Streisand / Movies

Seven Arts Productions were the high bidders for the movie rights to The Owl and the Pussycat in 1964.  Stark paid $100,000 dollars, and the entertainment columns immediately reported that he offered Elizabeth Taylor the role of Doris. Taylor said she wanted Montgomery Clift as her co-star.  That deal never came to fruition, so Stark revisited the property a couple of years later for Streisand, who owed him three more pictures. Her casting was announced in November 1968.

Variety reported in December 1968 that Columbia Pictures announced The Owl and the Pussycat at their stockholders meeting, with Herb Ross selected to direct.  Ross handled the musical numbers in the Funny Girl movie and was finishing up his first directorial project, Goodbye Mr. Chips.  Variety also speculated that Barbra’s husband, Elliott Gould, may have been considered as her male lead.

Pictured:  Ray Stark and Herbert Ross

Stark and Streisand had a contentious relationship that played out in the papers when Stark told Joyce Haber that he would tailor the character of Doris for Streisand’s singing talent. “She’ll be a folkhooker,” he said. Stark imagined Doris as a part-time folksinger, incorporating some songs into the movie for Streisand to sing.  

Streisand responded at a December press conference: “I will not sing in The Owl and the Pussycat despite what Ray Stark says I will do.”

Asked by another columnist if she would be singing in The Owl and the Pussycat, Streisand retorted, “How many singing prostitutes do you know?”

A week later, Stark mended fences with his star when he called up Sheilah Graham and explained that Barbra would not sing in the movie. “She wants to prove she can act without having to sing,” he said.

“Naturally, when the showdown came, I said there was no way I would sing,” Streisand told Newsday in 1972. “You see what I mean? I was pushed around. Made to feel like I was a bad little girl or something. There was no reason for that.”

Later, in 1975, Barbra explained, “People said, ‘You've got to sing in Owl and the Pussycat,’ and I said, I'm not going to sing, and they said you can't not sing. I said I'm not only going to not sing, I'm going, to not sing in at least four pictures. I'm not going to do just what I'm expected to do. It's no fun for me. I'm not afraid of failure.”

Meanwhile, Stark concentrated on casting the character of Felix Sherman, also known as “the owl” in the movie’s title. Broadway producer Philip Rose claimed credit for his suggestion to Ray Stark. “After emphasizing how excited I was by the idea of Barbra as the female lead, I got to the heart of my agenda: to suggest Sidney Poitier for the co-starring role,” Rose wrote in his memoir. Poitier was the Academy Award-winning actor who starred in To Sir, With Love and In the Heat of the Night.

Poitier won aclaim for his role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, playing a character who was in love with a white woman, so the idea of reversing the ethnicities of the characters in The Owl and the Pussycat movie – with Poitier playing Felix – was intriguing.  Poitier was also friendly with Streisand – at least business-wise.  He was one of her partners in the newly-formed production company, First Artists.

Poitier and Streisand were both named “Star of the Year” and attended the National Association of Theater Owners convention on November 14, 1968 to accept the awards.  Ray Stark was there as well. “It’s great to be on the same platform with Sidney Poitier,” Streisand told the audience. “Ray originally wanted to use Sidney for Nick Arnstein in Funny Girl, but we decided he looks too Jewish. So we went in another direction.”

Ray Stark hired Bruce Jay Friedman to adapt Pussycat for the screen since Friedman had a hit off-Broadway with his 1967 comedy play, Scuba Duba. Stark set Friedman up in an expensive Hollywood hotel to write The Owl and the Pussycat screenplay. In his memoir, Friedman recalled the experience: “Before leaving the hotel, Stark tossed me a copy of the play and said: ‘Do anything you want with it. Shit on it if you like. Just keep the basic premise: Intellectual Meets Hooker. And by the way,’ he said as he left, ‘the playwright is blind.’”

Friedman was taken aback by Stark’s comment and took his meaning to be that “the poor playwright (William Manhoff) would be unable to read or see whatever desecration was visited on his work, and that I was therefore free to trample all over it.”

Friedman “did what I could to hold on to every bit of what I felt, quite frankly, was [Manhoff’s] pedestrian dialogue, blind or not. Manhoff’s play was on the fluffy side. I tried to darken it up a bit with an opening scene in which Streisand’s character clings to a rooftop, legs flailing, and threatens suicide. The scene never made it into the film.”

Sidney Poitier reportedly had reservations about the role and script and eventually dropped out of the movie, although he was never actually signed.  

What followed was a string of casting ideas for Felix.

“Streisand was interested in (had a crush on?) Oskar Werner,” Friedman explained.  Werner had appeared in the films The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Ship of Fools. Friedman was asked to tailor the script for Werner.  Then, a little later, after Werner lost interest, Friedman was asked to re-write the script for Michael Caine, who had made a big splash in Alfie.

By mid-June 1969, there were more British actors considered for the bookish Felix Sherman: Albert Finney and David Hemmings (Barbarella, Camelot, Blowup).

When they didn’t sign, Stark told the press he was looking at Jerry Orbach, starring on Broadway in Promises, Promises (and, later of Law & Order fame).

Finally, George Segal was signed as Felix in August 1969. Segal was a hot property at the time because he was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Elizabeth Taylor.

After Segal was signed, Ray Stark jettisoned Bruce Jay Friedman and hired Buck Henry to re-write The Owl and the Pussycat. He delivered the script in three weeks!

“The unmanageable Ray Stark said to me, ‘Hey come on, we’ll write this film,’” Buck Henry explained. “Ray first had a script written for Barbra and Sidney Poitier. Pointless. Reverse the sexes but kept the black and white. No reason for it at all. The second script was written for [English actor] Tom Courtenay and Barbra. Equally silly. They should be American, and they should be city people.”

With George Segal playing Felix, Henry thought, “I can do both their voices. I had a good time writing that one.”

“What Buck wrote for my part was an aspect of myself, specific to the character and also specific to me personally,” said Segal.

“Buck is a genius at humor,” Stark stated. “We made a ‘now’ comedy of it, not dirty. I think a little bit of pornography can spoil a good comedy. Our humor is natural and sexy, about a two-buck hooker with a heart of gold who seduces a shy young man and has him for keeps.”

Songwriter Martin Charnin wrote a song for the film. Charnin told writer James Kimbrell, “I was in New York and I ran into Herb Ross who was directing The Owl and the Pussycat at the time,” Charnin said. “He asked me if I'd be interested in writing a song for Barbra to sing in the film when the characters separate. I told him I'd like to see the rough-cut of the film first, but that I was interested. I wrote the song, sent it to Barbra's people and that was it. Later, when the film was released, all the music was done by Blood, Sweat and Tears, so I thought my song was just dropped. Barbra, though, liked the song and it ended up on one of her albums three years later.”

Streisand released Charnin’s song, “The Best Thing You've Ever Done,” on her 1974 studio album, The Way We Were.

Costume designer Ann Roth created Streisand’s “hooker chic” look for the movie.  Roth stated, “I’m not interested in fashion, it’s not my scene. If you do a really superb job, the clothes in a play or opera or film are not noticed, because they suit the character so well.”

For the character of Doris, Roth dressed Streisand in miniskirts and a fabulous fiber fur “lynx” coat made of Verel modacrylic and acrylic by Norwood Mills. Roth confirmed, “Barbra is a great professional. She’s interested in looking right whether it’s attractive or not, in creating a character and not bringing out Barbra Streisand.”

Streisand agreed, telling the press, “I play a girl with absolutely no taste.  Not bad taste, but just no taste at all. I can wear anything. It’s rather fun, since all my other costumes have had to be so perfect for the parts.”

Roth’s main contribution to Pussycat was Streisand’s risqué “modeling outfit” with pink hand prints on the bra, and a rhinestone heart strategically placed on the panties. Roth said she came up with the look because “I’m a huge researcher.” She poured over “Screw” magazine, a weekly pornographic tabloid newspaper published at the time. “I was looking for dirty, erotic, skuzzy underwear, and somehow or another I made it up,” she said. 

The Owl and the Pussycat was filmed entirely in New York, October 1969 – January 1970.  Besides utilizing real Manhattan locations, Pussycat also rented soundstages at Twentieth Century Fox’s West 54th Street location (now Sony Music Studios).

“It was fantastic,” director Herb Ross offered, as he was editing the film in April 1970.  “No one but Barbra and George. We rehearsed a couple of weeks. We all had a lot of inhibitions to break down. We had a strange, enforced intimacy and ended up having a very good time and liking one another very much. She knocks me out. Her instincts, her sense of truth.”

Some of the outdoor filming locations in New York forced the cast and crew to endure the freezing winter temperatures:

• The first scene, with Doris in the rain, was filmed at 1st Avenue and 59th Street.
• Felix’s apartment building exteriors were shot at 346 East 59th Street and 1st Avenue.
• The outside entrance to Barney’s apartment was filmed at 400 East 59th Street and 1st Avenue.
• Felix and Doris walk down the steps of Lincoln Center before confronting the car full of thugs.
• The strip club where Doris dances was “Club 45” on West 45th Street.
• The movie theater playing Doris’ porn flick, Cycle Sluts, was filmed at the World Theatre on 49th Street.
• Scenes of Felix’s workplace, Doubleday Book Shop, were filmed there, at Fifth Avenue and 52d Street.
• Felix runs to meet Doris at Riker’s Restaurant, an all-night joint at 6th Avenue and 57th Street. (All the Riker’s Restaurants are closed now).

On the warm soundstages Streisand was worried about her first nude scene.  When Felix and Doris finally consummate their attraction to each other, the scene required Streisand to remove her top, walk across the room, and lay in the bed.

“She only calls me ‘Herbie’ when she’s uptight,” Ross said about directing Barbra for this scene. “Otherwise I’m Herbert … But for that scene, as soon as I heard ‘Herbie, I gotta talk to you,’ I knew she had big reservations even though I thought we’d worked them all out.  She got me into a corner and said, ‘Herbie, I can’t. I’ve got goose bumps and they’ll show. Herbie, I just can’t. What will my mother think?’ George, who had overcome his inhibitions, took a nap and I kept working on her. Finally, she said, ‘Oh, what the hell. I’ll do it once.’ The set was hushed, the cameras rolled and Barbra (‘One, two, three … go!’) threw off her robe and did her first nude scene. It was perfect. I yelled, ‘Cut and print! Beautiful!’ But you know Barbra the perfectionist. She wanted a retake. I think we were all shocked because everybody burst into laughter, including Barbra.”

Later, when Barbra saw the scene cut together, she decided she wanted it cut out. Streisand told one reporter, “The producer and the director are both pleading with me to put it back in the film, but I won’t. I did the scene on condition that it wouldn’t be used without my approval, and I didn’t like it. It’s out and it stays out.” The nudity, according to Streisand, “spoils the comedy of the next scene.”

Unfortunately for Streisand, in 1979 a magazine called High Society printed a frame blowup of her topless nude scene from Pussycat in its November issue. “Barbra Streisand Nude!” the magazine’s cover declared.  Streisand sued for $5 million, and her lawyers filed papers in the U.S. District Court of Manhattan that stated, “Throughout her career, Streisand has vigorously protected her reputation and privacy by refusing to consent to release of any film or publication in which she was not fully clothed.” 

As a result of the lawsuit, the magazine was required to telegram their wholesalers and ask them to tear out the pages featuring Streisand and tape over the word “nude” on the front cover.  High Society publisher Gloria Leonard said, “frankly, I know there will be some distributors who’ll just say, ‘The hell with the wire,’ and won’t go to the bother of following its instructions.”

How did High Society get the frames of a topless Streisand in The Owl and the Pussycat? “She says the shots didn’t appear in the final print of the picture, but our attorney got a copy of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ from the copyright office, and there they were right in the third reel,” Gloria Leonard stated.

The band Blood, Sweat and Tears were signed to write and perform the score for The Owl and the Pussycat – their first movie score. The band was known for their fusion of rock, blues, pop music, horn arrangements and jazz improvisation. In its 1970 iteration, Blood, Sweat and Tears’ band members were: Lew Soloff, Jerry Hyman, Fred Lipsius, Dick Halligan, Jim Fielder, Bobby Colomby, David Clayton-Thomas, Chuck Winfield, and Steve Katz.

Guitarist Steve Katz remembered “A meeting was arranged one afternoon in Manhattan at the apartment of movie producer Ray Stark. I was there, as was Herb Ross, the movie director … Stark and Ross wanted us to do the score, and we were talking about what they were looking for. Dick Halligan must have been there as well, since Dick was to do most of the work.”

Halligan wrote in his memoir, “Not everyone in the group was interested in this and we were very busy concertizing and preparing the music for the third album. I was the only one capable of writing for the film and maybe the only one interested. I said that I definitely wanted to do it. I would write, the band would play.”

Columbia Pictures flew Halligan to Los Angeles to write the score. “I was introduced to the music editor, William Saracino, who helped me so much to understand the process of writing and recording film music. This had always been one of my dreams in life, and I was ready.”

Halligan wrote the score in L.A. in three weeks, and the band recorded it in New York. “It was difficult to write only for those band instruments and still meet all of the requirements of the film,” Halligan stated.

David Clayton-Thomas, who sings the end-title song, “Just Want to Mention (You've Been Alone Too Long)” recalled, “[Owl and the Pussycat] was a Dick Halligan project – he did the arranging and composing. We recorded it on the run.”