by Anne Edwards
Sexually drawn to this intense, wiry man with summer-sky blue eyes, Streisand found out all she could about him. In Canada Trudeau-mania was at its height. After only one year as Prime Minister, the polls showed that he had the highest percentage rate of endorsement of any Prime Minister in Canada’s history. By nature Trudeau was a questioner and a listener, but she got him to talk about himself. His mother was Scots by origin, his father French Canadian. He was bilingual, educated at Montreal University, the London School of Economics and Harvard. Contrary to this conservative beginning, in his youth he had crossed five continents and twenty countries with a knapsack on his back. His smile was boyish, his charm difficult to resist and Streisand saw no reason to do so. Since the impressionable time she had met John Kennedy, power and politics had intrigued her. She promised that somehow she would manage to see him again – very soon.
Her life was programmed from the moment of her return to Hollywood, as she plunged into work on A Clear Day in which she co-starred with Yves Montand, cast as the professor/hypnotist who, while attempting to cure Daisy’s smoking habit, sends her back – in her mind – to her previous life as the temptress, Melinda Tentrees. He then falls in love with Melinda during Daisy’s hypnotic sessions. Also appearing were Larry Blyden as Daisy’s stuffy fiancé and Jack Nicholson in a small but amusing role as her half-brother. She got along well with Nicholson, but her working relationship with Montand was strained, although certainly not as difficult as it had been when she played opposite Walter Matthau. This time she had a leading man who was well known as a singer (in his native country, France, at least), the first time this had occurred. A ruggedly attractive man in his late forties, Montand was urbane and a lively individualist. Married to the French actress Simone Signoret, he had weathered stormy affairs with Edith Piaf (who had guided him to stardom as one of France’s leading chansoniers), and with Marilyn Monroe, his co-star in Let’s Make Love (1960). Primarily known as a singing star, his role in Clouzot’s classic thriller, The Wages of Fear (1953) had catapulted him to international fame as a dramatic actor. As a result he sustained two careers – dramatic roles in Europe and more romantic parts in Hollywood, where he could exude his Gallic charm. Seductive though he was, Streisand was not attracted to him.
Wary of Europeans after her affair with Omar Sharif, she concentrated on the film. Vincente Minnelli, the director of On a Clear Day, allowed her great independence and as with Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly! she involved herself in everything to do with her character from costumes, lighting, hair, make-up, to interpretation. Caught up in the art of film-making, she was preparing herself for the future although she was not yet fully aware of it. After Dolly and her problems with Matthau, she worked hard to protect her performance, making sure that she was the prime character in the film, that she had the majority of the songs and the full attention of the camera.
‘When we commenced On a Clear Day,’ Montand said later, ‘I had the mistaken impression that I was the co-star. I was Miss Streisand’s first leading man who can sing, even though this was her third musical. I thought she was my leading lady, a partner. I doubt I shall ever choose to work again in Hollywood [which he never did].’
She flew to New York for location work as the Daisy character and then, a week later, to England for Melinda’s Dickensian poor-house sequence and the elaborate scenes in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, the latter to be shot first. Cecil Beaton’s costumes for her were spectacular. Beaton was an accomplished author, photographer and theatrical set and costume designer, known equally well for his portraiture of Britain’s royal family, his persistent pursuit of Greta Garbo and his wit. He had won two Academy Awards for his sets and costume designs for My Fair Lady, for which he had also created the original stage decor. Beaton claimed that the memorable white satin Regency gown which revealed a voluptuous bosom with imposing cleavage that Streisand wore in the banquet scene of On a Clear Day was a shared creation. ‘It was inspired – and both our ideas, really – to wrap the Streisand features in a glorious white turban, to further accent her strong profile. At the same time, she was totally feminine, beguiling, shamelessly sexual. I tried to stress ... the physical if not spiritual splendour of the period. On a less gifted actress and model, on almost any American actress I can think of, this would have been wasted and somewhat ludicrous. Barbra has a less monotonously American-type [look] than most actresses of her nationality.’
The banquet scene at the Royal Pavilion was the most ornate in the film. Minnelli, who had started his career as a set designer, insisted that every detail be true to the lavish display of the period. Over 100 extras magnificently costumed in regal Regency clothes sat at an enormous banquet table before mounds of food – all real and prepared by leading English chefs. Streisand sat across the table from languid-eyed John Richardson, playing Robert Tentrees, Melinda’s future husband. Close shots would be filmed later of their sexual wooing as they ate and drank in a powerfully seductive manner. For now, they were simply guests at the royal banquet. ‘Eat up!’ Minnelli shouted, as the cameras began turning, ‘Devour everything in sight! Shove it all in! You’re all gourmets.’ Streisand did as requested, along with the extras.
That night she had a date with George Lazenby, an Australian actor who had just made his film debut as James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. They had dinner at a kosher restaurant. Unable to resist some of her Jewish favourites – knishes, dill pickles, latkes – Streisand gorged herself and fell ill by the end of the evening. Early the following morning (Easter Sunday and double-time for the crew, but Minnelli wanted to limit his days of foreign production), she had to report to the studio to shoot the scene as Melinda in the royal kitchens. The set was decorated with great sides of beef, game and geese, baskets of fish, trays of game and sweet pies, rounds of pungent Stilton cheese and a suckling pig on the fire. ‘The most uncongenial atmosphere for someone with a weak stomach,’ Cecil Beaton commented. ‘The smell of food was so high that it had to be sweetened by atomiser sprays.’ Streisand persisted though obviously ill. Beaton marvelled at her stamina after what must have been ‘a night of much vomiting’.
‘Barbra is one of two kinds of superstars: the coolly detached and the fanatically involved,’ he professed. ‘Barbra is the latter. Barbra and I talked our way into everything, and I trusted her judgment, something I seldom do with any actor, especially a relative neophyte. I had never met anyone so young who had such an awareness and knowledge of herself. Both Audrey Hepburn’s wardrobe for My Fair Lady and Barbra’s for A Clear Day contained before-and-after outfits. Both women are very different, yet they’re both regal, and that came through in the clothes I designed for them. Melinda [in early scenes] came from lower-class origins and was dressed in a rather grubby, unflattering manner, much as Eliza Doolittle during her Covent Garden days. Both women were marvellous at conveying this earthiness, and seemed to relish the chance to wear rags and carry on like craven guttersnipes. But as grand ladies, dressed to the hilt, they were truly in their element, aware that everything had been building up to that moment – neither had a lack of confidence in their ability to act regal and look monumental, despite their widely varying types and images.’
Beaton claimed, as did Minnelli, that there were no great contests of will between them during production, although he was somewhat perturbed that Streisand would only approve his still photographs ‘when lines, marks and a spot on the chin had been brushed out’. When she returned to the States, he wrote in his diary: ‘I like B.S. very much: she is a good, fine girl. If we do not speak the same language, at least we are in sympathy with one another. She is very clever – and meticulous.’
Her romance with Lazenby was short lived. She left London without ties, but not without romantic thoughts. The good-looking Prime Minister of Canada had unsettled her. Not only had she found him sexually exciting and intellectually challenging, she was confident that he felt the same way about her.
Footnotes
1 The original so
undtrack recording of Funny Girl was released a month in advance of the film but was pre-empted by Diana Ross’s Funny Girl album, Diana Ross and the Supremes Sing and Perform Funny Girl. To Streisand and Stark’s amazement, Jule Styne had assisted Ross with the recording and had written the liner notes and Peter Matz had helped with the arrangements. ‘I just don’t like the idea of her singing my songs and with my musical arranger,’ Streisand is reported as saying. ‘Who the hell does she think she is? The world doesn’t need another Streisand!’ Ross had a keen sense of competition with Streisand, believing that if she had been white, like Streisand, ‘it would have been a hundred times easier for her’. Ross’s album was one of her few commercial failures. Streisand’s original soundtrack recording, on the other hand, did extremely well, although not as well as the original Broadway cast recording.
2 In its first domestic release Funny Girl grossed $25 million. It eventually did reach the revenues projected by Columbia Studio and Ray Stark in foreign and further releases, television and video sales. At the figures quoted in the text, Stark received $2.5 million from the gross at the end of the first year of its release. Barbra Streisand received her $200,000 contracted fee, her royalties from the original soundtrack recording and the later income generated by her royalties on the film’s television and video release.
3 Lerner and Loewe had written the scores for Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, MyFair Lady, Gigi and Camelot.
19
THREE DATES WITH Warren Beatty – a ‘fling’ she called it – proved disappointing. She demanded more than good sex from a man. She expected commitment. She romanticised Trudeau – the intellectual father figure – respected the power he wielded, the world stage he occupied. Their affair was moving slowly. They spoke on the telephone. She read up on Canadian history and current political leaders. They met briefly in New York, he was there on official business and she once more was looking for a new Manhattan residence.
The world did not know yet that she and Elliott were going their separate ways and for the moment they both preferred to keep the press guessing. He came out to California to discuss the divorce and, to keep up appearances, escorted her to the 41st Academy Award Oscar presentations on 14 April 1969, held in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the new Los Angeles Music Center. The long drive down to the auditorium in a chauffeured limousine was rife with tension. A concerted effort was made by both of them to avoid personal issues. Seeing him again, watching his tenderness with Jason, had touched her. Elliott was a good father and Jason adored him and she could not dismiss her own confused feelings about him that made her question her decision to obtain a divorce.
She had been nominated for the Best Actress Award with four other exceptional performers: Katharine Hepburn, for The Lion in Winter; Patricia Neal for The Subject Was Roses; Vanessa Redgrave for Isadora and Joanne Woodward for Rachel, Rachel. Her competition was formidable, all four women were known for their roles in dramatic films. Funny Girl was a musical and she had played Fanny Brice in such a spontaneously natural manner that the critics had not viewed her performance as ‘acting’. For many, it was hard to distinguish between the actress who played the role and the woman in real life.
The Academy Awards Ceremony was to start at exactly 6 p.m. and all the participants had been notified that the doors to the Pavilion would be locked at that hour as the show was being televised. At 5.45, Streisand and Elliott were tied up in grid-locked traffic. She became agitated, her voice, as she railed against the traffic jam, high-pitched, strained. Elliott attempted to calm her. The driver assured them both that they would make it in time. Other guests were jumping out of nearby limousines, stalled in the pile-up of cars, and were making swift tracks towards the front doors of the Pavilion.
Streisand refused to make a running entrance, and eventually, with about two minutes to spare, walked gracefully towards the auditorium, Elliott close by her side, and smiled at several of the press photographers.
Beneath a tent-shaped, black taffeta evening coat, she wore a see-through, black chiffon pyjama outfit with starched white puritan cuffs and collar and traces of black jet. Designed by Scaasi for Daisy in On a Clear Day, the outfit had been rejected as too revealing for the character to wear. There were shocked faces turned to her as she entered the packed wood-panelled auditorium with its gleaming crystal chandeliers. One row of the audience applauded as she walked down the aisle past them. For all the costume’s seductive design and shocking sheerness, it did not lack style and she looked especially lovely, her skin glowing, her hair coiffed beautifully in a loose, casual manner, blonde streaks highlighting it, eyes bright, smile radiant, bravely masking her inner anxiety.
The Oscars are an especially long ceremony and the awards for Best Actress, Actor and Film are at the end of an often tedious evening. Streisand sat stiffly as all the nominated members of the FunnyGirl company were passed over; Oliver! winning the larger share of the evening’s Oscars for best picture, musical score, best art direction and best direction. Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary’s Baby over Kay Medford’s performance as Mama Brice.
Ingrid Bergman, looking luminously beautiful, opened the envelope containing the winner for Best Actress of 1968. For a moment a look of astonishment came over her lovely face. In a stunned voice, she cried out, ‘It’s a tie!’ and then read off the names, ‘Katharine Hepburn for Lion in Winter,’ and then had to wait until the applause abated before she added in a strong and pleased voice, ‘and Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl!’
Streisand rose briskly from her seat, ran up the aisle and the steps to the wide stage, gargantuan golden Oscars standing sentinel at the rear of it, and stood beaming beside Bergman. Hepburn was in New York and her director, Anthony Harvey, accepted the award in her name and then stepped away from the podium. ‘Congratulations!’ Bergman said to Streisand, who grasped the gold Oscar in her hands and in strident Brooklynese exclaimed, ‘Hullo, gorgeous!’ There was a wave of laughter, wild applause. When the audience quieted, she graciously declared, ‘I am honoured to be in such magnificent company as Katharine Hepburn.’1
The next day Streisand called Diana. ‘Well, Ma, what do you think about the award?’ she asked.
‘What kind of a dress was that to wear in public?’ was her mother’s reply.
Despite Streisand’s intense therapy, she remained unable to deal rationally with her mother’s negativism. The rejected child she harboured inside her refused to let go. As with so many areas in her life – her career, her male-female relationships, Streisand wanted things on her terms and these were often founded on unrealistic demands. In her late fifties by now, Diana was not going to change. Plumpish, resigned to life without a partner, she remained much the same as she had always been, harbouring old-world Jewish fears and superstitions that to speak well of things, to be too optimistic was to court disaster. She was no less pessimistic with Shelley, but he was better able to cope with his mother. Content in his career, very much the family man, he did not have the need to seek Diana’s approval. Nor did his sister’s success and fame threaten or overwhelm him. He and Barbra remained close in spirit. Streisand knew Shelley would be there for her if she needed him, and the reverse was true. But their lifestyles, their friends and interests were far apart. She would see him and his family when she was in New York, a family visit, welcomed but disconnected from her everyday life. With Diana, it was quite a different matter. Open wounds still festered.
At present, Diana was caught up in Roslyn’s career, which was not moving along at any great speed. She was defensive when the press claimed the half-sisters did not get along. ‘Barbra loves Rozie very much,’ she told a reporter. ‘But Roz was a little shy and didn’t know how to approach a big sister who had gotten so famous. When Barbra was in Funny Girl on Broadway, Roz went to forty matinees and stood through them all. At home she would play the Funny Girl album day and night, lip-syncing and imitating Barbra. She was really her best imitator.’ Which was Roslyn’s immense failing, for s
he was not as gifted.
Asked for her advice on child-rearing, Diana replied candidly, ‘Never give your kids too much praise. In fact, I try to tone them down if I see they have an exaggerated opinion of themselves. I just kind of make a remark that calms them down.’
Roslyn entered the room at this point. ‘She says something like, “Don’t forget you got it from me; you didn’t fall out of a tree.”’
‘Yeah. My voice comes from my mother,’ Streisand says. ‘How else can I explain it?’ Yet even this acknowledgment of Diana’s talent was spoken with an air of disaffection.
Neither woman understood the other. Diana’s life had been one of compromise which she both accepted and resented. Pragmatic, lacking drive, the desperation to learn, absorb, improve, Diana’s character was completely at odds with that of her famous daughter and of the image Streisand nurtured of her father, the intellectual scholar, the man who refused to compromise his ambitions, who was so supportive of the young people he taught.
Her father, she was told, had spoken several languages – English, German, Yiddish. She was now studying French and Italian and had started private instruction in music theory. ‘That was fascinating: to create sound and tone from a mathematical concept, to be able to say that something I hear in my head is an F-sharp minor chord with a flatted fifth,’ she mused. ‘I studied piano till my teacher said I had to cut my nails. I said, “I’m not going to be a concert pianist – so what if I do make some clicking noises on the keys?”’ Yet, she realised that a flat-fingered position was no way to play the piano and the lessons soon ended.
