Hello, Barbra!

By Liz Smith

Sunday News Magazine (NYC), 11/13/83

Cover

Article contributed to this site from the collection of Robert Traugh.

Cover provided by the David Salyer collection courtesy of Joseph Goodwin

I was planning a nice leisurely trip to LA, walking around with the elusive Barbra Streisand on the grounds of her 20 odd acres of privacy and seclusion in Malibu, a place where only intimates are usually allowed and, occasionally, a media superstar such as Barbara Walters. Then I thought we'd sit down for tea in one of Barbra's stunning all-but-perfect living rooms and I'd ask a lot of penetrating questions, skewering the star with my sharp intuition and deep background and long experience as a Barbra-watcher.

It just didn't work out that way.

Barbra is under pressure these days finishing Yentl. As we went to press, she was in the difficult phase of recording the Michel Legrand/Marilyn and Alan Bergman score, an inhuman task limited by expedience and economics to too few days for a perfectionist like Barbra. She likened the whole thing to a masochist arranging World War III.

So yours truly and the funny lady (actually she has grown increasingly serious as the years sail by, following in the tradition of all great clowns who are tragedians at heart) finally settled for a long afternoon's phone call, LA to NYC. When it ended, an hour and a half later, I was wrung out. But I did have a feeling for where Barbra is now. And it's a long way from the girl I first interviewed in 1965 when she was still on Broadway in Funny Girl.

Streisand as Yentl

On the phone she was subdued, exhausted, vulnerable, frightened, worried, but trembling on the brink of something or other. After a grueling climb up a hill behind a stone called Yentl, she is panting the last few steps. This project has been 15 years—count 'em—in the making, the dreaming, the trying, the planning, the hoping, the frustration, the wishing, the work. Says Barbra, “The joy is in the work!”

This is the film nobody seemed to want Barbra to make and a lot of forces actively combined to thwart. But, like Sisyphus, Barbra has been pushing Yentl up the hill, ever since 1968 when she discovered the Isaac Bashevis Singer story. And in the manner of Sisyphus, Yentl would come crashing back down before she'd start pushing again—seeking rights, searching for a good screen treatment, hunting financing, distribution, just somebody to let her make the movie, for Pete's sake; inducing the moguls, also, to let her be both behind and in front of the camera, writing it, rewriting it, co-writing it, producing, directing, starring in it. Putting in her own money. And it was MGM/US that finally “took a chance” on Barbra—the surefire female box-office name of our time in a business dominated by men (Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Richard Pryor, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman can each get $5 million a movie, and one man, Sylvester Stallone, can get $15 million!). Yes, somebody finally took a chance on Barbra for a movie with music, filmed on location in Czechoslovakia and costing around $17 million. She brought it in only 11% over budget.

You see, the myth that Streisand can do exactly as she pleases and easily get anything she wants dies hard. No, in this case she had to kick against the pricks, as old Will Shakespeare had plenty to say: “She'll never pull it off ... Never get away with it ... Who'll buy a middle-aged actress as a young boy? ... She's much too old now ... Impossible ... Too ethnic!” So said the professional entertainment scoffers, those who make car-crash trash and elongated video tapes into features and follow the trends of “high concept.” That is to say, they'll buy one lime like Private Benjamin in Outer Space but no Streisand, the Woman as a Yeshiva Boy. Too ethnic! By such standards, The Godfather, Roots, Ryan's Daughter and Dr. Zhivago were all too ethnic. The Thorn Birds was too Australian and Abel Gance's masterpiece, Napoleon, too French.

Barbra had to strain for 15 years to make Yentl, and how's this for an accompanying statistic? In that time, she also made 12 major movies. (Yentl is the magic 13th.) She produced 22 albums (Yentl makes 23.) And she did two live concerts against her growing terror of public appearances. But all the time, she was determined to put on film the story of a Mittleuropa Jewish girl who wants so much to learn that she takes on the disguise of a male Yeshiva student; a girl who is so willing to give that she even marries another girl to please the man she loves.

Yentl is an incredible and appealing story. I've seen the movie and Barbra has pulled it off—succeeded entirely, even her 40-year-old impersonation of a young man is without a wrinkle. It all works because it is so detailed, refined, sensitive and caring. There are no cheap laughs in Yentl. I'm told Barbra's pal George Lucas said, “Don't cut a frame of it!” while Wunderkind Stephen Spielberg dubbed it “the best directing debut since Citizen Kane.” But you'll judge for yourself.

Hollywood seems always to have bated the idea of Yentl, just as its establishment seems to hate and fear Barbra. She represents someone that “got away” and is out of their orbit and control, beyond their ken. So the wiseacres in the glass offices said, “Don't dress for Yentl!” Meaning: don't bother to wait for the premiere, “it'll never happen.” Then when it did, they quipped at Ma Maison and the Polo Lounge—places Barbra seldom if ever visits—“Yentl is simple Tootsie on the Roof!” Even author I.B. Singer felt that she couldn't possibly write, direct, produce and star in his story.

Says Barbra, “I did a lot of movies for all the wrong reasons, but I did Yentl for the right reasons. Actually, people weren't ready when I first wanted to make it. But now the timing is right. It's like Up the Sandbox. I loved that movie, but it was a flop, ahead of its time.”

Over long distance there is no trace of yesteryear's nervy vivid girl from Brooklyn first glimpsed singing in a long red tube dress at the Bon Soir in Greenwich Village. Now Barbra seems hesitant, softer, as if reconsidering everything. “Yes, I'm in a new period of my life now because it took 15 years to make this happen and it consumed the last five years of my life. I had to do it. I reached 40 and it was a telling point for me.

“I guess I'm suffering labor pains. Making Yentl was very much like having a baby. The pain of delivery will wear away and then all I can think of is the baby itself.

“There was so much I wanted to express of this dream of mine. It was a painful, yet joyful, creative experience. This movie is about uplifting our spirits, an affirmation of life, love in a moment of doom.

“You know, I went to see The Return of the Jedi and what I liked most about it was what it has to say about good and evil for kids. I'm saddened by so many things in the world, because as long as people have hate in their hearts, this planet can't evolve.

“I believe in the power of love and feeling and of the will. Yentl is a movie about caring, about the love of learning and the love of people. I wanted to make both a simple and complex story that entertains, but that you will think about afterward. Someone said that The Big Chill is a good, a nice, movie, and I answered ‘I only hope Yentl is a good, a nice, movie.’ And my friend Sydney Pollack said, ‘Oh, Barbra, it's much more than that!’ God, I hope so!”

Barbra sighed 3,000 miles away: “What's hard for me is that it seems everything I do has to always be a masterpiece or nothing. I just want the chance to try and fail. This movie took my life, it was obsessional, all-consuming. You see, being producer and director is good because the producer controls the money the director needs. But directing is being responsible for everything! I was simply scared to death. I almost died every morning as I went to the set. The script woman had to keep telling me to ‘speak up’ to the actors. I was petrified. Of course, part of me always wants to do everything; I'll try to be a lawyer next, I guess. But I was humbled by the experience of directing. And having gone through it, I can say it is not fun, absolutely not, no way. Sometime, maybe, I'd like to try again, something smaller and simpler.”

We talked of her co-star Mandy Patinkin, who comes off so brilliantly. I said he simply shines on screen as if he has been rubbed with chicken fat. Barbra liked that and laughed. “Yes, he glistens. I told Mandy that I wanted him to come out of this a big movie star. He said, ‘But my hair is too long; it's not authentic.’ I said, ‘Mandy, you have to trust me. This is realistic fantasy.’” I noticed that Barbra gave Mandy most of the best angles while the camera was always on the back of her cropped head. “Oh, you noticed that?” she said gleefully. “I'm glad. This was no vanity production. The movie isn't even photographed with any Hollywood glamor, no diffused light, we're there warts and all.”

The film is dedicated to all fathers. Why? “My father gave me the courage. He was a Ph.D. and Phi Beta Kappa, and I always wanted him to be proud of me. I was 15 months old when he died, so I never knew him. But I have this picture of him at 19, and as Yentl, dressed as Anshel, I look just like him. So his presence gave me the courage to make this movie. In 1979, my brother Sheldon took a photo of me at my father's grave in Long Island. I got home and saw the photo and right next to it is another gravestone reading ‘Anshel.’ I couldn't believe it, because the male name that Yentl takes in the story is Anshel, almost exactly the same. It was unbelievable! I was trying to get the courage then and that was the sign. As if my father was saying, ‘Make this movie!’”

What next? “I need time to unwind now, to observe life and people again, to stare out a window, cook some food, be with my son, to think, to sleep. I need to be renewed again. I might come back to New York more often and spend time there. I want my son to finish school and go to college and then I'll make my move. But I'm not so shy and retiring now, Liz. I have ‘come out’ a lot. I'm less afraid. I want to be a part of things. It's all sort of coming back into focus. You know, I loved being in London, walking the streets, able to fly to Amsterdam to see the Rembrandts and to Vienna to see the Klimts and Breughels.”

We discussed the press-shy Streisand. Of course, she has a lot to say on the subject, like most big stars. “At first when I ‘arrived’ everything was fun. I liked the publicity. But then people got mean. I am always portrayed as some bitch goddess, a diva, or something they think is more interesting than what I am. You know, I can't believe the fans still support me after reading all this crap. When I start new projects, I feel sorry for people I have to work with because they think in advance I'm a monster. I've been so burned, but at this point I've decided to be more vulnerable. There were so many lies written, so many mean things, and here I believe in the truth; it's more exciting.

“The crew of Yentl was so wonderful. They wrote an unsolicited letter to the press saying I was okay to work with. I carried it around in my purse for weeks. Of course, nobody printed it. But it said ‘she has completely captivated all of us.’ I felt very gentle—feminine, even—when I was working and especially while wearing Yentl's masculine clothes.”

Barbra sounds weary but hopeful. “Now I think I want to go to college. Maybe next term. I went to my son's school and was so excited by the humanities course where they discuss philosophy and existentialism. I said that's for me.”

I asked, “Barbra, are you like Yentl?” She laughs, “Yentl is like me, Liz! No—of course I'm like Yentl. She existed. I didn't invent her. But I do serve the material! In the yeshiva of Brooklyn in Williamsburg, whether the teacher called on me or not, I'd always answer. I'd ask ‘Why?’ like Yentl. So I got a D in conduct but was over 90 average scholastically. I was in the Arista Society at Erasmus High.”

Well, what about the other part of your life, I ask? The romance with Stephen Spielberg? “Absurd! He's my FRIEND! We like to talk about movies together. No, I'm no thinking of men now. Not really, not at the moment. There is no one. I'm married to Yentl.”

END