Getting to Know the Incomparable Funny Girl
by Lawrence Grobel
I’ll never forget the first time I met Barbra Streisand. It was more than 30 years ago. She was editing A Star is Born (1976), a remake of a remake, with Kris Kristofferson as her costar (she wanted Elvis Presley, but the King wouldn’t meet with her alone; he brought his entourage, and Streisand didn’t think he was ready for her). She was also mixing the songs for her Superman album. She was, by far, the primo diva at the time.
My phone rang one afternoon with one of her assistants on the other end. “Barbra Streisand would like you to come to Todd-A-O Studios on Wednesday at 11 o’clock.”
She wanted me.
“Would this be business or just social?” I asked, wanting to know whether I should prepare questions and bring my tape recorder.
“Just be there,” was the response. Crisp, curt, bossy.
I had been trying to get to Streisand for nearly a year, first for Newsday’s Sunday magazine, then for Playboy, and finally for both. But getting to meet with the Funny Girl turned Funny Lady had proven to be as difficult as getting to see the pope or the Queen of England. I called her publicist, tried her agent, spoke to her manager, asked her ex-husband, wrote to her directly, but all to no avail. And then the call came. Out of the blue. The woman whose melancholy songs I used to listen to in my dorm room—songs about the man she loved, about crying a river, about people who loved people—wanted to meet me. It sounded urgent. Like she had made up her mind about something. And it involved me.
So I went to the studio at the anointed hour and sat in a waiting area until a glass door opened and she appeared, followed by five assistants. She walked straight toward me, with a full head of steam, and when I put my hand out to shake hello, she ignored it. With her face just inches from mine, and not bothering with any introductions, she said, “Why does the press hate me?”