Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand

So many threads about Streisand. Is anybody ever going to let that old bitch go?

The cynics had it wrong. "Barbra's far too bright to ever be with somebody just because he's a hunk," said Steve Jaffe, Ryan's public relations man at the time. "And Barbra had a lot of choices of men she could have dated. I'd be at her house and the phone calls that would come in! Extraordinary men would be on the line. But she wanted Ryan, and it wasn't just for his body.

According to Jaffe, "Ryan liked to expound on things, and his opinions sounded like they'd been tested. He knew where the bodies were buried and how you could get into trouble in Hollywood. Barbra would soak it all up like a sponge."

"Ryan and I had an argument on our first date," Barbra said. "He won. I never felt better losing. . .. Ryan isn't afraid of my image; he respects my talent, but he's not in awe of my career. I guess that's what made me like him at first."

Barbra and Ryan had good reason to avoid being photographed together. Ryan at the start of his dalliance with Streisand was still married to actress Leigh Taylor-Young. He was also in the running for an Oscar for Love Story and upon the advice of his press agent he was told not to alienate the older, more conservative Academy voters by appearing in public with any woman who was not his wife or his mother. And Barbra, who remained a nice, traditional, Jewish girl at heart, was still legally married to Elliott Gould.

But the facts could not be denied. Ryan and Barbra were deluding themselves if they thought that they could escape attention when they turned up together for James Taylor's opening at the Troubadour and at a party at the home of their agent. Sue Mengers. They were stalked by paparazzi constantly, but managed to avoid being photographed together until the March night they attended a party at the Malibu home of record executive Robert Krasnow and later moved on to Mama Cass Elliott's concert at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Photographer Peter Borsari tried to get a picture of them as they left the concert. Borsari claimed that he was then attacked by Ryan's younger brother, Kevin O'Neal, who threatened to smash his camera "You can sue me for as much as you want," Kevin shouted back, throwing a punch. "I don't have any money anyway"

Although Ryan had attended the Academy Awards with his wife, he lost the Oscar to George C. Scott for Patton. Since then, he and Barbra had been spotted more frequently in public, for example at the June 18 premiere of his new movie. The Wild Rovers, and he even dropped in on a recording session for her next album. Elliott had found someone new, and now it was time for Barbra to go public with her own new lover.

Ryan even brought Barbra, who was now also blond and bronzed from her days at Malibu Beach, to the Reseda ranch of his first wife, actress Joanna Moore, where Barbra met his children, Griffin and Tatum. At one point, they reportedly ordered his and her gold dog tags from Cartier.

"We both fall in love easily. You wouldn't think so, would you? I've had one marriage that didn't work; he's had two. No one's in a rush," Barbra said.

Barbra and Elliott filed for divorce in a joint petition in Santo Domingo. Always eager to experiment, they became the first couple to dissolve their marriage under the Dominican Republic's new quickie divorce law. Under the statute, foreign couples and Dominicans living abroad could be divorced in less than 12 days.

....Peter Bogdanovich wanted to do a screwball comedy. Barbra would play a wacky girl who gets involved with a very serious musicologist who is already engaged to an equally stuffy heiress. Barbra, it turned out, had something more serious in mind. Something like The Last Picture Show, But she was willing to go along with a comedy if she could have Ryan as her leading man

'it'll be just like Bringing Up Baby," Bogdanovich told her. "You know, the Howard Hawks picture with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. You'll play this free-spirited zany girl who meets this stuffy scientific-type guy and turns his life upside down. It'll be great."

"Well, I guess so," Barbra had replied. "As long as Ryan O'Neal plays the guy."

But Bogdanovich did not want Ryan. Fortunately for movie history, Sue Mengers, the powerful Hollywood agent who was representing Barbra, Ryan, and Bogdanovich at the time, managed to broker a deal.

The genesis for this new movie had come inadvertently from Elliott Gould, who, following his breakup with Barbra, had emerged as the hottest new male star of the seventies. After M*A*S*H he made five movies in a row, then "freaked out" on the set of A Glimpse of Tiger in New York. Wearing a New York Giants football helmet, with a New York Yankees baseball cap over that, he harassed his director, Anthony Harvey, by blowing a whistle while other actors were doing their scenes. He also shook up his costar, Kim Darby, and fired, then rehired, his producer-partner, Jack Brodsky, who tried to get Barbra to intervene.

"Barbra was getting all this news on the phone in L.A.," said Ryan O'Neal. "She spoke to Elliott for thirty minutes and got him to apologize. Then Brodsky would call back ten minutes later with some new item"

During rehearsals, Bogdanovich shot tests of Streisand and O'Neal. He showed the tests to director Howard Hawks, whose Bringing Up Baby, with Gary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, was the admitted plot from which he'd stolen What's Up Doc? ("You made a mistake telling 'em where you stole it from," Hawks told the young director. "I never said who I stole it from.")

Hawks, upon viewing the Streisand-O'Neal footage, stated that Barbra had the same problem as Hepburn. She was trying too hard to be funny. "Tell them to just read the lines," he instructed. "They've got to play off each other and get the laughs from their attitudes

Bogdanovich arranged for Barbra and Ryan to see a steady stream of his favorite screwball comedies, and Newman recalled the night he, Benton, Bogdanovich, Barbra, and Ryan watched Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, in Barbra's basement screening room at Carol wood.

Newman had never met Barbra or Ryan before, but when he did, he felt they'd be great together in the movie. "There was a lot of funny bantering between them," he recalled. "They kidded each other a lot"

When The Lady Eve unreeled, Peter, Barbra, and Ryan sat behind Newman and Benton. The two writers started laughing right away, and every so often Bogdanovich would guffaw. Soon Newman realized that he hadn't heard so much as a giggle from either Barbra or Ryan. "Then I heard Barbra say, That's four for her and only two for him.' I turned around and asked, 'What?' It turned out she was counting the close-ups. And Ryan said, 'Oh, there's another one-for him; that makes it four to three"

A short time later Barbra stood up and said, "Okay, that's enough, I know what you mean' and halted the screening. Newman felt that the essence of her reaction was "I hope we can do better than this." He walked out of the film "feeling stunned because we had just seen one of our favorite movies and Barbra didn't think it was any good. And when Peter screened Bringing Up Baby for her, she thought that was awful, too."

Undeterred, Bogdanovich and his writers began to work on a second draft of What's Up, Doc? They came up with the story of Judy Maxwell, a free-spirited girl with a near-genius IQ.

In production Streisand worried about the lighting, the sets, and the wardrobe. "She doesn't work from a confidence base," said Ryan. "She likes to go into a project thinking it's the worst, and she builds from there."

Bogdanovich recalled: "All through the picture Barbra kept telling Ryan: 'Ryan, we're in a piece of—. I mean, we're really in trouble.' She also tried to direct, but I put a stop to that real fast."

"Peter used to scold Barbra because she didn't do what he said," said O'Neal. "Barbra can do a scene twenty different ways and they all sound right to me. She'd say, 'Pick one.' But Peter always wanted one she hadn't done. He tried to condense her and pull her back. He made her cut her nails. He wouldn't let her wear makeup, hairpieces, or all the things she's used to doing, because all her movies have been vehicles."

Bogdanovich later claimed that he had to drag Barbra "kicking and screaming through the picture. She thought we were going to do something else, and I suppose I tricked her," he said. "She'd make trouble occasionally about things that she didn't think were funny, and I'd just laugh at her. She'd ask me what I was laughing at and I'd tell her she was cute. She wouldn't know what to say to that.

Steve Jaffe recalled seeing Ryan "dancing around like Muhammad Ali before a fight, just getting ready for a scene with Barbra. He was trying to act at his absolute peak. Not only because Barbra's so great and such a perfectionist but because he wanted her to respect him. He wanted to be as good as he could be"

Peter Bogdanovich had a tendency to play out every scene himself in order to show his cast exactly what he wanted them to do. This approach worked well with O'Neal. "He let Peter place him, his body and his voice," said Buck Henry. "Ryan was playing Peter." But the first time Bogdanovich showed Barbra how he wanted her to recite some dialogue, she looked at him as though he has lost his mind. "Are you giving me line readings?" she asked

It may have been this difficulty that made Barbra doubt that anything in What's Up, Doc? was funny. As Pat Rogalla put it, "Barbra appeared to be working with gritted teeth." After nearly every scene, she would nudge O'Neal and say, "We're in a piece of shit, Ryan!" She never let up. Again and again she told O'Neal, "This is not funny, Ryan. I know what's funny, and I'm telling you this movie isn't funny"

Actress Madeline Kahn, who made her film debut in What's Up Doc? and who later romped home with most of the attention and the accolades for her scenes, recalled her expectations. "I was a little apprehensive about Barbra. I had heard that a lot of performers wound up on the cutting-room floor in her movies.

But I knew Peter had control. I was looking forward to working with her. We're both Jewish; we're both from New York; I sing and she sings—I thought we'd have a lot to talk about. But Barbra wasn't having any of that. Ryan was wonderful. Very funny, and helpful. But Barbra preferred to keep a polite distance"

She looked good here. Why on earth did she get that nightmarish red perm in the late 70s?

1 NO! Streisand, like Liz Taylor, is far to interesting to ever let go off

That August 16, the cast and crew of What's Up, Doc? moved to San Francisco for location filming. Barbra and Ryan shared a suite at the Himtington Hotel and for them it was a romantic time.

She had never looked better, sleek, slim, and blonde. Mengers called Barbra and Ryan "my two golden bubbles." It was also in San Francisco that Ryan suffered a serious on-set injury. He tripped over Barbra's heavy ermine coat during filming. At first, it looked like a pulled muscle.

Only later would the injury be diagnosed as much more serious. Neither Barbra nor anyone else connected with Doc had any idea that Ryan was in tremendous pain throughout the rest of the filming.

What's Up, Doc? wrapped in October. When Barbra viewed a rough cut with Sue Mengers and John Calley, they were delighted, but she was not amused. "I know from funny," she said, "and this is not funny." Her expectations were so grim that she sold her gross points back to Warners Bros, for $2.5 million.

She even resisted the idea of a soundtrack album, although she agreed to duet with Ryan, singing Cole Porter's "You're the Top" over the opening credits. (She also sings "As Time Goes By" in the film.) And before the movie premiered, the original bittersweet ending was changed. Barbra and Ryan were called back for additional filming in December so that their characters instead of parting at the airport, could declare their love on board the plane

When the film opened in March to rave reviews and an eventual $50 million gross, GBS Records approached the star about releasing a soundtrack album. The LP would include her duet with Ryan and a full version of "As Time Goes By," plus some snappy dialogue and incidental music. The star vetoed the idea. There would be no soundtrack released.

Streisand the serious artist was at the forefront once more. She was about to turn thirty; time, she felt, was running out. "My father died when he was only thirty-five," she said. "Perhaps I'll die young also. And what will I leave behind? Some record albums, a few lightweight films? That's not enough. I would like to do some important work."

Real life ran a slightly different course, however. By the time filming ended, Barbra and Ryan were no longer dating. By then he and Barbra were no longer an item. "Ryan had a very highly attuned libido," Steve Jaffe said. "Barbra and everyone else knew it. Ryan's roving eye likely doomed his relationship with Barbra.

Neither has ever spoken about the reason for their breakup, but she was reportedly miffed when Peggy Lipton, the exquisite young star of television's Mod Squad, visited him on the Doc set. Later he wooed the Playboy bunny and actress Joyce Williams as well as Lana Wood and Bogdanovich's estranged wife, Polly Piatt.

Although the romance with Ryan was over, they remained good friends. Barbra was naturally concerned when he entered St. John's Hospital for back surgery that December. What had first appeared to be a sprained muscle when he fell over Barbra's ermine coat in San Francisco, turned out to be a slipped disc. Barbra marveled that, "I never heard him complain. I never dreamed he was hurt that badly."

Now he lay in the hospital and there was nothing she could do for him. "The terrible irony is that you're with somebody so much and just then you need to be with him, you can't be," she said. They did stay in touch by phone, and she flew back to Los Angeles twice to visit him in the hospital.

Barbra said, "Ryan's spirits were good. He was in a lot of pain, but he was very valiant about it all. He was lying in bed, and you know, he has that terribly irresistible little-boy quality about him. I have that terrible Brooklyn Jewish need to mother. Maybe that's why we get along so well."

More from the Ryan troll

James Spada was a hack writer who devoted his pitiful life to promoting Barbra Streisand as a sex symbol. Anything he wrote is unreliable.

But Barbra had a commitment to appear in Las Vegas for the 1972-1973 holidays, Ryan's wife was free to visit him daily.

Barbra insists that to her, Ryan was always more than a pretty face. "I don't think externals are so important as many people think. I feel secure with men of all kinds, whatever they look like, but I think most women hesitate to pair up, permanently, with a man who's . . . outrageously handsome. Anyway, what's inside is what tells. I never cared for dumb dons; I want a man with brains upstairs, you know?"

I found Barbra very sexy," Ryan said somewhat later. "A terrific girl." Then he added, in mock dismay, "but I think she used me"

Years later, Ryan was asked why he and Barbra had not married. His reply: "Well, that's very personal, and there are many reasons, but I occasionally think about it and I'll just say this about that—If I had to marry, I mean if I was up against the wall with a rifle at my back, Babs is the girl I'd have wanted to marry"

That April it was announced that Barbra's next film for Barbra would be The Way We Were, Now all Barbra needed was a director and a leading man. She wanted Ryan O'Neal, but Stark felt she had already teamed with him once and he wanted to see her with someone new for some fresh chemistry.

Next, she targeted Warren Beatty. Like Ryan, Beatty was known for romancing some of the most beautiful stars in town, including Julie Christie and Joan Collins. Warren and Barbra knew each other socially, especially at the time she was dating his friend Ryan O'Neal. These two pals frequently shared the same ladies (not at the same time, it should be noted), and Barbra was not a part of the traffic

I can see Babs and Ryan but I cannot see Babs and Warren Beatty.

Warren indicated he was interested in co-starring with Barbra in The Way We Were and Barbra's agent, Sue Mengers, arranged a meeting for them to discuss their mutual interests. But Warren was far more interested in Barbra's drawing power for a political benefit he was planning than in sharing the screen with her.

"Both Warren and Barbra, when they wanted something, could be very seductive," an insider said "So the games went on and soon they were in bed. It went on for weeks. They'd meet at her house, or at El Escondido, his hideaway suite at the Beverly Wilshire. Warren was relentless. He worked on her head. And on her hands, feet, and shoulders. Barbra matched him, stroke for stroke. He'd get her into bed and he'd turn on the famous Beatty charm, and then he'd shp in a plug for the concert. 'Barbra, you should do it. You have to do it. It's your civic duty. For me, baby, come on, come on.'

And Barbra would say "I know, Warren. I know. I am considering it. Now let's read some more of the script.' And he'd say, 'Okay, Barbra. You want to take it from the top or the bottom this time?"

Barbra eventually yielded to Warren's urging and agreed to shelve her fears about performing in public to join three other music stars, Carole King, James Taylor, and Quincy Jones, in a live concert at the Hollywood Forum. The "Foxir for McGovem" concert was designed to raise money for Senator McGovem's presidential campaign.

It would be Barbra's first live concert appearance in five years

Sydney Pollack, who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, was signed to direct. Pollack immediately went after Robert Redford, whom he had directed so successfully in Jeremiah Johnson, But Redford, like Warren Beatty before him, recognized that Barbra had all the good scenes and he had no desire to play a subordinate role. He believed Hubbell's detached WASP cool was no match for the heat of Katie's commitment. Pollack insisted that Redford was the only actor strong enough not to be overshadowed by Barbra on screen.

"It wasn't that there weren't other actors who could act," said Pollack. "But they didn't look like Bob. You had to have a WASP—and all-American, blond, blue-eyed. Newman was too old. Ryan [O'Neal] is a good actor, but [Barbra] was just too strong."

"I had turned it down because it was overly sentimental and drippy," Redford said. "I also thought the politics in it was bullshit. It was knee-jerk liberalism and very arch. But there was some very good love-story writing, which read to me like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie."

The script was revised and revised again to make it more acceptable to Redford.

Stark was getting angry. "We have Barbra, and what do we need Redford for?" he told Pollack. "Ryan O'Neal will do it."

Finally, at a meeting with Ray Stark and Arthur Laurents in Stark's apartment in the Dorchester Hotel in New York, matters came to a head. "I'm going to give Redford one hour and then fuck it," Stark announced. "I'm just not going to chase my life around Robert Redford. Who the fuck does he think he is"

Pollack found this "a real vindictive, ego conversation. I said to him, 'Ray, don't do it.' I got Bob on the phone and told him I had to come over to his apartment and settle this." As Pollack left Stark told him "You've got an hour."

Pollack used every argument he could think of to change Redford's mind: the picture wouldn't start filming until the fall, it could be shot mostly in New York so that Redford could stay with his family. Pollack also assured him that the script would be rewritten to give Hubbell a stronger point of view.

"What is this picture about, Pollack?" Redford wanted to know. "Who is this guy? He's just an object. A nothing. He runs around saying, 'Aw, c'mon, Katie, c'mon, Katie.' He doesn't want anything. What does this guy want, Sydney? What does he want'?"

"He's a very moving guy, Bob," Pollack replied

Redford was asking, "What's moving? What's moving?" when the phone rang. It was Stark, telling Pollack his hour was up. "Come back. That's it. We're hiring Ryan O'Neal."

"No, you're not. I'll call you back in ten minutes!" Pollack slammed the phone down and turned to Redford, who was cradling his head in his hands. "All right, Pollack," he finally said. "I'll do it."

"The reason I finally decided to do the picture," Redford said, "was that I had faith that Pollack and [the screenwriters] Alvin Sargent and David Rayfiel would make something more out of that character than was in the script. As it was written, he was shallow and one-dimensional. Not very real—more a figment of someone's imagination of what Prince Charming should be like. What emerged out of the rewrites were glimpses of the darker side of this golden boy character—what his fears were about himself"

A good read, OP...keep posting!

Once Redford signed—at a reported salary of $1.2 million, which was $200,000 more than Streisand received—Barbra eagerly awaited their first meeting, a customary procedure where two co-stars sit down to get to know each other and discuss their roles. Redford wanted no part of it.

It was not for her lack of trying, others claimed. She used all of her wiles to get to him," said one agent. "She became obsessed with him. Night and day it was Redford this, Redford that." She couldn't wait to get him alone. She called Sue Mengers, she called Sydney Pollack. Redford was going to be her leading man and she had to prepare. She had to meet with him—privately. The fact that he was married, or not interested in being alone with her, never crossed her mind.

After all, she was Barbra Streisand—men, beautiful men by the numbers, came when she beckoned. Hadn't Ryan? Hadn't Warren? And then when Redford would not respond, she began to get angry. "Who is this Redford character anyway?" she began to say. And she started picking out flaws . . . was he tall enough for her . . . and what about those lumps on his skin? What if they had no "chemistry" together?

"Finally it got destructive," said Sydney Pollack. "I said to Bob, 'You've got to see her because she's taking it personally.' So he agreed to meet with her, but only if I went along. So the three of us sat down to dinner at her house and talked, and we had about three meetings before the picture began—that's all

The lack of familiarity helped the opening scenes of the picture, Pollack believed. These scenes were filmed on the campus at Union College in Schenectady. It was here that Hubbell first saw Katie—proselytizing from her soapbox. Streisand appeared combative, defensive, but evidently adoring; Redford was breezy, confident, and not entirely unaware of her romantic interest in him. His method worked.

The two stars became friends in due time. Throughout the filming

Barbra found Redford dazzling. "She was simply mesmerized by him because she found him so beautiful," Arthur Laurents said. But there was more to it than that. Redford had a quiet strength, a keen intelligence, and a strong commitment to political and environmental issues.

"He always has something going on behind his eyes," Barbra said. "He's not just an actor, he's an intelligent, concerned human being, so that whatever you see has many layers underneath." Barbra considered Redford well nigh a perfect man and Lola, his wife of nearly fifteen years, a very lucky woman. "Why can't I find a man like Redford?" she sighed to a friend.

Streisand also became a staunch supporter of Redford's work and family-man reputation. When she heard they were previewing The Sting at Harvard, she organized a group to go and see it; and later, when a jocular remark about Redford and Paul Newman passed her ears, she leapt to her costar's defense.

"Listen, he's straight." she admonished in very serious tones, "and so is Newman. Furthermore they're both happily married and faithful to their wives. How many actors can you say that about?"

But Barbra brought a heat to her scenes with Redford that no other actress ever has. "Barbra ... I can't explain it," said Redford. "Her femininity brings out the masculinity in a man, and her masculinity brings out a man's femininity, vulnerability, romanticism, whatever you want to call it. It's a crude way of putting it, but that's what it boils down to"

At first, Barbra peppered Redford with questions and some of them were quite personal. Redford, charming if taciturn up to that point, became a little sharp. "Barbra," he said, "if we're going to be able to work together, you have to keep in mind that anything I tell you about myself will be volunteered because I want you to know it. Not because you think you have some kind of right to know it."

With that Redford completely won Barbra over. Not only did she love the fact that he had stood up to her, but she knew he was right. If there was one thing Barbra hated it was people who pried.

Once filming began on September 18, 1972, at Union College in Schenectady, New York, Barbra began to fret. Redford's subtly effective acting impressed her so much that she feared her performance would suffer in comparison. "Barbra was very intimidated," said Bradford Dillman, who was cast as Hubbell's best friend. "There was a lot of stuff that Bob and I did that was total improvisation. Barbra was very, very new to that, and I don't know how comfortable she would have been."

Her insecurity led her to want to discuss her scenes in even more detail than usual before she acted them. "She called me up—oh, my God—every night!" Pollack said. "She called out of compulsive worry—'Should I do this?' 'Listen, I was reading back five drafts earlier and I found this line.' It was all pushing and testing and trying to cover every base—worrying it, worrying it, worrying it"

When the time came to film the sex scene, it was clear to Harry Stradling that the chemistry between Streisand and Redford extended beyond their roles. "They were very close," Stradling said. "During the scene where they were both in bed, it was very arousing ... more so than just actors acting."

It is unlikely that Streisand and Redford ever consummated their mutual attraction, but word filtered back to Lola Redford about the romantic sparks flying between her husband and his leading lady. One evening, after the two stars lost track of time during an impromptu rehearsal Redford missed dinner with his family.

Lola hit the roof. Their son Jamie went to school the next day, a columnist reported, and told his classmates, "Mommy threw a glass of milk at Daddy. They had a fight about Barbra Streisand." When he was asked about the accuracy of the report, Redford replied, "That sounds about right"

In August of 1978, to fulfill her contract to First Artist Films, Barbra Streisand agreed to start production in September on a new film entitled The Main Event, costarring Ryan O'Neal, with Jon Peters as producer. Actually, the part had been offered to Ryan when it was being considered for Goldie Hawn and Diana Ross, but he passed it up. Barbra called him herself and urged him to take it on

"The Main Event was my partner's idea," said Howard Rosenman, the executive producer of the project. "Renee Missell, my partner, wanted to do a comedy about a woman who owned somebody, a man, a boxer. Through Sherry Lansing we got a deal at MGM and we hired Gail Parent and Andrew Smith to write the script.

The idea grew to a story line, which was pitched to Sherry Lansing at MGM, who agreed to finance the project.

"I gave the script to Sue Mengers," said Rosenman. "We were developing it for Diana Ross, and we wanted Sue to get Ryan O'Neal interested—to costar with Diana. Then Sue saw the potential of getting Barbra involved with Ryan. She had packaged What's Up Doc?, which made millions for the agency, so she decided to try for that combination again."

Gail Parent, meanwhile, had slipped a copy of the script to Jon Peters, through her manager. "Jon liked the script, but Barbra didn't," said Rosenman. "So Sue Mengers arranged for me to meet them at this very important dinner party in her home. She said to me, 'Jon likes stylish people, so look great.' I looked great and when I arrived at the party, the Dunnes—John Dunne and Joan Didion—were there, along with Marty Scorsese and Julia Cameron —very heavy types. I didn't tell my partner, Renee, about the dinner; she didn't believe in that kind of socializing—she's a true artist—but I would have killed to do a Streisand movie.

After dinner Sue directed traffic so that Jon and Barbra and I were cordoned off from the others. Barbra was sitting in a chair and Jon was sitting on the arm of it. He was saying how hip I looked. I started a conversation with Barbra, about her music, her records. I told her she was in danger of losing her audience and that she should do a duet with Stevie Wonder.

She looked at me and said, 'Sue told me you were smart, but I didn't think you were that smart.' And we chitchatted some more until Jon had to show how assertive he was by saying to Barbra, 'Get me a glass of water.' And she said, 'You get it.'

Once more, Barbra was attracted to material with relevance to her early life. In this case, the world of boxing stirred up memories of her stepfather, Louis Kind. She had wanted so much to please him and never had. Now she confided in Ryan: "You like Ac fights? My stepfather liked the fights. I always wanted his approval. He never liked me. He used to sit in his undershirt, drinking beer and watching the fights on television. And, you know, one time I crawled underneath the TV picture when I went by so I wouldn't interfere with his view. He never even noticed He would never see me, he just stared at the fights."

"I will never forget her telling me that," Ryan O'Neal said. "I asked, 'Whatever happened to him?' She said, 'I don't know. One day he just left and never came back. I thought it was my fault, and so did my mother.' " Barbra never saw her stepfather again

O'Neal recalled "That's why I like Barbra—because all of those things in her life have enriched that woman"

As full-line producer, Jon Peters drew up the budget, scouted locations, and designed Barbra's new look. Her hair was dyed red by a stylist at Sunset Plaza, and her body was trimmed and firmed by Gilda. He also hired the production staff, including the director, Howard Zieff, whose agreement forbade him to write about, or talk ill of, Barbra or Jon after the picture had been made.

Zieffs major problem was not with the star or her producer, but with Ryan O'Neal. "Zieff went to New York to talk to Ryan," said Rosenman, "and Ryan kept him cooling his heels for three or four days.

[quote]said Bradford Dillman

I love the name. SO American.

[quote]on a new film entitled The Main Event, costarring Ryan O'Neal, with Jon Peters as producer.

ZZZZzzzz....

The picture almost fell through at this point, because it was really contingent on Ryan. Barbra would only do the movie with him. Barbra had only one actor in mind to play "Kid" Scanlon.

In an offer she made over the phone she told him, "Ryan, if you don't want the part, I don't want to make the picture." Barbra wheedled and cajoled, begged and pleaded with him to come aboard.

Ryan O'Neal, a former amateur boxer, had had a string of disappointing films, and had fallen into such a funk that he was close to quitting the business.

Ryan had been set for two other boxing pictures. Flesh and Blood and The Champ. In the latter remake he wanted his son Griffin to play the Jackie Coogan role, but the director. Franco Zefhrelli, wanted Rickey Schroeder. So Ryan turned down the movie. Flesh and Blood also fell through, and Ryan went through an identity crisis. He announced he was quitting pictures and he took to his bed.

He would not do The Main Event. Sue Mengers called. Barbra Streisand called. But Ryan would not pick up the phone. Sue drove out to the beach and she and Tatum pulled up chairs and sat by his bedside.

"Ryan . . . Daddy . . ." the pleaded, "you've got to get out of bed and do this movie." Ryan kept his eyes closed with the covers pulled up to his chin.

Then Sue called Barbra and held the receiver to Ryan's ear. "Ryan! Honey!" Barbra cooed. "You need a hit picture. This is it. I'll protect you"

Then Sue called Barbra and held the receiver to Ryan's ear. "Ryan! Honey!" Barbra cooed. "You need a hit picture. This is it. I'll protect you"

"I'll do the picture," said Ryan finally, "but only if Jon Peters cuts my hair."

The showman in Jon Peters agreed that Ryan was the perfect co-star for The Main Event; audiences would likely be eager to see the What's Up, Doc? co-stars together again. But he was wary of putting Barbra into such close proximity with one of her former lovers. Steve Jaffe was surprised when he heard that Jon had agreed to O'Neal's casting.

"There was a time," Jaffe said, "when Jon didn't want to hear Ryan's name mentioned. It was very hard on me because at the time I represented both of them. I'd be in Jon's office, and Ryan would call me and Jon would say, 'You're not taking that call here: In the maximum sense of machismo, right or wrong, Jon and Ryan were rivals. I could see them flexing. Barbra probably had the last laugh every day on The Main Event, because here were two guys who were in love with her, and in her shadow.

Scriptwriter Andrew Smith said "Jon was jealous of Barbra's leading men— especially of Ryan, who was her old boyfriend. And Barbra liked to get things going between the two men. She had this quilt, this embroidered quilt that Ryan had given her after What's Up Doc? and she slept under it. When Jon came along he used to kick the thing off the bed onto the floor, but Barbra would retrieve it and put it on her side of the bed."

Then when they had rehearsals for the love scenes in The Main Event, According to Andrew Smith, Ryan would always put a little 'something extra' in the scene if he knew Jon was watching. He'd tweak her ass or bite her earlobe. It drove Jon crazy. He stopped coming around when they did love scenes. He told Ryan that when the movie was over, he was going to get into the ring and beat the hell out of him. It never happened. But Jon did give him a haircut. Ryan insisted upon it; that was the deal maker. And on the first day of rehearsals at Warner Brothers, Jon showed up with his scissors and his barber's cloth, and he clipped Ryan's curls.

Then when they had rehearsals for the love scenes in The Main Event, According to Andrew Smith, Ryan would always put a little 'something extra' in the scene if he knew Jon was watching. He'd tweak her ass or bite her earlobe. It drove Jon crazy. He stopped coming around when they did love scenes. He told Ryan that when the movie was over, he was going to get into the ring and beat the hell out of him. It never happened.

But Jon did give him a haircut. Ryan insisted upon it; that was the deal maker. And on the first day of rehearsals at Warner Brothers, Jon showed up with his scissors and his barber's cloth, and he clipped Ryan's curls.

Ryan could see that the intervening years since their first film together had wrought changes in Barbra. "In Whats Up, Doc? we did what we were told," he said. "Peter Bogdanovich ran the show. This time we tried all kinds of things. She played the Bogdanovich role. Howard Zieflf was under lots of pressure; I think he held up pretty well"

Despite her assurance of protection, the strength of The Main Event shifted to Streisand. "It became the story of Barbra finding this boxer and her experiences with him as seen through her own eyes," said Howard Zieff.

"Every entrance, exit, composition, and quip favors her," said one critic. "Even in the fight scenes, when Ryan is getting pummeled, the camera picked up her reaction to the beating."

Ryan was very dependent on Barbra," said Andrew Smith. "He trusted her so much he wouldn't do a scene alone, without her. She was there. He was professional. He was on time. He knew his lines, and he never questioned a line. He never said, 'What is this crap I'm supposed to say?' He knew that Barbra was working so hard on the script, that if she brought in a scene, it was fine—no discussion

"I got paid a million dollars to do The Main Event," said Ryan. "With a Barbra Streisand movie if you show up, it's a hit. I haven't had one in a long time. I don't care if I'm riding on her coattails"

For the duration of the production writers Smith and Gail Parent were kept on the payroll. "The Main Event wasn't art and wasn't supposed to be," said Andrew. "Whatever original conceptions we had for the movie went right out the window when we knew Barbra would be involved. Once we decided it was going to be her picture, that we were writing for her and with her, that she was the boss, then we adjusted to the situation. Screenwriters are not authors. We get paid a lot of money to write for hire ... to write at somebody's whim . . . those are the rules of the TV and movie game. We're there as secretaries, highly paid creative secretaries. It's her picture and you do whatever she wants. But in her favor—correction: in our favor—she never changed a word, without consulting us.

The script consultations and rewrites continued up to the moment of filming on each scene. "We were with her day and night," said Smith. "We met at her house in Holmby Hills or we went out to the ranch on weekends. She'd stay up till eleven or twelve o'clock the night before she had to be on the set. Our heads would be dropping, but she would not let go of the scene until she felt it was perfect.

'It has to be smart,' she'd say. *It has to be smart and sharp, like a forties comedy.' The revisions and rewrites were endless. I used to bring my typewriter onto the set and out to the ranch. I didn't mind. She was working with us. She wasn't just lounging around like some old-time movie star saying, 'Write me something clever.' She was there with us, improvising, suggesting, doing our lines. Jon would come in for a three- or four-minute spritz session. She'd ask for his reaction, but his attention span was not the same as hers. He couldn't bear down on one thing for a six-hour stretch like Barbra"

OP this is a great thread.

Between writing bouts Barbra fed her guests lavishly. "God, she loved food," said Smith, "preparing it, looking at it, eating it

Warner Brothers opened The Main Event in eleven hundred theaters across the country on June 22, 1979. The cornerstone of the promotional campaign was a sexy photograph of Barbra, braless in a tank top and tight satin shorts, and Ryan, bare-chested and in trunks, in a classic nose-to-nose boxing pose.

Despite mostly negative reviews, Barbra's popularity and the desire of many moviegoers to see if she and Ryan could re-create the magic of What's Up, Doc? brought the film a glittering gross of $66 million, making it Barbra's third most successful picture to that date, behind A Star Is Born and What's Up, Doc

"I got paid a million dollars to do The Main Event," Ryan O'Neal said. "With a Barbra Streisand movie if you show up, it's a hit. I haven't had one in a long time. I don't care if I'm riding on her coattails"

..... When Joan Collins's autobiography, Past Imperfect, was released, Barbra read one passage aloud to friends, wherein Joan described Ryan O'Neal as the best lover she'd ever had.

"What!!" said Barbra, wounded. "Ryan? The best she ever had. I went with Ryan."

"It was like she felt cheated, that Ryan had been holding out on her," said a .friend.

R19 R30 Thanks

"There was a time," Jaffe said, "when Jon didn't want to hear Ryan's name mentioned'"

That's sort of how Sinatra turned on Lena Horne. After he and Ava got together, he couldn't stand to see Lena or hear her name.

I HEARD David Newman say on a radio show in the 70s that Streisand HATED, HATED HATED HATED "The Lady Eve" when they screened it to her to show what a screwball comedy was. Some taste, Babs.

"And Barbra, who remained a nice, traditional, Jewish girl at heart, was still legally married to Elliott Gould."

Puleeze. She and Gould were separated since 1969, and it was very public. Streisand was seen dating in 1969/1970. This wasn't the 1950s. But James Spada was always such an ignorant asshole.

barbrastreisand Verified

With Peter Bogdanovich and Ryan O’Neal on the set of What’s Up, Doc? #tbt

barbrastreisand Verified With Ryan O’Neal on the set of What’s Up Doc. #tbt

This was so much fun to read!

But The Lady Eve is much funnier than What's Up Doc.

Mengers didn't do much for their careers. Babs had a hit wit TWWW, but A Star Is Born got mixed reviews, then... nothing (she wisely declined the widely-panned The Eyes of Laura Mars). Aside from the brief blip of Yentl, she never regained movie stardom.

O'Neal had a brief moment in the sun, then faded after a couple turkeys.

Barbra's problem is that she didn't like to work. After the initial flurry of films, she started turning down everything she was offered. After 1976, she no longer made a film every year. The lapses between movies became longer and longer until finally she just stopped altogether. It's a real shame she didn't do more from, say, 1976-1990.

DL has made me hate Ryan O'Neal and Babs Streisand.

enough

Not to be that person, but Eyes of Laura Mars wasn't widely panned. It got mixed with some good reviews and a famous rave from Kael. It fared way better than ASIB.

I remember hearing Barbra singing Prisoner love theme from the movie on the radio and the dj commenting he'd seen the movie and it was pretty scary. So I went to see it and loved it because it scared the shit out of me. I was 14.

Just watched The Main Event. Not great but fun because Barbra is funny throughout even when the movie starts to lag in the last half.

R40 is correct. In the 1970s I blamed Mengers for being a lousy agent. I thought her friendship with Streisand was the only reason she kept Sue as her agent. Later I learned it was all Streisand - she was a lazy bitch who squandered her peak years. And when she did movies, it was drek like A Star is Born and The Main Event. As for Ryan, of course he wasn't the same kind of talent, but What's up Doc, Paper Moon, Barry Lyndon and The Driver were good, others weren't. Not bad for a TV actor.

I think The Prince of Tides was one of Streisand's best movies. I loved Nick Nolte and Blythe Danner in this movie.

The Prince of Tides is very good and could have been downright great had she trimmed the scenes between herself and Nolte at the cabin. Their love story was much less interesting than the story between Nolte and his wife.

"Barbra's problem is that she didn't like to work"

That's what she says (in every interview). But I think she knows her appeal is best hauled-out for Special Events. I bet she strategizes her career with a team of handlers all day long, sifting through scripts.

Her movie characters were always those fast-talking nutcases, not much range. And she's not going to play age-appropriate grandmothers- too vain.

Online comment about "The Main Event" :

I hate to sound like I've worked on every picture made in Hollywood, but I have done over sixty major films, and one of them is, "The Main Event", starring Ryan O'Neal, Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson's ex-wife, Patti DeArbenville. We shot the movie in three months in late 1978-79.

Ryan O'Neal remembered me from boxing and so did Hedgeman Lewis, who had a small background part in the film. It was a fun shoot, except for Streisand, whom O'Neal had dated a couple years previous. Barbra Steisand is one of those "pain-in-the-ass" pro's who are so good and bankable they get away with anything. When we shoot Barbra, she wants the stage cleared of everybody but key crew members. I will credit her for being the only actress I've ever known who truly "knows" her light. You have to light her face very carefully, and very flat (straight on). If you light her too much from the side, that big nose throws a shadow over the other side of her face. We light her soft and flat, plenty of back light rimming her hair, and a special light my uncle called a "snoot" that pumps ambience below that huge nose to erase any shadow.

We shot the movie locally at the Culver Studios, the Main St. Gym, the Olympic Auditorium, a Long Beach exterior location, and a Malibu Beach house.

Ryan, he gets along with the crew, and likes to have fun. He has a younger brother named, Kevin, who told me he was a better fighter than his older brother, and should have fought as a pro bantamweight. I asked him why he didn't? His answer was the he was signed to play in a '1964 Warner Bros. TV series titled, "No Time For Sargents", and he had to stop boxing.

I knew he was full of crap. He may have boxed with his brother at the Teamster's Gym, but he was no pro prospect that I ever heard of.

The last time I talked to Ryan O'Neal was at the 2007 California Boxing HOF banquet, when Frank Baltazar Sr. was inducted. Ryan was sitting at Don Fraser's table along with Gwen Adair, Hedgeman Lewis, and his son Redmond (from Farrah Fawcett).

Another Ryan O'Neal - Hedgeman Lewis fact . . .

Ryan and Hedge have remained friends ever since they hooked-up in the mid 60's. Back in the 70's, Hedge's wife served as governess of Ryan's children, Tatum & Griffin. The boxer's wife serving as Tatum on-set "guardian". Hedgeman Lewis' wife worked for the family for years, until the kids were out of the house. Hedge would usually have a small background roles in O'Neal's feature films when the actor was at the top of his game.

-Rick Farris