Streisand
Page 1
Streisand
OTHER BOOKS BY ANNE EDWARDS
BIOGRAPHY
Sonya: the Life of Countess Tolstoy
Vivien Leigh: a Biography
Judy Garland: a Biography
Road to Tara: the Life of Margaret Mitchell
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
Katharine Hepburn: a Biography (US title A Remarkable
Woman: a Biography of Katharine Hepburn)
Early Reagan: the Rise to Power
Shirley Temple: American Princess
The De Milles: an American Family
Royal Sisters: Elizabeth and Margaret
The Grimaldis of Monaco: Centuries of Scandal/Years of Grace
Throne of Gold: the Lives of the Aga Khans
NOVELS
La Divina
The Survivors
Shadow of a Lion
Haunted Summer
Miklos Alexandrovitch Is Missing
The Hesitant Heart
Child of Night
Wallis: the Novel
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Inn and Us (with Stephen Citron)
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
P.T. Barnum
The Great Houdini
A Child’s Bible
Streisand
________________
A BIOGRAPHY
Anne Edwards
TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING
Lanham | Boulder | New York | Toronto | London, UK
TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 1996 by Anne Edwards
First Taylor Trade Paperback Edition, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Information Available
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Information Available
ISBN 978-1-6307-6128-8 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-6307-6129-5 (e-book)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
FOR STEVE
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
People
Roots
Broadway Baby
Making It
Making Movies, Making Love
Discography
Theatre
Film Cast and Credits
Television Credits
Notes
Bibliography
Illustrations
A section of photographs appears between pages 146 and 147
Emanuel (Manny) Streisand1
Barbara Joan Streisand – age seven
Bob Schulenberg3
Barry Dennen4
Barbra (circa 1960)5
In performance at the Bon Soir5
Singing ‘Miss Marmelstein’ in I Can Get It For You Wholesale6
With Elliott and Jack Kruschen in I Can Get It For You Wholesale7
Collecting antiques8
In her Lorenz Hart penthouse9
Funny Girl: directed by Garson Kanin2
Singing ‘I’m the Greatest Star’ from Funny Girl6
Funny Girl rehearsals with Garson Kanin, Isobel Lennart and Sydney Chaplin2
Recording her second album under the direction of Peter Matz10
With Ray Stark, producer of Funny Girl6
Jule Styne, who wrote the music for Funny Girl6
At the London première of Funny Girl6
After half-sister Roslyn Kind’s opening at the Persian Room, New York7
Diana Streisand Kind
With her older brother Shelley and half-sister Roslyn7
With son Jason aged 1½ years6
With husband Elliott Gould11
Walter Matthau starred opposite her in the film of Hello, Dolly!12
In On A Clear Day You Can See Forever on location at Brighton13
With Marty Erlichman6
After receiving her Oscar for Funny Girl from Ingrid Bergman7
With Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier7
In the garden of her New York town house7
With Prince Charles in Hollywood6
In A Star is Bom7
With Jon Peters6
With sometime lovers: Pierre Trudeau;6 André Agassi6 and Don Johnson6
Leaving London after her Wembley concert6
With AIDS activist/playwright Larry Kramer14
With Jason15
Four films: Yentl, What’s Up, Doc?, Funny Lady and The Owl and the Pussycat6
After her 1994 Californian concert6
Credits. The author and publishers thank the following for permission to reproduce the above photographs:
1 Brooklyn Historical Soctety
2 Garson Kanin
3 Edward Carroll
4 Bob Schulenberg
5 Craig Simpson
6 AP/Wide World Photos
7 UPI/Bettmann
8 Henry Grossman, Life Magazine © Time Warner Inc
9 Howell Condit, Life Magazine © Time Warner Inc
10 B. Eppridge, Life Magazine © Time Warner Inc
11 Camera Press
12 CBS
13 Cecil Beaton, Camera Press
14 Anthony Savignano/Gallela Ltd
15 Albert Ortega/Gallela Ltd
Acknowledgments
I HAVE THIS THEORY that the more we learn about the men and women we choose as our icons and heroes the more we learn about ourselves. Each biography I write is a self-journey in that discovery. Writing this book has taught me much about our admiration for people who are great survivors, perhaps because so few of us know their strength. It has brought me close to what it can cost to become rich and famous, but even more to be different from most other people, a one-off, unique.
I often think of myself not as a biographer but as a literary detective. But no one can make their way alone through the maze of truths and half-truths, the real and the imagined that constitute the days and years of someone’s life. To be a good literary detective one needs the help of other attuned ears, expert witnesses, confidants, co-workers, contemporaries, family and friends – loving as well as injured and resentful – lovers, admirers, critics and fans. I have been most fortunate in having the help of representatives from each of these categories in writing this book. I wish I could thank every contributor personally. In the majority of my biographies I have been able to do so. Occasionally the subject of the biography creates a climate of fear that promises banishment from his or her good graces and perhaps loss of employment if an associate decides to tell the biographer a part of their own life that also happens to involve the subject. That has occurred in the writing of this book. None the less, well over a hundred people have chosen to discuss with me the part they played in the life of Barbra Streisand, many of them requesting that their names not be revealed. I have honoured their choice and here thank them publicly. I have already done so privately.
Not enough writers have been as fortunate as to have had Ion Trewin as an editor. Not only is he a man with tremendous grace, talent and sensitivity, he knows exactly when to stand tall and also bring the best of an author to the written page. I am eternally grateful for his major contribution to this book and to the many others that we have worked on together. My good fortune did not stop there for my two agents –
Mitch Douglas in the United States and Gill Coleridge in Great Britain have been an enormous support. In the twenty years we have worked together, Mitch has always been there when I needed him, help offered without request, and friendship given freely. We have had a unique relationship and I am grateful for it. I want to add my thanks to Richard Aieli, Cassia Joll and Liz Cowen and to the ever cheerful Lilia Mejia, who brings so much special care to my working days.
My special appreciation to Garson Kanin, who not only gave freely of his time, but allowed me access to his extensive files on the stage production of Funny Girl, to Marian Seldes who added to this trove with files of her own, to Arthur Laurents, whose insights and recall added greatly to my understanding of many areas in which this story had to travel. And to Larry Kramer whose honesty and forthrightness was a gift that I shall treasure.
Of the many who gave so liberally of their time, allowing me to spend hours with them, interviewing them in depth, talking on the telephone, filling out questionnaires and tediously searching files for information and who made the writing of this book such a vital experience I would like to thank Peter Matz, Don Black, Lainie Kazan, Jack Kruschen, Ken Welch, Mitzie Welch, the late John Patrick, the late Jule Styne, Luther Henderson, Barry Dennen, Bob Schulenberg, David LeVine, Milton Mensch, Marcia Mae Jones, Madeline Lee Gilford, Walter Matthau, Anthony Newley, Ira Howard Levy, Ann Shanks, Bob Shanks, Herman Raucher, Rex Reed, Thomas Z. Shepard, Billy Barnes, Ed Holly, Blossom Kahn, Rose Tobias Shaw, Alan Shayne, Kathleen Brady, Martha Wilson, Harry Medved, Martha Weinman Lear, Louise Kerz, Al Hirschfeld, Jackie Sedeli, Sharon Palmer, Carl De Milia, Millard Vine Clark, Cindy Bouton, Ray Rominger, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Judy Horgan, Michael Edwards, Michael Smith, Kristine Krueger, Michael Meltzer, Lila Burkeman, Alice Weiss, Richard LaGravenese, Amy Rosenfeld, Bella Linden, Jocelyn Clapp, Kelly Magio, Barbara Dunlap, Catherine Craco, Arthur Gelb, Graig Simpson, Tom Gates, Stanley Brassette, Angela Corio, Debra Cohen and Paul Arbor.
I would like to single out with special gratitude Sally Slaney Carr and Terence McCarthy, who were invaluable aids in my London research, Polly Brown in my Washington D.C. research and Jeffrey L. Carrier in Brooklyn; the staffs of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the theatre library at Lincoln Center, the British Film Institute, Recording Industry Association of America, the Museum of Broadcasting and the Screen Actors Guild.
And last but always top – my love, admiration and gratitude to my husband Stephen Citron, whose musical expertise and knowledge as respected historian of the musical theatre added immeasurably to my work on this book.
I thank you all.
Anne Edwards
Blandings Way, 1996
Author’s Note
For the Updated Edition
WHEN THE FILM ADAPTATION of Funny Girl was released in 1968 by Columbia Studios, the film’s extraordinary success and Streisand’s celebrated star turn startled Hollywood. For one thing, the naysayers had claimed that the reign of the musical picture was over. Yes, there had been The Sound of Music three years earlier, but it had the beloved Julie Andrews who had recently starred in Mary Poppins, and it had all those adorable children who were in danger for their lives from the Nazis – the greatest evil of recent years. Many other reasons were given for skepticism. For one, the public now had their fill of musical television shows. As well, the four previous films of producer Ray Stark had been serious dramas and the director chosen for the film, the estimable William Wyler, although a member of Hollywood’s pantheon of directors, had never made a musical. Added to these challenges Streisand, seen previously only on stage or on the available, small-format television of the 1960s, would be viewed larger-than-life on the big screen of movie houses and, notwithstanding that she had a great singing voice (some said to equal Garland), she was no beauty (so Hollywood believed). There were her noticeable proboscis, her Jewish mannerisms, and her often raspy speaking voice. Of course, she was playing Fannie Brice who was of the Hebraic faith. But Brice had been a comedienne who used her ethnicity in her performances to garner laughs, not generally thought suitable for a romantic lead.
Funny Girl did not bring back the movie musical as mainstream entertainment. It did make an international star of Streisand and – would you believe it? – great beauty could be seen in her when the camera caught her at certain angles: something recalling the exotic quality of the ancient Egyptian queens. Most notably, the camera loved her. It was hard to turn away from her image on the screen, for she dominated every scene she was in. And that singing voice! It was like nothing any viewer had ever heard. It did not have the quiver and heartbreak or the pure showbiz pizzazz Garland could project. It was powerful, yet moving and tender; bold and pushing when called upon; totally new and original; always musically sound; and the lyrics delivered with great understanding and interpretation. The film adaptation of Funny Girl was successful, not because of the property (the script never overcame its mediocrity), but because of Streisand’s powerful, dramatic performance – with a lot of help on the part of William Wyler, who gave her a master’s class in acting for the camera. (Bette Davis was to say about Wyler, “I have known all the horrors of good direction and bad direction. I know now what a great director Willy Wyler was and what it means to an actress. I will always be grateful to him for his toughness and his genius.” Three of her finest performances in Jezebel, The Letter, and The Little Foxes were under Wyler’s direction.)
The greatest laurel yet bestowed on Streisand was to share that year’s Best Actress Oscar with the venerable Katherine Hepburn (cited for her role opposite Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner). Wyler had known how to handle Streisand as other directors (including herself) never had. She was willful, used to ruthlessly fighting for herself against whatever odds and, with the exception of Wyler whose instruction she was wise enough to take while making her first film, unable to trust the instinct and talent of others in her many future endeavors. Still, over nearly three decades she remained a major force in the industry, her singing voice never failing her, producing some admirable film work, if sometimes wanting in story content, and never allowing anyone – or anything – “to rain on her parade.” That now included the harsh critics of The Mirror Has Two Faces.
The making of the film was an exhaustive process complicated by her position as producer, director, and star. She replaced much of her original staff early in the process, including the script writer, cameraman, and top cast members. She had a strong, decisive hand in the music and her makeup (especially so in the misguided Cinderella-like change the final script called for at the end of the film). There was no one who could say “no” to her although Lauren Bacall, playing her sharp-tongued mother, was quoted as asserting “I gave it a hell of a try!” (Bacall received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the film.)
It seemed that The Mirror Has Two Faces would be Barbra Streisand’s last major film role in front or behind the camera. Over the next decade, still at the top of her form musically, she would make several worldwide singing tours, each an astounding success, both in the multitudinous ticket buying audiences (charged the highest prices known for such concerts at that time) and in the revenue they and the record release of the performances generated. When a tour ended, she worked for medical and political causes, rallied up Democratic voters, and made a good friend of President Bill Clinton during a time of Congressional censure when he sorely needed friends. None of that could substitute for the total immersion of making a film where she wore all three hats – producer, director, star – or the fact that there was no special man in her life. When it came down to brass tacks, although brilliant at so many endeavors, she was first and foremost a most passionate woman who had always, perhaps since the death of her father in her early life, needed someone to love her, take her side, and see her as beautiful. It does not seem mere coincidence then that her most deeply played roles on screen were about women who seemed to have all but the forever love of one man. In
most of her vehicles she had to fight for that love, seldom the reverse, and, more often than not, lose.
In July of 1995, with “Mirror” in the final stages of editing, she met James Brolin at a rather small, casual party given by a friend. Both of them were enduring great changes in their lives. Streisand was in her mid-fifties, an awkward age for women in film, and wise enough to know that her chances of finding a leading role for herself were slim, and the chance of securing financial backing if she did, probably futile. She had choices – none of them with easy answers. She could work entirely behind the camera (difficult, as even the independent production companies were not welcoming women as directors, and seemingly never would). Her voice had not failed her so live performance could – and would – be an alternative. This might have been a painful choice due to the exhaustion of a tour and the fear she had always endured when appearing live. Her attention could be more trenchantly placed on politics and philanthropy, which she did enjoy, but perhaps not as a full-time occupation; nor with her current lifestyle was she actually rich enough to make it so. A single woman, her son Jason well out on his own, she lived in a home of many rooms and considerable acreage in Malibu with no one but working staff to share it with her. She was vulnerable, perhaps not to fall into a suitable man’s arms, but open for a relationship.
Brolin (born Craig Bruderlin), most recently a successful television star, was now without a show and in the midst of a second divorce. Just two years Streisand’s senior, he had two grown sons from his first marriage (one, Josh Brolin, just beginning what would become a noteworthy acting career), and an adolescent daughter from his more recent one. He was now a part of television history, appearing as Robert Young’s youthful assistant in 172 episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.” which had been followed by the romantic lead opposite Anne Baxter in 115 episodes of “Hotel.” Early in his career (1976) he had made one dismal motion picture, a box office failure, playing the male lead in a biographical film of two of Hollywood’s most famous off-screen lovers, Gable and Lombard, and had not yet found his way back to the big screen as a major player.