Streisand recalled that “Somebody, a friend, sent me the book and I said, ‘eh, well.’ Then I read it again and ‘eh’ became ‘ah.’ I could feel for this woman. I feel for women, period. Part of Margaret wants to be a housewife and mother. But she remembers when she used to read Baudelaire and now she reads pamphlets on toilet training.”

Winkler and his producing partner Irwin Winkler hired Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Zindel to write the screenplay for Sandbox – his first writing for film.  In July 1971, he told the New York Times, “I must say, Sandbox is a challenge – but a wonderful one.”  Zindel traveled to Las Vegas to work on the script and was spotted at Streisand’s opening night at the Hilton Hotel, where she was singing for several weeks.

In Sandbox, Barbra would play Margaret Reynolds, a New York housewife with two children who discovered she is pregnant with her third and who questioned her role as housewife and mother. “That's where all the fantasy scenes come in. It's great because Margaret—and me, too—is able to say everything in the fantasy that she should have said in reality.”

Streisand was excited for a new acting challenge in Sandbox. “In all my other films, I played characters full of idiosyncrasies, with lots of funny lines,” she said. “In this one, I get back to my beginnings. I don’t think I even smile, except at the end. And there are no more than seven funny lines in the whole film. My character is more banal than any I’ve ever played. This is the most natural role I’ve had, and so I’ve had to strive for simplicity. I really want people to think of me as an actress.”

David Selby was cast as Streisand's husband, Paul Reynolds. Selby appeared off-Broadway in the Tony-winning play Stick and Bones (he turned down the opportunity to take his role to Broadway when he was cast in this movie, his first). He also appeared in the hit television show Dark Shadows. For his role as Paul in Sandbox, Selby told writer Dick Kleiner, “I’m trying to make sure the character has strength and isn’t just a passive figure. Of course, I realize that the leading man in a Streisand picture can’t be the central figure, but I hope to give him strength anyhow.”

Irvin Kershner directed Up the Sandbox.  Streisand admired Kershner’s 1970 film, Loving (also photographed by Gordon Willis). Several years later, Kershner directed the successful Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back; also the 1978 Jon Peters-produced thriller, Eyes of Laura Mars.

Kershner admitted he was warned about Streisand. “‘She’ll kill you, she’s a murderess.’ That’s what people told me before I directed Up the Sandbox. Of course, they were wrong. Because I discovered working with her that I had the most joyous time of my career. [Barbra is] beautiful in any light, at any angle, as a woman and as an artist.”

On Sandbox’s DVD commentary, Kershner explained how he prepared for the film. “Before we started, I took dozens of photographs of Barbra – different lighting conditions, different angles, trying to find where she looked glamorous, where she looked ‘house-wifely’, where she looked like a love object, where she looked like a mother who’d been up all night with her babies. Well, I think we found it ... [Cinematographer Gordon Willis] loved the story, he was just afraid of Barbra. Well, I showed him all the photographs I had taken, introduced them. He liked her, of course, because she has a great personality — and made him laugh, which he of course enjoyed — and finally said he would do it. And that was my essential team.”

Gordon Willis added, “I had a very good time with her. She’s very bright. Harry Stradling [Funny Girl’s cinematographer] put cross hairs in front of a woman’s face and bang, that’s where the light went. Barbra would prefer the key light right between her eyes, but you can’t always get it that way. Harry Stradling lit a movie in a certain way — I don’t light that way. If I start lighting actors one way and the movie another it looks stupid. We worked it out very well. I thought Barbra looked great and she was helpful. She will work with you.”

Willis’ cinematography is renowned; he lensed The Godfather and many Woody Allen films.  He told American Cinematographer that he lit Streisand for Sandbox using bounced light. “The way I finally licked Barbra’s problem was to have practically all of her key lights coming off the walls. I would key a lot of times by just hanging something onto the wall.

“She likes to talk about lighting,” he continued. “She had a ‘left-side, right-side’ kind of concept about herself. I said, ‘Are you going to go through this while moving left-to-right, Barbra? Aren’t you ever going to go right-to-left?’ The truth of the matter is that she looks good from both sides, but she thinks she only looks good from one side. Well, if that’s on her mind, that’s on her mind, and you have to deal with it.”

Streisand liked working with Willis. “Gordon, it’s interesting, liked the right side of my face,” she stated. “I always liked the left side of my face. In seeing how he shot me on my right, I must say, he made me appreciate the right side of my face a bit. I think he ended up liking my left, but I’m not quite sure. But I trusted him, that’s the point. I trusted him.”

Casting “Sandbox”

Up the Sandbox was filmed in Hollywood, New York, and Nairobi, Kenya.  Robert Chartoff told Daily Variety that he estimated the film’s production costs in Los Angeles were around $13,000 per day; New York City cost $19,000 per day; and Africa was much less expensive, at $8,000 per day. 

One of the first scenes filmed was with Jacobo Morales as Castro at New York’s Biltmore Hotel in March 1972.

The exterior of Margaret's apartment was located at 601 West 112th Street, New York; and the playground scenes were filmed at Riverside Park in Manhattan.

The fantasy scenes at the Statue of Liberty were filmed at Liberty Island, New York. It’s bitter-sweet that, in 1972, the just-opened World Trade Center towers are visible in the distance in this film.

The locations for Paul Reynold’s university workplace were bicoastal: The exterior, in which Streisand is seen walking up the stairs, was shot at Columbia University in New York.  The interiors, however, were filmed in the Edward L. Doheny Memorial Library at University of Southern California.

Moving to the West Coast, the Sandbox crew filmed the maternity ward scenes at the new Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in Watts, Los Angeles.  Because the hospital was not scheduled to open until March 1972, Sandbox was allowed to film there.  The family reunion scene was filmed on location at a home in Pasadena, and some of the interior sets for the film were built at the soundstages at Twentieth Century-Fox in Los Angeles.

The family scene “was my idea,” Streisand said, “it was based on the last time my family had a reunion. It was the first time I ever used real situations from my life put into a movie. Before that I was probably scared to, like how could I do that? It wasn’t important enough. But in this piece, I remember having a family reunion with my brother, his daughter, his wife, my cousins … people I hadn’t seen in a long time. And everybody was quite awkward with each other. My brother has always taken pictures of everything. He goes to an event, he takes pictures. You can’t find him, he’s behind the camera.”

Streisand’s brother – Sheldon Streisand – used to make home movies at family gatherings.  And that’s actress Pearl Shear who portrayed the woman singing “Beautiful Dreamer” at the party.  The character was based on Streisand’s own mother who used to sing operatic tunes. 

Castro’s hotel suite was also filmed at Fox studios, including the scene where he danced with Margaret. Streisand remarked on the music he played: “This is music from my youth. My cousins Harvey and Lowell, we used to dance to this music, Tito Puente, in the ‘50s.”

“Sandbox’s” Score

Two music scores were written for the film. The first composer was Dave Grusin, whose score for Up the Sandbox was rejected. 

“The first time I lost a score,” Grusin said in 1983, “I was devastated. When I say lost, I mean my music was taken off the final film and redone by someone else.” (One wonders if the music score to the movie’s trailer was temp music, or actually Grusin's rejected score?)

Billy Goldenberg was the second composer for Sandbox. Kershner wanted a smaller, simpler sound for the film. Goldenberg achieved this by using a toy piano over the opening credits. He told Time Magazine that Streisand would call him as late as 2:30 a.m. after she’d finished shooting the picture for the day and ask him to “hum me the music for tomorrow” over the phone.

At one point, Streisand asked Goldenberg for an end title song by 4:00 p.m. the next day. “I wrote like mad,” Goldenberg recalled. “When she called, I hummed her the tune. She liked it, and the next day we got the word writers, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, to fit it out with a lyric.” The song became “If I Close My Eyes,” the movie’s single – although, ultimately, it was not used in the final film. Columbia Records released the song as a 45-rpm single in January 1973, backed with an instrumental version.

Incidentally, the song that Dave Grusin wrote for Sandbox was “A Child is Born.” Although it was not used in the movie, Streisand did record and include it on her 1975 album, Lazy Afternoon. The Bergmans wrote the lyrics to “A Child is Born,” too.

Back in 1972, Streisand told columnist Robert Taylor that after she sneak-previewed the movie with test audiences, “The audience went in expecting another What's Up, Doc? They were confused. There were things in the movie that I wanted to change, and the audience confirmed them. For instance, they didn't like it when my husband—David Selby—yells at me. They didn't know it was a fantasy.”

“The changes we've made since the preview have not been in the basic structure, but in the content. We've used music to indicate where the fantasies begin. Now you can pretty much tell which is real and which is fantasy. It's less confusing.”

SOURCES USED ON THIS PAGE:

• “A Funny Girl in the Sandbox” by A.H. Weiler. New York Times, July 18, 1971.
• American Cinematographer, October 1978. Gordon Willis (Part II of II).
• “Barbra Discovers Business Matters Loosen Her Tongue” by Barbara Wilson. The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 22, 1972.
• “Barbra runs tight ship” by Dick Kleiner. The Capital, May 10, 1972.
• “Castro Asked, But He’s Not Cast” The Indianapolis Star, November 13, 1972.
• Dorothy Manners’ Hollywood.  The El Dorado Times, March 29, 1972.
• “Earl Wilson: It Happened One Night” column. The Courier Post, December 21, 1972.
• “'Empire Strikes Back' Director Irvin Kershner Dies” by Mike Barnes. Hollywood Reporter, November 29, 2010. Retrieved November 26, 2018. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/empire-strikes-director-irvin-kershner-49759
• “First Artists Story, The” by CEJ. Revised 12/2/14. Retrieved November 17, 2018. http://gullcottageonline.com/FirstArtists_WarnerBros.html
• Joyce Haber column. The Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1971.
• “Lost ‘Sandbox’ Scene No Loss.” Variety, October 30, 1972.
• Luckiest People in the World: People Who’ve Worked with Barbra.  An interview with Paul Benedict by Peter Cosenza. All About Barbra magazine, Winter edition No. 19/20.
• “Near anonymity plays well with David Grusin” by Terry Lawson. The Journal Herald, March 5, 1983.
• “Only Human” by Sidney Fields (Stockard Channing story). New York Daily News, June 3, 1975.
• Robert Taylor … Stage and Screen.  “Another Side of Barbra.” Oakland Tribune, December 19, 1972.
• “Stage and Screen” by George Anderson. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 20, 1972.
• “Streisand finds ‘her’ role in ‘Sandbox’ by Henrietta Leith, Associated Press. Boston Globe, December 27, 1972.
• Streisand’s Buried Treasure. Another Look at ‘Up the Sandbox’ by Allison J. Waldman. All About Barbra magazine, Issue No. 11.
• Tales from the Casting Couch: An Unprecedented Candid Collection of Stories, Essays, and Anecdotes by and about Legendary Hollywood Stars, Starlets, and Wanna-bes. Compiled by Michael Viner and Terrie Maxine Frankel.  Phoenix Books, 1995.
• “Music: Reels of Sound” by Time staff (interview with Billy Goldenberg). Time Magazine, September 8, 1975.
• “Will Roll Their Own” by Florabel Muir, June 21, 1969.

END / Up the Sandbox 1972 / BACK TO MOVIES