Streisand: Her Life (82 page)

The sound-track album of the film’s troubled and controversial musical score, which Rex Reed hated so much, surged to number one, sold four million copies, and became the largest-selling movie sound track to that date. The single release of “Evergreen” also rocketed to the top of the charts and sold over one million copies.

In February,
A Star Is Born
won five Golden Globes in the Musical or Comedy category: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Song, and Best Score. Accepting his award, Kris Kristofferson thanked “the lady.”

A
FTER ALL THE
bad press and all the critical vitriol, Barbra had been vindicated, and so had the executive who told Pierson, “Shoot her singing six numbers
and we’ll
make $60 million.” But why the stunning chasm between the way so many critics and journalists saw the film and the way the moviegoing public embraced it? The reasons are complex, and Barbra had her own opinion: “The media loves to build you up when you’re new on the scene, but after you become a star they’re always trying to tear you down.” There was, of course, an element of that in the press’s reaction to Barbra and Jon, but the couple undoubtedly played into the hands of the cynics with their grandiose, often ill-advised statements about the film, Jon’s abilities, and the public’s desire to see their story on the big screen.

A remake of a beloved classic is always a risky proposition. No matter how excellent it may be, it can never totally please fans of the original. There was no way that Rex Reed, an unreconstructed fan of Judy Garland and of traditional music, would ever have liked a rock version of
A Star Is Born.

The quality of the film
is
uneven. It careers from scenes of soaring music and touching drama to passages of embarrassingly inane dialogue, unbelievable situations, and mawkish sentiment
ality. Barb
ra’s characterization of Esther Hoffman wobbles badly in the film’s early reels: she’s self-possessed enough in her first scene to approach John Norman Howard during one of her songs and tell him angrily, “You’re blowing my act,” but moments later, alone in a car with him, she acts like a nervous schoolgirl. At the end of the film, when Esther hears a tape of John Norman that has accidentally been turned on, she believes for a few moments that he might still be alive. It is a scene that makes the suspension of disbelief difficult.

But the film works well as a musical love story. Streisand’s singing is breathtaking at times, especially with the rousing “Woman in the Moon,” the lyrical “Evergreen,” and the at first heartbreaking, then raucous seven-minute one-shot finale, “With One More Look at You/Watch Closely Now.” Kristofferson’s performance is layered and touching; he rarely hits a false note as a man in self-destruct mode who fights, does drugs, and cheats on his wife. It is a tribute to his attractiveness and his ability to move us that he never loses our sympathy despite all that. The chemistry between Barbra and Kris clearly worked; most viewers found them both sexy, attractiv
e people.

The overriding reason for the film’s popularity, however, must have been the con
temporary nature of the love story. Barbra was correct to feel that for her character to be
as submissive and docile as the previous incarnations would have been fatal to the film in 1976. Young people grappling with the issue of sex roles
could rel
ate to Esther’s taking the dominant role during sex and making John Norman up with glitter and rouge in a bathtub. This was what was happening in the front lines of the sexual revolution, and if the Reeds and Simons of the world didn’t get it, the young moviegoing public did.

W
HEN KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
saw his lifeless body lying on the ground at the end of the movie, he gave up drinking. “I realized it was my own life I was seein’ on the screen. It was like seeing myself through [his wife] Rita’s eyes—when I saw the corpse at the end, I had a weird feeling of sadness, like a character in
The Twilight Zone
who sees a coffin with his name on it. I feel so goddamn lucky to have found out in time—I’d been drinking for twenty years.”

His lyrics to “Evergreen” won Paul Williams an Academy Award when the song was chosen the best of 1976. Accepting her trophy, Barbra said, “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined winning an Academy Award for writing a song.” Williams thanked Barbra for writing “a beautiful melody” and Dr. Jack Wallstader for giving him “the Valium that got me through the wh
ole exp
erience.”

The months of wrenching work on
A Star Is Born
left Barbra exhausted but exhilarated. She had put her artistic vision on the line, and while the results were mixed, she had proved to herself that she could do it. Her head had long been aswim with cinematic visions of light and color and composition, but “I had always been afraid before,” she said. She had put many of those visions on film in
A Star Is Born
.
Some had worked, some had not. But the film left Barbra certain she could someday be a director.

“A Star Is Born
was the beginning of Barbra’s examining her own power,” Jon Peters told the author Karen Swenson in 1984. “It was the discovery period for her. And she started to realize that she could do it, she could take control of her life. I was the tool, in a way. The halfback. I was the one who ran interference for her—because there were a lot of changes she wanted to make, but she couldn’t always articulate it.... I remember Jane Fonda calling her up after she saw the film and saying, ‘Congratulations. Not only for the movie, but for leading the way for all of us.’

“In retrospect,” Jon concluded, “I have to say that the most creative experience I’ve had in my life to date was
A Star Is Born
.
I’ve never worked with a more compelling, imaginative person.”

I
’m very tired,” Barbra said early in 1977. “This film has taken up two and a half years of my life. I can’t even look at it anymore. I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to know about it.”

The filming and the eighteen-hour days she had spent getting the picture ready for release took a toll on Barbra physically; the steady barrage of negative press she and Jon had endured almost since they met had left her emotionally drained. “I wish I could say that I’ve risen above it,” she said, “but that would be a lie. I cry a lot, I can tell you that. I get so
wiped out
sometimes that I think, It’s not worth it. And then all of a sudden, someone will see me in the street, you know, and grab my hand and say, ‘I love your work’ or ‘I love you, Barbra.’ The people bring me back to a kind of reality, because the people’s reaction is so different than what I read.”

The Malibu ranch provided rest and relaxation for Barbra for most of the next two years; she wouldn’t start work on a new film until the fall of 1978. She certainly didn’t need to make another movie to keep the bills paid; her and Jon’s share of the
Star Is Born
box-office bonanza amounted to over $15 million, and Barbra’s royalties on the sound-track album brought in over $5 million more.

Barbra spent a good deal of the money to buy up additional land in Malibu and construct houses in order to create a lavish compound of five separate residences, each decorated in a distinct style. The eclectic and rustic main house, known as “the barn,” contrasted sharply with the “Deco house,” a cool, streamlined e
xample of 1930s Moderne with chrome-and-glass fixtures, gray and red lacquer, and geometr
ic patterns. A third house might have been lifted right out of America’s Colonial era, and the “peach house” contained guest quarters, a projection room, and a gym.

Jon worked mostly on the grounds because when he and Barbra had tried to renovate one of the houses together they fought constantly. He planted trees, built stone waterfalls, and landscaped the property in order to “help get rid of his hostility,” Barbra said. To the dismay of the neighbors, Jon redirected Ramirez Creek so that it would babble closer to the house. Bulldozers moved earth, stonemasons created a new riverbed, and nature’s will was thwarted. The downstream neighbors complained that the creek now swelled more dangerously during rainstorms, but Jon wasn’t about to undo the change.

When all of the rustic comfort and luxury of Ramirez Canyon wasn’t enough, Barbra still had her house on Carolwood and a cottage on the Pacific Ocean in Malibu Colony that she had bought for $564,000 cash in May of 1978. “On the beach we have
a little
shack,” Barbra said. “I mean, a real tiny little beach house. Which I like in contrast to the space of this place. It reminds me of my past.... I always lived in apartments until I was really grown up. And it’s like a little apartment. I’m doing it like a Victorian dollhouse. [All these houses] are the dollhouses I never had. We spend different parts of the year in different places. Because there’s so many different environments that I like.”

Despite all this excess, Barbra professed to want a simple life. She had proven herself more than ever the most popular actress in the world; in 1977 she was second only to Sylvester Stallone in the Quigley Poll of top box-office attractions. Now, she insisted, she wanted merely to live, to enjoy her new family and her lavish new compound, to be as normal a person as she could be.

“I don’t go to openings and premieres and wear beaded gowns,” she said. “I don’t live that way. I go home and I cook dinner. I wash dishes and do the laundry. I haven’t done that in years. This is my new kind of life.... I really like that kind of small, basic responsibility—taking care of people that you love.”

A Malibu neighbor, Joe Kern, recalled that Barbra “was very charming, very retiring, and very shy” whenever she visited him. “She walked the canyon a lot and she didn’t like it when people approached her. It wasn’t that she was snobby or anything, just scared. When she’d pass a group of us she’d be relieved if no one said anything to her or tried to stop her. She would just say hi and go on.”

“In the mornings,” Jon recalled, “she works in the yard—she raises begonias, orchids, and the best vegetables in Malibu.” More accurately, she supervised the gardener’s efforts: “I have a very weak back, so any time I’ve done it, I’m paralyzed for a week afterward, but I really like to
plan
gardens, you know. I spent the summer just going to nurseries finding the most exotic varieties of perennial plants.”

In the afternoons Barbra might play tennis or walk along the beach and the mountainside. On weekends a number of neighbors would meet at her house at ten in the morning, cook breakfast, then embark on a five-mile hike. “The other day we were walking back,” Barbra recalled, “and this big white limousine with blackened windows went past. We were all looking in, wondering who the movie star might have been in the car.” When the same thing happens to her, she admitted, she hates it. “I always wonder what people are staring at. Then I realize, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m what’s-her-name.
’”

That realization came rudely to Barbra one day when a man began to stalk her. Another neighbor, Ruth White, recalled that “there was a stalker at one point. I worked very closely with the police on that. I gave them information, and I spoke to Barbra’s office as well. This is a very closely knit neighborhood; whenever there’s a situation we kind of close ranks. I was in charge of dealing with the police about this stalker. Barbra wasn’t the only celebrity in the area [Don Henley, Geraldo Rivera, and Mick Fleetwood also lived in the canyon], and the others sometimes had stalker problems, too.”

The threat made Barbra nervous and Jon wary. They erected a No Trespassing sign at the entrance to their property, punctuated by anoth
er: “Dange
r! Beware: Guard Dogs Trained to Attack.” They meant it, too. Geraldo Rivera, who became close buddies with Jon after he purchased a house nearby, recalled in his autobiography that Jon’s Doberman pinscher, Big Red, was “the scariest dog in captivity. This Doberman was always pissed off. Once, he tried to rip the fender off my 1954 Jaguar.” Big Red also attacked a woman who had come to the ranch for a meeting, resulting in a lawsuit, and he “tore up” Joe Kern’s schnauzer. “Jon paid all the vet bills,” Kern said, “but he didn’t really apologize.”

Barbra went to the dog trainer Michael Kramer to learn how to control Big Red and two German shepherds. “At first she was a little nervous,” Kramer said, “but once she became familiar with the dogs she was very relaxed and applied herself diligently. Now she is able to have the dogs attack whenever she needs to, using her own special commands.” Kramer recalled vividly how upset Barbra could become when recognized by strangers. One time she was sitting in Kramer’s waiting room with some of his other clients. “All of a sudden there was a pounding on the door and Miss Streisand was yelling at me to let her in. She was shaking. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she had to get out of the waiting room because the other clients had recognized her. The funny thing was that no one had actually approached her.”

Jon and Geraldo acted like fraternity brothers when they were together. “We’d work out, talk about women, and get drunk together,” Rivera wrote. “We were each involved with very dominant ladies, and we commiserated and compared notes. We dreamt of our younger days, when we were free to roam and plunder and raise hell.” Whenever they could, they tried to relive those wilder days. They drag-raced their powerful motorcycles through the winding hills of Ma
libu until they nearly went over a fifty-foot cliff. “I had to sort of lay the bike down to keep it from going over,” Geraldo said. It came to a stop with one wheel hanging over the edge of the cliff. “Jon missed going over by about half a foot.... We never
rode those bikes again.”

According to Geraldo, “Jon was wild in those days.... I watched him deck a crazed fan who was stalking Barbra on the ranch. Jon wasted him with a rising left hook. I bailed him out of that one when I told sheriff’s deputies that he had merely acted in self-defense.”

Jon’s hair-trigger temper sometimes got him into legal trouble. In 1977 he gave a deposition in a lawsuit filed against him by Philip Mariott, an automobile salesman, charging him with assault and battery after an incident at the Terry York Chevrolet lot in Encino on December 1, 1974. According to Jon, he and Barbra were shopping for a car when Mariott approached them, asked if he could be of assistance, and “stated to my companion [Barbra] that she looked like Barbra Streisand. My companion stated that others had told her the same. The salesman then became persistent in talking with us although we asked to look at autos ourselves.

“He insisted on telling us about his personal dislike for Barbra Streisand movies and records, and he became more and more abusive in his comments until we finally had to leave. He became hostile and aggressive to Barbra Streisand, stating that he hated her movies and records and in general disliked her and found her unattractive, and her singing was terrible.” Finally, Jon alleged, Mariott placed himself next to Barbra “in a space of an amount that he knew would annoy her.”

At that point, Mariott alleged, Jon attacked him, injuring him so badly he could no longer work. The matter was settled out of court on December 12, 1977.

On March
5, 1978, Ba
rbra had to bail Jon out of jail after he was arrested for reckless driving and resisting arrest. The incident and what led up to it, Jon told a reporter, “was a nightmare from beginning to end.” Southern California had been battered by torrential rains for days, and Jon, Barbra, Jason, Jon’s son Christopher, and a group of their neighbors had worked around the clock to build sandbag barriers against the swelling of that redirected creek, which now threatened to flood their homes. When Jon and Christopher drove off to pick up additional sandbags from the fire department, Jon said, he informed patrolman Patrick Meister, who was standing guard, and Meister gave him permission to return.

When he got back, Jon alleged, Officer Meister “started hassling me, saying I had to have proof of identification and proof I lived in the area. Hell, who had identification? I was wearing the same muddy, rain-soaked clothes I’d had on for days. I told him I had to get back to my home, to Barbra and Jason. When he wouldn’t let me, I drove through the roadblock, and when he caught up with me, he dragged me out of my car, slammed me against the hood, put a gun to my head, and started hitting me with his club, while I kept screaming, ‘Why are you hurting me?’ Then he took me away in handcuffs.”

Meister’s supervisor, Sergeant Rodney Yates, said that Meister pursued Jon for three miles before he was able to stop him and that the officer was justified in hitting Jon: “He hit him on the legs with his baton after Peters came at him in an aggressive manner.” Barbra paid $500 to spring Jon from jail, and he made noises about suing Meister for assault and false arrest. He never followed through on the threat, however, and the charges against him were ultimately dropped.

On Barbra’s birthday in 1977 her cook, Bing Fong, prepared a cake, but by the time of her party the icing had become too hard for Jon’s taste. He told Fong to replace the icing, but the chef protested that to attempt such a thing would ruin the cake. According to Fong’s attorney, Leonard Kohn, Jon then pushed Fong against the sink so violently that the cook seriously injured his lower back. “They settled for $5,000, but with the doctor reports and testimony I think we could have gotten a lot more,” Kohn said. “But Bing Fong wanted to just settle it and take the money and not have it drawn out in court. He was very afraid of Peters.”

In Aspen a few years later Geraldo Rivera came to his friend’s aid again when Jon faced “possible felony charges for sticking his antique Colt revolver in the ear of his gardener, who had become abusive over an unpaid bill,” Geraldo wrote.