Streisand: Her Life (99 page)

B
ACK IN THE
states, Barbra was named “Female Star of the Decade” by the National Association of Theater Owners at the group’s annual convention in Las Vegas on February 23, 1988. Scheduled to arrive alone for the luncheon ceremony at Bally’s Hotel, Barbra caused “near pandemonium” when she swept in an hour late—hand in hand with Don. The couple of the moment were “embraced warmly” at the VIP table by Jon Peters (of all people), and Barbra brought the house down when she quipped, “Sorry I was a little late. I was auditioning for a part on
Miami Vice
.”
Just days later Barbra did indeed tape a wordless walk-on for the show’s “Badge of Dishonor” episode (aired March 18), while she visited Johnson in Florida. Co-stars on the show were hounded by the press for details of what local papers were referring to as “The Visit,” but they all took a “no comment” stance. A minor flap erupted when Johnson confiscated a tabloid photographer’s film after the man sneaked onto the set. One observer noted that Barbra seemed to turn “positively giddy” whenever Don drew near.

A few weeks later the venerable show business reporter Hank Grant casually mentioned in his
Hollywood Reporter
column that when Barbra and Don attended a surprise birthday party for Quincy Jones on March 14, they told a few select friends that they were planning a September wedding. This juicy tidbit, coming as it did from a repu
table journ
alist in an industry trade paper, was taken seriously, and press scrutiny of the affair heated up. Asked about the possibility of her daughter marrying Johnson, Diana Kind said, “I only met him once. I don’t know what to think. I’ll know when she sends me an invitation.”

At the end of April it was reported that Barbra was devastated when Don failed to attend her forty-sixth birthday party because he couldn’t get away from filming a new picture,
Dead-Bang
, in Canada. Gossips insisted, however, that Johnson had avoided Barbra’s party because it was thrown by Jon Peters and attended by Don’s ex-lover, Patti D’Arbanville, a Malibu neighbor of Barbra’s. Don sent flowers and an apology, but Barbra’s mood soured again when she heard rumors that Johnson was romancing his pretty young co-star, Penelope Ann Miller.

Perhaps to keep an eye on him, Barbra joined Don in Calgary, Alberta, the first week in May. The visit was idyllic, she told friends; she and Don had held each other all night long and had smooched at a private screening like teenagers on a date. “It was so warm and loving,” she said. Later in the month the couple returned to Aspen for the final ski weekend of the season, and in July they were spotted with Don’s son, Jesse, at an L.A. Dodgers game. (Barbra adored Jesse, who spent several weekends with his father frolicking at the Malibu compound.) A week later they cheered on the L.A. Lakers at the Forum. Clearly, any rift had been patched up. The lovebirds were billing and cooing again.

A
S SHE HAD
often done with men she loved, Barbra elected to bring Don into her career. For an album she planned that would trace the evolution of a love affair from beginning to end, Barbra decided to include “Till I Loved You,” a duet from an unproduced pop opera,
Goya... A Life
, that Placido Domingo hoped to bring to Broadway. Barbra saw the song as a perfect vehicle for her and Johnson, who was eager to prove that the success of his Top 10 single “Heartbeat” hadn’t been a fluke.

On the day Don was scheduled to visit Barbra at the B&J recording Studio in West Hollywood, where she was laying down tracks for the album, Barbra couldn’t resist a little showing off. “Of course, there were a couple of her framed gold records on the walls,” recalled one of the album’s recording technicians, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “but I heard her tell an assistant to make sure
all
her gold albums were on display as well as some of her most famous magazine covers. It was kind of touching, really, that she felt she had to impress Don Johnson—who couldn’t sing his way out of a wet paper bag.”

About the “Till I Loved You” sessions Barbra said, “It was a lot of fun singing with Don because he’s very musical and has a unique sounding voice. When he sings, he’s an actor—and a really good one—so he knows about being in the moment, which is always new and different and the way I like to work.”

At an early screening of Johnson’s latest film,
Sweet Hearts Dance
,
a romantic comedy-drama co-starring Susan Sarandon, Barbra couldn’t help but suggest a few changes. The picture’s director, Robert Greenwald, was unusually receptive. “[She made] some very, very good suggestions,” he said. “Nothing major. A laugh that seemed inappropriate [or] ‘This moment here I thought was a little bit ragged’—and she was right.”

As the rumored September nuptial date came and went, more and more column items suggested that Barbra’s new romance was in fact fizzling. Johnson was spotted with a nameless blonde in New York and a “ravishing brunette in Miami, while Barbra attended a party with Richard Baskin in Hollywood. But Don joined Barbra in New York on September 14 at a concert-party thrown by Stevie Wonder at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Wonder had performed there for three days before a live audience for his latest music video, and on the last night he was joined onstage by Barbra, Don, Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, and Time-Warner head Steve Ross. To the delight of the audie
nce, B
arbra joined Stevie in an impromptu duet.

A few days later Don was seen out on the town with the gorgeous eighteen-year-old actress Uma Thurman. Some press reports proclaimed the Streisand-Johnson affair dead, others quoted an “intimate friend of the couple” to the effect that the wedding had been rescheduled for December. The truth was that the affair was all but over—because, some claimed, Barbra was disturbed by Don’s suggestion that they embark on a nonmonogamous open marriage.

Still, the duo attended the Hollywood premiere of
Sweet Hearts Dance
on September 18, and their arrival created bedlam. “The doors of the black limo fling open,” wrote a Los Angeles
Herald Examiner
reporter, “the paparazzi push forward, knocking over the red velvet ropes but still managing to keep the strobes firing as they trip over each other. Fans scream, bodyguards appear out of thin air, even uniformed LAPD officers are in the human wedge that forms around the arrivees.” Following the screening, Barbra and Don attended a small party where they shared a table with Patti D’Arbanville.

Three weeks later Columbia released a single of the “Till I Loved You” duet to mixed reviews but heavy radio-audience response. Of Johnson’s performance,
Time
said the song had him “sounding more like a cop than he does o
n TV.”
Many disc jockeys made fun of Johnson’s gravelly vocals; one was so unremitting that Johnson called him to complain. “I don’t sing
that
bad!” he pleaded. Although it hit number one on adult contemporary radio formats, the record stopped at number twenty-five on the pop charts, primarily because the public had now learned of Barbra and Don’s breakup, which rather spoiled the song’s sentiments.

Although her intimates say she was deeply hurt by the collapse of the romance, Barbra kept characteristically mute on the subject. Johnson, however, told
Life
magazine, “Barbra was more willing to stay [in the relationship]. She’s an incredibly bright woman, and she’s been through a great deal of therapy. I don’t think I’m speaking out of school when I say that. We genuinely tried to make it work. But we’d reached a point where we had to make a commitment or let it go.”

The
Till I Loved You
album was released on October 6, 1988, peaked on the
Billboard
chart at number ten, and went platinum in a matter of weeks. It proved an unsatisfying collection of love songs, and rumors in the record industry claimed that Barbra was so distraught at the collapse of her relationship with Johnson that she couldn’t face the rigors of another album of theater songs to follow up
The Broadway Album
and so had decided on this less demanding pop effort.
Till I Loved You
proved yet again Streisand’s fallibility when it came to choosing appropriate material from contemporary sources.

O
N OCTOBER
16, 1988, Barbra sang at a Los Angeles fund-raiser for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Sponsored by the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee and held at the home of Ted and Susie Field in Beverly Hills, the gala attracted politicians from Jesse Jackson to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and celebrities from Faye Dunaway to Bette Midler.

Hollywood liberals were in an optimistic mood. After eight ye
ars of “beni
gn neglect” of social programs by the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan, Massachusetts Governor Dukakis seemed to have an excellent chance to defeat Reagan’s lackluster vice president, George H. W. Bush. Barbra threw herself behind the Dukakis campaign, although she did express disappointment that neither he nor Bush had chosen a woman as a running mate, as Walter Mondale had in 1984. “Either Dukakis or Bush could have buttoned it up right now if they had chosen to run with a woman in November,” she said.

Barbra, of course, was the highlight of the evening as she sang “Happy Days Are Here Again” and “America the Beautiful.” The event raised $80,000 for the Dukakis campaign and put a scare into the Bush camp. Ten days later, Bush flew into Los Angeles for a $5,000-per-person reception at Bob Hope’s home. An internal campaign memo pointed out that “the press is allowed in briefly to capture the celebrities and the festivities. This event will impact all of California and offset the post-debate Barbra Streisand reception.”

When the memo was leaked to the press, Mark Goodie, a Bush campaign spokesman, took pains to point out that
“
‘The Way We Were’ is a Bush favorite. And actually we were very pleased when Governor Dukakis appeared with Barbra Streisand because we have been trying to remind American voters of the ‘misty water-colored memories of the way we were’ just eight short years ago when the economic ox was in the ditch.”

George Bush won the election after Dukakis proved to be a less than formidable candidate. But Barbra and her fellow Democrats would have their day four years later.