Barbra Streisand – Crawley's Casting Calls

Jean Seberg, St. Joan, 1957. Producer-director Otto Preminger could hardly be expected to remember any of the reputed 18,000girls he auditioned around the world. Or, not until a woman upbraided him. “My daughter auditioned and you did not give her the part. You – afamous director! You didn’t recognise talent when you saw it.”His response to Streisand’s mother was: “You should be grateful. Compare her career to Seberg’s – it might have ruined her.”
Laurie Peters, Summer Holiday, 1963.
Barbra Streisand and Cliff Richard…! Hard to believe but US choreographer Herbert Ross suggested a certain Broadway chorus girl would be perfect to co-star for the BritishElvis wannabe. “The producer saw her,” recalls Cliff, “but said she wasn’t right for the part”- of a teenage singer, running away disguised as a boy. (Shades of Yentl). Ross directed Streisand in his second movie, The Owl and the Pussycat, 1970, and the Elstree musical’s helmer, Peter Yates, made For Pete’s Sake withher in 1974. Lauri Peters becamethe first Mrs Jon Voight, 1962-1967. And Cliff was knighted by Queen Eliszabeth II in 1995.
Samantha Eggar, Doctor Dolittle, 1967. Considering the racially abusive Dr Rex Harrison (called Tyrannosaurus Rex behind his back) was 57,Fox was none too sure who should be his romantic interest – who was not in the books. He wanted his My Fair Ladystage co-star because he was furious she was never even considered for the film version. (“Eliza Doolittle is supposed to be ill at ease in European ballrooms. Bloody Audrey [Hepburn] has never spent a day in her life out of European ballrooms”). Or his pal, Maggie Smith, was 33. Hayley Mills was 20. Barbra Streisand, 24,would have punched out his anti-Semitism. “Yes, he was unkind and vitriolic and very mean-spirited,” recalled Eggar, 27, “but he was also very funny. Until, of course, he turned on me, too.”
Jane Fonda, They Shoot Horses Don’t They? 1969. Set in the cruelly exploitive dance marathons of the 1920s and early 1930s, when couples “danced ” non-stop for aa long as 1,000 hours – just for food and money. They danced until they dropped or died. (Reminiscent of a 70s’ LA disco called Dance Ya Ass Off.) La Barb and Julie Christie passed on the sharp-tongued Gloria Beatty… ironically, Warren Beatty was in the frame for her partner, Michael Sarrazin’s Robert Syverton. Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Losey and two French auteurs, Jean-Pierre Mocky (with Brigitte Bardot!) and François Truffaut had all tried to film Horace McCoy’s book during ts 35 year long journey to the screen.
Dyan Cannon, Such Good Friends, 1971. Another Otto Preminger turn-down. “Author Lois Gold and I discussed her. A very good actress and singer but too strong and too sharply Jewish for this lady. Cannon was right: a very insecure, very troubled woman.”
Jane Fonda, Klute, 1970. Greatly in need of a hit after three successive losers – Hello Dolly!, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Owl and the Pussycat – La Barb took bad advice and and rejected the hooker Bree Daniels (She already been a hooker the year before in Pussycat). So it was Fonda who did the research with real callgirls and pimps. (Husband Roger Vadim latet bullied her into threerways with hookers). Miffed that none of the pimps offered to represent her, Fonda felt undesirable and told director Alan J Pakula to get Faye Dunaway… a more desirable hooker. And the Oscar goes to… (PS: Sylvester Stallone was among the extras).
Barbara Harris, Plaza Suite, 1970. On Broadway, George C Scott and Maureen Stapleton starred in all three Neil Simon mini-plays. Paramount wanted six stars: Scott & Stapleton (repeating the first of their triples), Peter Sellers & Baraba Streisand, Walter Matthau & Lucille Ball. Then, Matthau insisted on playing the three guys – with Lee Grant, Barbara Harris and Stapleton. Simon didn’t like the cast, nor the picture. “Walter was wrong to play all three parts. That’s a trick Peter Sellers can do. I would only have used Walter in the last sequence and, probably, Lee Grant.”
Jennifer O’Neill, Summer of ’42, 1971. “At the last moment,” producer Fred Weintraub told me in Yugoslavia, “there was a hurried rush because they had nobody for the lead – and they tried to get Streisand. She turned it down.”
Liza Minnelli, Cabaret, 1972. Refused long before director Bob Fosse came aboard. She preferred Up In The Sandbox. Go figure. And the Oscar goes to… Confirming the fact that director Bob Fosse was here to stay (alas not for long enough), Cabaret stems from the Weimar Berlin stories by Christopher Isherwood who based his main character (he is the other one!) Sally Bowles on the British often naked teenage libertine flapper-actress-singer-writer Jean Ross – later Communist, Spanish civil war correspondent and lover of jazz pianist (later actor) Peter van Eyck. On her father’s advice, Minnelli (rejected for the Broadway production!) chanelled Louise Brooks as Sally. Isherwood said Liza was too talented such a “medicore” singer. Never said what he thought of her ten rivals: Ursula Andfess, Julie Andrews, Ann-Margret, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Jill Ireland (!), Glenda Jackson, Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand, Brenda Vaccaro and Natalie Wood. Plus Julie Christie… with Warren Beatty as her gay pal Brian!
Marsha Mason, Cinderella Liberty, 1973. La Barb was the studio’s choice. Marsha won her first Oscar nod.
Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974. “I was too young.”And besides, she said, who on earth would believe her as a failed saloonsinger…Well, that would depend onhow well she playedit.Anne Bancroft also ”nibbled.” And the Oscar goes to…
Jessica Lange, King Kong, 1976. “That was Jon Peters’ idea – en erotic Kong. And I thought: Yeah Like…No Leading Man Big Enough! Isn’t thatfunny?” Not as much as the legend about Peters having dinner with Kong producer Dino De Laurentiis while Streisand was making Funny Lady. “Your movie will do much better,” said De Laurentiis. “Your monkey sings.”
Glenda Jackson, The Incredible Sarah, 1976. The 1972 plan of bravura UK director Ken Russell’s. La Barb was keen.Of course, she was. She had a Bernhardt bust, sculpted by Bernhardt in her Beverly Hills home, plus three Mucha posters of Bernhardt plays: Camille, Hamlet, Medea. “Three roles I’ve always longed toplay, especially Medea.” But Russell’s script allegedly had a man making love to the divinely dead Sarah in her coffin… with her wooden leg sticking out.That’s pure Ken Russell!
Jane Fonda, Julia, 1977. La Barb said she refused films because living her life or romances were more important. After passing her They Shoot Horses, Klute and now Julia, La Barbn boasted: “I made Jane Fonda’s career.” Codswallop! Well, she can say it, but it ain’t true. Fonda had already started wining awards, Golden Globes, etc, for Cat Ballou, in 1965 (three years before Streisand’s Funny Girl). And what followed – Sunday In New York, Any Wednesday, Hurry Sundown, Barefoot in the Park, Barbarella – were not exactly screen tests.
Sondra Locke, The Gauntlet, 1977. Hard to imagine even Marlon Brando coming close to Clint’s alcoholic cop – dispatched to Vegas to bring a foul-mouthed hooker witness back to Phoenix. No way says the Mafia army… That was Plan A: Mumbles and La Barb. Plan B: Steve McQueen and Streisand. Thery didn’t gell at all. Plan C: Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw (Mrs McQueen – for Sam Peckinpah). Plan D: Clint and Streisand. She’d brought him the script. But she wanted songs. He bought her out] for Plan E: Clint and his lady, Sondra Lockesharing one-liners… “For two cents and a stick of gum, I’d beat the shit out of you” – “Whatever gets you off, Butch.” Classic Eastwood, said Roger Ebert. “Fast, furious, funny.” And totally shoot-out preposterous!
Jane Fonda, Coming Home, 1978. She didn’t want to have to sing all the time… “I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.”.
Faye Dunaway, The Eyes of Laura Mars, 1978. Columbia paid John Carpenter $200,000 for his thriller script – and adapting it for Streisand. “However,” recalled Carpenter, “I didn’t have a clue how to write for Streisand. She is essentially…a New York actress. So to prepare… I read a lot of Neil Simon!” Didn’t work. David Zelag Goodman took over – writing for Dunaway. She had something La Barb did not – a photographer lover soon to be husband, Terry O’Neill. Hence: great poster, poor film. The April 19790 Mad Magazine send-up was: The Eyes of Lurid Mess.
Margot Kidder, Superman, 1978,
Gena Rowlands, Gloria, 1980. Columbia insisted on Barbra but she was still mad at writer-director John Cassavetes forrefusingto be her director for hire on A Star Is Born, 1976.Anyway, she reasoned, who would believein her as a Mafia doll.Gena loved Gloria; John who created her, did not.
Vanessa Redgrave, Playing For Time, TV, 1980. La Barb resembled the real Fania Fenelon much more than Redgrave – yet still walked away. She had no wish to make a tele-movie.
Geraldine Chaplin, Les uns et les autres, France, 1980. For another of Claude Lelouch’s over-blown (as many stars as cliches), James Caan persuaded La Barb to talk about the double role of Suzanne and Sara Glenn. “She was most enthusiastic,” reported the realisateur. Her agents were not: $4m for four weeks. Shevisited the shooting in Paris. For free.Bless her heart!
John Belushi, Continental Divide, 1981.
Steven Spielberg adored the Tracy/Hepburn unlikely romcoms. Now he’d found his own. Except he chickened out when he couldn’t unearth a new Spence/Kate. He remained producer and thought the no-nonsense journo hero (based on Chicago Sun Times columnist Mike Royko) was perfect for… Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Falk, Dustin Hoffman. Plus George Segal, who showed it to his California Split co-star, Elliott Gould, who showed it to his wife and… La Barb immediately wanted to switch roles and be the journo opposite Robert Redford as the bald eagle researcher! Which is about when Belushi, the ruination of Spielberg’s 1941, decided he could go straight. Spielberg believed him. And stuck him on poor UK director Michael Apted. Gigantic error! (Barbra and Redford reminds me that Billy Wilder always said a guaranteed hit needed: a love story between Paul Newman and Robert Redford on a Boeing on fire flown by… Barbra).
Cher, Mask, 1985. Seeking an A-list biker mom, the studio told director Peter Bogdanovich to hook up again with his 1972 What’s Up Doc? Star… or Jane Fonda. “No one,” he said, “thought of Cher for the part except me.” Not so… Scenarist Anna Hamilton Phelan hadpinned a photo of the chanteuseto the scriptshehanded into Bogdanovich.
Bette Midler, Big Business, 1988. Barbra and Goldie Hawn meet Shakespeare! The two sets of twin sisters in this update of Comedy Of Errors were penned for La Barb and Goldie. That they didn’t accept them is best explained in Chicago critic Roger Ebert’s review: “This ought to have inspired a funny movie, but instead… it inspires… an endless and dreary series of scenes in which the various twins just barely miss running into each other.” Bette made it with Lily Tomlin. Midler’s previous title stemmed from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, line 58, … Outrageous Fortune.
Cher, Mermaids, 1989. Directors kept switching from Sweden’s Lasse Hallström to Frank Oz to Richard Benjamin, but none could land La Barb as Mrs Flax . All very exciting for the novelist Patty Dann. “It was wonderful and a bit overwhelming. I’d be sorting socks on the bed and get calls like, Barbra Streisand wants to do the movie, and I’d just say, sure, and then Cher ended up playing the mother. It was a wild experience.” She liked the movie very much. So did Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “I didn’t give a bean how it turned out, and I found a lot of it preposterous, but I enjoyed that quality.”
Farrah Fawcett, Margaret Bourke-White, TV, 1989. Her epic project about the Life magazine photographer (played by Candice Bergen in Gandhi) finally became a tele-movie – directed by another famed photographer, Lawrence Schiller. “Out of focus,” said Variety. Of course.
Kathy Bates, Misery, 1990. “Nobody knows you’re here. And you better hope nothing happens to me. Because if I die… you die.” The vengeful fan Annie Wilkes was the full throttle woman’s role that scared A List guys off the 32nd of Stephen King’s staggering 313 screen credits. His Stand By Me director Rob Reiner considered Anjelica Huston, Jessica Lange, comics Roseanne Barr, Vicki Lawrence, Mary Tyler Moore Rosie O’Donnell, and singers Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand… until scenarist William Goldman picked Bates. And she won the best actress Oscar on March 25, 1991. As if that wasn’t enough, King later wrote Dolores Claibourne and rewrote Ray as Rae in The Stand, for Kathy.
Madonna, Evita, 1996. Way back in 1979, producer Robert Stigwood agreed to her terms:Not Argentina, just $3m, plus $1m for the album – and points. When director Oliver Stone introduced Madonna to Andrew Lloyd Webber, she said in her brassy way that she was a composer, too, and wanted to work on the music, first – change some of the songs a bit. “Webber sat there,” said Stone, “not really believing it.”
Barbara Hershey, Portrait Of A Lady, 1996. Australian director Jane Campion called – as if La Barb believed another woman director existed!
Kathy Bates, Titanic, 1996.
Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock, 2000. Ed Harris prepared to play the alcoholic, manic-depressive painter Jackson Pollock for 15 years – and pouncedas soonas co-stars De Niro and La Barb let it go. And quickly called Marcia to be his wife, Lee Krasner.
Eartha Kitt, The Emperor’s New Grooves, 2000. The much troubled Disney toon started out as Kingdom of the Sun, with much the same cast and characters. From the outset, Lion King director Roger Allers wanted La Barb as Yzma, described in the script as an aged royal sorceress.Yzma, She did not appreciate the appreciate the adjective.
Patricia Kaas, And Now…Ladies & Gentlemen, France-UK, 2002. French film-maker Claude Lelouch who never learns from experience (hence his string of lookalike lovers, wives and movies) asked for La Barb again – to co-star with Dustin Hoffman, who finally turned into Jeremy Irons. Then, he realised to have Streisand as a singer in a bar, well “people would mock me.” Just as the silly movie mocked him. Unknowingly, bien sur.
Nicole Kidman, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, 2006. Eight years after MGM and Lorimar did little else but talk about it, Streisand took an option on Patricia Bosworth’s bio. After failing to interest Jonathan Demme, Mike Nichols or Martin Scorsese, she fled in 1997.
Annette Bening, The Women, 2007. After 15 years trying to make her version of MGM’s 1938 magic, the fizz had left the bubbly for the TV Murphy Brown creator Diane English. Few among her cast(s) could match the 30s ladies. La Barb would have had more fire than Bening in Rosalind Russell’s Sylvia.
Eva Mendes, The Women, 2007. Uma might have cut it, but Eva was no Crawford.
Julia Roberts, The Normal Heart, 2013.
In the year of another comeback (the misfiring Guilt Trip with Seth Rogen, 2012, and singing at the Oscars), La Barb’s 38-year-old pet project was rescued by HBO – due to Glee creator Ryan Murphy and Plan B’s Brad Pitt. Kramer complained he’d be dead before she did it – nothing, of course, to do with his imperious restrictions: $1m for his script which must be used without changes. “I couldn’t get any studio to commit to his version [HBO only offered $250,000 in the 90s]. Many fine actors [including Bradley Cooper] were ready to commit to our version but Larry would not allow it.” He even accused Streisand of making Emma the most important role, when she only offered to play her, as well as helming, “if that would help get it made.” John Schlesinger took it over… and he did die before he could make it. Kramer, himself, couldn’t give it away over the next decade, until Ryan Murphy talked HBO into a deal… and worked with Kramer on the script for three years on “40/45% new material… similar to the play and very different.” As Barbra always wanted. Plus starring Mark Ruffalo, her own choice for Ned Weeks, based on Kramer, and his tireless AIDS activism.

Birth year: Death year: Other name: Usual occupation: SingerCasting Calls: 37