Barbra Streisand & her two lovers chase a $10million dream

Womans Day cover

Woman's Day (New Zealand)

May 10, 1976

Barbra Streisand chose a former boyfriend as co-star for her new movie — which is being produced by her latest lover, who was once her hairdresser. In Los Angeles, Woman's Day correspondent JULIA ORANGE talked to them all about this tangled tale and about the film which brought them together.

“You wanna know why I made this film?” Barbra Streisand asks, jabbing a finger at me. “I made this film because I want people to know what being famous is like. I wanna show what the pressures are like. How it is not being able to walk from the front to the back of the stage without 10 different people asking you questions. The self-destruction we live with . . .”

On cue her train of thought is broken as one of a pack of photographers, moving in for a close-up of the imposing Roman nose and the creamy throat, cannons into her. She winces, prongs her new Orphan Annie curls with her fingers, and laughs.

In spite of her famous grumbling, Streisand is full of nervous animation. After many abortions, A Star is Born is finally in production. It's a multi-million remake and update of the old Judy Garland classic, only this time the screenplay is about two rock singers. Streisand plays one: a strutting, fiery but, you’ve guessed it, basically good-hearted rock singer who is on the rise. The other, played by Kris Kristofferson, is slowly but surely self- destructing. It's a love story and a tragedy or, in the words of director Frank Pierson, “a tough story shot as a love story".

If it's not exactly “Barbra Streisand, this is your life”, it is the closest she’s ever come to it. which makes her nervous. The film is, she says, “the most revealing thing I’ve ever done”. It has become both a baby and their Waterloo for her and her boyfriend, ex-hairdresser turned producer, Jon Peters. He talked her into doing it and has said, “This is our story.”

They’ve hired and fired three directors and four writers in the search for the perfect script and the perfect man. Already they‘ve considered a lawsuit against the writer of a story about the film in the making entitled “A star is shorn", who called it Hollywood’s biggest joke.

“The chemistry between Kris and Barbra is absolute magic”

They've worked 17 to 18-hour days for the past year on it. “Why,” says a friend in shock. “Barbra even cut her fingernails for it.”

The joke element in the gossip about the film mainly centres on the unlikely alliance of Jon Peters and Barbra Streisand. It rankles the Hollywood establishment that the 30-year-old, ex-reform-school boy turned successful hairdresser, should turn again and become main man and producer of the $10 million multi-national corporation called Barbra Streisand. “My boyfriend’s a hairdresser,” shrugs Barbra defiantly. “People say, ‘How can he possibly produce?’ Just like they said, ‘She’s a singer, how can she act, or play the guitar or write songs?’ Well — we’ll see.”

The stories circulate endlessly: that Streisand recently hurled a camera at the love of her life; that Kristofferson and Streisand are at daggers drawn; that Peters now is too proud to lay a finger on La Streisand’s curls. (“He hasn’t done my hair for years,” she laughs.)

To separate some of the film from the floss, and to meet the new Barbra, Jon Peters and Kris Kristofferson, I went down to Arizona to watch a weekend's filming . . .

This weekend they were shooting a crucial scene in the film — a live rock concert. The general mood was one of nervous euphoria. From the very beginning Peters had insisted that the concert scenes should not be faked, and should be filmed in front of an actual live audience. Barbra, who hasn't performed as a singer in ages, and who has a perennial fear of forgetting her lyrics, quaked at the idea: “I said I‘d have nothing to do with it."

But Peters stuck to his guns. A huge stadium was hired, and a concert featuring groups like Santana, Montrose, and Peter Frampton was organised for an audience of 40,000 mostly teenagers. Between the acts, the continuing story of A Star is Born was filmed.

The event started at seven in the morning and went through till dusk and involved months of tightly controlled planning. A successful rock concert is in itself a difficult event to pull off. To combine it with the nit-picky, stop-start world of filming was doubly dangerous. The organisers had to be sure the crowd didn‘t go sour and stop cheering, so everybody was nervous, particularly Peters because it was his idea. Streisand, faced with what might prove a yawning generation gap, paced up and down in jeans and woolly jumper. And Kristofferson, not drunk, but, as the Irish would say, with drink taken, staggered round asking himself what he was doing there.

It was a good question. Kristofferson, who was selected for the role against some magnetic competition, seems uneasy about being in Streisand’s blockbuster. Initially James Taylor was approached by the producers, but he turned it down after reading the script and deciding it was “too close to his relationship with Carly Simon”. Elvis flirted with the idea: “He told us he’d always wanted to work with Barbra,” said Peters, “which is unusual. Most performers don’t -- she’s too strong.” (Rumour has it that Elvis’ main concern was that his blossoming girth couldn't be whittled down to rock star proportions to meet the deadline.)

So Kris — portly himself in his last role in the award-winning film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, landed the job. Before the film he lost weight and acquired a deep tan which sets off his sudden, white, and breathtakingly sexy smile to great advantage. On the set he was surrounded by giggling girls: “He’s gorgeous,” sighed an extra to me. “I wouldn’t want to be married to him because he cusses a lot. But he is gorgeous."

Everybody seems to be impressed by the high-voltage love scenes played out by Barbra and Kris. “The chemistry between Barbra and Kris is absolute magic," says Peters with professional detachment. “I predict he’ll be a major star after this film is released."

I wondered whether the love scenes made Peters jealous. “Sure they do,” he smiled. “When a scene works out great I don‘t know whether to knock his head off or congratulate him. It gets so strange, you know— fantasy starts to blur with reality."

Another kind of reality warp enters into it when you learn that Kristofferson and Streisand were once real-life lovers. At that time Kris (who has since married singer Rita Coolidge) was a making-it musician, newly arrived in Hollywood via Brownsville, Texas, and Oxford University (where he went as a Rhodes scholar). Barbra was an already ascended star.

Another point is that, while Kristofferson has a steadily growing reputation as an actor, his reputation as a singer — after two middling successful, poorly reviewed albums — is dwindling.

“I guess there might be problems in Kris playing a singer on the way down in the film,” suggests a friend. “It’s certainly been a point of some contention that Paul Williams, not Kristofferson, wrote most of the songs he sings in the film.”

But Kristofferson, whose feelings about Barbra seem to fluctuate between hero worship and terror, won’t be drawn into discussions about this.

“But I’m tellin’ you,” he drawls, “this is the most frightening thing I’ve ever done. I'm nearly 40 years old and I feel as though I’m at school. I can hardly breathe."

‘This film for me has been like becoming an adult’

With his boozy, good-ol’-boy, casual charm, Kristofferson would seem to be the polar opposite to Barbra’s intensity and professionalism. “I don’t understand her,” he admits, “and I’ve had conflicts with Barbra since I’ve known her.

“But man, she is a heavyweight. Watching her work is like watching Muhammad Ali or Dylan. She’s brilliant. Other people approach problems with A, B, C, D. She goes A, A, H, Z. The rest of us — we just try to keep up.”

During the filming Barbra, in faded jeans and long white cardigan, paces the set like a she-tiger. “It’s a totally consuming thing with her,” says Peters. “Once she’s involved she sets no limits on herself.”

The smiling keyboard player Mike Utley, who plays in Kristofferson’s band, reflected some of the general awe when he talked about a recording session with Barbra.

She was absolutely intent on a certain feel, a certain mood, which for hours was only apparent to herself.

“She made us play that damn thing over and over,” recalls Utley. “It seemed so nit-picky we couldn’t believe it. But she has an amazing ear. When we finally got to it we knew why she was right to go for it.”

“Life is short,” Barbra explains in her crunchy New York twang. “I used to be timid — yeh really,” she protests, “I was. I had the power but I never really took it. This film for me has been like becoming an adult. It’s like I have an idea, and if your idea is better than mine we‘ll go with that, but if it isn‘t, I’ll take responsibility.

“I'm dealing with my life in this film in a way I haven’t done before: I feel elated. l‘m where I want to be, and I plan to be totally involved. I‘m writing music, I’m learning the guitar. I check the rushes and the stills, and when the film's over I plan to be totally involved in post production.”

But power, she adds, is frightening. “Being a woman in power is a pain-in-the-ass position to be in.” Peters makes it feasible, she says, because “basically he is a very strong person and he copes with all this beautifully. When I’m lazy he gets me going.”

From the start the attraction seems to have been based on the fact that he wasn’t threatened by the famous Streisand histrionics, or her very real strength.

They met on the set of For Pete's Sake. Streisand had sent a trail of quaking hairdressers packing when Peters arrived, a cocky street kid, brandishing his scissors.

“She kept me waiting for an hour and a half,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again’. Barbra was intrigued by that. It made a nice change from the ego strokers and yes men. She still likes it.”

Whatever it is between them, shrugs a friend, “it makes her happy. She’s in love”.

Barbra in love is quite a sight. She is 34 now and favours the elegantly funky look. “You’d never have seen Barbra in jeans before she met me,” boasts Peters, as though he had persuaded the Mona Lisa to draw herself a moustache.

The impression of compressed vitality is overwhelming. She is not pretty, but she is so alive. When she talks everything seems to move: the slightly skew-whiff eyes, the mouth with its tender, humorous curve, the nose, the graceful hands.

She is a rare thing: all animation, yet totally self-possessed. Her eyes look at you directly when she talks. She feels dangerous, but also warm and funny.

We move into the more sensitive areas of the film when I ask her about the blurring of reality and fantasy. When she plays an intense love scene with Kristofferson does she worry about falling (or re-falling) in love with him?

She gives me the steady look, and I feel her danger again. But she tackles the question seriously. “No, I'm not falling in love with him. I’m a professional. I’m also in love with another man, and you don’t do that.” Yet she becomes intrigued with the idea.

“It’s awfully funny, though. This is very much a film about the changing woman’s role. I mean I play the kind of strong woman who doesn’t minister to her man or abandon her career the moment he lifts his finger. But when we act together I do sort of relate to him like a woman — protectively. I want him to get the good moments, to cry, to get the attention . . .

“We play around with this idea of role reversal in the film. There’s a great scene when we’re in a bath together, fooling around, and I put make-up on him. Suddenly I look at him in shock. I say, ‘My God — you’re so pretty’.”

She is interrupted again by a smiling PR man. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, fluttering her fingers in a friendly way. “Wish me luck.”

The day of the concert dawns. Barbra could well fall on her face today. Certainly it’s one of the most difficult scenes of her career. She is performing not only live for the first time in ages, but to a totally alien audience, half of whom think of Streisand as someone their mum likes. The test will be whether she comes across as an authentically raunchy rock ’n’ roll superstar or whether she will embarrass them, like watching Mum in wedgies and hot pants trying to keep up with the latest craze.

To prepare for the scene she apparently spent a lot of time observing two of the highest paid, black back-up singers in rock, Clydie King and Vanetta Fields, who appear as her back-up singers (The Oreoles) in the film.

“How are you snapping your fingers?" she’d ask. “Move like you’d move,” she’d say, imitating their loose-limbed dances.

So here is Barbra, striding on stage for her first number, in velvet jeans tucked into boots and a skin-tight sparkly top. The 18-year-old actress who plays the groupie in the film is standing next to me because her jeans are too tight to sit down and obviously approves. “She looks good.”

Then Barbra starts to lash the microphone round like a lassoo and moves into a song. The audience is initially polite.

“When Kris comes on,” she shouts, with a nervous crackle in her voice, “I want you to shout, ‘We love you, John Norman’.” She adds uncertainly, “I’m having fun.”

“She’s trying too hard,” says the groupie clinically. When Kris comes on grinning, the audience says, “We love you, John Norman”, obediently and the band lurches through a few tunes. Barbra comes on again and says she is going to sing one of her own compositions: “And if you don’t like it I’ll be crushed.”

“It’s a really good song. I can’t believe it,” Kristofferson complained earlier. “She’s just begun writing songs and already she’s got twice as many damn chords in as me."

The audience applauds with genuine warmth. “Did you like it? Did you really like it?” she shouts, like a little girl. Obviously she is starting to have fun.

Then she does a most unlikely thing. She swings into her famous song People. It may be her anthem, but it is hardly rock concert fare. You feel she may have misjudged her audience.

“Lovers are very special people — they’re the luckiest people in the world.” Suddenly Streisand’s voice in full flood is quite simply a miracle — muscular, vibrant, beautiful. To hell with the finger snaps and the exact hip movements. Suddenly the proceding singers look like amateur night. She is so sure of herself on this ground.

The restless, shuffling audience is transfixed. By force of habit she is conquering her audience as only a top singer can. After the song the mascara runs freely down the stunned faces of the girls in the audience and men “harumph” appreciatively and turn away. Barbra runs off stage, flowing into the arms of Jon Peters, who is also crying with the emotion of it all.

There’s no way of telling at this stage what the film will be like. But the stadium roared and shook for 15 minutes after she left the stage. Streisand’s star is still securely up top.

 

End.

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