A Star Is Born was Streisand's most successful film at the box office, budgeted at $6 million and grossing an estimated $80 million dollars (in 2020 dollars that would be a $26.5 million budget and $353.2 million earnings). 

A Star Is Born presented a sexy, modern, feminist version of the Streisand persona, allowed her to sing on screen, and gave her unprecedented control behind the camera. The film was also a very controversial one for Streisand because of industry gossip about behind-the-scenes disagreements and the bad press that followed.

Career-wise, A Star Is Born (her tenth film) fell right after Funny Lady, Barbra’s 1975 musical sequel to Funny Girl — and 1968 film debut. By completing Funny Lady, Streisand had also fulfilled a four-picture contract she signed with producer Ray Stark.  It was the 1970s, she was recording rock and pop music, making yogurt, and newly in love with Jon Peters … shouldn’t her next movie reflect that? 

A Star Is Born was filmed three times before Streisand’s 1976 version.  The first two versions were non-musicalized: What Price Hollywood (1937) and A Star Is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor in the main role. Judy Garland’s 1954 take on the classic story was a musical film with songs by Harold Arlen. A Star Is Born was resurrected one more time in 2018 when Bradley Cooper directed and starred in an Oscar-winning  version with Lady Gaga.

Streisand’s Star is Born was presented by First Artists — a production company she established with other actors like Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman.  A Star Is Born was the first movie Streisand made in which she held an executive producer title. “It just means that I’m responsible for the film,” Streisand told Shirley Eder. “The concepts, the music and just about everything. It also means, in this case, that I don’t get paid to act in the film and — it comes out of my pocket if we go over budget. What’s more, there’s nobody I can blame if anything goes wrong but me.”

Streisand explained, too, that “the deal with First Artists was that the artist was responsible for anything over $6 million dollars. I spent the $6 million on the movie. But then, when I got into sound, I spent another million dollars. When Warner Brothers saw the film, they liked it so much that they didn’t make me pay the million dollars.” 

What rankled Hollywood and the press that wrote about it was that Streisand’s boyfriend, Jon Peters, didn’t take the usual path to becoming a film producer.  He jumped right to the head of the line — on Streisand’s coattails, they wrote. Peters was already running a successful string of Los Angeles hair salons, having started as a hairdresser himself. But his ambitious entrepreneurism propelled him to become a mogul in the beauty business, employing hundreds of persons. “The hair business was never really big enough for me,” he told the press in 1976. “My scope, my ideas were larger than that particular business was limited to.” When he met Barbra Streisand, she wanted him to create a wig for her to wear in her film For Pete’s Sake. They began dating; they moved in together; Peters produced her album Butterfly; and just as soon, they were developing and producing A Star Is Born.

“My boyfriend’s a hairdresser,” Barbra stated defiantly at the time. “People say, ‘How can he possibly produce?’ Just like they said, ‘She’s a singer, how can she act, or play the guitar or write songs?’ Well — we’ll see.”

In 2003, James Lipton asked Streisand (on Inside the Actors Studio) what lead her to film a story that had been filmed three times before. Streisand responded, “Jon Peters — who didn't know they were filmed three times before!”

The critics were not kind to A Star Is Born and seemed to take a strange pleasure in punishing Streisand in their reviews for her ambition. Despite this hurdle, and the personal attacks, the movie was elevated by her fans, who not only made it the #3 box office hit of 1976 but bought the soundtrack album (#1 on the Billboard charts), and made the single, “Evergreen,” #1 as well.  Streisand fans of a certain age count A Star Is Born as the defining moment they began following her career. 

Since the last version of the rising star/declining star story had not been filmed since 1954, credit must be given to the writers John Dunne and Joan Didion for reviving the idea. Dunne and Didion were married writers for 40 years. John Dunne is the brother of writer Dominick Dunne (true crime author of books like The Two Mrs. Grenvilles); Dominick’s son is the actor-director Griffin Dunne (After Hours); Dominick’s daughter, Dominique, an actress with a prominent role in Poltergeist, was tragically murdered by an abusive boyfriend.  Joan Didion was a noted essayist and novelist whose best-known works include The Year of Magical Thinking and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. 

In the early 1970s, before tackling A Star Is Born, they wrote screenplays together for the films The Panic in Needle Park and Play It as It Lays.

FALL 1973: 

John Dunne recalled: “It was one o’clock in the afternoon on the first day of July 1973, when I turned to my wife, while passing the Aloha Tower in downtown Honolulu on our way to the airport and said sixteen words I would often later regret: ‘James Taylor and Carly Simon in the rock-and-roll version of A Star Is Born’.”  For readers unfamiliar with Taylor and Simon, the short version of their story is that they were singer-songwriters who married, only to have their union split several years later for a variety of reasons that included infidelity and Taylor’s heroin addiction — not to mention the pressures of show business.

Dunne confessed “we had never seen A Star Is Born in any of its prior incarnations. Nor had we any intention of seeing A Star Is Born, or of reading the scripts, treatments, synopses or memorandums pertaining to any previous version. We were only interested in a movie about the rock-and-roll business, but the only way we could get a studio to underwrite the screenplay was to dress it up in what they perceived as an old but very well-cut suit of clothes.”

Dunne and Didion spent three weeks on the road, touring with the bands Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep and soaking in the atmosphere and characters who populated the concert scene in order to learn more about the genre they were writing.

Since Warner Brothers owned the rights to A Star Is Born, and since the Dunne’s ex-agent was employed there, that studio became the home of the project. Their early screenplay draft was used to attract an interesting director to helm the movie: Peter Bogdanovich, Warren Beatty, and Mike Nichols all passed.

Mark Rydell became attached as director in a 90-day “development deal.”  Rydell, known today for directing On Golden Pond, For the Boys and others (as well as having a long involvement in Streisand’s Nuts), was given the chore in late-1973 of developing the screenplay and landing a dynamic leading couple. John Foreman, producer of many 1970s Paul Newman pictures, came aboard as producer, too.

SPRING 1974: 

The movie was tentatively titled Rainbow Road and Richard Perry (Stoney End) was hired to supervise the music.  Carly Simon and James Taylor — the original inspiration for the film — turned it down. Rydell approached Diana Ross and Alan Price to star; also, Liza Minnelli and Cher were suggested; even Streisand’s agent, Sue Mengers, submitted the Rainbow Road script to her, but Streisand rejected the idea. 

PICTURED: James Taylor and Carly Simon, photo by: Peter Simon.

SUMMER 1974: 

Warners dismissed Rydell when the film still wasn’t cast.  “The Dunnes and John Foreman thought I was dragging my heels on the casting,” said Rydell. “There were a number of people they thought would be good, and if I had said yes, they would have gone ahead with some of their in-house record stars.” Rydell went on to film The Rose with Bette Midler a few years later.

The Dunnes and Foreman then engaged director Jerry Schatzberg (The Panic in Needle Park), who worked on yet another draft of the script.  Kris Kristofferson was cast but not signed as John Norman Howard. Jon Peters read the script and thought it was a perfect vehicle for Streisand, even though she already turned it down.  “She’d done Funny Lady,” Peters said, “and I thought, why should a young girl be playing an old lady? She’s a young, hot, sexy woman — a little ball of fire. None of that had been conveyed on film. She should be playing things that are hot and young and contemporary.”

Streisand, Peters, the Dunnes, and Schatzberg spent a few months trying to agree on a direction for the project that appealed to all parties … they couldn’t agree. Warner Brothers and Jon Peters then fired the Dunnes. “The third draft was little more than a rehash of the second draft,” John Dunne stated. “It’s tough to tailor a part for a star. We were all played out at that point.” They were paid $125,000 and ten percent of the movie’s gross to depart.

Peters brought in twenty-five-year-old writer Jonathan Axelrod who suggested the screenplay might be more interesting if they switched the roles: Streisand should play a Janis Joplin-like rocker and the male lead would be the ascendent star. 

“I found them fantastic,” Axelrod told biographer James Spada, “very gentle and sensitive to my feelings and to my age.”

Schatzberg left the show. “When I told Barbra my decision, she genuinely didn’t understand it … but in the end I just felt I couldn’t direct Barbra properly under the circumstances,” he said.

FALL 1974:

The new president of Warner Brothers was John Calley. He recalled, “[Peters] came in and said that in his and Barbra’s view, the screenplay was moving away from being suitable for Barbra. I agreed with them … He said, in effect, ‘It’s very simple – either we get to take over the screenplay and make it work for Barbra or we take a walk…’”

Warner Brothers, excited to be in business with Barbra Streisand, conceded to all of her requests: Her company, First Artists, would produce the film; she would act as executive producer; Peters produced (Foreman was elevated to executive producer, then he departed the project); Streisand received final cut; in lieu of an acting and producing salary, she also received 25 percent of the net profit; Columbia Records would release the soundtrack. 

For a minute, Jon Peters considered directing the film. Joyce Haber also reported that, for a minute, Jon Peters thought he should costar opposite Barbra.

WINTER 1974:

Barbra finished filming Funny Lady and devoted her energy to A Star Is Born. Writer Axelrod was let go. Richard Perry left, too.  Jack Nitzsche, who did some studio work on Barbra’s album Butterfly, and who would do more work on the 1978 Superman album, was brought in to consult on music for A Star Is Born. But then Rupert Holmes replaced him.  Holmes produced Streisand’s 1974 album, Lazy Afternoon and later had the big hit “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”.

JANUARY 1976:

“Barbra kept calling and telling me about the script and singing the songs; she'd carry on for half an hour,” Kristofferson said. 

Gary Le Mel was hired by First Artists to look after the film’s music and soundtrack album. He told Film Score Monthly: “We had a ritual where every Saturday I’d bring somebody to [Barbra’s] ranch just so we could see how they hit it off personally, and then she would start to collaborate with them, and it worked.”

Songwriter Stephen Bishop was one of those people who met with Streisand; he was early in his career and played over two dozen songs for Streisand that day. Although she didn’t use any of them, Streisand did record a handful of his songs on future albums of hers.

Meanwhile, Rupert Holmes left the show. “I think he was a bit overwhelmed,” Streisand confessed. “It left me in a kind of lurch. How was I going to get the rest of the score?”  Holmes told writer Jay Padroff he was busy recording his own self-titled album for Epic Records at the time. “I was sitting in script conferences on A Star Is Born and trying to write lyrics at the same time or working with people on A Star Is Born till eight at night and then going into the studio at 9 p.m. and recording till five and then having to be somewhere at seven in the morning,” Rupert explained. 

Holmes wrote a dozen or so songs for A Star Is Born. He told Barbra Archives, “‘Queen Bee’ was inspired by [Barbra] calling me all excited because she had heard about – from a beekeeper … she was trying to get beehives on her ranch in Malibu, and she thought that would be cool – and she heard about how the queen bee rules, and she said ‘That’s kinda cool! Why don’t we have that set-up?’ And I immediately jumped to the piano and started writing ‘Queen Bee.’”

Holmes said the song “Everything” went as smoothly. “When the person sings about ‘I want everything,’ they’re not greedy. They’re in love – it’s like a kid in a toy store. A kid in a toy store who says, ‘I want every toy here,’ he’s not really being greedy. He’s saying, ‘you can’t show me this much and then tell me I can’t have it.’”

Some of Rupert Holmes’ songs for A Star Is Born were duplicative, meaning that he may have written several versions of songs for the same spot in the movie. Holmes revealed some of those unreleased songs: 

• “Love Out of Time” — “Love is an only child / Born where the weeds grow wild / High in the wind you hear it sung. / If it should ever stray / Love just might come your way….” 
• “The Nick of Time”
• “Lullaby For Myself” — this Holmes song was recorded and released on Barbra’s 1977 album, Superman.

Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher were brought in and began writing a substantial number of songs for the film.  Leon Russell and Kenny Loggins contributed songs, too. Russell’s wife, Mary, wrote a song for the movie that Streisand loved, but ended up not using.

PICTURED: Rupert Holmes, Photo by Richard E. Aaron.