Streisand: Her Life (74 page)

When Omar Sharif played his scenes with Barbra, there was less levity, but in its place came an easy rapport shared by the older and wiser ex-lovers and co-stars. “For the first two days,” the now gray-haired Sharif recalled, “she seemed a little different to me. But then, I’m sure I appeared somewhat different to her, which is natural. [In 1967] she was married and had led a somewhat sheltered personal life. She has broadened considerably in the intervening years. I think it shows in her performing as well.”

Jon’s presence on the set as an uncredited creative consultant kept Barbra on a fairly even keel, and Ray Stark was happy to have him there, principally because Jon pushed her to be more punctual. “Her lateness drove Jimmy Caan nuts,” Jack Roe recalled. “One day he yelled at me about it, and I said, ‘What am I supposed to do? Sleep with her to make sure she gets here every morning?’ She would be anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour late for each setup. I don’t ever recall her being on time once.”

B
ARBRA HAD TO
film a scene at the Santa Monica airport in which Fanny, after realizing she is through with Nick Arnstein for good, impulsively hires a 1937 biplane to fly her to Cleveland, where she plans to surprise Billy, who is on the road with his aquacade. For the shot, she was required to run to the plane, climb into it, and ride in the open cockpit as the pilot guided it off the ground and into the air for several minutes. “It took Herb Ross almost the entire picture to talk Barbra into doing it,” Jack Roe recalled. “She was obviously frightened.” Ross finally convinced her that if a double was used in the air, it would be obvious to the audience.

“Herb was wonderful,” Roe recalled. “He could really finesse actors. She had a right to be scared; it was, after all, only a two-seater plane. But he talked her into the shot. I had set it up with the airport for the plane to take off and turn around and then land; she wasn’t supposed to be up in the air very long. But it got messed up and the control tower couldn’t let it land. It was bizarre. She was up there for almost half an hour, scared to death, and you could hear her screaming bloody murder from the minute the plane touched down until it taxied to a stop. She said she thought she was being kidnapped. It was terrible. But amazingly, Herb was able to talk her into doing it
again!
”

Funny Lady
wound up production in the second week of July 1974. At a lavish wrap party, Barbra dispensed close to two hundred parting gifts, each with a handwritten note of gratitude, to the cast and crew. She gave James Caan a sterling silver rodeo belt buckle and James Wong Howe, who would die within a year, an antique camera with a plaque that read, “Thank you for your talents, generosity and cha siu bao”—Barbra’s favorite Chinese dish.

Barbra gave Ray Stark a gift that perfectly symbolized the conflicting dynamics of their relationship. Across the face of an antique mirror, she scrawled “Paid in Full” in vivid red lipstick. Yet on the accompanying plaque she had had this sentiment engraved: “Even though I sometimes forget to say it, thank you, Ray. Love, Barbra.”

S
CHEDULED AS COLUMBIA’S
major release for Easter 1975,
Funny Lady
began previews in January, and it became apparent that there were problems with the ending. As originally written, Fanny, after arriving unannounced in Cleveland to reaffirm her marriage to Billy, discovers him in bed with Eleanor Holm. Rose accompanies her to the train station and admits that his love for Eleanor is genuine and reciprocated: “To her... I’m Nick.” Understanding, Fanny asks to be left alone while she awaits her train back to California. The film ends as the camera pulls back from a forlorn Fanny sitting in a darkened station as her vocal of “Am I Blue” plays on the sound track.

Audiences found the scene too downbeat, so Stark called Streisand and Caan back to the studio to shoot an alternate ending, set a decade later, when Fanny and Billy are reunited after many years. Rose, it turns out, wants Fanny to appear in a revival of a Ziegfeld-type revue he is planning. She promises to let him know, and while the film ends on an ambiguous note, it’s clear that Fanny is at last her own secure grown-up person. This second ending, though hardly memorable and marred by silly aging makeup on the stars, proved more popular with test audiences. Its inclusion in an already long movie, however, forced Ross to trim some of Barbra’s musical numbers.

Perhaps because they were hungry for a Streisand musical, most critics greeted the film with lavish praise. “
Funny Lady
wins over its predecessor,
Funny Girl
, on all counts,” raved Judith Crist. “You have to be crazy not to love
Funny Lady
,” said Rex Reed, while Richard Cuskelly, writing for the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
, added, “
Funny Lady...
defies the laws of gravity to prove that you can still move upward from the top.” Many of the critics were even more enthusiastic about Barbra’s performance. John Barbour, reviewing for KNBC television, said, “Barbra Streisand’s incredible artistry as an actress and singer deserves more than an Oscar; it deserves a Nobel Prize.” James Caan’s notices were nearly on a par with Barbra’s, and the opening week’s box-office receipts matched the reviews.
Funny Lady
was a hit, and went on to gross over $48 million.

There were, of course, dissenters. Pauline Kael, the doyenne of American film critics, used her review of
Funny Lady
to launch into an elaborate critique of Barbra’s entire career that ran seven pages in
The New Yorker
. “Streisand’s performance,” Kael wrote, “is like the most spectacular, hard-edged female impersonator’s imitation of Barbra Streisand.... It’s a performance calculated to make people yell without feeling a thing—except adoration.”

Why so many critics went so far overboard in their praise of the picture is hard to fathom. In truth, the movie is cumbersome and often flat; it lacks two of the most exciting elements in
Funny Girl
—the struggle of a young performer to reach the top against all odds and the compelling romance between Nick and Fanny. While Barbra and James Caan have a sparkling comic chemistry, their mild love story never gives off much heat. Worst of all, the new songs were not nearly on a par with those of
Cabaret
, and there are only sporadic moments of genuine electricity in the musical productions, several of which are frustratingly truncated.

Almost a year after
Funny Lady
opened, Herb Ross said, “Up until
Funny Lady
, I thought Barbra’s possibilities were limitless, but that film was a curious experience. She was in love at the time, and she didn’t seem to want to make the picture or play the part. It was a movie that was made virtually without her. She simply wasn’t there in terms of commitment, and one of her greatest qualities is to make a thousand percent commitment.”

In a Columbia Studios publicity interview, Barbra admitted as much. “I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but not a whole one. I’d say to Herb, ‘Look, that’s good enough,’ and he’d say, ‘No, it’s
not.
’ I’m very changed.... When I had a lack in my private life I cared more about my work. It was like a fill-in, sublimation. Now I don’t. Now it’s only a movie.”

Still, there is no evidence on screen that Barbra wasn’t as committed as always. Her performance is believably consistent, and for better or worse she was unafraid to show Fanny Brice’s harder edges. “I don’t try to be liked,” she said. “I don’t know if she’s likable, this character.”

B
ARBRA DIDN’T WANT
to rehearse. It was Sunday, March 9, 1975, the afternoon of a planned live, nationally-televised concert in front of President Gerald R. Ford, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and hundreds of other government dignitaries at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to promote
Funny Lady
and to benefit the Special Olympics. Barbra was nervous and cranky; she had a sore throat and didn’t want Ray Stark telling her what to do.

At first Barbra had refused to promote the picture at all. In the nine months since filming wrapped she had done little but supervise the construction and decoration of the ranch, tend to her garden, and enjoy her life unfettered by professional responsibilities. Stark had planned an ambitious international promotion tour that included a premiere in New York, a royal command performance in London, and a reception with the president of France in Paris. Streisand, of course, was the key to the whole thing, but she told Stark no. The last thing she wanted to do was perform live in front of millions of people, face another potentially dangerous mob of New York fans, then travel all the way to London and Paris for more of the same. According to her publicist Steve Jaffe, “She was terrified of getting crushed by these fans who were full of adulation but could squeeze the life out of her.”

Nevertheless, Stark told Barbra her participation in these promotional activities was vital to the success of the movie. He offered her $100,000 to sing five songs at the Kennedy Center event. She wouldn’t budge. Stark pleaded with Jon to reason with her. Jon told Barbra she
had
to do it, if not for herself and the movie then for him. He was in the middle of negotiations with Stark to produce a film, and if he could deliver Streisand for this publicity blitz, his stock would surely rise with the producer. She at last agreed, but she didn’t like it.

“Barbra had celebrated the end of her contract with Ray Stark,” Steve Jaffe offered, “and here she was now having to do this grueling tour for him. She wasn’t happy. There was this kind of one-upmanship between them. She would do something to get at him, and he would follow it up. They were like two prizefighters—one gets a jab in here, the other lands a punch there.”