Quote of the Day (John Neal, on the Insurance Industry and Climate Change)

“You'll never find an insurer saying, ‘I don't believe in climate change.' The frequency and severity of weather-related losses are exponential. The US had the highest number of convective thunderstorms in 10 years last year, and it's already worse this year.”—Lloyd’s of London CEO John Neal quoted by Rana Foroohar in “Lunch With the FT: ‘You’ll Never Find an Insurer Saying ‘I Don’t Believe in Climate Change,’” The Financial Times, June 15-16, 2024

Appreciations: Barbra Streisand’s ‘Yentl,’ 40 Years On

Forty years ago this holiday season, moviegoers—and, especially, the all-important Oscar voters—watched with more than the usual amount of interest one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars bring to the screen what many thought was, at best, a niche product.

But Barbra Streisand had the drive, the clout, and the money to put her vision before a mass audience.

Though not a blockbuster, Yentl, an adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” performed well enough ($40 million on a $16 million budget) that the singer-actress would be able to get behind the cameras again a few more times in the next dozen years.

I had never viewed the film until I watched a DVD in preparation for writing this blog. My reaction may well have been different had I seen it when it premiered. 

For all its imperfections, I still can’t help but respect the zeal and craftsmanship with which the singer-actress made this labor of love.

You will notice that my headline for this post has the phrase, “Barbra Streisand’s ‘Yentl.’” I don’t think a truer three words were ever put on this blog.

It wasn’t “Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ‘Yentl.’” Great storyteller that the Nobel Literature laureate was, his tale left enormous gaps in the narrative that he felt no need to fill. The way that fiction such as his describes thought and time diverges from the methods of film. And what he felt the story was “about” differed quite a bit from Streisand’s.

This is one instance in which Hollywood’s annoying habit of saying “A Film By [director's name],” without acknowledging collaborators, makes sense. Streisand played multiple roles throughout the production: star, singer, co-screenwriter, producer, and director.

The last actress who had performed this actor-hyphenate role was Ida Lupino in the late Forties to mid-Fifties. But the pictures Lupino made were low-budget. Streisand's was far more high-profile. 

For all her admitted large ego (which, she believed, gave her "strength" to achieve), she was also acutely aware, in a sexist industry, that Yentl's failure could set back progress not just for her but also for other women who hoped to helm a project. 

To her credit, Streisand saw the movie through, from beginning to end—doubly extraordinary since it took 15 years to get it made.

The seeds of the project took root in Streisand’s mind even before 1968 acting screen debut, Funny Girl, when she came upon the opening phrase of the story: “After her father's death.”

The inscription on the tombstone of her own father, who died when she was only 15 months old, reminded her more than a little of Yentl’s deceased parent: “Beloved Teacher and Scholar.” (The film ended up “dedicated to my father...and to all our fathers.”)

Among the difficulties Streisand faced in bringing the story to the screen:

*The disbelief of movie industry associates, even her intimates, about commercial prospects for such subject matter. Streisand’s agent in 1968, David Begelman, strongly advised her that taking on a character so identified as Jewish right after Funny Girl risked stereotyped her, and would not fly with moviegoers anyway. The star broke with a later agent, the legendary Sue Mengers, in part for expressing similar doubts. Her commitment to the project also severely strained her relationship with then-lover Jon Peters. By my count, at least three studios—Orion, Columbia, and Polygram Pictures—passed on the proposal until United Artists agreed, on the basis of several concessions by Streisand.

*Skepticism from some of the same sources about whether Streisand was the right person for the role. Singer did not specifically state Yentl’s age, but most people who’ve read the story (myself included) believe she’s no more than 20. By the time Streisand came across the tale, she was already in her mid-20s. The longer the project took, the older she looked for a yeshiva student. Streisand herself thought her character was about 28. By taking care of herself (and with the right lighting and hairstyle), Streisand may have felt that, even at age 40 (when she was finally able to go before the cameras), she could pass for someone in her late 20s. That was surely wishful thinking, but the history of Hollywood is filled with actors who try to pass themselves off for younger.

*The gender-bending plot was one that neither Hollywood nor audiences was accustomed to. Yentl loves the Torah so much that she is willing to dress as a male to be in the one environment where she can study it to her heart's content: a yeshiva, a traditional Jewish school centering on the teaching of Rabbinic literature. The film's script explored the complications of cross-dressing, including how both a male and female come to care for her in different ways. Even Streisand admitted to concentrating more on the feminist aspects of the story rather than its gender-bending ones. But the subtext was hard to miss, and the movie is now regarded as something of a landmark in LBGT depictions.

*Streisand had to direct this because her initial choices passed on it. One, Ivan Passer, told the actress in 1971 that she was too old and famous to play the role. Another, Milos Forman, upon hearing her pitch, gave her the same advice as Passer: Given her strong feelings on how the movie should be made, she should direct it herself.

*Much of the film was shot on location in Czechoslovakia—which, while it placed her far away from interfering Hollywood “suits,” also meant she was cut off from the many resources and personnel available for domestic shooting. (Filming at a British studio went more smoothly.)

*Amy Irving initially resisted being cast as Hadass Vishkower, the unwitting center of an unwitting love triangle. She might have felt better when all was said and done, as she was nominated for an Academy Award—the only one she ever received.

*Her leading man made a clumsy pass at her. In her new memoir, My Name Is Barbra, the star recalled her astonishment when, in pressing Mandy Patinkin for why he had acted so oddly in a recent scene, he blurted out, “I thought we were going to have a more personal relationship”—i.e., an affair. After she threatened to replace him if he didn’t act more professionally, he complied, but he still unnerved her enough that she scrapped a planned love scene with him. (That last decision may have been for the best, because there was nothing like this in Singer's story.)

*An actor cast as the rabbi died right after his run-through. Harold Goldblatt made an excellent impression, but Streisand (who had cradled his head until the ambulance arrived) was flabbergasted to learn that he’d understated his years by 20 years to get his role.

*Rumors circulated that Streisand was flubbing her shot at directing. The actress’ penchant for asking for advice led some to wonder if she knew what she was doing, according to Gregg Kilday's December 2015 profile of her for The Hollywood Reporter. Conversely, her reputation for being difficult sparked rumors that she was driving the crew crazy. (Streisand was so sensitive to such talk that, for the 25^th anniversary of the film’s release, the accompanying DVD included the studio crew’s typed letter to a London paper denying any discord—the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this in a product meant to celebrate, rather than defend, work from long ago. Streisand might have been a force of nature, but that didn’t lessen her sensitivity to charges that she was a perfectionist diva.)

*The insurance company was ready to yank control away from her just as she began shooting. In a prior post on Tyrone Power’s fatal 1958 heart attack on location for Solomon and Sheba, I demonstrated one of the lesser-known aspects of moviemaking: how insurance affects production in ways that a layman can’t imagine. Streisand experienced her own moments of stress at the hands of an insurance company when, just before shooting, she was told she’d have to sign a completion bond, or a written contract guaranteeing a movie will be finished and delivered on schedule and within budget. At one point, when she was $1 million over the budget, the company working with United Artists, Completion Bond Co., told her they’d take control of the movie away from her if she didn’t complete dubbing within six weeks rather than the 10 she believed she needed, according to Streisand’s February 1984 interview with Dale Pollack for Playgirl Magazine. (Completion Bond was not making an idle threat: In 1992, Spike Lee required financial assistance from prominent African-Americans like Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Earvin (Magic) Johnson, Janet Jackson, and Prince to retain control of Malcolm X from the company after he went $5 million over budget.)

*Staying on budget entailed other financial sacrifices and even risks for Streisand. As she told Pollack, she didn't get paid for co-writing the script, was compensated only scale for directing, and had to agree to give back half her salary if she went over budget.

A compromised, but still impressive, product

Although as a woman, Streisand was operating under greater constraints than any studio would allow a man, it's also true that she was now working in an environment in which directors of both sexes were being scrutinized more heavily than they had been in years. Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate fiasco had curtailed director-driven cinema and given carte-blanche to studio execs and their bean-counters.

That swing in power not only meant that Yentl would be a musical, but dictated what kind of musical it would be.

Adding songs to the screenplay was suggested to Streisand by United Artists, as a means of bolstering its box-office appeal. The soundtrack would, in effect, cross-promote the film as well. 

Lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, whom Streisand had used, to Oscar-winning impact, on The Way We Were, had the idea of creating the songs as interior monologues by Yentl. It was a fascinating, unusual, even distinctive form of a musical. 

Both Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving were accomplished singers (he, on Broadway in Evita; she, onscreen, as a country-and-western singer, in Honeysuckle Rose), but the soundtrack for Yentl made no use of their talents. In fact, nobody else but Streisand sings in the film.

Onscreen, then, there is no interaction between the characters in these minutes. Additionally, with only nine days for rehearsing actors for musical numbers, Streisand kept dancing to a minimum, retaining highly respected Cats choreographer Gillian Lynne basically for a wedding scene. Although director of photography David Watkin provided Streisand with beautifully lit scenes, her preference for a long lens kept variety to a minimum.  

The upshot was not merely that the camera was largely stationary for this "motion picture," but also that the focus would be squarely on Streisand, opening her to the familiar charge that she was egocentric.

 And, with the director persuading United Artists to allow her to go beyond their two-hour limit by 12 minutes (and with an additional four minutes inserted for the DVD "director's cut"), the overall pace can be languid.

After the film's release, Singer wrote an article for The New York Times that criticized the movie on three points: 

1) Streisand did not understand the character as well as Tovah Feldshuh, who had played Yentl on Broadway in 1976 (and who, at 27, was admittedly more age-appropriate than Streisand); 

2) as a director, Streisand allowed herself to "monopolize" the action at the expense of other cast members; and 

3) the "kitsch ending" (which is reminiscent of Streisand's "Don't Rain on My Parade" in the film Funny Girl) "was done without any kinship to Yentl's character, her ideals, her sacrifice, her great passion for spiritual achievement."

Predictably, Streisand (who had rejected Singer's script in 1969) dismissed him as a misogynist. My own feeling is that, though the author's points are well-taken, he might not have grasped that a work of creation can have a very different meaning among those who encounter and embrace it than he might have originally intended.

I agree, then, with Pauline Kael's assessment in The New Yorker, that Yentl “has a distinctive and surprising spirit. It's funny, delicate, and intense—all at the same time.”

More specifically, the movie was well-cast, with Streisand eliciting excellent performances all around (including, in the end, the troublesome Patinkin); she sings the Bergman-Michel Legrand tunes with unrivaled psychological insight and purity of tone; and, from its first shot, it pays full tribute to Judaism as a culture with a deep reverence bordering on passion for the book.

Though winning a Golden Globe for her direction, Streisand remains peeved that she was not nominated for either this movie nor her follow-up behind the director's chair, The Prince of Tides. 

But she can take comfort in the fact that her success with Yentl made it possible for women to advance from outside the mainstream (where Lupino and Italian director Lina Wertmuller had been confined) to studio fare previously reserved entirely for men. I hope that, if Greta Gerwig wins an Oscar in 2024 for Barbie, she makes sure to thank Streisand for paving the way years before.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Addams Family,’ As Morticia Muses About Family Pets and Home Decor)

[An insurance salesman at the house discusses how to compensate the family for a loss.]

Gomez Addams [played by John Astin]: “We don't want money. What we want is another bear.”

Morticia Frump Addams [played by Carolyn Jones]: “What else could possibly go with our decor?”

Joe Digby [played by Eddie Quillan]: “The bear may be a little hard to come by. How about a lion?”

Morticia: “We already have one.”

Digby: “Stuffed?”

Morticia [eyeing the animal as it enters the living room]: “Well, he is after he's had his dinner.”—The Addams Family, Season 2, Episode 28, “The Addams Policy,” original air date Mar. 25, 1966, teleplay by Harry Winkler and Hannibal Coons, directed by Sidney Lanfield

Flashback, November 1958: Power On-Set Death Turns Film Upside Down

A recent trip to the doctor’s office had left aging matinee idol Tyrone Power fearful of both his employability and his mortality. His silence about his condition smothered concerns about the first but could not avoid the second, as a fatal heart attack on November 15, 1958, during difficult location shooting in Spain for a Biblical epic became one of the most dramatic examples of how insurance affects financial—and, yes, even artistic—decisions related to filmmaking.

I have wanted to write this post for awhile, for several reasons:

1) Power has, increasingly over the years, impressed me as an example of someone who first found work in Hollywood largely because of his looks, but who broadened his range and was doing some of his best work before he died;

2    2) The actor was, like myself, of Irish descent, and appeared in several films with Irish characters;

      3) Through a relative who was involved in this line of work early in his career, I have become fascinated by how insurance plays an enormous role in the entertainment industry that most of the public know little if anything about. 

Only three months before his death, the 44-year-old Power appeared in a short film sponsored by the American Heart Association in which he warned about the dangers of overwork. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to follow his own advice. 

The longtime idol of Twentieth Century Fox had just partnered with producer Ted Richmond to form Copa Productions, intending to make a half-dozen pictures outside the U.S. so he could set up a tax-free trust fund for the first child he was to have with his new, third wife. 

But the anxieties involved with entering a new marriage and planning for another family (he already had two daughters from marriage to ex-wife Linda Christian) were multiplied exponentially by shooting the blockbuster Solomon and Sheba on location in Madrid. During one sequence, for instance, a battle between the Israelis and the Egyptians, 12 horses were killed and many extras were transported to the hospital with assorted injuries. 

Power kept up an appearance of cheerfulness before the crew, but events began to take a toll on him. Chain smoking became his major means of calming his nerves. It was a major mistake. He couldn’t help himself, even though it was self-destructive. 

He already had family history telling against him (his father, Tyrone Power Sr., had also died of a heart attack—right in the arms of his 17-year-old son, in fact—during the making of a film), and a routine checkup eight months before had given him a bad fright: he had been asked to stay around longer than expected because of something found on the cardiogram, until he had been assured that it was the fault of the machine rather than himself. Rather than seeking a second opinion, Power told Christian, he preferred not to know the truth.

There was a good reason why: a grim diagnosis would have meant that Power would have been uninsurable. That would have at best greatly diminished his range of good roles and at worst could have rendered him unemployable. This was why it was such a big deal in 1964 when John Wayne, ignoring admonitions from his agent and closest advisers, announced that he had “licked the Big C” following cancer treatment.

By the mid-1950s, Power’s strikingly handsome face showed increasing signs of aging. While he turned in marvelous performances in a couple of high-profile movies (Witness for the Prosecution and The Sun Also Rises), he looked too old for his roles. 

By early November 1958, his film colleagues began to notice disquieting signs of his mortality as well. While in a steam room at the end of a day’s shooting, he clutched his chest, before joking that it must have been the result of Spanish food. (Like much of the crew, he did experience dysentery during filming.) He looked puffy around the eyes from the long shooting and had fallen on ice on the Spanish studio set.

This was the background for the awful scene that occurred on the morning of the 15^th. Accounts vary on the exact sequence of events, but in the midst of a sword fight with co-star George Sanders, Power stopped the action and said he wasn’t feeling well. Within an hour, he was dead.

With shooting completed on three-quarters of Solomon and Sheba, Hollywood executives decided to finish the film with Oscar winner Yul Brynner in Power’s role. (Long-range shots where Power’s likeness could not easily be seen were salvageable.) Production had to be suspended to allow for the recasting.

The projected $4 million budget had ballooned to $6 million by the time the film (with Gina Lollobrigida as the female lead) was released in 1959, but considering what could have happened—i.e., cost-overruns on the scale of Cleopatra three years later—that wasn’t bad. When worldwide grosses were considered, nobody really lost out on the movie.

Still, few if any of the principals involved had anything good to say about the film afterward. 

A production already filled with numerous logistical challenges now confronted another difficulty: frequent tense face-offs between Brynner and director King Vidor, who disapproved of the different interpretation of the role by Power’s good friend. 

Brynner projected total, unwavering decisiveness, as if he were reprising his triumph in The King and I, whereas Power had sought to underscore the ancient Israeli king’s anguished conflict between piety and passion. 

The experience was unpleasant enough that Vidor didn’t even discuss the film in his memoir about his career. He had already made his feeling known, however, that with Power in the lead, they would have had "a simply marvelous picture," but the result with Brynner turned out to be "an unimportant, nothing sort of film."

The death of Power is one of the most dramatic examples of how an unexpected event can alter the course of a film. 

To avoid this kind of nightmare, film production companies need to obtain completion bonds required by financing institutions. Cast insurance is needed, particularly for a star regarded as integral to launching the movie. 

An actor's serious medical condition or death can delay a film, as in the case of Solomon and Sheba, or even shut it down for good, as happened with Alexander Korda's 1937 production of I, Claudius when reports of Merle Oberon's injury in a car accident were received. 

(Some have believed that the accident was faked, in an attempt to pull the plug on director Josef von Sternberg, who had allowed the film to become behind schedule and, hence, way over budget.) 

Sometimes, an actor’s substance abuse is so pronounced that directors become hard-pressed to employ him or her. 

Such was the case when Woody Allen wanted Robert Downey Jr. for Melinda and Melinda and, more recently, with Lindsay Lohan, whose producer on Liz and Dick sought not only special provisions related to her drug use but also to cover the risk of incarceration, as she was on probation at the time and risked jail time with another infraction.

In other cases, a medical condition that does not relate to substance abuse has played a role in how a film is shot. 

A knee injury to Nicole Kidman while shooting Moulin Rouge!, for instance, resulted in a $3 million insurance loss on that film—then, when she was forced to withdraw from Panic Room, Fireman’s Fund had to absorb $7 million for the actress replacing her, Jodie Foster.  

As Edward Jay Epstein has noted, the insurance company then balked on her participation in Cold Mountain, until these conditions were met: a) Kidman had to place $1 million from her salary in an escrow fund to be paid out in case she failed to adhere to the production schedule; b) the co-producer, Lakeshore Entertainment, had to toss in another $500,000 in the account; c) Kidman had to use a stunt double whenever it was deemed a particular scene posed a risk to her knee.

The participation of Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?  went a long way towards redeeming Stanley Kramer’s simplistic 1967 message movie, as he brought the cumulative goodwill bred by eight prior onscreen pairings with offscreen partner Katharine Hepburn. But he almost never appeared in the film because of several insurance companies’ concern that the 67-year-old actor, after years of epic drinking, would not survive the film’s shooting. 

Kramer and Hepburn could only win approval by agreeing to put their entire salaries in escrow in the event that Tracy had to be replaced. Filming was scheduled around the actor; he was done by noon each day to allow him enough time to rest. Even so, he barely made it, dying only two weeks after filming was concluded.

Other productions were not as fortunate as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?  The biggest bath taken by insurers in the last few decades was John Candy’s death while filming tĥe comedy Wagons West. 

The $15 million resulting payout became a stiff lesson for Firemen’s Fund, which thereafter sought to more closely monitor stars’ cardiovascular health. (Like Power, Candy had reached his mid-40s and chain-smoked; unlike Power, he was well over 300 pounds.)

More problematic, because the situation was more ambiguous, was Brainstorm, the movie that Natalie Wood was making at the time of her drowning death in November 1981. Despite the fact that almost all of her scenes were finished at the time of her death, director Douglas Trumbull found that he was now facing “the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.” 

Though he was eventually able to tweak her scenes enough to get the film released two years later, he felt he had become caught between the insurance company and MGM, then staring into the face of bankruptcy and hoping to use any insurance proceeds to stay alive.