HELLO, DOLLY! 1969

Hello, Dolly!, indeed.

I’ve wanted to write about this movie since I started this blog way back in 2009.

The only thing preventing me was the promise I’d then made to myself—in response to what felt like (in the days of IMDb’s message boards and forums) a pervasive trend toward negativity and combativeness in online film writing and discourse—that I would devote this retro movie blog exclusively to the films I loved and admired most.  

And when it comes to Hello, Dolly! ...well, let's just say my relationship with it is complicated.

Barbra Streisand as Dolly Levi

Walter Matthau as Horace Vandergelder

Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl

Marianne McAndrew as Irene Molloy

Danny Lockin as Barnaby Tucker

E. J. (Edra Jean) Peaker as Minnie Fay

Louis Armstrong as Louis, the Orchestra Leader

Hello, Dolly! is the much-hyped, megamillion-dollar 1969 screen adaptation of that enduring, now-classic 1964 Tony Award-winning musical (with the annoying exclamation point) about a meddlesome matchmaker from Yonkers who sets her personal matrimonial sights on a curmudgeonly, wealthy client. I’m old enough to have seen Hello, Dolly! when it was released in December of 1969, but not being much of a Streisand fan at the time (that changed with 1972’s What’s Up, Doc?) I foolishly backed out of every opportunity to see it. 

That was the winter when I, a precocious, self-serious, hormonal adolescent, was busy spending my weekends and most of my allowance money going to see Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Midnight Cowboy, and The Sterile Cuckoo...over and over again. The last thing I was interested in was seeing anything rated “G.” Much less a G-rated thing that sang and danced.

Of course, now I could kick myself for not having given up at least one weekend of “Suggested for Mature Audiences” nihilism for the chance to experience the opulent excesses Hello, Dolly! on the big screen. More’s the pity because I just know that impressionable, 12-year-old me would have gone utterly gaga over the whole "event" spectacle that is Hello, Dolly! 

If anyone can upstage 4,000 extras, it's Barbra Streisand

I absolutely live for that moment in “Before the Parade Passes By” when Streisand, arms aloft, striding toward the camera, flanked on both sides by a red-jacketed marching band, brings herself to a theatrical halt to end all theatrical halts, dropping her arms and that big ol’ hat, grounding herself like a rocket before liftoff, then lets fly with that voice that soars to the heavens and shattering all the artificiality around her. It’s a genuine “goosebump moment” in a film with all too few. 

My family lived in San Francisco in 1969, and Hello, Dolly! played in movie theaters for at least a year after its exclusive, reserved-seat, $ 4.50-a-ticket roadshow engagement ended (at which time it became available at “popular prices” in neighborhood theaters on weird-ass double bills with The Battle of Britain or The Kremlin Letter, of all things). But I didn’t get around to seeing Hello, Dolly! until 1974…when it was broadcast on TV, in cropped format, with commercials, on our family’s ginormous living room console. Not the most advantageous of circumstances under which to see my first Barbra Streisand musical, to be sure, but at least by this time, I was an interested party.

Hello, Dolly! had its broadcast TV premiere on Thursday, February 28, 1974. I’m not sure why CBS thought scheduling a 3-hour special movie event on a non-holiday weeknight was a good idea (I was exhausted in school the next day). Maybe timing was a factor: earlier that week, the 1973 Academy Award nominations were announced, and Streisand was up for Best Actress for The Way We Were. 

So… what were my first impressions of Hello Dolly!? 

(1) Well, I loved Jerry Herman’s tuneful score (although the beautifully sung, written-for-the-screen ballad [a.k.a., shameless Oscar-nomination bid] “Love is Only Love” was, is, and will forever remain for me, a total slog). 

(2) I enjoyed Michael Kidd’s strenuous “The word I think I’d use is athletic” choreography. 

(3) And although Barbra Streisand’s Dolly Levi makes not a lick of sense to me in the context of the story and casting—I’m supposed to believe this young, glamorous, sexy, and vivacious firecracker of a woman is wasting her time meddling in the love lives of four vapid virgins and one grumpy old man?—I was nevertheless utterly charmed and entranced by her. 

The movie itself…not so much.

As Hello, Dolly! is set in 1860, I've selected a quote from a 19th-century author (re: drawing-room entertainments of the day) that cannily echoes my thoughts on seeing it for the first time. 

If You Ain't Got Elegance
"All is forced, coarse, heavy. The jokes are like cannon-balls, smashing everything in their passage.
 No wit, nothing natural, no sprightliness, no elegance."  

Guy de Maupassant - The Moustache 1883

As I said, perhaps television wasn't the best showcase for a film of this scale, and likely influenced at least a part of my initial response to Hello Dolly!  

For example, the film's lack of visual distinction (all static shots and overlit sets) was ill-served when subjected to the then-standard practice of cropping the edges of wide-screen movies to better fit the square TV screen. The sight of blandly colorless dancers with fixed, joyless smiles leaping about with mechanical precision in a New York set that, in the minimalized format of television, resembled nothing so much as Disneyland’s Main Street; didn’t scream "$25 million movie musical" so much as suggest a “The Doodletown Pipers Meet The Ernie Flatt Dancers"  TV variety special.

While singing groups like The Doodletown Pipers and Up With People always gave off "cult" vibes to me, their popularity during the "let it all hang out" Sixties reflected a market for aggressively wholesome, MOR entertainment. Hello Dolly!, pitching itself as the family-friendly alternative to the saturated R and X-rated market of the New Hollywood, emerged as one of the top 5 highest-grossing films of 1969/70. (But, due to its hefty production and marketing budget, still wound up losing 20th Century Fox [depending on the source] in the neighborhood of 10 to 30 million dollars.)

The widow Levi serving up a little wholesome, G-rated sex appeal

Given my penchant for falling in love with waaaaay less-than-perfect movies, none of the above-stated would have factored significantly in my feelings for Hello, Dolly! had I just felt something…ANYTHING…for the characters or the story. Outside of the allure of Dolly’s fin de siècle fabulousness, I had no love story to root for and no investment in anything that was going on. By the film’s two-hour mark, I found myself wishing Ambrose and Barnaby would run off together and that Dolly would hook up with one of the Harmonia Garden waiters. 

In the end, I was so disappointed that so much money, talent, and obvious hard work hadn’t resulted in a movie that was more fun. Or even funny.

Coke Eyes and Gaping Maws
No small part of my annoyance with Hello Dolly! is Michael Crawford's creative decision to convey boyish American enthusiasm by imitating a largemouth bass. Similarly, director Gene Kelly has the cast adopt an acting style of contrived naivete that's all cartoonish "takes" and eyes held open so wide that everyone looks like they've just taken a bump 

Despite my complaints and primarily due to the immense pleasure I derive from Streisand's The Three Faces of Eve take on the character of Dolly Levi (she's Mae West! She's Fanny Brice! She's a drag queen!...the fun to be had is in never knowing from scene to scene which Dolly is going to show up), I've always owned a copy of Hello, Dolly! and watched it countless times over the years. Usually à la carte...with the TV remote at the ready, finger poised over the "fast-forward" button. 

So, how does a lifelong cinephile and movie musical lover reconcile himself to this paradox? Well, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have: Hello Dolly!…a film for which I’ve never fully resolved my love/hate feelings. (Thank you, Al Burton, Gloria Loring, and Alan Thicke.)

Until now. 

The way Dolly sexily grinds her hips against Horace in "So Long, Dearie" convinces me her matrimonial gameplan is to induce a honeymoon heart attack and go on living happily solo on the old man's half-a-million 

Ironically, the one thing that got me to stop evaluating Hello, Dolly! exclusively through the prism of unrealized potential—putting me on the path toward appreciating the film, warts and all, for what it is—was my late-to-the-party discovery of The Matchmaker (1958), the screen adaptation of the 1954 Thornton Wilder Broadway play that inspired Hello, Dolly! 

The Matchmaker Cast: Shirley Booth, Shirley Maclaine, Paul Ford, Anthony Perkins, and Robert Morse

One of the smartest decisions screenwriter John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, The Children's Hour) made in adapting The Matchmaker to the screen was to dump the superfluous characters of  Ambrose and Ermingarde. If only Hello, Dolly! had done the same

I had never even heard of The Matchmaker before seeing it on TCM sometime in 2001, but it instantly won me over with its abundance of heart, humor, engaging performances, and genuinely sweet-natured charm. The very things I’d always felt were missing in action from Hello, Dolly!. I initially thought that my falling in love with a practically-perfect-in-every-way adaptation of Wilder’s story would only amplify my dissatisfaction with Hello, Dolly!, but to my surprise, it had the opposite effect.

 

Finally seeing Thornton Wilder’s frothy farce presented on a scale appropriate to its slim plot and humble characters led me to conclude that perhaps part of my issue with Hello, Dolly! might stem from evaluating it by motion picture standards when it’s really not a movie at all; it’s a monument.

An eager-to-please, pull-out-the-stops, Barnum and Bailey Circus of a monument erected to commemorate and pay tribute to the institution that is Hello, Dolly!...a show that, at the time, was one of the most lauded (10 Tony Awards), lucrative, and long-running musicals in Broadway history.

Suspended in Time 
The movie I once dismissed as the kind of musical Hollywood needed to stop making, I now appreciate as a last-gasp souvenir of a style and type of Hollywood filmmaking that is gone forever 

Thinking of Hello, Dolly! this way has gradually turned me into a more appreciative audience. I once felt the film’s chief liability was its dogged devotion to the proved-to-be-fatal Hollywood dictum that bigger, busier, noisier, and more expensive was ALWAYS better. Now, simply because these qualities affix Hello, Dolly! squarely in a specific time and place in Hollywood history—the sets, costumes, production numbers, and sheer spectacle of it all shine brighter for me than they ever did. 

On Feb. 29, 1968, a month before Hello, Dolly! began filming (and nine months after Streisand's casting), Carol Channing not-so-subtly thumbed her nose at 20th Century Fox while giving America a glimpse of what it stood to miss in the way of comedy chemistry by having Walter Matthau guest on her TV special. 

As Broadway’s first singing Dolly (from 1964-1967), Carol Channing was so affectionately identified with the role that the casting of anyone else in the film version was bound to be controversial no matter who it was. But when news broke that the Hollywood parade had passed by 46-year-old Channing in favor of 25-year-old, hot-as-a-fuse Barbra Streisand—the very person Channing had beat out for Best Actress at the 1964 Tony Awards (Channing won for Hello, Dolly! against Streisand in Funny Girl)—the outcry over perceived miscasting turned it into a cause célèbre that raged unabated for over a year.

 

Billboard - May 9, 1964

Hello, Dolly! has often been dismissed as a "one-song musical" by critics. But when it comes to that one song, no one is more responsible for its widespread recognition and success than Louis Armstrong. His 1964 recording won Grammys for Best Song and Best Male Performance and gave the 62-year-old jazz legend his first and only #1 hit, famously dethroning The Beatles. I’ve always thought of Armstrong’s brief guest appearance in Hello Dolly! as one of the film’s few moments of magic. It’s the only moment in the entire film when Streisand looks relaxed and genuinely happy.

GOOD GOLLY, MISS DOLLY or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

If part of my making peace with Hello, Dolly! means accepting that my heart will be on a bit of a starvation diet, I take comfort in knowing that—thanks to the modern innovations of Blu-ray, restoration, widescreen HD television, and impeccable digital audio—my eyes, ears, and nervous system will be treated to a veritable feast. Watching the title song production number and the breathtaking "Waiter's Gallop," I found myself feeling for the first time a sense of gratitude that Hello, Dolly! is such an overinflated totem of studio-era excess.

PERFORMANCES 

Time has made the supporting cast of Hello, Dolly! less of an irritation to me (they're all so young, they're kind of cute now). Walter Matthau will ever be a favorite, his reactions and line deliveries being the source of many of the film's meager laughs: "Any man who comes to the city deserves what happens to him." 

But I've often wondered if the creators of Hello, Dolly! didn’t fully recognize what a screen presence powerhouse they had in Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl hadn’t yet been released when "Dolly" went into production); otherwise, it's hard to understand why they didn’t see it as a problem that her character is offscreen for so long. The stage show is built to give an older actress lots of rest…but when you’re fortunate enough to have Streisand in a musical, do you really want to give so much screen time over to those dull ingenues and juveniles?   

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

"I thought she did the BEST job she could do."
 - Carol Channing's slightly shady appraisal - Dec. 29, 1969 

Perhaps because I don't think of Hello, Dolly! as a "great" musical in the first place (ergo, impervious to being "ruined" in any significant way), I don't have any problem with the built-in contradiction of my thinking Barbra Streisand is most definitely miscast as Dolly, yet I find her to be ideal as an musical comedy star.  There's just no way I'd ever be disappointed to have one of the preeminent entertainers of my generation showcased in a vehicle like this. As unpleasant an experience as it was for Streisand in the making (as detailed in her EPIC memoir), I will be forever grateful that it exists. Streisand's not perfect in it...but in many ways, she's better than perfect, she's exquisite.

Hello, Dolly! is over 55 years old. Barbra Streisand is over 80. And I’m somewhere there in between. Sure, Hello, Dolly!, much like myself on certain mornings, can be lumbering and stiff. But just as I’ve found peace in not focusing on my aches and pains and learned to simply celebrate the fact that I’m still here, I'm glad—after so many years of back and forth—I can at last accord Dolly Levi a similar grace. 

BONUS MATERIAL:

Gene Kelly puts his handprints in cement in the forecourt of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater on November 24, 1969, just prior to Hello Dolly!’s December 16th West Coast premiere.

The young ladies behind him are the stars of Fox's forthcoming X-rated release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - Marcia McBroom and Cynthia Myers in Irene Sharaff-designed costumes from Hello, Dolly!. 

During the '90s I worked for a time as Walter Matthau's personal trainer. After taking months to win over his confidence, he was finally comfortable enough with me to share some anecdotes about the making of "Dolly" after I begged to know the details. Without going into it, let me just say that in having heard the exact same story Streisand relates in her memoir more than 20 years before she wrote it, the talk about their not getting along during the filming is true (his recounting of the rude comment he made to her was accompanied by a surprisingly spot-on Streisand impersonation), as is the fact that they became good friends...or at least friendly...later. 

The hemlines of women's skirts fluctuated rapidly in the 1960s, but it's got nothing on the 1890s, as evidenced by these screencaps of the "Dancing" sequence, showing Minnie Fay's dress growing shorter by the second.  

Barnaby Tucker and Minnie Fay

Two-time Tony Award winner Robert Morse made his Broadway debut at 24, originating the role of Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker, later reprising his performance in the film. In 1968, Morse co-starred with E.J. Peaker (24 when she made her screen debut in Hello, Dolly!) in the musical sitcom That's Life, which ran for a single season on ABC. 

Richard Amsel, one of my all-time favorite illustrators, was just 21 and a recent art school graduate when his submission for 20th Century Fox's nationwide talent contest (to design a poster for Hello, Dolly!) was selected, launching his brief but prolific career. His iconic artwork for the Hello, Dolly! poster is noted for the era-specific, Boomer-recognizable Spirograph-style design of the flowers adorning Mrs. Levi's enormous hat.

Streisand & Matthau in a clip from Hello, Dolly!

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2024

GOOD & PLENTY: MY NAME IS BARBRA

"The movies were my escape. ...The Loew's Kings was one of those extravagant movie palaces with red-velvet seats, an exotic painted and gilded ceiling, and Mello-Rolls…the best ice cream cones. And the candy! My usual was two packages of peanut M&M's and a box of Good & Plenty, with soft black licorice inside the hard pink or white cylindrical shells. It was like eating jewelry."

Built in 1929 on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, the movie palace that gave birth to many of Streisand's dreams would, in later years, play host to several of her films.  

An essential theme emphasized by Streisand throughout her heavily-anticipated (and heavy) autobiography My Name Is Barbra is her need to find something she can identify within the roles she plays, the songs she sings, and the films she directs. 

I chose the above quote (Chapter 1, page 23)—the adult Streisand recounting what movies meant to her as a 13-year-old growing up in Brooklyn without a father (Emmanuel Streisand passed away when Barbra was just 15 months old)—because, as a person who also prefers to identify with the things I invest my time and interest in, I instantly related to the fantasist she describes. A child who sought escape in the transportive magic of movies and who could come up with a simile as fancifully evocative as "It was like eating jewelry." 

What Streisand shares in that beautifully written paragraph resonated with me like the literary equivalent of looking in a mirror. Indeed, the quote reads exactly like entries I've written for this blog about my own childhood growing up in San Francisco and how, after my parents' divorce when I was 11, the movies I saw every weekend at our neighborhood theater (the ornate and landmark Castro Theater near Market St.) were my primary escape and solace. 

I don't remember a world that didn't have Barbra Streisand in it. 

My parents had her albums. Her face stared out at me from the magazines on our coffee table. Her TV specials always came on at my bedtime. I grew up thinking Barbra Streisand was a contemporary of stars like Eydie Gorme (14 years older) and Judy Garland (20 years older). Imagine my shock when, years later, I discovered that the "grown-up lady in the evening gown" was the same age as Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney.

The casual, self-reflective tone of Streisand's childhood memory is characteristic of what I most readily responded to in My Name Is Barbra and a large part of why I found the book to be such an irresistible page-turner. Unlike many celebrity memoirs and autobiographies that struggle to conceal the Marie Antionette-esque roots of their genesis (i.e., dazzle us "little people" with a peek at Hi-Ho the Glamorous Life), My Name Is Barbra finds Streisand successfully achieving through her writing what I feel she's always done so masterfully in her acting, singing, and directing: establishing the human connection. 

Streisand's gift as a writer—through uncluttered prose and chummy asides—is in making the reader feel as though they are on the receiving end of a private, marathon heart-to-heart monologue with an old friend—an old friend who just happens to be one of the greatest stars of her generation. 

It's likely not the memoir that Streisand could have written at any other time in her life, for it reads like a woman at peace with herself, with nothing to prove, no facade to keep up, and no axes to grind. She just wants to settle some scores, set the story straight, and replace decades' worth of gossip and innuendo with some clear-eyed, not-always-flattering-but-almost-always funny, truth.

(Page 93) On Streisand thinking then-boyfriend, future-husband Elliott Gould looked like a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Jean-Paul Belmondo: "He told me I was a cross between Sophia Loren and Y.A. Tittle. I didn't have a clue as to who Y.A. Tittle was...still don't." 
(Tittle is an NFL Hall of Famer popular in the 60s) 

With the dispelling of diva rumors the object and the demythologization of the Streisand Persona the goal, My Name Is Barbra takes us meticulously through the personal and professional life of this famously close-mouthed EGOT with a breezy alacrity that's…given its length…nothing short of extraordinary.  

Lauren Bacall and Shelley Winters both wrote bestselling autobiographies so comprehensive that they spanned two volumes. Alas, fans of Winters had to wait nine years between volumes (published 1980 and 1989), while Bacall junkies had a whopping 16 years to wait for their next fix (1978 and 1994). Leave it to Barbra Streisand, a self-professed lover of instant gratification, to show her fans some mercy and deliver the entire goods in a single three-pound, 790-page volume. And for this, my inner Veruca Salt (who screamed, "I Want It Now!" when Streisand's book was published) is eternally grateful.  

Streisand goes nose-to-nose with a guest on her 1966 TV special Color Me Barbra

"An 'amiable anteater'? That's how I was described at nineteen
 in one of my first reviews as a professional actress." 

You gotta love a book whose Prologue has the iconic actor-singer-director-composer-screenwriter-designer giving a rundown of the paradoxically insulting/exalting things critics have said about her looks over the years.  

Barbra Streisand and I have been living together for some time now.

I arrived late to the Barbra Streisand party (she was off my radar until I saw What's Up Doc? in 1972), but when I fell, I fell hard. 

I'm always disappointed when a film personality writes a memoir and then skims over their movies like they're a footnote. Streisand proves to be the answer to this cinephile's prayers. She backs up her asserted belief that the creative process is more enjoyable than the result with marvelously detailed, chapter-by-chapter descriptions of the making of her films. The passages Streisand devotes to describing her methods of working are like taking a Master Class on Film and the Performing Arts. (A particular favorite is Chapter 40: detailing how Streisand's well-intentioned respectability politics clashed with the confrontational queerness of playwright Larry Kramer in her desire to turn his AIDS crisis drama The Normal Heart into a film.)

Happily, they're lessons from an instructor with a great sense of humor and considerable tea to spill when the subject calls for it. 

Barbra Streisand commenting on her films: 

FUNNY GIRL (1968)

Page 243: (Commenting on the film's opening sequence shot at The Pantages Theater in Los Angeles) "God, my nails were way too long. It's ridiculous."

HELLO, DOLLY!  (1969)

Page 282: "But I still thought the huge production numbers overwhelmed a flimsy story. So I'm always surprised when people come up to tell me how much they liked the movie. I'm glad someone had a good time."

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER  (1970)

Page 307: "Daisy is supposed to be attracted to him [actor Yves Montand as Dr. Marc Chabot], and that was a challenge, because there was no chemistry between us. None." 

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT (1970)

Page 317: (Joking about the price of movie tickets in 1970 and a topless scene she filmed and later "killed") "We'd have to charge much more if they're gonna see my breasts!"

WHAT'S UP, DOC?  (1972)

Page 346: "It was sort of amusing. I could tell Peter [Bogdanovich] was aching to play my part…not to mention all the other parts as well!!"

UP THE SANDBOX  (1972)

Page 363: "Rewatching the movie now, there are things I would do differently. I would fight harder to keep the moment where Margaret and her Black revolutionary boyfriend [Conrad Roberts] kiss. That was in a fantasy sequence where they're blowing up the Statue of Liberty. The Studio made us cut the kiss but they kept the explosion, which says a lot about our world."

THE WAY WE WERE  (1973)

Page 378: "And now, all I can think of is, Why do I keep holding that handkerchief in front of my face? I was probably self-conscious about my nose running. This is painful to watch. I can't believe how long my hand is in front of my face. You can't see the eyes. You can hear the emotion but you can't see it. This is where I needed [director Sydney Pollack] to say, 'Barbra, I want to try it without the handkerchief this time. Or pick it up but then put it down. I don't care if your nose runs!'  I wish I could do it over."

FOR PETE'S SAKE  (1974)

Page 410: "I was so disengaged from that movie that I barely remember making it. It's such a blank in my life that it's like a movie I've never seen before …only I'm in it!

FUNNY LADY  (1975)

Page 426: "So I liked the clothes…I liked the funny and serious relationship between Fanny and Billy,  …but I still don't get some of the musical numbers, like 'Great Day.' The set was over the top, the costumes for the chorus were ridiculous, and it went on way too long."

A STAR IS BORN  (1976)

Page 450: "When [negotiations with Elvis Presley to co-star] fell through, Jon [boyfriend-turned-producer, Jon Peters] actually said, 'Maybe I should play the part myself!' He wasn't joking. He was ready to make his debut. I said, 'Jon, who the hell do you think you are? You're not a star. I hate to tell you, but you're only a legend in your own mind.'"

THE MAIN EVENT  (1979)

Page 509: “Why am I making this lightweight comedy? I'm not wasting my life on this kind of fluff. I've got to do something I believe in… something I feel passionate about. I’m going to do Yentl.”

ALL NIGHT LONG  (1981)

Page 534: “Put it this way, it was a mistake to take this part, and I was very disappointed in [Sue Mengers, her agent]. I had a lot of problems with the script and had given the writer notes, which he seemed to agree with, but the rewrites Sue promised were never done.”

YENTL  (1983)

*No spoilers, but it's Chapter 36, it features the phrase "Tough titty," 

and here's a likely depiction of Mandy Patinkin after reading it. 

NUTS  (1987)

Page 663: “When [Leslie Neilsen] was pretending to strangle me, he got a little carried away and was actually choking me too hard. It really spooked me and that’s what you see on-screen. I played it scared because I was scared."

THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)

Page 714: " I had a hard time letting go. Maybe that’s where my limitations as an actress come in. Would I be a better actress if I was less in control?  Probably. But no use worrying about it now."

THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES  (1996)

Page 847: "I just wanted to make a movie with a happy ending. Too many characters I’ve played…Fanny, Katie, Yentl, Lowenstein…wound up alone in the last reel. It was finally time for the girl to get the guy."

MEET THE FOCKERS (2004)

Page 904: “Dustin and I had so much fun. We treated the script as a starting point and then improvised a lot, just like we used to do in acting class. We knew each other when we were hardly 'star material'… he was a janitor and I was a babysitter. Strange to think that was 40 years ago, since it felt like yesterday.”

LITTLE FOCKERS (2010)

Page  917: "Oh, I see I passed right over Little Fockers, which I can’t say much about because I barely remember it..."

THE GUILT TRIP  (2012)

Page 917: "But the scene I liked best was a quiet moment, where I tell [Seth Rogen, playing her son] about this one man I loved and lost, while we’re eating ice cream at the kitchen table."

April 28, 1965  -  Newspaper ad apparently inspired by a kidnap ransom note 

The breezily conversational style of My Name Is Barbra resulted in my zipping through this voluminous and surpassingly entertaining memoir far more quickly than I would have liked. It turns out that the story of Streisand’s life was one rabbit hole I had no inclination I’d take so much delight in descending into, so despite its 970 pages, I wasn’t quite ready to stop reading at the point Streisand ultimately decided to stop writing.

Upon completing the final chapter ("and so, we bid a reluctant farewell to…”), I was aware of feeling a kind of exhilarated exhaustion…you know, the sort of thing one usually associates with having accomplished some heroic task or Herculean feat. I must admit that part of me DID feel as though I were an armchair adventurer who’d just been on an extensive expedition to the uncharted territory of La Streisandland, so perhaps there was indeed a trace of Indiana Jones in the way I closed the hefty hardback, stared again at that gorgeous Steve Shapiro cover photo, and settled back onto the sofa to give my thoughts on all I’d read some time to marinate a little. 

My first thought was that I would most definitely be purchasing the My Name Is Barbra audiobook. The second thing to pop into my head was (of all things) I Love Lucy.

Specifically, the "Lucy Writes a Novel" episode and the scene where Ricky, Fred, and Ethel are reading aloud from Lucy's thinly disguised roman à clef, "Real Gone With The Wind" (for any youngsters out there, "real gone" is archaic slang for "outrageously cool"), and they come across this hilariously cryptic passage pertaining to the Mertzes: "The best thing about Fred was that when you met him, you understood why Ethel was like she was." 

And there it was. I'd arrived…albeit by way of a curiously non sequitur route…at the most concise, succinct, and clumsily worded paraphrase to sum up my overall impression of Barbra Streisand's singularly sensational autobiography: The best thing about My Name Is Barbra was that after I read it, I understood why Barbra Streisand was like she was. 

Behind that sentence's comical lack of nuance is me expressing that I’ve always admired Streisand for her talent and accomplishments, but after reading about her life--which she writes about with remarkable humor, candor, and introspection--I now respect her in a way I never had before. 

And I felt empathy, for the memoir reveals a traceable path from all Streisand lacked growing up (a father, love, validation, safety, permanence, encouragement) to all she had to develop within herself in order to protect Barbara Joan Streisand... the little girl dreaming in the dark at the Loew’s Kings Theater in Brooklyn.

If I'm being honest, I think this book made me fall a little bit in love with Barbra Streisand. 

All over again. 

Francesco Scavullo photo shoot

Streisand set my gay heart aflutter when she got on the disco bandwagon (a tad late) in 1979. First with the movie theme "The Main Event/Fight" in June, then in October of that same year, a collaboration with disco's reigning queen, Donna Summer, for "Enough is Enough (No More Tears)." Both songs composed by Oscar winner Paul Jabara and Bruce Roberts.

MAD MAGAZINE - June 1971 (click on image to enlarge)
On a Clear Day You Can See A Funny Girl Singing "Hello Dolly" Forever

KEN'S  

BARBRA STREISAND TOP TEN

1. Favorite Comedy   -  What’s Up, Doc?   (1972)

2. Favorite Musical  -  On a Clear Day You Can See Forever  (1970)

3. Favorite Drama  -  The Way We Were (1973)

4. Favorite Studio Album  -  Stoney End (1971)

5. Favorite Single -  The Best Thing You’ve Ever Done 1970 (M. Charnin) released 1974

6. Favorite Album Cover - Classical Barbra  / Francesco Scavullo  1976

7. Guaranteed Waterworks  - You Don’t Bring Me Flowers  1979 (Diamond, Bergman)

8. Favorite Guilty Pleasure Song - I Ain't Gonna Cry Tonight  1979  (Alan Gordon)

9. Restored Footage Wish -  “Wait Till We’re 65” from On a Clear Day     

    

10. Favorite Underappreciated Performance -  The Guilt Trip (2012)

AUDIOBOOK NOTES   (Purchased less than a week after I finished the hardback)

I've always been crazy about Streisand's speaking voice, and it's such a treat to hear her swear so much and say "motherfucker" (Chapter 41) with such aplomb. But I especially love that she refuses to say the word "fart" (quoting Walter Matthau) and has to spell it out instead.

Reading about the Funny Lady biplane episode is amusing.

Listening to her telling it is priceless.  

Given how much it annoys Streisand to have her last name mispronounced (to the point of contacting the head of Apple and getting Siri to say it correctly), actress Jacqueline Bisset might want to give Streisand a call after Barbra mispronounces Bisset (which rhymes with "Kiss it") as Biss-ette.

Streisand's favorite quotes and credos

Never assume.

"He who tells too much truth is sure to be hanged."   George Bernard Shaw  - Saint Joan

"We're all mad. You're mad. I'm mad. The only difference is I respect my madness." - Her therapist

"At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you" -  Gothe.

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2024