Streisand

by Anne Edwards

  The extraordinary meanness of the press did not stop Streisand from enjoying the thrill and exdtement of the historic occasion. She stayed at the Stouffer Mayflower Hotel, instantly renamed in the press as ‘the power hotel of the week’ as other guests included President Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, her husband Dick, Clinton’s brother Roger, Mrs Clinton’s two brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, Vice-President Al Gore and his family, political guru james Carville, Barbara Walters and a long list of top film, concert and television performers. Streisand was also being called, ‘the woman fast becoming the top celebrity’.

  The following day, 20 January, she sat teary-eyed at the stirring inauguration ceremony, the weather crisp and cool, a winter sun lighting the podium as Bill Clinton, his broad, usually smiling face sombre on this occasion, was sworn into office. The new President seemed enveloped in an aura of youth; he was, after all, only forty-seven, a year older than John F. Kennedy had been when he was assassinated. This was truly what Streisand had come to Washington to witness, the central simple reality. A man she believed in was taking the oath of office as President of the United States. It was a moment that signalled the turning of a great page. She had soaring hopes for the future of the country. She who complained so much, who suffered such heavy Jewish guilt, nurtured a negative approach, saw the black side rather than the white, the half-empty glass to the half-full, who claimed to feel threatened and frightened so much of the time, felt optimistic. The Clinton administration was one with which she could personally identify. She felt an insider, like somehow she belonged.

  This was to usher in a new phase of her life in which she would speak up and out, become an activist. ‘We [Hollywood executives and stars] have the right to be taken as seriously as automobile executives,’ she told an interviewer after one of the media sneeringly addressed her as ‘the princess of tides’. ‘No one would question the president of G[eneral] M[otors] talking to people in Washington.’

  Streisand carried away many memorable moments throughout the day: ‘a cheerful thumbs up and wink from out-going President Bush through a limousine window as the car pulled away from the White House; Mrs Clinton and Mrs Bush chatting amicably as they raced through Capitol corridors towards the West Front; Clinton stooping to pet Millie [the Bushes’ dog] when the Clintons arrived at the White House; young First-Daughter, Chelsea, unable to suppress a yawn even during the very peppy singing of the national anthem by Marilyn Horne.’ She was mesmerised by these personal recollections and in awe of the history that she saw at every turn. She had become in these few days a part of that history. The thought thrilled her, whipped up a deep sense of patriotism that was equal to her pride in her sex and her heritage.

  And she had a handsome escort to the various activities, ABC TV anchorman, Peter Jennings, a distinguished-looking news reporter with a self-assured air and great popular appeal, who had recently separated from his wife. Streisand perhaps saw in him some of the same attraction that once had drawn her to Pierre Trudeau, the intelligence, political and worldwide grasp of issues mixed with good looks and considerable charm. There were eleven official inauguration balls. Streisand, in a grey jersey Karan gown (’cut down to here and slashed to there’), briefly attended the most high-profiled one, the Arkansas Ball at the Washington Convention Center, with Jennings, departing shortly after the Clintons moved on.

  Streisand held court, according to the Washington Post, at what was called the after-the-ball Inauguration Day party at the chic jockey Club. Jennings had to report back to work and she came with Donna Karan. The only persons missing were the President and First Lady. Jack Nicholson could be heard laughing his diabolical laugh. Warren Beatty and Annette Bening passed around a picture of their new baby daughter, Lauren Bacall cha-cha-ed, Jack Lemmon, Kathleen Turner, Chevy Chase, Shirley MacLaine, Robert De Niro and Richard Dreyfuss were there along with a host of Kennedys and well-known politicians. At 1.30 a.m. Streisand, ‘wearing a long black hooded cape which made her look like Marie Antoinette fleeing revolutionary Paris’, made a getaway through the kitchen, the bar and out the front door with Karan close at her heels.

  Streisand’s relationship with Jennings would remain on the basis of ‘just good friends’ although she relied on him for inside information on many of the topics that interested her. They spoke often and met whenever she was on the East Coast. Her obvious and ongoing public comment on issues caused the media once again to proclaim that she was about to declare for political office. She made it as clear as she could that she was not interested in running for anything, she was merely an involved citizen. A lot of press was given to the supposition that she had the ear of the President, which she hotly denied. In mid-May 1993, she was invited to the White House Washington Correspondents’ Dinner and then ‘granted 5 minutes with Clinton. I talked with him about what was being done for AIDS research,’ she averred. ‘The month before, some of us from the entertainment industry were invited to the health-care meeting. We didn’t even have dinner with Clinton. We saw him afterwards. We had dinner with his mother – whom I adore because she’s this resilient, optimistic woman.

  ‘There was all this criticism that Hollywood people were getting into areas that they are not expert on but we were asked to come to the White House for communication ideas – we were called there for them to tap into our communication skills – how to get a message across to the American people. We’ve been called “air-heads” and “nitwits”. This is so unfair. And it’s smearing the main industry in our community. It’s saying there isn’t a brain around. Did the entertainment industry create the national debt?

  ‘The media are in a Hollywood-bashing mode these days. They reported contemptuously that Janet Reno and I had dinner and “hashed out issues”. Why two prominent, hard-working women, isolated by their position, should not want to talk to each other is beyond me. Why such venomous response toward people from Hollywood? Why are we so threatening to the media? We have the right as an industry, as people, as professionals, to be taken as seriously as automobile executives – an industry that is having trouble selling its products abroad. On the other hand, we make something that the whole world wants to buy, it improves our balance of payments, creates jobs and pays a lot in taxes.’

  She wandered the Capitol on this trip as a tourist, visiting the Smithsonian and Monticello. ‘The most moving moments were being at the National Archives,’ she confessed, ‘and holding the Emancipation Proclamation and Louisiana Purchase and seeing the film at the Holocaust Museum about the survivors who were reaffirming the preciousness of life, struggling to maintain their dignity, helping one another to gather strength to survive. They didn’t surrender to cynicism – which is killing our country and preventing our pulling together.’

  Nothing was going to stop her from speaking her mind. She was, and always had been, pro-choice, for the equality of women, for the protection of the environment, a dedicated liberal. ‘That’s why I have a foundation to fortify my beliefs,’ she told Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times. ‘That’s how I give back. That’s how I raise my voice. And whether the right-wing conservatives like it or not, I will keep on raising it.’

  In the early days of January 1994, she got Sammy, a fluffy white bichon frise with dark button eyes and an affectionate nature. She had been without a dog for many years. Sadie, whom she had adored and she did not think she would ever replace had died before she made A Star Is Born. Sammy followed at her heels wherever she went in the house.

  On the morning of 17 January, the devastating earthquake she had always feared would come to Los Angeles, seemed to have arrived. She awoke in the house on Carolwood Drive to a sudden shifting of the bed beneath her, the sounds of breaking glass, wood creaking, the house groaning and shaking. The first thing she did was get out of bed, carefully avoiding the glass from a nearby broken window, and go in search of the young puppy, frantically calling his name. When she found him sitting under her dressing table ‘he was so calm he calmed me’, she said. She th
en called her mother, who was frightened but not harmed. Thankfully, no one in the household had been injured but it was a terrifying experiencing and she had lost many of her treasured pieces of pottery and glass.

  She had recently finished work on a new album, Back to Broadway, that included many of the songs she had not been able to record for the first Broadway album. Sondheim theatre music was well represented with ‘Everybody Says Don’t’ (Anyone Can Whistle), ‘Children Will Listen’ (from Into the Woods, and perhaps Sondheim’s most important song), ‘Move On’ (Sunday in the Park with George), ‘I Have a Love’ and ‘One Hand, One Heart’ (West Side Story, lyrics only – a duet with Johnny Mathis). But this time Sondheim did not have as great an influence over the recording sessions. She included two songs, exquisitely rendered, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s yet-to-be seen Sunset Boulevard, ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’ and ‘With One Look’.

  Sunset Boulevard was in rehearsals for its West Coast première, and Don Black and Christopher Hampton, the English writers who shared credit for the lyrics, were in Los Angeles. She wanted some small changes to be made to adapt the lyrics of ‘With One Look’ and ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’ to her needs (as Sondheim had done with ‘Putting It Together’ on the earlier album) and she asked Black and Hampton to meet her at the Carolwood Drive house to discuss it.

  ‘It was the highlight of my professional career,’ Black, who also collaborated with Lloyd Webber on Song and Dance and Aspects of Love and wrote the lyrics for ‘Born Free’ and many other hit songs, stressed. ‘She is a great story teller with phenomenal instinct into the proper phrasing and interpretation of a lyric. It was what every songwriter dreams of – to have a song sung by Barbra Streisand.

  ‘Christopher, myself and David Caddick, who is Andrew’s musical director and was also on Sunset, went together. Christopher couldn’t stay long as he had another engagement but he wanted to meet her. The three of us went to her house. It looked a very modest house as we drew up to the gates. It wasn’t that long driveway that you have in your fantasy as the approach to a home belonging to a star of her calibre. Inside it was another matter, marvellous taste, but again not what you would expect. What would that be? Shangri La, I suspect.

  ‘She was late. There was a problem that had suddenly developed with a tooth and she had gone to the dentist. This was mid-morning, an especially bright autumn day. Her secretary greeted us and made us comfortable in the living room where a piano occupied one corner. We waited about a half an hour. Christopher was about to leave when she came in, her attitude sisterly. “Hi, hello everybody,” she greeted, very family-like. I was struck with how ordinary she looked. Nothing starry about her – casual clothes, almost no make-up, tennis shoes. “How are you guys for tea, coffee?” she asked. There was no feeling at all that you were in the presence of such a famous woman. It was quite amazing. After about five or ten minutes of chit-chat, Christopher left and there was just me and David Caddick seated at the piano. He said nothing for hours on end – he wasn’t asked to.

  ‘She sat down opposite me and kept offering snacks – little potato latkes, olives, nuts. She’d push a dish closer to me on the table between us. Meanwhile, she dissected the lyrics with forensic precision. Her main concern was “With One Look”.

  ‘“Will people know what I’m talking about?” she asked. “As written it’s about a silent movie star. People are going to hear it on the radio or by record and if they haven’t seen the show they won’t know what I’m talking about.”

  ‘She wanted to put a few words of explanation in the verse. I didn’t agree with that. “Songs from musicals are specific,” I told her. We talked about it for a long while. There was nothing argumentative about it or dictatorial or demanding. She was flexible but we went over every comma and crotchet of the song. At the end I did say, “Well, let me think of something.” Her secretary then interrupted with some papers she had to sign and sandwiches were brought in and I took the time to write some lines for the front of the song. I think they were something like – “They don’t want me any more, they all say I’m through, but it’s time they knew – With one look” and so on.’ My intention was to set up right away that this was a star past her prime but still defiant.

  ‘There is a line – “One tear from my eye,” and she wanted “one tear in my eye makes the whole world cry”. I admired her intense involvement. She cared so much about every detail. There was a comfortable collaborative feel to the session. Very affable. This went on for hours with David still at the piano, very respectable, just poised there. Finally she said, “Well, maybe we should try it.”

  ‘She was now seated next to me on the couch having a cup of tea and she puts the cup down and without rising and without the piano sings the opening lines of “With One Look”. This remarkable voice came out. After the first few bars David found her key and backed her and it was just unbelievable. Here was this most ordinary-looking woman having a cup of tea and singing liquid diamond in my ear. I ran out of goose bumps.

  ‘“Well, what do you think?” she asked. “Is it OK? I haven’t sung for years. You know I haven’t done a concert in so long. You really think it’s OK?”

  She was so insecure, very uncertain about it and really it was just wonderful. There was no pretending. I had the highest respect for her. Then when we stopped the session she played some of the tracks she had already recorded for the album and she told me how Sondheim rewrote everything for her. I could understand why he did it. She gives a lyric new meaning, fresh interpretation. She is simply the greatest singer of our time. Still, as she played the tracks she would ask, “Does it sound like it’s mixed right here? Could you hear the breath?” – more like a singer just starting her career. There was no doubt in my mind why she has stayed at the top. Because she doesn’t release a record – she unveils it.

  ‘Andrew had agreed that I should work with Barbra, but I was still apprehensive and showed him what I had done. You’re dealing with two icons. How many people are there in their strata? It would have been terrible if Andrew hated it but Barbra loved it. It would be a nightmare that doesn’t bear thinking about. But Andrew thought the lyrics were right for her purpose. In the end he produced the songs and worked on the arrangements for the recording.’

  Black was also with her when she recorded the two songs from Sunset Boulevard. He was ecstatic with the first take, more so with the second. She went on to do about twenty more. ‘I thought, “Oh my god! Don’t keep singing because this voice can’t last!” but it did. Then she has the engineer play back the same line from each of her takes. She has a sheet and ticks off which phrase or word she likes the best of each. Then she has them put together. It’s a miraculous job of stitching, a surgical skill. “I like the breath on take twenty-two,” I heard her say. And you’re sitting there and it’s simply mind-boggling.

  ‘She wanted various musical phrases and she would sing them to the trombonist or the trumpeter and say, “You know it would be very nice if you could play something like –” then she would la-la a few notes that took on an instrument sound. She is unique.’

  Back to Broadway went into the charts almost immediately upon its release and its great success sparked Streisand and Marty Erlichman to the idea that the time was right for her to return to the concert stage. Her past appearances before a live audience had always put her through ‘great misery ... every night I was terrified’. Then, as she explains it, on 24 April 1993, ‘Donna Karan gave me a wonderful birthday party and Liza Minnelli got up to sing and I am sitting there thinking, “How does she do this? How does anyone get up in front of people and sing?” I could never get myself to sing at parties ... with people looking at me. I can sing on stage because it is a black curtain out there. I can just see a few people and even that disturbs me. So I was fascinated just watching her and it became a challenge. I didn’t like accepting that fright. I am frightened about a lot of things, but what I hope is good about me is that I go through the fear.

  ‘
“Why can’t I do this?” I thought. Besides, so many fans wanted me to sing live. People were saying, “You owe it to them.” It was starting to get to me.’

  ‘I had returned to London,’ Don Black remembers, ‘and Alan Bergman rang me up and said Barbra wanted to open with “As If We Never Said Goodbye” and would I make some changes [that had not been made for the record], make it more relevant to a singer who was coming back after being away from the concert stage for a long time. “I don’t know why I’m frightened. I know my way around here. The cardboard trees, the painted sea ...” that’s Norma Desmond. I changed it to “the band, the lights, familiar sights ...” and various little bits throughout and then I faxed it to Alan and he faxed back Barbra’s suggestions. There were six or seven phone calls as well. Again, the minutest details.’

  The song had personal meaning for Streisand, who had begun her career in live venues – cabaret and the stage – and had grown steadily fearful of maintaining these appearances. That fear had not disappeared but a concert tour would greatly enhance her recording potential. A record album and a pay-per-view TV special (later scrapped in favour of a Home Box Office special) would be the natural spin-offs and should generate tremendous revenues.

  Money was much in her mind. She was rich, but not rich enough to do all the things she wanted to do without concern for her future. There were the films she wanted to make that did not appear to be commercial and there were her foundation and the various deeply felt causes to which her financial support, even in a small way, could make a difference. And on a more personal note, she was refurnishing her New York apartment, with priceless American eighteenth-century antiques and paintings, this time responding to a private tour of the White House which remained vivid in her mind.