Streisand: Her Life (83 page)
Read Streisand: Her Life Online
Authors: James Spada
Tags: #Another Evening with Harry Stoones, #Bon Soir Club, #My Passion for Design, #Ted Rozar, #I Can Get it for You Wholesale and Streisand, #Marilyn and Alan Bergman, #Streisand Spada, #Mike Douglas and Streisand, #A Star is Born, #Stoney End, #George Segal and Streisand, #Marvin Hamlisch, #Dustin Hoffman and Streisand, #The Prince of Tides, #Barbara Joan Streisand, #Evergreen, #Bill Clinton Streisand, #Ray Stark, #Ryan O’Neal, #Barwood Films, #Diana Streisand Kind, #Sinatra and Streisand, #Streisand Her Life, #Omar Sharif and Streisand, #Roslyn Kind, #Nuts and Barbra Streisand, #Barbara Streisand, #Barbra Joan Streisand, #Barbra Streisand, #Fanny Brice and Steisand, #Streisand, #Richard Dreyfuss and Streisand, #Amy Irving, #MGM Grand, #Emanuel Streisand, #Brooklyn and Streisand, #Yentl, #Streisand Concert, #Miss Marmelstein, #Arthur Laurents, #Columbia Records, #Happening in Central Park, #Don Johnson and Streisand, #Marty Erlichman, #Judy Garland Streisand, #Jason Emanuel Gould, #by James Spada, #One Voice, #Barry Dennen, #James Brolin and Barbra, #Theater Studio of New York
Failure to pay their bills in a timely fashion was apparently a habit with Barbra and Jon, who were slapped with numerous mechanic’s liens over the years, according to court documents. Among the complainants were a pool contractor, a masonry supply company, and a general contractor hired to do work at the Malibu ranch. In all cases either Barbra or Jon contended that the work hadn’t been done to their liking; the unpaid amounts ranged from $4,500 to $50,000. The liens were removed from the properties once the bills were paid.
J
ASON GOULD, ELEVEN
in 1978, and Christopher Peters, two years younger, had been leery of each other at first, but soon became fast friends. They went tearing through the canyons during Chris’s weekend visits, first on bicycles, then on motorbikes, and finally on motorcycles as they got older. Their neighbor Trude Coleman recalled that Jason was “a sweet kid, but Christopher was a real pistol. He took after his father. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was a troublemaker, although he certainly was loud around the canyon, which was a perfect place to go motorbiking. It’s a great place for boys to grow up, a fun place. There are lots of trails and woods and places to play and build forts, and that’s what the Streisand and Peters boys did together. They’d go up into the trails for hours.”
Both Lesley Ann Warren and Elliott Gould fretted about the influence Barbra and Jon’s sumptuous Shangri-la would have on their sons. “I worry that Christopher’s not going to want to come back home to me after he’s spent time there,” Lesley Ann said. Elliott groused that “Barbra lives in a fantasy world. That’s one of the reasons I want to take Jason back to live with me. I just don’t want to take chances with his head.... I don’t want him to grow up in a worl
d of
fantasy
. I find that when he’s with me he’s very natural. I want to keep him that way.” Barbra, however, might have argued that her life in Malibu provided a more stable environment for Jason than his father’s with Jenny Bogart, who had borne him a child out of wedlock, then left him, had come back, borne another child, and finally married him in December 1973.
Why didn’t Barbra and Jon get married? “I’ve asked her about three times, but she turned me down,” Jon said. “Now I’m waiting for her to ask me.”
To Barbra, marriage represented not an institution but “a final commitment, a beautiful, romantic gesture.... But there is also a kind of excitement in not being married—you can never take each other for granted.” Neither felt any pressure to legitimize their love affair for the sake of the boys. “The children look to see what you feel about each other,” Barbra said. “They don’t check to see if you’ve got a piece of paper.”
Steve Jaffe, whom Jon had fired as his publicist late in 1975 after Jaffe declined to fly from New York to Los Angeles on a few hours’ notice to attend a meeting, recalled that Barbra and Jon would talk about marriage “almost as if it was a running joke, because neither of them needed the ceremony, and neither one was going to be changed by it. They were both pretty savvy individuals and knew that there was a good chance that the relationship wouldn’t last.”
“I
hope
I’ll be with her for the rest of my life,” Jon said. “Most mornings I wake up here with her and I
laugh
, it’s so good.”
I
N JULY
1977 Roslyn Kind returned to the club circuit with engagements at the Grand Finale in New York and the Backlot at Studio One in West Hollywood. She had given up her singing career in the early 1970s; in 1976 she had gone to work as a purchasing agent for Hollywood General Pictures. After losing that job and collecting unemployment, she decided to take another stab at performing, helped along by an encouraging friend, Richard Gordon, a Streisand fan who had befriended Diana Kind. “I got Roslyn the Grand Finale booking,” Gordon recalled, “and she was a hit, got a lot of attention, television shows, that kind of thing. She was the toast of the town for two or three weeks.”
At the Backlot, Elliott Gould introduced his former sister-in-law with the words, “Now we’re going to hear somebody who can
really
sing.” Barbra arrived late and alone, wrapped in an ivory-colored shawl and looking like a fragile porcelain doll. During intermission, when a woman mentioned to Barbra that her husband was out of town, Streisand replied, “So is mine.”
At the end of Roslyn’s act, the audience a
pplauded
heartily, but no one stood up. After about thirty seconds, a man rose to make room for someone to get out of his seat. Barbra took this as a cue and jumped to her feet. Everyone followed suit, and Roslyn got a standing ovation.
She also got excellent reviews, but nothing came of the comeback. Over the next few years Roslyn made sporadic club appearances, but she still had the same problem with comparisons to Barbra, something she seemed to invite by wearing the same hairdo and singing similar songs. As Richard Gordon put it, “When Barbra was blond, Roslyn got a blond wig. When Barbra’s hair was red, she got a red wig.” Roslyn still protested that she didn’t want to be compared to Barbra, but her actions spoke louder than her words.
Gordon felt that Roslyn’s inability to forge a singing career was largely her own doing. “Barbra could have helped Roslyn more, but the fact of the matter is Roslyn’s lazy,” he said. “She doesn’t have the ambition that Barbra had at her age. Never did. She also expected things to happen to her because of who she is. She thought her relationship to Barbra would open doors. Then she saw that it didn’t.”
By the early 1980s Roslyn had gone to work in a bakery in Westwood owned by her manager and his wife, with whom she was living. She worked mostly behind the scenes, reportedly becaus
e she c
onsidered serving customers beneath her. The name of the bakery was “Butterfly.”
B
ARBRA ALLOWED WORK
to intrude on her Malibu idyll when she returned to the recording studio to give Columbia its annual Streisand album, which the company wanted as soon as possible to capitalize on the enormous success of the
Star Is Born
sound track. Gary Klein produced the package, entitled
Streisand Superman
;
apparently his trial-by-fire introduction to Barbra when he criticized the
ButterFly
album wasn’t held against him. “The concept was to keep Barbra Streisand on the pop charts,” Klein said, “not have people think of her as just an MOR [middle-of-the-road] artist.”
As the elegant Regency-era courtesan Melinda Tentrees, one of Barbra’s dual roles in
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,
1970.
(Chris Nickens collection)
Barbra greets admirers as she attends an Ottawa arts festival with her rumored new paramour, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, January 1970. Barbra and Elliott had separated a year earlier.
(Bob Scott collection)
George Segal as Felix, uptight would-be writer, and Barbra as Doris, foul-mouthed hooker-cum-actress, in
The Owl and the Pussycat,
1970.
(Richard Giammanco collection)