Not many observers have been content to merely appreciate Barbra Streisand as a multi-talented performer. Instead, she has long registered visceral emotional responses, the needle flapping between red zones of love and hate. Ethan Mordden falls more toward love—“she is arguably the greatest popular singer America has ever produced” he proclaims on page 1 of On Streisand: An Opinionated Guide.
Many would argue otherwise: Any votes for Bing, Frank, Elvis, Ella, Billie…? And yet, Mordden didn’t come to heap mindless praise on his subject. Admiration for Streisand’s spirited self-invention abounds, but Mordden isn’t blind to her faults. He admits she’s not good playing a Brit (check out On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) and calls out her “Everybody else is wrong” attitude. He points to low career points as well as high.
Streisand was firmly established on stage and the pop charts by the time of her first movie, Funny Girl (1968). As a result, her cinematic career occupies roughly the second half of On Streisand. Mordden is an often brilliant writer (his previous book, When Broadway Went Hollywood, contains all most of us will want on the subject) and an astute critic. He mocks the stilted screenplay for What’s Up, Doc? (1972), which established Streisand’s character as a rebel by having her cross a busy street without looking for traffic. An inept attempt at recreating 1930s screwball comedy, writer-director Peter Bogdanovich—Mordden writes—mistook “a lack of common sense for joie de vivre and recklessness for nonconformity.” He adds, “Eleanor Roosevelt is nonconformism. Walking into moving traffic is stupidity.”
Well, Streisand survived to star in her most remembered movie, The Way We Were (1973), playing the sort of misguided idealist described by Lenin’s mordant phrase—quoted by Mordden—“a useful idiot.”
Commenting on the opposition by Streisand’s mother to her daughter’s pursuit of places beyond life’s dead end, Mordden comments that parents like her aren’t really counseling their kids on the danger of a financially insecure future. The real reason, he writes, is because “your dreams of joining the leadership class of unique individuals irritate them. They say they want you happy, but they don’t.”
