Barbra Streisand

The Owl and the Pussycat

Yentl

Hello, gorgeous! The past few weeks have been filled with bewildering and bizarre cinema—some more palatable than others—so I thought I’d break the cycle with some bizarre and bewildering cinema from one of America’s sweethearts, one of the few individuals to have achieved EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) status, one of the best-selling recording artists of all time who’s career spans six decades spent on the radio and stage and the silver and small screen, a multi-nominated and awarded writer, director, producer, singer, songwriter, actress, author, and legendary (fellow) big-nosed Jewish diva named Barbra Streisand. She was born Barbara Joan Streisand (that’s StreiSAND) on April 24th, 1942 in New York, and from a young age her talent was noticed. She always wanted to be an actress, but her singing ability was what garnered her the most attention—first from her schoolmates and the parents at PTA, and eventually from nightclub owners and Broadway musical producers. As her star began to rise, “Barbara” changed her name to “Barbra”, and she was becoming known outside of the jazz clubs and gay bars where she’d open for comedian Phyllis Diller, appearing on Broadway and quickly becoming a re-occurring guest on The Tonight Show, and eventually signing her first record deal at Columbia at the age of 21. Barbra took a pay cut in return for sole creative ownership and rights over her music—a business decision that would become a game-changer and massive influence in the music industry, and a savvy display of Babs’ commitment to being herself, just as her choice to not get a nose job, even after studio heads and producers told her she’d go further in showbiz if she did. Barbra has such a depth and breadth of impressive, generation-defining work that I’m intimidated to even begin writing about her. She has lived such a capital “L” LIFE that I struggle to narrow down her many accomplishments and insane true stories for this post. Barbra has always been very boldly and controversially herself—as showcased in all of her film projects and albums. Her first major film Funny Girl, which earned her an Oscar for Best Actress in 1968 (the only time in Oscars history with a tie that category, Katharine Hepburn also won), showcased her singing and acting capabilities, as well as her genuine likability—a status that is (still) very hard to achieve as a woman (especially one who was constantly told to change her appearance.) This likability carried over into her next musical films, Hello Dolly! and On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, and her charm would only further flourish when she began starring in screwball comedies like What’s Up Doc? and tonight’s first film: Herbert Ross’ 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat. Based on the Broadway play of the same name, The Owl and the Pussycat follows Babs as Doris, a chicly-dressed street-walking sex worker as she tiptoes around the mean, grimy, rainy streets of New York City one night. She takes a client home and shows him a good time at the same time that her upstairs neighbor, a verbose but unsuccessful writer named Felix (George Segal), gets home for the evening. Felix is uptight, anxious, and highly refined, so when he realizes that a sex worker is operating a business so close to his intelligent high-and-mightiness, he reports her to the landlord. This results in Doris being thrown out of her apartment in the middle of the night, leading this foul-mouthed and fancy-dressed leading lady right to Felix’s door. Desperate for a place to lay her head for the night, Doris insists on staying with Felix, to which he begrudgingly agrees. He complains about her line of work and she complains about the incessant click-click-clicking of his typewriter, and the two form an irresistibly incongruous dynamic that makes for some shockingly sweet and hilariously hectic chemistry. She calls him the F slur, he claims that she is “a fine example of capitalism at its most efficient” (which somehow seems even more offensive) and through the chaos of their ridiculous rendezvous, Doris offers Felix some much-needed notes on his rejected manuscript and Felix offers Doris a vocabulary lesson. Nothing I write could properly sum up just how absurd and silly their encounter is, it’s just one of those classically screwy screwball comedies that has to be heard and seen to be believed. The Owl and the Pussycat was a film I chose to watch mostly because of the outfits—which is also mostly why I chose to watch What a Way To Go!, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, When Harry Met Sally, and Showgirls—and while Babs turns some fiercely fab looks in this film, I also enjoyed the story a lot more than I thought I would. It always astounds me how free-wheeling, unpredictable, and impeccably sexy these screwball comedies were, and as I watched Barbra Streisand’s Doris fall for the nerdy but fit Felix, just as her character Judy in What’s Up Doc? fell for Ryan O’Neal’s dorky but dashing Howard Bannister, I realized that Babs and I have the same type. I wasn’t aware that there were multiple films in the Manic Pixie Barbra Tries to Seduce a Hot Nerd Cinematic Universe but I am so relieved that this is the case, and good for her! The Owl and the Pussycat is a perfectly preposterous story that works because of the severe charisma of both leads, and the undeniable chemistry between them. The entire film is essentially just one long conversation between Doris and Felix, but it never became boring or trite or exhausted, it always felt sincere and adult yet completely goofy. Babs was effortlessly funny and played this brassy and crass-y sex worker with the same amount of ease and commitment that she displays with every character—even the role of a young, devout Jewish yeshiva boy. That brings us to our next film of the evening, from Barbra’s serious era of her career where she acted, produced, wrote, and directed, her 1983 film Yentl. Much like Casino Royale, the filming process of Yentl could, itself, be made into a film, so I encourage you to read about the behind the scenes of this project—even if you’re like me and cannot brave the 970 page memoir Babs just released. What I will tell you about the making of Yentl is the fact that if it weren’t for a psychic that spoke to Barbra all those decades ago, we wouldn’t even have this Oscar-winning classic. Based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, Yentl transports us to 1904 Eastern Europe, inside a quaint Ashkenazi shtetl (village) where Barbra’s character Yentl lives with her elderly rabbi father. Within this time and tradition of religious study, women were not allowed to be instructed on the lessons of the Talmud (the central text of Jewish law), nor were they allowed to learn anything beyond what was expected of a housewife, but Yentl’s father lets her study in secret. She aches for knowledge, and deeply envies the men around her—who are allowed to learn and question and ponder the mysteries of life and the universe. Additionally, Yentl is entirely disinterested in finding a husband, much to the dismay of her father and her community. This film is a musical, but it hardly feels like a traditional one. Barbra is the only one who sings, but even then, this singing is seemingly done internally. The music and lyrics are often played inside the mind of Yentl, which makes for less catchy, dance-y musical numbers, and leans more into interiority, which I found to be fascinating. As she sings “What a waste to have a taste of things that can’t be mine”, Yentl hasn’t yet discovered that this will be a reoccurring theme in her life, even when she chops off her hair, dons a tallit (prayer shawl), and learns to assimilate into the patriarchal world of education as a Jewish drag king. Yentl, with a fresh new cut and a wardrobe of her father’s clothes, flees her meager shtetl and embarks upon a journey of knowledge and self-discovery. She decides to go by Anshel, and is miraculously accepted into a prestigious yeshiva that is bustling with boys and men, thrusting her into a new world of information, philosophy, discourse, and power. Among all of the Jewish bros, Yentl as Anshel stands out as a twinky little sprite, and is quickly singled out and picked on. But Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin) is a gentle giant who stands up for her, and the two quickly become friends. Somehow, despite her size, glowing skin, lack of facial hair, missing Adam’s apple, and obviously-high-pitched voice, no one clocks that Anshel is really a woman, so she is free to study and learn and find her place among a group of people who appreciate her for her knowledge and wit—not just for her looks and baby-carrying capabilities. Anshel/Yentl can breathe a sigh of relief when she befriends Avigdor and impresses the entire yeshiva with her knowledge, but when Avigdor introduces her to his fiancee Hadass (Amy Irving), things take a turn for the tense. Yentl/Anshel falls in love with Avigdor who is in love with Hadass who begins to fall in love with Yentl, making for a kinky kinship between the three that, were they in a different era, could’ve resulted in a very effective throuple, but unfortunately for this polycule, this was a time when everything was considered a sin. Yentl is overwhelmed but inspired as she experiences a sexual awakening alongside an intellectual one—something I’d always assumed would also happen to me in college but didn’t. She also experiences the full spectrum of human emotion as she balances her relationships and friendships with her thirst for knowledge and independence, which makes for a refreshing exploration of the limits of religion and traditional gender politics. It all results in an exciting and genuinely interesting exploration of how cultures and human behaviors are shaped by religion—how we use it to explain and justify what we cannot understand, how we rely on it to get us out of situations and into others, how its answers often only result in more questions. I’m not sure what exactly I expected out of Yentl, but it wasn’t this, and I wasn’t sure how much I’d like this film at all, but I ended up loving it. No one told me that this film begins like Beauty and the Beast then shifts into Mulan and ultimately becomes Call Me By Your Name (Yentl and CMBYN both use the same Hillel the Elder quote “if not now, when?”), or I might’ve seen this sooner. No one told me about the emotional depths that this would reach narratively, about the gender dysphoria and euphoria it would explore authentically, about the sun-soaked tea-stained tension-filled frames that would stay with me. No one told me that young, hairy, intellectual Jewish adonis Mandy Patinkin would turn me on in the most intensely visceral way since Ryan O’Neal in What’s Up Doc? I grew up religiously Jewish, not so much culturally, my dad is Jewish and my mom isn’t so some would consider me not Jewish at all, my sister had a bat mitzvah but I didn’t, and while I’ve always been drawn to Jewish stories in pop culture, the uber religious ones always put me off—perhaps due to my years and tears spent in Sunday and Hebrew school. But I’m glad I finally sat down to watch this. I’d never necessarily taken note of how gendered of a religion Judaism is, but like any hobby or philosophy or code of ethics there is always the potential for muddied, forced binary thinking. Yentl did what all of the more modern pieces of Jewish-adjacent media do, and that’s investigate these oddities and contradictions and shortcomings, give these belief systems a thorough shake, and appreciate how sexy it is to sin. I don’t believe in god or organized religion, but I do believe in the power of sex god Mandy, and clearly so did Babs because there is a full-on Avigdor fancam in the middle of this movie (so no one’s allowed to shit on Saltburn for doing the same thing with Jacob Elordi, mmkay?) What do you, dear reader, know about yearning? What do you know of the sleepless nights and embarrassing journal entries of a person who covets another that they will never have? Because whatever you call this genre, whatever flavor of film that uses this unrequited, unrealized, but undeniably real kind of desire is my absolute favorite. Call me a masochist, call me a tortured poet, but these are the love stories that I find to be most romantic. I certainly never expected Yentl to be so romantic or sexy, but I’m so glad that Babs made it this way. I’m so glad whenever I can find a piece of Jewish media that doesn’t bore or depress me, and I’m over the moon to announce that Yentl didn’t just entertain me, it entranced me. We can thank Barbra Streisand for making Judaism chic, and we can thank Mandy Patinkin for making it sexy. Amen. You’re a mensch if you’ve read all of this so thank you, dear reader, for letting me explore the many talents of Barbra Streisand. Now, don’t rain on my parade, let’s talk next week! Toodles!