliott, or the besotted woman who had given herself so completely to Peters and then allowed the making of a movie to break them apart. She had met, worked with, and had affairs with some of the most powerful, vital, intelligent and sexy men in the world. Whatever man she was drawn to had to measure up to the best of those gentlemen and, so far, none had. The man she wanted could not be intimidated by her immense fame, her iron-hard dedication to everything she attempted. He must share her enthusiasms, her convictions, her expectations as well as having a career of merit on his own. In addition he had to be sensitive and understanding when necessary, strong and protective when required. He could not be married or have ‘a roving eye’. Such a man was not easy to find. But she never abandoned the possibility that he was out there.
Streisand had agreed to give a lecture on 3 February 1995 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard on ‘The Artist as Citizen’ and was jotting down notes all the time on what she wanted to say – which mainly was a defence of the right of Hollywood celebrities to speak out on politics. Having experienced the prejudice of the media towards the politically active members of the film colony during the presidential election, the subject was one that she had been agitating over for many months. The week before the speech was to be presented, she flew to New York to consult Jennings. Her fear was not so much the speech itself, but the question-and-answer period that would follow where she might be called upon to respond on subjects or matters on which she was not sufficiently knowledgeable. Jennings acted as a consultant, but did not do any rewriting on her speech.