(Above: Barbra Streisand and Sidney Chaplin on the Playbill for the tryout run of Funny Girl in Philadelphia.)
The revival of Funny Girl opened on Broadway last week on Barbra Streisand’s 80th birthday to mixed-to-negative reviews mostly because Barbra Joan Streisand isn’t young enough to play Fanny Brice anymore and Elizabeth Greer Feldstein was starring in the role. Maybe if Feldstein were known by her real first names instead of the diminution “Beanie” it would have been a first step into seeming at least grown-up enough to fill such shoes even if those shoes were first worn by Barbra when she was 21 years old. It also brings to mind “Beanie” babies, the name of a once popular tacky stuffed animal collection, which were filled with plastic pellets that were referred to as “beans” so even they were pretending to be something they were not - which seems to be the criticism of Feldstein, who has to pretend to be a star instead of being an actual one which is what the role calls for. Or does it? Indeed, the critics mostly seem to be criticizing her for not being Streisand instead of letting us know if she is actually maybe a better Fanny Brice. Streisand played Streisand as a star in the role and has been playing it brilliantly ever since. I don’t think hubris is Feldstein’s problem. I think maybe being too humble is.
(Above: Streisand and Chaplin on the Playbill for the Broadway production.)
I interviewed Streisand for a Vanity Fair cover story - Herb Ritts photographed her for it - when The Prince of Tides, which she directed, was about to open. I went to her home in Beverly Hills and hung out with her in a screening room as she edited the film. Here is how the story opened:
“I vant sea gulls . . . Barbra Streisand dramatically whispers, then giggles at the Yiddischer élan with which she still enhances her every desire. Her distinct Brooklyn accent fills the Cary Grant Theater here on the Columbia Studios lot with such outlandish longing that she could easily be a Chekhov heroine in a spoof by Mel Brooks.
Streisand stands with her back to me and works on the sound editing for her upcoming motion picture, The Prince of Tides. In front of us, on the giant screen, South Carolinian gulls are soaring to recorded orchestral strings as she conducts the sound levels with her outstretched arms, her expressive hands and famously attended fingernails fluttering with the instinct of the coastal birds. At the control board, seated around her, are the film's sound men and assistant editors. One of them looks back at the editor Don Zimmerman and good-naturedly rolls his eyes behind Streisand's back. As director, producer, and actress, she has spent the last three years putting together the much-anticipated film version of Pat Conroy's best-seller, and she's allowing no detail to go unnoticed, not even the sound of sea gulls behind the film's lush opening music. The Prince of Tides is the story of one southern family's summer of healing. It stars Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, the cracker who migrates north ostensibly to rescue his cracked sister from yet another suicide attempt and unexpectedly rescues himself from his own shattered past with the help of her psychiatrist, a woman called Lowenstein, portrayed by Streisand.
One of the technicians punches a button and the film magically rewinds, the gulls flapping a retreat. This woman who can make birds fly backward walks to the rear of the theater, where I am sitting. "This is a great image for your story," she instructs me. "Me standing there with my back to you. All the guys around me. My arms conducting it all. The screen filling up with . . . with . . . with all this childhood stuff."
This is how the story ended:
Streisand and I head up the stairs to her study. On the wall next to the stairwell, across from another Klimt and a small portrait by Tamara de Lempicka, are three gigantic Mucha theatrical posters advertising Parisian productions starring Sarah Bernhardt. "These are the only posters I've ever bought, because they are the three roles I have always longed to play," she tells me later. "Camille and Hamlet and, especially, Medea. I did Medea when I was fifteen in acting class in New York, and I still think it is my best work. I'll always remember one of her lines: 'I have this hole in the middle of myself.' "
We settle into Streisand's study, where all the portraits of her family, surrogate and otherwise, are kept. Now wearing her reading glasses low on her nose, she plays the opening song on her upcoming retrospective collection for me. It is the very first demo she ever recorded, the love song "You'll Never Know," and the scratchy quality of the recording does not lessen its impact. The voice of the thirteen-year-old Barbara Joan Streisand from Brooklyn, New York, fills this Beverly Hills house. She stands behind her desk and warns me that her first attempt at musical improvisation is coming up. At the end of the number, as promised, her voice swoops around a few final notes. Streisand, giggling at her youthful audacity, punches a few buttons on her digital tape machine. "Now I'm going to play you the last number," she says. Hesitantly, hauntingly, the forty-nine-year-old begins to sing a duet of "You'll Never Know" with her thirteen-year-old self.
Streisand plops down in the overstuffed chair behind her desk. The emotional duet swells. "You'll never know how much I love you," the adult Streisand and the baby Streisand sing to each other while the real Streisand sits and listens. Through her reading glasses, she glances down at an imperfection in one of her fingernails. She lip-synchs with herselves.
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(Above: A photo from the Vanity Fair cover story that Herb Ritts and I did on Barbra. According to Julien’s Auctions, this is a Herb Ritts bookplate signed by Barbra. It sold at auction in 2011 for $437.50)
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Yesterday was Carol Burnett’s 89th birthday. And I also remembered that Jule Styne had told me for that Vanity Fair story that Burnett had originally been offered the role of Fanny Brice and turned it down after Ann Bancroft had declined it as well. The explanation for that is in this section of the story in which I let Styne hold forth:
“There is only one way to deal with Barbra Streisand: tell her the truth," says Jule Styne. "If you don't tell her the truth, then you're going to have problems."
Styne, the composer of Funny Girl, was instrumental in securing the role of Fanny Brice for Streisand after she submitted to seven grueling auditions. She was only twenty years old, and the show's creators had been searching for a woman who could convincingly portray a mother in Act Two. They talked to Anne Bancroft, but she didn't like the idea of being called Fanny onstage. At one point Mary Martin was slated for the role; at another, Carol Burnett. It was the latter who advised Styne that someone with "her Jewishness born in her" was needed, and Streisand was finally given the coveted role that thirty years ago thrust her permanently into the cultural consciousness.
Styne: "Barbra's all about the work. After we cast her, I even flew to Las Vegas, where she had already been booked as the opening act for Liberace, and taught her the score between shows—that is, when I could drag her away from the gambling tables. When we were finally in rehearsals for Broadway - now, this was before the girl was a star, she was just this strange little creature who walked out at her first audition looking like a Russian Cossack —she had her manager write me a note telling me that there were two songs that she didn't like, 'People' and 'Don't Rain on My Parade.' She didn't think she wanted to sing them. I called her right up and said, 'Barbra, if you don't sing "People," you don't sing my score.' You've got to be straight with her. This reputation about being difficult comes from untalented people misunderstanding truly talented ones. Because she's so talented she had a tendency - maybe she still does - to show off a bit. She was always shoving shovelsful of her talent in your face. Jerry Robbins summed her up. He said she does everything wrong, but it comes out right."
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Feldstein seems to be doing everything right, but it is coming out wrong. I am seeing Funny Girl on June 2nd when I get back to New York City. I will be pulling for her and I hope to be a contrarian and write a lovely notice for her. I’d like to do a story on her someday to talk about this very complicated narrative she is living in this moment. It took a lot of grace for Streisand to survive her own very different experience of starring in this show. It’s going to take a lot of it for Feldstein to carry on as well. I hope she puts that carry-on grace into the role and by June 2nd I will be seeing a deepening of her performance in a show that isn’t that deep to start with.
In the meantime, because the opening of the revival conflated with Streisand and Burnett’s birthdays in the last few days, here are Barbra and Carol or Burnett and Streisand - if we’re going by alphabetical billing - in today’s RUBRICS. You’re getting six photos in today’s curation. Enjoy.
(TO SEE THE CURATED GALLERY OF IMAGES OF STREISAND AND BURNETT - WITH A SURPRISING CAST OF SUPPORTING CHARACTERS - SUBSCRIBE FOR ONLY $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR. THANKS.)