Chance encounter

I got up late today. I’ve accepted that prolonged sleep is incontrovertible evidence of my impending dissolution and ultimate evaporation. Or, as my late father so amorphously characterized it, “Going into space!” It was noon before I was spooning my ineffable steel cut oats and nibbling on superb pieces of extra thick bacon. But astonishingly time was no impediment. The sun was shining brightly; the air was dry and clear. An ideal day for a drive to nowhere and back.  So after I brushed my teeth, then crawled on my stick to the basement garage, I was soon motoring into the clear wintry sky along the Appleton Side Road.

The first application within my flying cabin was to change the Christmas music to something else.  I chose instead my Car Play collection of Favourites (which now amount to 126 songs, 8 hours and 37 minutes). What came up after the first couple classical orchestral pieces was Memory Cats: Highlights from the Motion Picture Soundtrack Jennifer Hudson. Within seconds of listening to the performance I knew it was not Barbara Streisand. What however I had not anticipated was what I heard immediately after saying to Siri, “Play Memory from Cats by Barbara Streisand”.

What appeared on my screen was not a prelude to music.  It was a podcast by Lucille Ball (born 1911) interviewing a 21-year old Barbara Streisand (born 1942). I ended listening to three successive podcasts in which Ball covered much of Streisand’s young career.  Like so many young, successful talents, Streisand had started at an early age (in Brooklyn naturally, as did her husband 1963 – 1971 actor Elliot Gould). Even as young as 6 years of age Streisand knew she wanted to be famous and an actress.  Curiously singing had not been her initial ambition.  And, perhaps remarkably more curiously, her immediate reaction to instant fame (after performing as the lead in Funny Girl) was disappointment.

Produced by (Fanny) Brice’s son-in-law Ray Stark (and the first film by his company Rastar), with music and lyrics by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, the film stars Barbra Streisand (in her film debut reprising her Broadway role) as Brice and Omar Sharif as Arnstein, with a supporting cast featuring Kay Medford, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon, Lee Allen and Mae Questel.

A major critical and commercial success, Funny Girl became the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and received eight Academy Award nominations. Streisand won Best Actress, tying with Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter). In 2006, the American Film Institute ranked the film No. 16 on its list commemorating AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals. Previously it had ranked the film No. 41 in its 2002 list of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Passions, the songs “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” at No. 13 and No. 46, respectively, in its 2004 list of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs, and the line “Hello, gorgeous” at No. 81 in its 2005 list of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. Funny Girl is considered one of the greatest musical films ever made.

The successive podcasts proved an insight into both Streisand and Ball. Ball came off as far more opinionated and controlling than I ever would have imagined her to be based upon her famous performances as a television comedienne. Streisand on the other hand came off as more adult than I would have expected her to be in light of her rocketing stardom.  In fact it was that fame and celebrity which disappointed her. She discovered the perils that come with it – having to pose for interminable photographs, having people abuse the use of those photographs (to portray less than factual details), having to relent to the constancy of consumption by the public.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand’s first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier. The family fell into near poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper.

Learning about the achievement of those coming from a deprived background is always especially scintillating.  And while it is not uncommon for those of us on the outside of such success to imagine preposterous means and avenues of that achievement, we are equally ignorant of the work and skill so regularly required for the attainment.  For example, Streisand early on concluded that her best path to acting success was through singing.  And when that proved correct, I was surprised to read, “When she was 21, Streisand signed a contract with Columbia Records that gave her full creative control, in exchange for less money.” Clearly there were brains behind the talent.