Streisand: Her Life (112 page)

On July 12 Barbra paid a surprise walk-on visit to the David Letterman show. The scarcity of Streisand tickets had been a running gag on the show for weeks, and when Barbra strode out of the wings to the strains of “People”—and to wild applause from the audience—she handed two tickets to Letterman and told him to “stop kvetching, already.”

For her last concert in New York, Barbra decided to give “a gift” to the city and have her last encore, “Somewhere,” beamed on the giant video screen above Times Square. Tens of thousands of people crowded onto Forty-second Street in a scene reminiscent of New Year’s Eve and cheered when Barbra cried, “Hello, Times Square!”

Billboard
magazine proclaimed Barbra’s Madison Square Garden concerts “The largest grossing engagement in American music history.” The promoters of the event, Delsener/Slater Enterprises, estimated that the seven shows had grossed over $60 million.

B
ACK AT ANAHEIM’S
Arrowhead Pond for the tour’s new finale, Barbra taped the last two shows for HBO and CBS television specials. The final concert on July 24 was one of the most exciting of the tour. Relaxed and radiant, Barbra was in strong, pure voice, and the audience responded with seven prolonged standing ovations in the first act alone. “Wow!” Streisand exclaimed from the stage. “I’ve got a great closing-night audience!” At one point she told a pregnant Annette Bening that she might hurt herself if she didn’t stop popping up and down in her seat.

No one in the audience budged at the concert’s conclusion when Barbra asked if they wanted to stay and watch her sing a couple of songs again for the television cameras. She did a
handful of rep
eat performances, including “Somewhere,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” and “Evergreen.” Then she sang, for the first time during the tour, a moving version of “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” to be included in the CBS special.

W
HEN IT WAS
all over, Streisand fans filed out of the Arrowhead Pond beaming with the knowledge that they had been part of a very special night on a very special tour that Barbra had said she will never repeat. “You have to put makeup on and wear high heels,” she complained by way of explanation. “My feet get cramps.” More to the point, she had proven something to herself and to the world. “It all worked out; it was right. It was right for me to gain this confidence, to feel absolutely at ease onstage, to feel I belonged there and deserved to be there, that I could give and receive the love of those audiences. I really
am
grateful to those people.”

T
HE MOST STARTLING
moment of the entire tour—one that was edited out of the television presentations of the concert—took place during Barbra’s last performance at the Arrowhead Pond. Three hundred thousand people had cheered themselves hoarse for her over the past four months; she was at the peak of her extraordinary powers; she had proven herself as one of the most beloved entertainers of her generation.

This night her audience, perhaps because they knew this was the last time they would see Streisand perform live, burst into a stomping, cheering, ear-splitting standing ovation the minute she took the stage. For minute after long minute the wave of cacophonous adulation wouldn’t let up. But none of that mattered to Barbra as much as the reaction of one frail woman sitting in the second row. As the cheers of fifteen thousand people reverberated around her, Barbra Streisand looked down at the lady being helped up from a wheelchair and said quietly, “Are you proud of me now, Mama?”

S
he wanted the man to get on with it. As Harvard University’s interim president, Albert Carnesale, sang her praises in a lengthy introduction to the seven hundred students jammed into the cafeteria of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Streisand fidgeted, took deep breaths, rolled her eyes skyward, and at one point nearly jumped out of her seat to make him stop. When Carnesale turned to see what all this commotion was about, Barbra said to him, “You’ve heard
of shpilkes?”

She was nervous, more nervous than anyone could remember seeing her, at the prospect of delivering a speech entitled “The Artist as Citizen” to the students of one of the finest political science colleges in the world, a talk that would be taped for broadcast on the C-SPAN network. She had been asked a year earlier to speak at the school—which had hosted Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Russian President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, and scores of other world leaders—and she had worked on her speech with her usual obsessiveness. She wrote and rewrote; she sought help from friends and from political writers like Robert Scheer of the
Los Angeles Times
.

Streisand’s impending arrival had created an inordinate amount of excitement in Cambridge. So many students wanted to hear her that a lottery system was instituted, and the same security system used to protect visiting heads of state was put into place for her.

She flew into Boston by private jet on Wednesday, February 1, 1995, two days before the speech, and took up residence in the $1,500-a-night presidential suite at the ritzy Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. “A few days before Barbra checked in,” the Boston
Herald
reported, “there was a frantic search for a mandatory requirement for the diva’s suite—a full-size Hollywood vanity mirror. They found it.” Fans inundated her rooms with flowers until, the newspaper said, “it was wall-to-wall roses, tulips, calla lilies, French lilacs, and daffodils up there.”

On Thursday John F. Kennedy Jr. escorted Barbra around the Harvard campus. They toured the university’s libraries and museums, then lunched at the Kennedy School with Sharon Pratt Kelly, the former mayor of Washington, D.C., the former Tennessee senator Jim Sasser, and a select group of students that included Chris Garcia, a Republican with whom Streisand got into a spirited debate that she later said she enjoyed immensely.

W
HEN ALBERT CARNESALE
completed his introduction, Barbra stood at the lectern looking crisply professional in a dark gray pin-striped Donna Karan suit and a single strand of pearls. “I’ve stood up and performed before thousands of people, but this is much more frightening,” Barbra said to explain her obvious jitters. “Maybe it’s because this is the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. And I’m neither a politician nor a professor. I like to think of myself as a perpetual student.”

Barbra reminded the audience of the subject of her talk and said, “This is an important moment to deal with this subject because so much of what the artist needs to flourish and survive is at risk now. When I was asked to speak here a year ago, I w
as much more optimistic [because] we had a president who judged our ethnic, cultural, and art
istic diversity as a kind of strength rather than a weakness. And then came the election of 1994, and suddenly the progress of the recent past seemed threatened by those who hungered for ‘the good old days’ when women and minorities knew their place. In this resurgent, reactionary mood, artists are
derided a
s ‘the cultural elite’ and are convenient objects of scorn. And those institutions that have gi
ven Americans access to artistic works such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are in danger of being abolished.

“All great civilizations have supported the arts. However, the new speaker of the house, citing the need to balance the budget, insists that the art programs be the first to go. But the government’s contribution to the NEA and PBS is really quite meager. To put it in perspective, the entire budget of the NEA is equal to one F-22 fighter jet, a plane some experts say may not even be necessary. And the Pentagon is planning to build 442 of them. One less plane, and we’ve got the whole arts budget!... So maybe it’s not about balancing the budget. Maybe it’s about shutting the minds and mouths of artists who might have something thought-provoking to say.”

She found it difficult to contain her anger at the name-calling she had been subjected to by conservative commentators. “In Victorian times,” she said, “there were signs r
equiring actors and dogs to eat in the kitchen. And as recently as last year artists who have spok
en out politically have been derided as airheads, bubbleheads, and nitwits....

“Imagine having this kind of contempt for an industry that is second only to aerospace in export earnings abroad. According to
Business Week
,
Americans spent $340 billion on entertainment in 1993. Maybe policymakers could learn something from an industry that makes billions while the government owes trillions!...

“I know that I can speak more eloquently through my work than through any speech I might give. Speeches make me very nervous, as you can see. So as an artist, I’ve chosen to make films about subjects and social issues that I care about, whether it’s dealing with the inequality of women in
Yentl
or producing a
film
about Grethe Cammermeyer, who was discharged from the army for telling the truth about her sexuality.”

I
NDEED, BARBRA HAD
been a driving force behind
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story
,
which aired over NBC on February 6, 1995 and garnered mixed reviews and good ratings. When Barbra read news accounts of how Colonel Cammermeyer, after years of exemplary service as a nurse in the army and the National Guard, was drummed out of the Guard when she admitted that she was a lesbian, Barbra exclaimed to her producing partner, Cis Corman, “We have to do something about this. We have to tell this story.” To Barbra, Cammermeyer’s dismissal represented “discrimination, fear, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness, and I don’t think there is a place for that in a just society.... If we can help change some people’s opinions, make them less frightened of something they don’t understand; if they can look at this story and feel compassion and perhaps even anger at the military for this injustice, then it will be worthwhile.”

Streisand put together the package, which included Glenn Close, a movie star who rarely does television, as Colonel Cammermeyer. “Thank God for Barbra and Glenn,” said Craig Zadan, one of the film’s six producers, along with Streisand and Close. “We hear so much about the bad aspects of star power, but getting this movie made is a perfect example of how star power can be a force for good.”

S
TILL TAKING FREQUENT
deep breaths and fidgeting almost constantly, Barbra continued her speech: “I’m also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? [The audience cheered.] The liberals were liberating. They fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote... fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Thanks to liberals, we have Social Security, public education, consumer and environmental protection, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum-wage law, unemployment compensation. Liberals put an end to child labor. They even gave us the five-day work week. What’s to be ashamed of?...

“I have opinions, nobody has to agree—I just like being involved, and after many years of self-scrutiny, I’ve realized that the most satisfying feelings come from things outside myself....

“So until women are treated equally with men, until gays and minorities are not discriminated against, until children have their full rights, artists must continue to speak out, and I will be one of them. Sorry, Rush, Newt, Jesse—the artist as citizen is here to stay.”

The students cheered as Carnesale led Barbra off the podium, and a few moments later he escorted her back to answer questions. “Whaddaya wanna know?” she called to the audience. “
Whadda
ya wanna know?” As she replied to nearly a dozen queries, Barbra spoke as eloquently as she had from her prepared text, and promptly acknowledged that she didn’t know much about complicated policy issues. When one young woman asked what citizens could do to make sure such programs as Medicaid and Medicare stay in place, Barbra replied, “Vote for the Democrats next time.”

“Would you please consider running for public office,” a student asked her to much applause.

“No, no, no,” Barbra replied. “I’m passionate about certain issues, but I think I can be much more effective doing what I do. You know, making films about Colonel Cammermeyer, or making a film about everybody’s right to love in
The Normal Heart.
”