It only took Barbra Streisand six years to complete her EGOT, but it took her more than 20 to pen My Name is Barbra, her recently-released memoir from Viking Press. And if two decades sounds like a long time, you must not have picked up your copy yet. Clocking in at 966 pages—48 hours and 14 minutes if you’re listening to the read-by-Babs audiobook—the tome spans the singularly prolific artist’s 81 years on earth, from her torch-singing origins in Greenwich Village gay bars to her fraught relationship with her mother, Diana Kind. “I do love her,” Streisand writes in the short, wrenching chapter all about Diana. “But that doesn’t mean I like her.”
Repeated throughout is a quote from G.B. Shaw’s Saint Joan (coincidentally, Barbra’s middle name): “It is an old saying that he who tells too much truth is sure to be hanged.” Well, in My Name is Barbra, Streisand braves the gallows. But the book, for all its unvarnished truth-telling, lacks an index. “No flipping straight to the sordid bits,” Streisand seems to say.
Until now. A Fran Fine-level Barbra fan, I inhaled the masterpiece in a few short days and cobbled together a handy little index—“cheat sheet” might be more apt; it’s not perfectly comprehensive, but it’ll get you where you need to go—for those eager to skip the filler and get to the meat of it. I recommend starting with Barbra’s digressions on the subject of food. They go down like buttah.
———
Abe, Shinzo | Page 840
“In 1994 I was approached by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to be part of a program which over the years had brought in speakers ranging from Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, to Ted Turner, the founder of CNN.
I thought, Oh my God … I was intimidated, yet it was hard to refuse, because they happened to catch me at just the right moment. I was so incensed at what was going on, and this was an opportunity to express my feelings about it.”
Acid reflux | 868
“It’s interesting how quickly I regressed from being charmed to ‘this will never work.’ I guess I was looking for the negative, and I found it. So I left, and Jim remembers that I didn’t even say goodbye to him.
I went home so distressed that I asked Renata to make me a hot dog with mustard and relish. Fuck the diet. And then when I had finished it, I said ‘I need another one.’ I ate them both in bed, with two coffee ice cream cones afterward (I can never have just one), while I read the latest issue of The Economist. I thought, No more relationships. Back to politics.
Jim called several times that night, but I wasn’t ready to speak to him. I told Renata to say I was out.”
Acting like a chocolate chip | 35, 53
The Actors Studio | 16, 36, 48, 87, 431
“Adam’s Rib” | 342
Adams, Bryan | 859-860
Adler, Stella | 343
Aerosmith | 877
Abzug, Bella | 229, 350-353, 399, 795, 842
“Here we were, two Jewish girls . . . Bella from the Bronx and Barbra from Brooklyn . . . who made good!”
Agassi, Andre | 746-747, 795
“It was a completely unexpected relationship, and it was fun. He sent me six dozen pink and yellow roses after one dinner. He came out to the ranch. I remember playing tennis with him as my partner in doubles (don’t laugh), and I was trying so hard that I tore my meniscus. I actually heard it pop, but I didn’t want to stop, even to ice it, because I didn’t want to look like a wimp.”
Aghayan, Ray | 426
AIDS crisis | 617-618, 635, 640, 730, 749, 775, 782, 816
Air Force One | 810
“Airplane!” | 656
Albright, Madeline | 826-828, 908, 958
Alda, Alan | 313, 352,
Aleichem, Sholem | 545
Alexander the Great | 648
Alexandre de Paris | 219
Ali, Muhammad | 429
“Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” | 405
“Alice in Wonderland” | 191, 434
“All Night Long” | 405, 531, 533
Allen, Woody | 131, 335, 709
“I was on the bill with Woody Allen, but we barely met. We were both such loners that we never said anything to each other. He would read in his dressing room, and I would read in mine.”
Altman, Robert | 602
Amazon stock | 895
American Civil Liberties Union | 398
American Film Institute | 896
“An American in Paris” | 724
AMFAR | 618
Andersson, Bibi | 336, 339
“Angelina Scarangella” | 223
Angelou, Maya | 893
“Angels in America” | 645
“Anna Karenina” | 237, 323
“On July 11, the first day of shooting, we were in an abandoned railroad station, built in the 1880s, with a soaring ceiling, Romanesque brick arches, and wrought-iron gates. We were doing the scene where the Ziegfeld girls arrive in Baltimore. There’s a moment when I step off the train, and I suddenly had an idea. I asked Willy, “What if we do a takeoff on Garbo’s entrance in Anna Karenina?” It’s a famous scene, where she’s hidden behind a burst of smoke coming off the train wheels, and then it clears to reveal her beautiful face as she stands in the doorway of the train. I thought it would be funny to do the same shot, but this time it would reveal me, coughing and waving the smoke away…”
“Another Evening with Harry Stoones” | 79, 192
“Another unsupportive male” | 701
Anouilh, Jean | 36
“Anxiety” | 782
“In my thirties I was plagued with more anxiety-related problems. As I wrote in my journal, ‘I wish my stomach was absolutely normal again. I wish I could accept my fears and think everything will turn out okay. I want to be more loving, even to myself. I want to learn how to redirect negative thoughts into more positive ones.’”
“Anyone Can Whistle” | 608, 752
AOL stock | 895
“Apparently Bush had called Clinton beforehand…” | 914
“Apparently no one brings a dog to the White House…” | 938
Apple stock | 895
Arafat, Yasser | 834-835
Archerd, Army | 470
Arendt, Hannah | 839
Aristotle | 648
Arlen, Harold | 50, 59, 66, 103, 120, 121, 124, 125, 134, 230, 444, 497, 604, 739-740
Armstrong, Louis | 65, 282
Armstrong-Jones, Antony (Lord Snowdown) | 257
Arnstein, Nicky | 109, 112, 154, 159, 160, 161, 165, 166, 167, 186, 518
Art prices | 310-311
Astaire, Fred | 218
“Attracted to attractive men” | 673
“I wanted to share my life with someone. It was very lonely being me… For Christmas I went to Aspen, and there, at a party, a man walked up to me. That was refreshing… if a guy makes the first move, he’s already a step ahead. And this guy was lean and tan, with an easy grin (and good teeth). His name was Don Johnson, and he was the heartthrob of the moment on the TV series Miami Vice. I have to admit, I’m very attracted to attractive men. (Okay, so I’m superficial!) It’s almost like an aesthetic thing . . . like a piece of art. I collect!”
Avedon, Richard | 215, 218, 238, 330
“The Awful Truth” | 342
Aznavour, Charles | 591, 910
Bacall, Lauren | 171, 352, 851, 853-855, 861-863, 897
Bacharach, Burt | 331, 334
Backyard concert | 630-632
Bacon, Kevin | 640
Baez, Joan | 137
BAFTA | 862
Balanchine, George | 331, 332
Baldwin, Alec | 795, 940
Baldwin, James | 648
Bancroft, Anne | 109, 110, 112, 315
“But Ray, as I only learned much later, had reservations about Anne Bancroft… And so did Jule. He was writing songs that required a singer with range, and he wasn’t sure Bancroft could handle them. And as he acknowledged after he had heard me sing, ‘In my head, I was really writing for Barbra.’”
Banderas, Antonio | 940, 956-957
Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center | 918
“Barefoot in the Park” | 366
Barr, Roseanne | 830
Barry, John | 720
“Barry Lyndon” | 545
Bartkowiak, Andrzej | 618, 660, 667, 853, 860, 935
Baryshnikov, Mikhail | 603, 893
“We shot it in 1984 in London, which was way ahead of America fashion-wise. I’d see these incredible-looking kids with Mohawk hairdos and dazzling makeup on the streets and ask, ‘Do you want to be in my video?’ I said the same thing to Mikhail Baryshnikov one night when he came over to the table in a Chinese restaurant where Richard and I were eating. Miraculously he said yes and played a role in one of my fantasies. As a child I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and who would be better than Misha to leap through a window, lift me up, and sweep me off my feet?”
Bashert | 103, 213, 394, 442, 961
Basie, Count | 113
Basin Street East | 132, 133, 175
Basinger, Kim | 795
Baskin, Richard | 307, 588, 602-603, 612, 614, 616, 650-651, 671-672, 685, 690, 764, 766, 771, 791, 802, 810, 856, 870, 883-884, 921
Baskin-Robbins | 307
Bates, Kathy | 636,
“Batman” | 472, 759
Battle, Kathleen | 764
Bean, Orson | 68, 69, 74, 101
The Beatles | 150, 188, 398, 958
Beaton, Cecil | 132, 175, 238, 304, 305, 308, 575
Beatty, Warren, 37, 38, 285, 298, 359, 472, 480-481, 591, 680, 696, 749, 765, 828, 897
“Warren and I go back a long way (back to summer stock) and there’s some water under that bridge. Recently, we were on the phone talking politics and who knows what else when he said, “I remember why we broke up.”
I said, “When were we together?”
Then I hung up and asked myself, Did I sleep with Warren? I kind of remember. I guess I did. Probably once.”
Becker, Lee | 109
The Bee Gees | 499, 503
Begelman, David | 540-541, 552, 576
Begley Jr., Ed | 298
“Behind the Green Door” | 316
Being called a “bitch” | 2, 284, 382
“Being a kook” | 91, 111, 163, 172, 300, 675
Belafonte, Harry | 284-285, 350, 352
Belmondo, Jean-Paul | 93, 910
“Bells Are Ringing” | 106
Benny, Jack | 139, 789
Bening, Annette | 298, 765, 828
Beresford, Bruce | 587
Bergdorf Goodman | 193, 194, 196
Bergman, Alan | 517-521, 524, 532, 536, 550, 587-589, 591, 594-595, 597, 602, 605, 651, 685, 720, 725, 739, 741, 763, 785, 789, 795, 810, 830, 859, 880, 883, 897-898, 915, 919, 942, 948-950, 953, 958
Bergman, Ingmar | 336-340, 561, 580, 587
“Bergman understood the beauty of stillness. Over and over again, he man-aged to create so many quiet yet compelling moments. He had a profound sense of truth, and that’s what I respond to on-screen.”
Bergman, Ingrid | 183, 238, 263-264, 729
Berle, Milton | 20, 139
Berlin, Irving | 187, 920
Berman, Shelley | 193
Bernhardt, Sarah | 45, 278, 282, 301, 311-312, 905, 906
Bernstein, Leonard | 103, 116, 190, 229, 350, 441, 616, 618, 626, 789
“But when we were about to release [The Broadway Album], I didn’t know what kind of response it would get. The person whose opinion mattered so much to me was Leonard Bernstein’s, so I sent him a copy of the album. Here’s the note I received in return:
Dear Barbra,
I love your voice, your style, your guts, your arrangements (Somewhere is something else!) and I love you for sending me the album. Putting It Together is putting it mild.
Thank you,
Lenny
That made me feel blessed.”
Berry, Chuck | 764
Bertolucci, Bernardo | 290, 603
“The Best Years of Our Lives” | 236
“Betrayal” | 469
“I couldn’t believe what I was looking at, and I don’t want to reread it now. I do know that Frank took great pleasure in ridiculing me and Jon, and our ‘$6 million home home.’ He twisted the facts, and he made up stories, saying that he had to persuade me to put the moment with Leon Russell into the script, and that he had to convince me to hire Bob Surtees . . . when it was exactly the other way around.
I was furious and immediately called him up. ‘How could you lie like this?’
Was he delusional?
…But in the article, he told a different story… every anecdote was meant to paint him as the savior and Jon and me as fools. When I challenged him on it, he kept reiterating that the article was not for publication. And I made the mistake of believing him. I still didn’t realize that I was dealing with a pathological liar. And as I’ve said, I cannot deal with people who lie.”
Beyoncé | 914-915
“And when Beyoncé came out to sing ‘The Way We Were,’ I was thrilled. After her last note, in the midst of the applause, she looked up at me and said, ‘It’s an honor to sing for you, Miss Streisand.’ At the party afterward, she was so charming and complimentary, and I told her I felt the same way about her. She’s done such imaginative work in her music and her videos . . . she just knocks me out.”
Bigelow, Kathryn | 733
“Birds flying around loose inside my home” | 478
“The Birth of a Nation” | 840
Bisset, Jacqueline | 405
Blair, Tony | 841, 931-932
Blanchett, Cate | 924
Blass, Bill | 191, 194
“The Blob” | 94
Bloch-Bauer, Adele | 802
“Blowjobs” | 668
The Blue Angel | 82, 92, 110, 116, 129
“Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” | 335
Bogart, Humphrey | 854
Bogdanovich, Peter | 341-347, 398, 795, 849, 958
Bogosian, Eric | 640
Bon Soir | 55-56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 71, 75, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 115, 116, 117, 119, 123, 125, 138, 190, 193, 217, 731, 779, 962, 964
Bonaparte, Napoleon | 258
Border crossing | 532-533
Botti, Chris | 929
Bourke-White, Margaret | 681, 924
Boxer, Barbara | 819, 942
“Boyz n the Hood” | 731
Bradley, Tom | 631
Branagh, Kenneth | 643
Brandeis, Louis | 907
Brando, Marlon | 24, 49, 93, 138, 178, 234, 273, 283-298, 350, 559, 580, 746, 751, 789-790, 813, 855, 880
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” | 371
Breaking royal protocol | 429
“I didn’t like the feeling I got when I was standing in the receiving line waiting to meet the queen. I struggled with whether I should curtsy or not. After all, she wasn’t my queen. And the idea of curtsying to anyone felt demeaning. Then there were all these rules. According to protocol, you’re not supposed to speak until the queen speak to you. And women were required to wear gloves.
Huh? That seemed like something out of another era. And if women were required to wear gloves, why not men?
When Jon dared me to ask her, I said, ‘How much do you want to bet?’
He said, ‘A hundred.’
And I thought, Why not? (This is probably why I got a D in conduct back at the yeshiva.)
When the queen and I were finally face-to-face, I did do a kind of curtsy, and she said something complimentary (which of course I’ve forgotten). And then I asked, ‘Why do women have to wear gloves to shake your hand, but not men?’ She looked a bit startled. I doubt she had ever thought about it. She said, ‘I’ll have to think about that one. I suppose it’s tradition.’”
Brecht, Bertolt | 331, 332
Brel, Jacques | 216, 217
Breyer, Stephen | 819
Brice, Fanny | 105-106, 108-110, 125, 136-137, 152-154, 160, 165, 166, 177, 186, 195, 207, 242, 277, 315, 518
Bricusse, Leslie | 214, 267, 957
Bridges, Beau | 851
Bridges, Jeff | 851, 853, 854, 857-858, 860, 862, 869, 897
Bridges, Lloyd, 851,
“The Bridges of Madison County” 849
“Brief Encounter” 485
“Bringing Up Baby” 341-342
“Brokeback Mountain” 646
Brolin, James | 3, 10, 295, 297, 298, 327, 395, 474, 482, 494, 503, 589, 671, 720, 810, 819, 824, 842, 863, 865-888, 890, 896, 898-900, 902, 909-911, 915, 940, 943-946, 948, 950, 951, 955, 957, 963-965
Brolin, Josh | 297
“I had also invited Jim’s son Josh to join us, because I knew how much he admired [Marlon] Brando. Kelly Preston suggested we take a snapshot of us all, which is something I wouldn’t normally do because I don’t like people taking pictures of me. But I’m glad I have it.”
Brooks, James L. | 587-588
Brosnan, Pierce | 852
Brubeck, Dave | 148
“Bubble-headed” | 774-775
Bud Light | 134
“Bugsy” | 730
Burnett, Carol | 108, 109, 112, 315, 406
Burton, Richard | 175, 198
Bush, Barbara | 914, 942
Bush, George H.W. | 761, 764, 942
Bush, George W. | 893, 903, 914
Bush, Laura | 914
“But your father didn’t become a star” | 236
Butterworth, Jez | 955
C-SPAN | 832
Caan, James | 423-427, 429
“Cabaret” | 405, 421, 554
Cabo San Lucas (lying fisherman) | 214
“Caddyshack” | 472
Caesarean section | 224
Cagney, James | 109
Cahn, Sammy | 135, 740
Caine, Michael | 589
Caldwell, Erskine | 924
Caldwell, Zoe | 442
Callas, Maria | 35, 438-439, 441-442
“You could say it all started with Maria Callas…
After I found Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin album and Johnny Mathis’s Good Night, Dear Lord on a supermarket rack when I was a teenager, my next big discovery in my midtwenties was Maria Callas. I bought an album of her singing Puccini arias and it’s the one record I kept playing over and over through the years.”
Calling the TV station to change the volume | 845-846
Calloway, Ann Hampton | 881
“Camelot” | 114
Canby, Vincent | 411, 536
Cantor, Eddie | 236
Capitol Records | 186
Capote, Truman | 50, 132
“Truman Capote, Cecil Beaton, and Tennessee Williams were in the audience on various nights. That was serendipitous, since Truman Capote wrote the book and cowrote the lyrics for House of Flowers, the show that gave me my first song, “A Sleepin’ Bee.”
Capshaw, Kate | 795
Cardin, Pierre | 591
“Carefully molded slices of salami. Very artistic” | 963
“His wife, Annie, had set out fruit and cheese, breads and dips, olives and chocolates, and my favorite bite-size sesame crackers (that she brought all the way from Taiwan). And it was all presented so beautifully… what I first thought was a rose turned out to be carefully molded slices of salami. Very artistic.
I was so busy eating that I could hardly focus on the tapes.
My voice was higher back then… I kind of sounded like a bird.”
“Carmen Jones” | 284
Carnovsky, Morris | 545
Caron, Leslie | 220, 285, 286, 304, 751
“Carousel” | 615
Carroll, Diahann | 284, 350
Carruth, Tom | 878
Carson, Johnny | 130
Carter, Jimmy | 844
Cartier | 169, 494, 759
“Casablanca” | 393
Castro, Fidel | 353, 357-358, 362
CBS | 189, 195, 197, 225, 399-400, 766
Cézanne, Paul | 145
Chagall, Marc | 839
Chambers, Marilyn | 316
Chanel, Coco | 218, 265
“I’ve seen photos of myself, wearing a jaguar suit and hat that I designed, sitting in the front row at Chanel and staring straight ahead. I was afraid that if I so much as moved, I might start to gag in the middle of the show. I can see now, looking at the picture, that Marlene Dietrich was sitting just four chairs away from me, but I had no idea at the time. The whole day is kind of a blur. I have a vague memory of meeting Coco Chanel, because I have the photo of the two of us smiling at each other, she with her strong, wonderful face. Normally I would have been very excited and full of questions, but I felt so miserable that I just wanted to lie down.”
“Changing with the times” | 330-334
Channing, Carol | 273-274, 276
Channing, Stockard | 640
Chaplin, Charlie | 159, 183, 353, 923
Chaplin, Sydney | 159, 160, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 180, 181, 182, 183, 206, 222, 261, 281, 282, 558, 782
“Chariots of Fire” | 548
Charles, Ray | 400
Chase, Chevy | 631
Chayefsky, Paddy | 527-529
Chazelle, Damien | 951
Chekhov, Anton | 431, 488
“I thought, Both of these men are brilliant directors, and they’re right. What was I doing? Waiting for Chekhov to come along?”
Chernobyl | 627-629, 634
Chevalier, Maurice | 337
“Children of a Lesser God” | 733
Chisholm, Shirley | 399
Chopra, Deepak | 300-302
“My friend Donna Karan and I went up to Deepak Chopra’s institute in Massachusetts for a retreat, where you eat vegetarian food and get Ayurvedic treatments. (They pour oil over your head. She loved it. I hated it.)”
“A Chorus Line” | 919, 939
Christie, Julie | 359
Cimino, Michael | 536
“Cinderella Liberty” | 314, 652
“Citizen Kane” | 584
Clift, Montgomery | 648
Clinton, Bill | 645, 762-766, 768-770, 772-775, 794, 805, 807-811, 819, 824, 826-827, 832-837, 840-841, 882-873, 888-890, 893, 898, 902, 903, 908, 914, 915, 918, 923, 931, 932, 942-943 ; impeachment of, 890
“To me the problems facing us were overwhelming . . . social injustice, gender inequality, nuclear proliferation, climate change. But Bill Clinton seemed to think that if there was a problem, there must also be a solution. And it felt as if he were enjoying the challenge!”
Clinton, Chelsea | 766
Clinton Climate Initiative | 907
Clinton, Hillary | 327, 762-763, 765-766, 770, 819, 832, 872-873, 903, 908, 913, 915, 923, 940-943
Clinton, Virginia | 766, 770, 783, 795, 803, 805, 806-812, 829, 834, 902
Close, Glenn | 838-839
CNN | 819
Coburn, James | 286,
“Coco” (Broadway musical) | 265
Coffee ice cream | 3, 23, 295, 296, 867-868, 917
Cole, Natalie | 779, 862
Coleman, Cy | 739
Coleman, Ornette | 52
Colette | 306, 330, 648
Collins, Joan | 267, 268, 270
“I looked up and saw a man and a woman walking down the stairs into the club. He was very handsome, with dark wavy hair, and she looked ravishing in a red dress. He was talking. She was laughing. It’s an image I’ve never forgotten. I remember thinking, Oh my God, what a beautiful couple! And then I realized it was Tony Newley and Joan Collins, the actress he had married that year.
I didn’t make any effort to talk to them… to me, they seemed untouchable. They were stars, and I was still just a supporting player.”
Collins, Judy | 764
Columbia Pictures | 725
Columbia Records | 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 123, 125, 186, 197, 199, 202, 252, 256, 330, 334, 401-403, 440, 476, 478, 503-504, 602, 607, 611, 617, 624, 640-641, 679, 680, 726, 755
Comden, Betty | 350
“The Conformist” | 545, 603
“One moment [from the ‘Emotion’ music video] was inspired by a favorite scene from The Conformist and was my homage to Bertolucci and Vittorio Storaro. A woman is sitting on top of a desk in a businessman’s office when he pulls out a string of pearls to entice her. My yellow coat is the one note color in the black-and-white frame.”
Connery, Sean | 828
Conroy, Pat | 679, 684-693, 696, 699, 703-705, 716-717, 728, 731, 734-735
Cook, Tim | 118
“Someone recently showed me that when you ask your iPhone a question about me, even Siri says my name wrong.
So I called Tim Cook at Apple. And was told they’re going to fix it. And they did.
Back to Ed Sullivan.”
Coolidge, Martha | 587
Cooper, Bradley | 473, 647, 939
Cooper, Gary | 233, 559
Cooper, Marilyn | 86, 94
Coppola, Francis Ford | 295, 434
Corman, Cis | 43, 44, 53, 74, 182, 205, 206, 207, 215, 216, 217, 220, 222, 224, 249, 257, 258, 301-302, 322-323, 345, 353, 356, 452, 483, 508, 515, 528-529, 532, 540, 543, 574, 594, 596, 604, 638, 639, 645, 656, 690, 702, 708, 711, 721, 733, 778, 795, 805, 825, 836-839, 842, 851, 875, 898, 904, 905, 948
Costner, Kevin | 696
Courage, Alexander | 615
Couric, Katie | 370
Cousins, Norman | 806
Coward, Noël | 121
Cranston, Alan | 629
Crawford, Cheryl | 165
Crawford, Cindy | 795
La Croix d’Officier des Arts et des Lettres | 591
Crystal, Billy | 733
Cuban Missile Crisis | 124
“There’s one song on the album I’m afraid to listen to . . . ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ My concept was that the whole world was collapsing (I had been terrified by the recent Cuban Missile Crisis), but I wasn’t happy with the ending. I’m geshreying (yelling, in Yiddish), getting so emotional that it’s embarrassing.”
Curtis, Tony | 140
Cutting grandfather’s ear hair | 10, 641
“I loved my grandpa, even though he once washed my mouth out with red Lifebuoy soap when I said a bad word. But I knew he loved me. I would sit on his lap and cut the hairs out of his ears. That’s real intimacy.”
d’Arbanville, Patti | 489, 675
d’Estaing, Valery | 430
da Vinci, Leonardo | 531, 648
Dalai Lama | 93, 877, 902
Daltrey, Roger | 603
“Damn right I want to be in control” | 473
“Dances with Wolves” | 696, 720
Dandridge, Dorothy | 614
Danner, Blythe | 696, 703, 904
Daschle, Tom | 630
Dassin, Jules | 23
Dating | 26, 46, 76, 93, 258, 259, 374, 408-412, 602, 674, 784, 793, 869
David, Hal | 331, 334
Davis, Bette | 171, 236, 246, 590-591, 729
“Bette Davis made a comment [on the Yentl Oscar snub] that I will always treasure: ‘Tell her it’s only the best fruit the birds pick at.’”
Davis, Clive | 330, 331, 332, 334
Davis, Judy | 838-839
Davis, Miles | 52, 77, 116
“Over and over again, I would play these jazz records… Ornette Coleman, Stan Getz, Miles Davis.. that I found in a Greenwich Village record store.”
Davis Jr., Sammy | 148, 284, 350
Davison, Bruce | 636
Day, Doris | 109, 405
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” | 94
De Laurentiis, Dino | 338
de Lempicka, Tamara | 487
De Niro, Robert | 904
“The Deer Hunter” | 904
Degas, Edgar | 145
Del Toro, Guillermo | 951
Delon, Alain | 910
DeLuise, Dom | 79
DeMille, Cecil B. | 422, 896
Demme, Jonathan | 730
Democratic National Convention | 349
“The real world was complicated. The 1960s had been tumultuous. After the shock and horror of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, I just wanted to crawl under the covers. Instead, I agreed to sing at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 to support his successor, fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson, and Funny Girl closed for one night on Broadway so I could perform at his inauguration in 1965. But there was no joy in it for me.”
Demy, Jacques | 199
The dentist | 2, 27, 28, 931
Dench, Judi | 219
Depp, Johnny | 298
“Designer yarmulke” | 579
Diamond, Neil | 2, 418, 484, 500, 505, 802
“The Diary of Anne Frank” | 20, 928
“We had tickets for The Diary of Anne Frank. Our seats were in the back of the balcony at the Cort Theatre, and I remember they cost $1.89. (Or was it $1.98?) The actors were far away, but we could see the whole sweep of the stage. I’ve realized, in retrospect, that there’s something to be said for the bird’s-eye view. Now that I can afford the expensive seats, I’m not sure they’re really better. If you’re too close, you can see the makeup, the sweat. It destroys the illusion.
I was mesmerized by the play. I remember thinking to myself, Anne is fourteen; I’m fourteen. She’s Jewish; I’m Jewish. Why couldn’t I play the part? I felt I could do it just as well as Susan Strasberg… especially since Anne had difficulties with her mother. She was convinced her mother didn’t understand her. I could definitely relate to that.”
DiCaprio, Leonardo | 951
Didion, Joan | 443-444, 446
“It was Jon who pulled the script out of a pile. He told Sue Mengers that he wanted to see everything that was sent to me, and he liked one by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunner. It was a gritty, behind-the-scenes look at the world of rock and roll, and I had already dismissed it because I thought it was fundamentally cold. The love story between two singers seemed almost secondary.”
Dietrich, Marlene | 121, 218, 233, 238, 240
Diller, Barry | 631
Diller, Phyllis | 60, 61, 62, 63, 69, 93, 605, 897
Dillon, Melinda | 696
“The Dinah Shore Show” | 132, 133
Dinkins, David | 831
Dion, Celine | 862-863
Dior | 218
Directing | 237, 254, 275, 280, 297, 306, 336, 339, 354, 376, 389, 395, 446, 455-458, 490, 509, 512-513, 517, 538, 542-544, 547, 552-553, 589, 598, 600, 634, 637, 647, 656, 719
Directors Guild of America | 587, 591, 655, 730-731, 733, 747-748
Disco | 497-499
Disney | 191, 814, 817
Disneyland | 414, 884
“Diva myth” | 241, 269
“Dog Day Afternoon” | 236, 446
Dogs | 3, 59, 213, 214, 219, 223, 249, 268, 278, 327, 411, 467, 483-484, 818, 910, 938, 943-946, 951, 955-956, 964; cloning dogs, 945, 946
“Two months later I got a call from the cloning lab. They had warned us from the beginning that the cells might not take, but it turned out that not only did the process work, but it produced more dogs than I anticipated.
So now I have three dogs… Fanny, the eldest, who often looks at Violet and Scarlet as if she can’t believe what has happened. She was the only child, and now she has to share her home with two rambunctious invaders. They’re both curly-haired like Sammie and look so much alike that I had to put lavender and red silk flowers on their collars to identify them.”
Dolby Stereo | 467
Dole, Bob | 873
Douglas, Kirk | 139
Douglas, Melvyn | 655
Douglas, Mike | 130
Douglas, Michael | 795
Dowd, Maureen | 773-775
“The Dresser” | 587
Dreyfuss, Richard | 636, 639, 656, 657, 660, 664, 667, 670
Duchamp, Marcel | 839
Duchess of Windsor | 218-219, 369
Duke of Windsor | 369, 723
Dunaway, Faye | 442
Dunne, John Gregory | 443-444, 446
Duse, Eleanora | 45
Dylan, Bob | 958
The Eagles | 417
Eakins, Thomas | 211
Eastwood, Clint | 461, 655, 771
“Easy Rider” | 307, 344
eBay | 895, 899
Ebb, Fred | 118, 421
Ebert, Roger | 390, 470, 581, 861
Edgar, Bob | 630
“Educating Rita” | 589
Eichhorn, Lisa | 531
Einstein, Albert | 161, 258, 327, 746
“According to Einstein, everything is energy. I don’t pretend to understand this, but I was curious enough to look it up and came across something intriguing. In quantum physics two particles can become inexplicably and inextricably connected, so that whatever happens to one instantly affects the other, even if they’re miles apart. It’s called ‘entanglement.’ And that basically describes love, doesn’t it?”
Eisner, Michael | 586
Ekland, Britt | 220, 265
“Elevated into oblivion” | 905
Eliot, T.S. | 823
Ellsberg, Daniel | 397-399
E-mail | 288
Emmy Awards | 147, 196, 644, 830, 839, 880, 900-901, 903
Emperor Akihito | 824
Empress Michiko | 824
Endometriosis | 534, 862
Environmental Protection Agency | 959
Equal Rights Amendment | 353
Erlichman, Marty | 71, 78, 95, 105, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 129, 130, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 148, 149, 150, 159, 162, 163, 169, 179, 186, 189, 194, 195, 198, 202, 205, 209, 220, 221, 222, 225, 227, 228, 234, 242, 252, 257, 267, 274, 275, 283, 306, 326, 330, 331, 359, 361, 363, 365, 388, 391, 393, 398-401, 405, 446, 449, 451, 478-479, 535, 604, 608, 634, 730, 739, 750, 756, 781, 788-789, 792, 813-815, 822, 826, 828-829, 842, 883-884, 890, 901, 909, 910, 915, 925, 927, 940, 954, 957, 963
Erté | 462, 618
Etting, Ruth | 50
“Evening Primrose” | 753, 755
“Every burp…” | 218
“Everyone loves pizza” | 879
“We couldn’t have a wedding without all our favorite foods. For the hors d’oeuvres, I definitely wanted smoked salmon with leek crème fraîche, baby blintzes, wonton pillows stuffed with vegetables, sushi, coconut shrimp, and pizza. (Everyone loves pizza.)”
“Evita” | 543
“Fabrent” | 10
“Fabulous snow queen” | 323
Facebook | 942
Fairbanks, Douglas | 353
“Fame” | 549
“Fanny and Alexander” | 580, 587
“The Fantasticks” | 70, 102, 190
“Faputzed” | 856
Fashion/jewelry | 7, 11, 21-22, 15, 21, 47, 49, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 66, 68, 69, 80, 101, 102, 111, 125, 133, 134, 139, 140, 141, 146, 147, 149, 153, 169, 170, 183, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 211, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 227, 230, 247-249, 251, 256-257, 261, 262, 275-277, 285, 288, 289, 303, 305, 306, 308, 311, 323, 370, 371, 374, 400, 402, 408, 411, 425-426, 437, 461, 470-471, 494, 531-532, 536, 540, 560, 575, 579, 580, 588, 591, 603, 703, 705, 767, 785, 788-789, 820, 868, 879-881, 886, 957
FBI | 481
Fear of flying | 674
“I’m an earth sign . . . Taurus . . . and we don’t like to be suspended in midair. I was very nervous, and kept trying to distract myself with books and newspapers . . . anything I could think of. And then, as we were nearing New York and beginning the descent, my ears started to hurt. The stewardess stopped by my seat and said brightly, ‘This is exciting. It’s the first time the pilot is going to be landing the plane!’”
Fellini, Federico | 593
“I sat there, completely entranced. Fellini had wavy grayish hair, glasses, and was dressed in a white shirt, a vest, and a coat and tie. He looked like any of the other prosperous businessmen at the adjoining tables. But there was something magnetic about him. He had the most penetrating gaze, as if he could see right through to the core of your being.”
Feminism | 478, 481, 491, 503, 512, 522, 525-526, 580, 585, 588, 590-591, 597-600, 634, 641, 748, 763, 782, 785, 794, 844, 889, 890, 904, 911-912, 918, 928, 930, 938, 941, 943, 958, 959, 960
Fendi | 494
“The Ferryman” | 955
“Fiddler on the Roof” | 439, 518, 615
Field, Sally | 631, 655, 656
Field, Ted | 872
Fields, Freddie | 583
Fields, Verna | 344
Fiennes, Ralph | 643, 822-824, 828, 956
Filming “Don’t Rain on My Parade” | 248-250
“It taught me something. The first time an actor tries something is often the best. So when I directed, I tried to film the actors as soon as the camera is there and the scene is on its feet.”
Fire Island | 637, 640, 642-643, 648
First Artists | 353, 444, 447, 467, 471, 488, 507, 707, 828
First and last singing lesson | 55-56
“First” time singing | 53
“First woman to produce, direct, write and star in a movie” | 579
“First woman to win a Golden Globe for directing” | 588
Firth, Colin | 924
Fischer, Bobby | 26
Fisher, Carrie | 849
“Five Easy Pieces” | 344
Fleetwood Mac | 417, 764
“Don Henley of the Eagles and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac bought property in the same canyon, although we never socialized . . . we all wanted our privacy. And in 1978 all three of us, unbelievably, won Grammy awards (I got two for ‘Evergreen’), and we called it Grammy Canyon.”
Fleetwood, Mick | 417
Fleming, Victor | 508
Flipping the Senate | 634
Flowers changing color | 302
Fonda, Henry | 139, 178, 179
Fonda, Jane | 405, 631
“For Pete’s Sake” | 405, 410, 492
Ford, Gerald | 429, 903
Ford, John | 874
Forman, Milos | 471, 507, 509, 827
Fosse, Bob | 156, 157, 405
Fossil fuels | 832-833, 840, 959
Foster, David | 617
“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” | 883, 911
Fox News | 903
“They can take a slur hatched at the Republican National Committee or a lie huckstered by the Heritage Foundation, repeat it on Fox, hit it on Limbaugh, print it in The Wall Street Journal, until it’s coming out of every media outlet imaginable. Repeating lies over and over doesn’t make them any more true. But it does make people believe the lies a little more until finally they stop demanding the truth.”
Foxx, Jamie | 939
Frampton, Peter | 453
Francis, Anne | 255
Frank, Anne | 928
Franklin, Aretha | 113, 764
“The French Connection” | 617
Friedkin, William | 617-619
Frost, David | 257, 258
“Fuck the diet” | 868
“Fuck first and talk later” | 639
“I wanted [The Normal Heart] to be a love story, not a sex story. But Larry didn’t see it that way. He regarded his play, and the movie, as a gay manifesto. He was declaring, This is the way it is. We fuck first and talk later. That’s the freedom we wanted and fought hard for, and even though this behavior was killing gay men, some of them did not want to give it up. Larry was trying to change this behavior, but he also wanted to show it, as an accurate reflection of these men’s sexuality.”
“Fuck it” | 503
“Fuck off!” | 317-318
“Funny Face” | 218
“Funny Girl” | 113, 135, 137, 141, 142, 143, 149, 151, 152-184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 205, 206, 207, 208, 221, 222, 225, 234, 371, 383, 405, 475, 518, 550, 611, 614, 651, 665, 675, 727, 739, 766, 779, 782, 788, 794, 796, 798, 825, 849, 851, 883, 904, 919, 922-924, 926, 946
“Funny Lady” | 420-430, 604, 607, 817
Gallin, Sandy | 300
Garbo, Greta | 24, 161, 233, 237, 363
Gardner, Ava | 614
Garland, Judy | 26, 114, 118, 135, 145, 146, 147, 148, 399, 444, 461-462, 582, 606, 632, 739, 778, 825
“A few years earlier, I had been walking down the street in Manhattan when I saw a sign that said Judy Garland was taping a show. I walked in and joined the audience. That’s where I saw her perform live, and she was magnificent. Now I would be singing with her.
…I’ll never forget singing that duet. We sat next to each other (me in my white middy blouse), and I noticed she was shaking. She grabbed my arm, as if to steady herself, and then clasped my hand and held on to it tightly. She never let go of me until the end of the song.”
Garr, Teri | 589, 849
Garson, Greer | 236
“Gaslight” | 183
Gassman, Vittorio | 592
Gates, Bill | 773-774
Gaudí, Antoni | 308
“The Gauntlet” | 771
Gay bars | 53
“Cis, Harvey, and Barry all came with me to the Lion on the night of the contest in June 1960. I was so naïve… I didn’t even realize it was a gay bar until I noticed that Cis and I were the only women in the whole place.”
“Gays of a certain age…” | 926
“There were headlines in the paper reporting that the movie was canceled, with lines like ‘Arthur Laurents put the kibosh on it, as gays of a certain age throw themselves out their windows by the thousand.’”
Gay cousin | 74, 77, 825
“A gay manifesto” | 639
Gay rights | 350, 647, 773, 836-838, 844, 912, 959
Gay roommates | 52, 53, 72, 73
“Let me set the record straight. Barry and I were never lovers. We were close friends. I thought he was probably gay, but then he told me he had a son, so I figured he was bisexual. At moments, there might have been some sort of sexual tension between us. But it was all very confusing. I was still so inexperienced that I didn’t know what was going on.”
Gaynor, Janet | 444
Gaynor, Mitzi | 109
Geffen, David | 398, 612, 619
Genet, Jean | 76
“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” | 106
“Gentlemen’s Agreement” | 590
“Few movies were about Jewish subjects . . . Gentleman’s Agreement was made in 1974 by very courageous people. Others would rather not risk any controversy.”
George magazine | 841
Gere, Richard | 543, 569, 696, 795
Gernreich, Rudy | 449
Gershwin, George | 50, 66, 120, 604, 614, 626
Gershwin, Ira | 50, 55, 66, 444, 604, 626
Getz, Stan | 52
Gandhi, Indira | 913
Giannini, Giancarlo | 593
Gibb, Barry | 500-505, 632
Gibb, Robin | 501
Gielgud, John | 350
“Gigi” | 303-304, 724
Gilliam, Terry | 857
Gingrich, Newt | 840-841, 843, 889
Ginsberg, Ruth Bader | 819
Ginzburg, Louis | 543
Giving birth | 223, 224
“I had a record of a woman calmly doing her panting, as I was taught, through each contraction, and I played it over and over again, copying every pant. (I sounded just like a dog in heat.) At the end you hear the cry of the baby being born, which always made me cry too. I wanted my experience to be as serene as that record.
Well, record schmecord. The universe had other plans.”
GLAAD | 839
“The Glass Menagerie” | 33, 280, 813
“The Godfather” | 348, 355
“The Godfather, Part II” | 422
Goethe | 59, 850
“Someone told me that publishers give sheet music for free to professional singers, but I knew they wouldn’t recognize my name. So I asked my mother to call and pretend she was Vaughn Monroe’s secretary… It was the perfect illustration of something Goethe said, which I’ve always loved: ‘At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you.’ And I had committed to giving this singing thing a try.”
Goldberg, Whoopi | 327, 631
Goldberger, Murph | 629
Golden Globes | 262, 391, 472, 539, 587-589, 591, 670, 730, 862, 896
Goldman, Bo | 529
“Gone with the Wind” | 393, 724
Goodman, Benny | 132
Goodwin, Doris Kearns | 842
Gordon, Ruth | 161, 162
Gore, Al | 762, 764-766, 770, 873, 892, 893, 903
Gore, Lesley | 439
Gore, Tipper | 893
Gormé, Eydie | 109, 112
Gould, Elliott | 85, 86, 87, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 113, 114, 129, 130, 131, 132, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 150, 161, 162, 169, 180, 197, 205, 206, 207, 215, 216, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224, 229, 233, 234, 241, 243, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 268, 278, 285, 287, 288, 322, 335-337, 340, 345, 347, 407, 421, 426, 468, 604, 606, 617, 795, 798, 829, 877-878
“That night the phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, ‘I’m Elliot Gould. I was there this afternoon and I thought you were brilliant.’
And then he hung up.
I had no idea who he was.
Then I found out I got the part… my first part in a real Broadway show.”
Gould, Glenn | 441
Gould, Jason | 3, 43, 148, 202, 220, 221, 223, 224, 241, 243, 261, 289, 309, 322, 326, 329, 335, 337, 340, 345, 353-354, 360-361, 410, 413-416, 448, 451, 468, 481, 484, 493, 497, 498, 521, 574, 587, 605-606, 645, 672, 675, 689, 690, 694, 705-707, 712, 714-716, 722, 730, 733, 764, 794-795, 800, 829, 870, 883, 898-899, 910, 920-923, 958, 961-962; directed by Barbra, 690; homosexuality of, 644
Goulet, Robert | 114
“The Graduate” | 446, 904,
Grammy Awards | 128, 129, 151, 188, 197, 391, 417, 442, 471-472, 484-485, 504, 608, 617, 626, 781, 863, 880, 916
Grandchildren | 951, 965
Grande, Ariana | 957
Grant, Cary | 233, 342-343
“Ryan seemed a little dazed after the encounter, and I couldn’t wait to hear what words of wisdom the great Cary Grant had offered.
‘Well, he said get a tan, because then you won’t have to spend as much time in the makeup chair.’
‘Is that all?’
‘One more thing. Wear silk underpants.’”
Grant, Lee | 590
Grant, Richard E. | 957
Grayson, Kathryn | 23
“The Great Santini” | 696
“The Great White Hope” | 311
Greco, José | 45
Greek mythology | 682-683, 735-736, 768
Green, Adolph | 350
Greenspan, Alan | 819
Griffith, D.W. | 353, 840
Griffith, Melanie | 677
Grimes, Tammy | 109
Group Theater | 545
“The Guilt Trip” | 917
Gun control | 522-523, 890, 959
“When the Constitution was written, it took time to load a gun, which could fire only one shot at a time. Now we have assault weapons that can fire dozens of bullets in a few seconds. Should Individuals be allowed to carry those?”
Guy-Blaché, Alice | 840
“Guys and Dolls” | 330, 789
“Gypsy” | 80, 106, 111, 154, 168, 213, 608, 924-927, 952-954
Hackford, Taylor | 957
Hackman, Gene | 359, 531, 534
Haines, Randa | 733
Hair, nails, makeup | 25-26, 29, 30, 54, 108, 194, 212, 239, 243, 247, 256, 276, 278, 296, 314, 360, 370, 374, 402, 406-407, 411, 437, 450, 480, 596, 603, 605, 716, 785, 800, 853, 882-883, 906
“I was definitely earnest, as you can see. But I didn’t look like the other honor students I hung around with. They wore brown oxford shoes with laces and thick glasses. I had streaked hair, which I did myself. I would take a piece of cotton, soak it in hydrogen peroxide straight from the bottle, and bleach strands of my hair. Then, when I got tired of that look, I bought Noreen henna rinse at Woolworth’s and tried to get ride of the bleached part. What I didn’t know was that inside each capsule were tiny little crystals in different colors, so chunks of hair turned red, green, and blue. I looked like a London punk rocker… way ahead of time… although it was a complete accident.”
Halston | 194
“Hamilton” | 940
Hamlin, Harry | 543, 640
Hamlisch, Marvin | 155, 168, 371-373, 377, 384, 391-392, 398, 401, 739, 786-787, 789, 792-793, 821, 830, 859, 862, 879-880, 883, 885, 897, 898, 918-920, 939
Hammerstein, Oscar | 51, 73, 604, 614-616, 626, 741, 746
Hanks, Tom | 828, 880
“A Happening in Central Park” | 225-232, 534, 629, 780, 956
Harkin, Tom | 761
Harris, Barbara | 280,
Harris, Richard | 303
Harrison, George | 398
Harrison, Rex | 220
Hart, Lorenz | 55, 103, 139, 290, 604
Hastert, Dennis | 889
Hathaway, Anne | 940
Hating stardom | 283
Hatred of food | 281
“To Have and Have Not” | 854
Havel, Václav, 827-828
“I remember going to [Madeleine Albright’s] farm in Virginia for a picnic supper in honor of Václav Havel, the dissident playwright who became president of Czechoslovakia. He was inspiring, because instead of being resentful after his years as a political prisoner, he chose to focus on the good in people and move on, like Nelson Mandela.”
Hawks, Howard | 342, 854
Hawn, Goldie | 359, 631
Haydn, Tom | 631
Hayes, Isaac | 418
Hayward, Susan | 93
Hayworth, Rita | 49, 68
HBO | 634, 646, 829-830, 838
“He could really fling that tush around!” | 689
“Suddenly this rather shy, courtly Southern gentleman turned into this hip-shaking hoofer. Loose as a goose. Boy, he could really fling that tush around! We had such fun, dancing the shag right in the middle of my office.”
“Heaven’s Gate” | 536, 538-539
Hecht, Ben | 342
“Hedda Gabler” | 516
Hedren, Tippi | 414
Helicopter | 572
Hellman, Lillian | 34
“Hello, Dolly!” | 60, 143, 234, 268, 273, 274, 275, 276, 283, 319, 449, 615, 862, 922, 926
“Hello, gorgeous” | 243, 264
“And then it was my turn. I was still examining the famous gold statue that I was holding in my hands. It was absolutely beautiful, so I said to the statue, ‘Hello, gorgeous.’ I didn’t plan on saying it, just as I hadn’t planned on winning.”
Hemingway, Ernest | 365
Henley, Don | 417
Henry, Buck | 314, 315, 318, 342-343
Hepburn, Audrey | 218, 236, 304, 729
Hepburn, Katharine | 238, 318, 342, 511; Oscar tie with, 263-265
“Here, look at my breasts” | 317
“Just before the camera rolled, I took Herb and George aside and pulled them into a closet with me. I took off my top and said, ‘Here, look at my breasts.’ It was my un-dress rehearsal. I didn’t want to be topless for the first time in front of the camera.
We all came out of the closet. Herb said ‘Action!’ and I tossed off my top and walked across to the bed. ‘Cut. Print,’ Herb said. ‘That was beautiful, Barbra.’
When Herb showed me the footage privately the next day, I closed my eyes at first. But then I forced myself to look. And I killed it.”
Herman, Jerry | 739
“Heater Street” | 544
Hickeys | 449
Hill, Anita | 748
Hines, Mimi | 109, 207
“Hippie period” | 415
“Hoarder… shot her way out of the house” | 352
Hoffman, Dustin | 45, 76, 353, 637, 656, 759, 828, 897, 903, 904
“Dustin Hoffman was also studying acting at the Theatre Studio and working as the janitor there, in exchange for classes. He was kind of cute, in a funny-looking way, and he was seeing a friend of mine from acting class, Elaine Sobel. She wore glasses but was very pretty, like a girl in a 1950s movie who takes off her glasses and lets down her hair and violà! When Dustin got a part in an off-Broadway play years later, that was big news… the janitor from Curt Conway got an acting job!”
Hoffman, Josef | 757
Holden, William | 30
Holland, François | 938
Holiday, Billie | 52, 65, 113, 135, 438, 442
“I acquired an agent, Irvin Arthur. He worked with Joe Glaser’s agency, the Associated Booking Corporation. Joe had represented Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, so that sounded good to me.”
Holliday, Judy | 109
Hollywood Blacklist | 381-382, 386, 395
Hollywood Ten | 381-382
Hollywood Women’s Political Committee | 629, 631, 762, 826, 872
Holman, Libby | 129
Holmes, Rupert | 433-437, 450-451, 478, 750
“Homeland” | 560
Homophobia | 639-640, 643-644, 646
“Talking about this made me emotional. I said, ‘Homophobia is another disease that has to be cured.’ This is still my most fundamental belief… everyone deserves dignity and respect. We all need to open our hearts to love and compassion.”
Hookers | 657
Hope, Bob | 145
Hopkins, Anthony | 905
Hopper, Edward | 125, 857
Horn, Shirley | 751
Horne, Lena | 127, 129
Horowitz, Vladimir | 116, 451
Horta, Victor | 909
“The Hospital” | 527
Hot water bottle “doll” | 11, 813
“Hotel” | 589, 865
House Un-American Activities Committee | 381, 395, 399
Houston, Whitney | 631
Howard, James Newton | 720-725, 731, 869, 870
Howe, James Wong | 422-423, 425-426, 428
“Hud” | 422, 655
Hudson, Rock | 405, 617
Human Rights Campaign | 903
The hungry i club | 79, 131, 132
Hunter, Tab | 93
“The Hurt Locker” | 733
Huston, Anjelica | 631-632, 897
Huston, John | 220, 365, 897
Hypochondria | 789
“I Can Get It for You Wholesale” | 80, 93, 105, 107, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 126, 167, 172, 625, Audition for, 85-90, Tryouts, 95-96, Opening night, 97
“I don’t like Hawaiian shirts” | 868
“He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and I don’t like Hawaiian shirts. (They’re too flamboyant and they distract from a person’s face.)”
“I don’t remember good reviews … only the bad” | 297
“I had to be my own father…” | 576
“I had called the major news networks…” | 882
“I like when I’m wrong…” | 251
“I love detail…” | 304
“I wanted my crew to be healthy…” | 562
“I’ll show you, motherfucker” | 655
“I’d like to do this movie,” he [Martin Ritt, director of Nuts] told me, ‘but I don’t know if you can play the part.’
I was completely taken aback. The character in this movie was a tough cookie. Didn’t he know I came from Brooklyn?
I took a deep breath and very quietly said, ‘I’ll show you, motherfucker, who can play this part!’”
“I’m being kidnapped” | 427
“I’m the mother! She’s nothing without me!” | 798
“I’m your enemy” | 841
Ibsen, Henrik | 42, 431, 516
Iñárritu, Alejandro | 951
Inner child | 11, 104, 192, 193, 269-270, 813, 854, 875-876, 962
“I didn’t have a doll, but I would fill a hot-water bottle as a substitute and pretend.”
Interior design | 41, 55, 68, 70, 89, 90, 91, 99, 139, 149, 153, 154, 160, 176, 210, 215, 216, 221, 222, 223, 235, 278, 289, 291, 300, 304, 306, 308, 310, 316, 327, 351, 352, 354, 407, 410, 412, 415-416, 437, 460, 486-487, 491, 496, 536, 537, 539, 540, 542, 554, 556, 563, 574, 591, 678, 679, 685, 702, 742, 769, 771-772, 786-787, 790, 818, 848, 866, 871, 881, 896, 906, 909, 951
“International incident” | 422
“Into the Woods” | 753
Intruders | 906
Irving, Amy | 336, 544, 550, 559, 560, 561, 564, 583, 585, 589, 897
Jabara, Paul | 497-498
“The Jack Paar Show” | 821
Jackman, Hugh | 939
Jackson, Glenda | 390
Jackson, Jesse | 825-826
Jackson, Michael | 298, 505, 764
James Bond | 309, 605, 720, 852
James, Henry | 648
“Jaws” | 344
Jefferson, Thomas | 771-772
Jennings, Peter | 824
Jesus Christ | 687
“I’m always looking for the truth… ‘The truth will set you free,’ as Jesus said in the Bible.”
“Jezebel” | 236
“JFK” (film) | 730
Joan of Arc | 661
Joel, Billy | 478,
Johnson, Don | 673-677, 680, 690, 828
Johnson, Lyndon Baines | 349, 352
Jolson, Al | 711
Jones, James Earl | 359
Jones, Jennifer | 233
Jones, Quincy | 128, 129, 295, 296, 298, 359, 582, 583, 602, 631, 757, 759, 764, 795, 857, 882, 897, 921
Joplin, Janis | 418
“I came out of the booth and asked, ‘What’s going on?’
Jon [Peters] said, ‘Look, you’re not getting it. You have this great instrument but you’re not really getting down, you know?’
You could have heard a pin drop in the studio. But the thing is, he was probably right… and I knew it. ‘Well, I’m not Janis Joplin. I don’t sing that way.’”
Jordan, Barbara | 631
Jordan, Louis | 303
Joy, Brugh | 678, 680, 682, 782, 822
“The Judy Garland Show”| 145, 146, 147, 148
“Julia” | 405, 652
Kael, Pauline | 283, 318, 363, 390, 581-582
“Maybe the reason the movie [The Way We Were] missed out on the big awards was because people sensed something was missing and didn’t understand why Katie and Hubbell broke up. Several critics pointed out gaps in the storyline. Pauline Kael wrote, ‘The decisive change in the characters’ lives which the story hinges on takes place suddenly and hardly make sense.’”
Kahn, Madeline | 347
Kallen, Kitty | 118
Kander, John | 118, 421
Kane, Carol | 543-544
Kanin, Garson | 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 185, 186
Karan, Donna | 300-301, 747, 750, 764, 766-767, 778, 788, 795, 820, 823, 824, 879-881, 886; acting, 852, 895, 921, 929, 957
Karimloo, Ramin | 956
Kaufman, George S. | 79
Kaye, Danny | 147
Kazan, Elia | 165, 294, 295
“When Rot Steiger pulls out the gun and points it at [Marlon] Brando [in On the Waterfront], Brando was supposed to say, ‘Put down the gun.’ But instead he just pushed it away gently and looked at him, shaking his heaf and saying, ‘Charley… Charley… Oh, Charley.’
What he was feeling was beyond words. He and Steiger were doing what felt right to them in the moment. And that’s the take Kazan ultimately used in the movie.”
Keats, John | 516
Keel, Howard | 23
Kelly, Gene | 273-275, 277-281
Kelly, Grace | 219,
Kennedy Center Honors | 603
Kennedy, Edward | 399, 766
Kennedy, John F. | 133, 134, 149, 349, 352, 737, 763, 771, 840, 843-844, 872
“After the dinner everyone who had performed lined up to meet the president. The protocol people were very clear… this was a quick meet and greet. We were not to detain him by asking for anything as plebeian as an autograph.
When JFK got to me, he told me that I had a beautiful voice and asked, ‘How long have you been singing?’
I said, ‘About as long as you’ve been president.’
He laughed, and then I did exactly what we were told not to do. I asked him if he would sign a card from the dinner for my mother. When he handed it back to me, I told him, ‘You’re a doll.’ That’s a real Brooklyn expression… and I guess some people were a little surprised to hear me saying it to the president. Frankly, it just slipped out.”
Kennedy Jr., John F. | 841-842
Kennedy, Robert | 352
Kerkorian, Kirk | 781-782, 797
Kern, Jerome | 604, 614, 626
Kerr, Deborah | 24, 109
Kerry, John | 903
Kershner, Irvin | 672
Kidd, Michael | 277, 282, 862
Kidman, Nicole | 915
Kilgalllen, Dorothy | 62
Kind, Diana | 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 52, 61, 62, 74, 80, 95, 97, 98, 114, 134, 141, 171, 172, 173, 211, 212, 264, 287-288, 292, 317, 321, 323, 325, 358, 389, 405, 409, 439, 451, 513, 516, 535, 544-545, 567, 577, 589, 664, 680, 712, 721, 727, 744-746, 778-779, 795-804, 807, 883, 901-903, 925, 961, 964, 965
Kind, Louis | 7, 13, 20, 22, 44, 297, 374, 408-409, 653, 656, 664-666; seeing “Funny Girl,” 665, 666, 744, 763
Kind, Roslyn | 13-14, 17, 52, 675, 727, 795, 883, 923
“King Lear” | 925
King, Ben E. | 766
King, Carole | 334, 359, 401, 439, 450
King, Coretta Scott | 795
King Jr., Martin Luther | 350
“The King and I” | 24, 109, 111, 187
“The King’s Speech” | 924
Kirkland, Sally | 431-433
Klein, Calvin | 229
Klein, Robert | 316
Klimt, Gustav | 125, 210, 310, 802, 909-910
“Klute” | 314, 405
Korman, Harvey | 662
Kosygin, Aleksei | 231
Kovács, László | 343-344, 405, 422
“I loved working with László, who was part of a new breed of cinematographers… he had shot Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. He really knew how to light, and he was also kind and caring. He had that twinkle in his eye… a joy for life.”
Krabbé, Jeroen | 706, 715, 927
Kramer, Larry | 296, 635-649
“Remember, this was a time when some people didn’t care if gay people lived or died. I was trying to get that group to change their minds, and Larry’s approach was probably not the best way to do it. But he delighted in pushing boundaries. He loved the hedonistic beach scenes on Fire Island. As he said in a letter, ‘The shots of ten, twenty, thirty thousand gay men walking along the ocean will make every gay man in the world want to see it and will scare the shit out of every born-again. But most importantly, Fire Island was what the 70s were all about in the gay world… all those gorgeous available men.’
That’s great if you only want gay men to come to the movie. I wanted this movie to appeal to the entire world.”
Kreisler, Fritz | 715
Kristofferson, Kris | 448-450, 452, 454, 456-460, 465, 469-471, 474, 479, 897, 909, 916, 956
“I remember the first time we met, a few years before this project came along. Marty called and said, ‘Do you want to see this guy named Kris Kristofferson at the Troubadour? I hear he’s good.’ So I went that night, and there he was onstage, so beautiful… with perfect white teeth… and barefoot. Incredibly sexy.
I thought, Hmmm…
We saw each other for a while after that… he and his Bull Durham cigarettes. He gave me hickeys on my neck. Thank God I had a two-piece bathing suit by Rudi Gernreich with a turtleneck top to hide them!”
Kubrick, Stanley | 545, 562
Kurosawa, Akira | 23
Kvelling | 923
La Gallienne, Eva | 20
Lampert, Zohra | 109
Lancaster, Burt | 359
Lane, Burton | 739
Lang, Evelyn | 316
Lansbury, Angela | 171
“Largest concert in the state of Arizona” | 453-454
Las Vegas | 137, 179, 217, 265, 266, 293, 316, 347, 354, 440, 449, 604-605, 629, 674, 746, 757, 780-781, 786, 789-790, 797, 803, 807-808, 812, 815, 830, 890, 894, 965
“The Last Picture Show” | 341, 446-447
Latifah, Queen | 914
“Queen Latifah spoke of watching me as a young girl and being inspired to leap over barriers: ‘Barbra threw out the rule book when it came to a standardized idea of what a movie star was… we don’t just do what the boys want us to do. We can do it all. We can sing, we can act, we can produce, and we can lead, not just the people whop are working with us, but all the girls who have dreams like you did. You just have to have the courage, like Miss Streisand, to reach for them.’ I blew her a kiss, and she ended with the words ‘An original doesn’t conform to our expectations, she changes them… forever.’”
Laubenstein, Linda | 636
Lauper, Cyndi | 626
Laurel and Hardy | 13, 73
Lauren, Ralph | 461
Laurents, Arthur | 80, 81, 82, 84, 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 97, 101, 126, 127, 128, 139, 247, 364-366, 369-370, 376, 377, 379, 381-386, 388-391, 393-394, 608-609, 616, 684, 924, 926, 927, 937, 952, 954
Laurie, Piper | 280,
“Lawrence of Arabia” | 245
Lawrence, Steve | 112
Layton, Joe | 132, 190, 195, 209, 225, 226, 227, 399-400
Lazenby, George | 309, 605
Leahy, Patrick | 630
Lean, David | 268, 365
Lear, Norman | 631
Led Zepplin | 444
Lee, Gypsy Rose | 924
Lee, Peggy | 390
Left side of face | 307
Legrand, Michel | 200, 201, 202, 203, 216, 401, 497, 518-520, 532, 550, 554, 587-589, 591, 597, 685, 741, 910
Lehman, Ernest | 605
“The Lehman Trilogy” | 955
Leigh, Vivien | 238
Lemmon, Jack | 139
“Marty said every agent in Hollywood was coming to check me out, because I had no representation at the moment, and they had brought their biggest stars along with them…Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Ray Milland, Jack Lemmon.”
Lennart, Isobel | 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 156, 166, 167, 169, 175, 235, 236, 237, 247, 427
Lennon, John | 330, 334, 398
Lenya, Lotte | 331, 332
Letterman, David | 822, 826
Lerner, Alan Jay | 604
Levinson, Barry | 730
Lewis, C.S. | 905
Lewis, Robert | 165
Liberace | 137, 138, 142
Library of Congress | 957
Lieberson, Goddard | 113, 114, 116, 117, 153, 169, 330, 421
“Like buttah” | 830
“Mike Myers had played the character, a New York Jewish woman with big hair and long nails, on Saturday Night Live for years. The running joke was that Linda [Richman] idolized me…as she famously said, my voice was ‘like buttah’… and Mike was so hilarious that the line became part of the culture. Just for fun I did a walk-on one night when he was doing the routine with Madonna and Roseanne Barr and completely surprised them.”
Limbaugh, Rush | 903
Lindsay, John | 229, 257
Liotta, Ray | 849
Listening to/watching her own work | 122, 123, 127
“Little Fockers” | 917
“A Little Night Music” | 619-621
“A little obsessive” | 468
“Little Women” | 589
Livingston, Ron | 889
Loewe, Frederick | 604
Lombard, Carole | 238
London, Julie | 123
“The Long Island Incident” | 839
Lord Byron | 516, 648
Loren, Sophia | 93, 289
Losing virginity | 74, 76
“I was eighteen when I had my first love affair…although to call it a love affair seems like a stretch of the imagination. This man and I had a few interesting evenings together. On a night with a full moon, he handed me a cigarette, and I took a puff and went weak in the knees. I thought it was him. Turns out it was marijuana, which I had never smoked before (and rarely after). One thing led to another…I’m not going to go into details. Use your imagination. The next day when we ran into each other he just said ‘Hi’ and kept going, as if nothing had ever happened between us… God, I hated him for not being kinder. But it started my wheels spinning. Some nights I felt like a cat in heat… my body ached for him… feelings I had never experienced before. At least it gave me more material to work with when I did The Jack Paar Show for the second time, on May 22… When I sang about wanting someone, for the first time I actually understood it.”
Love of food | 7, 15, 23, 27, 29, 34, 35, 42, 43, 44, 54, 61, 65, 67, 68, 77, 80, 84, 90, 98, 99, 107, 108, 142, 144, 151, 155, 176, 187, 194, 204, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 248, 256, 273, 274, 295, 296, 307, 308, 309, 315, 321, 322, 324, 351, 375, 407, 423, 430, 448, 482, 501-502, 520, 523-524, 537-538, 542, 550, 557, 561-562, 578, 591, 596, 602, 682, 720, 722, 740, 757, 779, 789, 791, 815-816, 824, 827, 833-834, 868, 873-874, 879, 882, 884, 909, 917, 929, 944, 953, 962, 963, 965
“My best memory of that time is lying on my bed, reading movie magazines and eating Breyer’s coffee ice cream. It came in a square box, divided into sections like Neapolian, except it was coffee on each side with a slab of cherry vanilla in the middle… I would eat that first and save my favorite flavor, coffee, for last. I wanted that to be the taste that lingered in my mouth. (I used to eat a pint of coffee ice cream whenever I could and still stay skinny as a rail. Why couldn’t that be true now?)”
“Love Me or Leave Me” | 109
“Love Story” | 340, 342,
“Love in the Time of Cholera” | 681
Lovet-Lorski, Boris | 757
“Lucky! Eventually the couple got divorced” | 871
Lumet, Sidney | 235, 236
MacDonald, Jeanette | 32, 337
MacLaine, Shirley | 656, 667, 733, 802, 828, 896
“After I hired him, Shirley MacLaine asked, ‘How could you hire Marty Ritt? Don’t you know he’s a misogynist?’ (I didn’t)”
[…] “I remember thinking, Shirley was right. He is a misogynist.”
Mackie, Bob | 426
McPherson, Elle | 852
Madam Alex | 657
Madison, Dolley | 769
Madonna | 626, 830
“I remember sitting in the audience on the night of the ceremony, February 24, 1987, and thinking, Just look at the amazon women I’m up against: Madonna, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick, and Cyndi Lauper.”
Magnani, Anna | 287
Maher, Bill | 828, 915, 951
Mahler, Gustav | 839-840
“The Main Event” | 509, 757
Malden, Karl | 656
“A Man for All Seasons” | 646
Mandel, Johnny | 751-752
Mandela, Nelson | 827, 831
“I was depressed the next day, when suddenly the phone rang. It was Nelson Mandela. We had met a few months earlier during his visit to LA, and now he wanted to thank me for a donation and invite me to come to South Africa: ‘I am waiting for you and will embrace you with open arms.’ He told me, ‘I still think of the moment when I met you in Los Angeles. Are you still looking as formidable as you did on that occasion?’ What a charmer…”
Mangano, Silvana | 57
Mann, Thomas | 591
March, Frederic | 236, 444
“Marcus Welby, M.D.” | 865
Marijuana | 74, 265-266, 428
“I wasn’t a pot smoker, although I do remember one night in LA when we went out with Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland. I must have had a puff or two of what they were smoking, or else I just got a contact high, because we were giggling all through dinner. At one point we were making up all sorts of crazy flavors for ice cream.”
Marley, Bob | 418
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia | 681
Marshall, Penny | 631
Martin, Dean | 145
Martin, Mary | 109, 154
“Marty” | 527
Marx Brothers | 806
Marx, Groucho | 112, 380
Marx, Harpo | 380
Masina, Giulietta | 593
Maslin, Janet | 579-580, 727
“I doubt people paid much attention to her, but they do read The New York Times, and I was on pins and needles waiting for that review [of Yentl]. Imagine how I felt when, in the first sentence, Janet Maslin accused me of wearing a ‘designer yarmulke.’”
Mason, James | 141, 444, 461
Mathis, Johnny | 52, 54, 438, 749-750, 921
Matisse, Henri | 210
“A matter of principle” | 366
Matthau, Carol | 295, 580-581, 828
Matthau, Walter | 275, 279-282, 580, 729, 828
Matz, Peter | 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 134, 135, 186, 188, 190, 195, 209, 604-607, 611-614, 616, 624-625, 716, 721, 860
Maxim’s | 591
Mayer, John | 658
MacFarlane, Seth | 940
“McCabe & Mrs. Miller” | 314, 422
McCarthy, Eugene | 350, 399
McCartney, Paul | 330
McCarthy, Melissa | 939
McDowell, Roddy | 135
McGovern, George | 359, 399
McGraw, Ali | 340,
McQueen, Steve | 141, 234, 353
Medford, Kay | 162, 219
Meditation | 300
“Next we were supposed to go into a room to meditate. Donna [Karan] and I went in together and pretty soon I heard her snoring.”
“Meet the Fockers” | 645, 903, 905, 944
“Since I was playing a sex therapist, I suggested giving [Robert De Niro] a massage. I once had a masseuse who sat on my back, so why not try that? Bob really got into it and kept saying, ‘Press harder. Harder!’ To this day my left thumb joint has never recovered… and every year, Bob sends me flowers on my birthday (not sure if that’s guilt or affection!).
Meir, Golda | 741-742, 913
Melato, Mariangela | 592
Mellencamp, John Cougar | 602
Mencken, H.L. | 943
Mendes, Sam | 955, 956,
Mengers, Sue | 162, 259, 270, 272, 340-342, 344-346, 367, 405, 430, 443, 493, 531, 534, 535, 536; firing of, 535
Mercer, Johnny | 200
Merkel, Angela | 913
Merman, Ethel | 147, 169, 350
“In one of those ‘spontaneous’ TV moments, Judy was complimenting me on the way I could belt (I never thought of myself as a belter) when suddenly an inimitable voice rang out, and then the camera turned to Ethel Merman, spot-lit in her seat audience and belting out a song. She came up onstage to say hello and lead ‘the new belter,’ me, and her fellow belter, Judy, in a spirited rendition of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’ I gamely joined in (wearing my burgundy middy blouse now) and tried to look enthusiastic, even though I barely knew the words. But it didn’t matter, because you couldn’t hear me, or Judy, anyway. Ethel completely drowned us out.”
Merrick, David | 80, 82, 83, 96, 97, 99, 109, 136, 142, 143, 282
Merrill, Bob | 154, 155, 156, 167, 185, 186, 187
“The Merry Widow” | 337-339
MeToo | 600
MGM | 540-541, 576, 583, 679, 724
MGM Auctions | 279
“Miami Vice” | 673-674, 676
Michelangelo | 648
Midler, Bette | 631
“Midnight Express” | 549
Midnight massages | 866, 886
“The Mike Douglas Show” | 130
Mikulski, Barbara | 630, 819
Milland, Ray | 139
Miller, Arthur | 34
Mingalone, Dick, 853
Minnelli, Liza | 147, 733, 778, 825,
Minnelli, Vincente | 303, 304, 306, 307, 309, 311
“The Miracle Worker” | 109, 364
Miranda, Lin-Manuel | 940
Mirren, Helen | 957
“The Mirror Has Two Faces” | 618, 644, 847, 859, 865, 872, 873, 878,
Mitchell, George | 631
Mitchell, Joni |333, 398, 450
“David Geffen was there with Joni Mitchell and asked me to sing her song ‘I Don’t Know Where I Stand.’ I was a little nervous to sing it in front of her and said, ‘Forgive me, Joni’ (only half in jest), but it was nice to be able to tell her, so publicly, ‘I love your music and I also love the way you sing.’”
Mitchum, Robert | 109
Modigliani, Amedeo | 125, 128, 145, 210, 212, 213, 931, 932, 935, 936, 940
Moffett, D.W. | 640, 643
Monet, Claude | 145
“And then there was the more regal side of the town, like going to a dinner party at the home of Bill and Edie Goetz. He was one of the original partners in what became 20th Century Fox, and she was the daughter of one of the founders of MGM, Louis B. Mayer. I had never seen a home like this, with paintings by Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, and Modigliani hanging on the walls. There was a self- portrait by Vincent van Gogh that particularly fascinated me, because it was unfinished. (Later, I think the whole thing was determined to be a fake.) But this was the first time I realized that some people could actually buy a great painting and have it in their home.”
Monochrome | 23, 90, 190, 252, 305, 546, 662, 787
Monroe, Marilyn | 37, 239, 303, 841
“After the class there was a lunch with some Harvard undergraduates and fellows from the Institute of Politics, hosted by John F. Kennedy, Jr. I thought he was a doll, just like his father. And he had that same twinkle in his eye, as I found out a year later when he asked me to be on the cover of his new magazine, George. His idea was to have me dress up in a slinky gown like Marilyn Monroe when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to his father. I thought he was kidding at first, but he was serious. I told him I’d rather be a historical figure, so we settled on Betsy Ross sewing the flag.”
Monroe, Vaughan | 59
Monsanto | 215
Montand, Yves | 303, 306, 306, 729,
Moore, Dudley | 852
Moreau, Jeanne | 591, 617
Morgan, Helen | 50, 125, 129
Morrison, Van | 857
“After we were done shooting for the day, [Jeff Bridges] appeared at my dressing-room door with his favorite Van Morrison CDs and said, ‘Come on, dance with me!’”
Moss, Kate | 957
Moynihan, Patrick | 767
“Mrs. Miniver” | 236
“Mud insurance” | 228
“Mudbound” | 589
Mudslide | 575
Mulroney, Brian | 778-779
Munch, Edvard | 125, 470
Muni, Paul | 20
Murdoch, Rupert | 758, 908
“When President Clinton called me up to the stage at a conference in New York to thank me for my one-million-dollar pledge (the biggest donation my foundation had ever made at that point, because I was so concerned about climate change), Rupert Murdoch was in the audience. And I said exactly what I was thinking: ‘Mr. Murdoch, you’re a billionaire and you only gave half a million dollars. Don’t you think you should write another check?’ Everybody laughed. (Maybe not Murdoch. I wonder if he ever matched my donation.)”
Murphy, Ryan | 647, 648
Murrow, Edward | 746
“My Brother’s War” | 873
“My commitment to the gay community” | 643
“And then [Larry Kramer] turned his fire on me. In April 1996 he told Variety, ‘This woman has had this play since 1986.’ (Not true, since he had reneged on our original deal and also took the project back for four years during that period.) He went on to question my commitment to the gay community, which was contradicted by the facts.” While I was trying to push forward with The Normal Heart, my production company, Barwood Films, made the TV films Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, which won three Emmys and brought home to millions of Americans the painful truth about the unconscionable treatment of gays in the military, and What Makes a Family?, about the unfair laws concerning gay adoption.”
“My Fair Lady” | 113, 304, 580, 615
“My Passion for Design” | 906
“My power as a woman…” | 246
Myers, Mike | 830
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” | 750
Nagame, Paul | 932
Name change | 59-60
Nancy Drew | 24
NASA | 942
“Barbara [Bush] gave me a scarf. We shared some laughs as we talked about our dogs as well as the state of the union. And during the concert, when I introduced them to the audience, they got a standing ovation. A lot of people from NASA and the military were there, and it was a wonderful night.”
“Nashville” | 602
National Endowment for the Arts | 843-844
National Organization for Women | 591
Navratilova, Martina | 648
NBC | 839
Neal, Patricia | 263, 655
Need for control | 231-232
Nelligan, Kate | 695, 696, 731
Netanyahu, Benjamin | 931
Netflix | 473-474, 944, 951
“Network” | 236, 527
New York Philharmonic | 229
Newley, Anthony | 214, 267-272
Newman, Paul | 350, 353, 399, 655, 707
Newman, Phyllis | 100
Newman, Randy | 333
Nichols, Mike | 586-587
Nicholson, Jack | 298, 307, 359, 587, 631-632,
“I was sitting by myself in the guesthouse, trying to calm down, when Jack and Anjelica found me there. Jack is very laid back, with a dry sense of humor. He talks and laughs, and I never quite understand what he’s talking about. Still, the two of them made me feel better.”
Nielsen, Leslie | 656, 658, 660, 663
“The Night They Raided Minsky’s” | 617
“The Nightingale” | 589
Nilsson, Harry | 333
Niven, David | 220
Nixon, Richard | 395, 398-399, 872
Nixon’s Enemies List | 399
“No Strings” | 121
Nobel Prize | 501, 835
“I was willing to get on a plane to see Barry, because it would also give me a chance to meet with Isaac Bashevis Singer again, who was in Miami at the time. He was the Polish- born author who wrote the short story that was the basis for Yentl, and he had recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Now that’s a combination . . . Barry Gibb and I. B. Singer. That should give you a glimpse of what my life was like at this point . . . stimulating!”
Nolte, Nick | 695, 697, 700-704, 706, 708-710, 712-714, 716, 729-730, 897
Norell, Norman | 214
“Norma Rae” | 655
“The Normal Heart” | 635-636, 638-640, 643-649, 656, 823-824, 838, 849, 905
Norman, Jessye | 774
“North by Northwest” | 274
North, Sheree | 93, 94
Nose | 1, 57, 58, 140, 175, 212, 213, 215, 238, 280, 402-403, 545, 548, 785, 961
Novak, Kim | 30, 68
NRA | 840, 889
Nuclear proliferation | 630, 634, 959
“Nude scene” | 316-317
Nudist retreat | 144
“For some reason [Elliott Gould] had thought it would be a great idea to take me to Esalen, the original New Age retreat. Of course we got lost, and when we finally arrived, it was very late, and the whole place looked deserted. Finally someone showed up and checked us in and then picked up a flashlight to lead us down a dirt path through the trees. The air did not smell like pine. In fact, it stank. I asked, ‘What is that smell?’ and our guide said, ‘Oh, that’s sulfur from the hot springs. Everyone comes to bathe in the water. It’s very healing.’ Clothing was optional. Yuck!”
Nyro, Laura | 333-335, 450
O’Donnell, Chris | 689
O’Hara, Maureen | 874
O’Neal, Ryan | 340-343, 346-347, 367, 488-489, 897, vs. Jon Peters, 489
O’Neill, Eugene | 226
Obama, Barack | 824, 839, 913, 908, 938, 939
“In 2011, when Jim and I arrived at another state dinner at the Obama White House, for the president of China, one woman reporter asked me, “Why do you think you were invited?” I thought that was rather rude, so I answered back, ‘Maybe because I worked in a Chinese restaurant!’”
Oberon, Merle | 233
“Obsessed with mortality” | 242
Obsession | 672
“He probably felt neglected. I admit it, I am obsessed when I’m in the midst of a project… to the exclusion of all else (except my son). My friends complain that they never see me, and that makes me feel guilty, and now I was feeling even more pressure because I didn’t want to disappoint my lover.”
Olivier, Laurence | 219, 244, 293,
On not being a fan of her own work | 242, 882
On never giving up | 396
“On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” | 132, 234, 261, 274, 299, 306, 320-321, 360, 415, 575, 587, 602, 604, 794
“On the Town” | 111, 129, 132, 138
“On the Waterfront” | 73, 178, 289, 294, 545, 656, 746,
Onassis, Jaqueline Kennedy | 149, 323, 737-738, 769, 821-822
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” | 529
Ono, Yoko | 398
Ontkean, Michael | 543
Ophuls, Max | 839-840
“Ordinary People” | 652
Oreos | 80
Orion Pictures | 536, 538-539
Oscars | 236, 246, 252, 261, 263, 264, 289, 319, 320, 329, 335, 339, 342, 379, 390-391, 405, 422, 472, 545, 589, 597, 652, 655, 688, 696, 725, 731-733, 746, 770-771, 833, 862-863, 880, 920, 924, 935, 951
Oscars snub | 589-590, 596, 619, 731-732, 770-771
“These awards are part popularity contest, and I’ve never put myself out there, winning friends and influencing people. I don’t go to everyone else’s openings, because I hate getting dressed up and wearing high heels. If I must go, I’ll slip in the back door. I don’t feel comfortable posing for pictures on the red carpet… I can’t stand there with my hip out, showing off my dress and jewelry. (Besides, they always pick the wrong photos.) It’s just my innate reserve, but some people probably take it personally. So why would they vote for me?”
“Out of Africa” | 720
“The Owl and the Pussycat” | 144, 282, 313, 322, 343, 365, 408, 852
Paglia, Camille | 768
“I was interested to see that several men came to my defense in the Letters to the Editor column… ‘Keep the peekaboo power suit, Barbra; you earned it.’ But the best response was from feminist scholar Camille Paglia, who wrote, ‘Barbra Streisand looked spectacular. Radiating molten sexuality and stunning artistic power, she nearly upstaged President Clinton. She was all man and all woman.’
I loved that. She certainly got the message and had no problem with it.”
“The Pajama Game” | 111
Pakula, Alan J. | 405
Paparazzi | 592
Paramount Pictures | 539, 586, 751
Parasite | 374
Parker, Alan | 549
Parker, Colonel Tom | 449-450, 605
Parker, Sarah Jessica, 915
“Crammed in with the contest winners were a few more recognizable faces, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nicole Kidman, and Sarah Jessica Parker, as well as old friends like Marilyn and Alan, Jule Styne’s widow, Maggie… and Jim, who was right in front. (Most of my guests were watching from a more spacious room at the Waldorf, where we had arranged food, drink, and a live feed.)”
Pasteur, Louis | 306
“Pat and Mike” | 342,
Patinkin, Mandy | 543, 550-551, 553, 558-560, 568, 587, 589,
Pavarotti, Luciano | 859
Pavlova, Anna | 242
“The Pawnbroker” | 235
Peabody Awards | 197, 830, 839
Peck, Gregory | 49, 233, 262, 263, 303, 399, 482, 559, 795, 802, 813
Peck, Veronique | 263, 795
Pelosi, Nancy | 819, 908
Pendleton, Austin | 852
Penn, Irving | 175
Penn, Sean | 298
“Marlon [Brando] died on July 1, 2004. The memorial service was at Mike Medavoy’s house. Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Johnny Depp, and Michael Jackson were there, along with Marlon’s family. Quincy Jones, Sean Penn, and Ed Begley, Jr., spoke. I hadn’t known that Marlon was an inventor. Ed reminded us that Marlon had patented a tuning device for his conga drums.”
Pentagon Papers | 397-398
“In the spring of 1973, I was asked if I’d be willing to do a fundraiser for Daniel Ellsberg, who was on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. He put his life on the line because he believed that if Congress, and the American people, could finally read the truth about the Vietnam War, they would put an end to it.
Well, I’m a stickler for the truth, I was against the war, and just like Katie, I felt it was important to support people who were willing to stand up for their principles.”
[…]
“[Daniel Ellsberg] said it was our fifty thousand dollars that enabled them to continue the trial another two weeks… and those two weeks turned out to be crucial. That was just enough time for the news to break that Dan’s psychiatrist’s office had been burglarized and Nixon was behind it. The charges against Dan were dismissed on the grounds of government misconduct, and then the Watergate hearings began. And that was the beginning of the end for the president.”
Penzias, Arno | 774
Peres, Shimon | 594, 833-835, 903, 929-933
Perfectionism | 557, 589, 622-624, 695, 790-791, 814, 846, 881
“I looked through the camera and said, “Wait! There’s no plant life. It doesn’t look natural.” I had a picture in my head of long, thin grasses undulating in the water, but the prop people could only get fat ones. So we split each stalk up the middle.
I know. We were literally splitting hairs. But that’s my attention to detail, which is either a blessing or a curse (probably both).”
Perlman, Itzhak | 893
Perm | 480
Perot, Ross | 764
Perry, Richard | 332-334,
Persoff, Nehemiah | 294, 545, 566-567, 591, 897
PETA | 80
“I came in to audition in November. Since the play took place in the 1930s, I was wearing my 1930s coat, to put me in a period mood. It’s made of karakul, the smooth honey- colored fleece of a lamb, trimmed around the collar and the hem with matching fox fur (this was before PETA). I bought it in a thrift shop for ten dollars and thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. What made it so special was that the inside was just as lovely as the outside… the lining was embroidered with colorful baskets of flowers, done in chenille threads, with a little pocket made of ruched silk.”
“Peter Pan” | 111
Peters, Jon | 291, 406-418, 424-425, 428-430, 443-446, 449-451, 453, 460, 463-465, 469-472, 479, 483, 489, 491-495, 509-510, 532, 538-539, 574-575, 601, 650, 657, 680, 690, 723, 756, 865; “Radar for power,” 428; vs. Ryan O’Neal, 489
Pfizer | 894
“The Phantom of the Opera” | 750
“Philadelphia” | 646
Piaf, Edith | 303
Picasso, Pablo | 145, 381
“And then the movie turns on a dime again, when the director finds a wire behind a Picasso painting, and all the guests are shocked to realize their conversation is being taped.”
Pickford, Mary | 353
Picon, Molly | 410
Pine, Chris | 940
Pinza, Ezio | 751
Plato | 648, 682
The Playboy Club | 267
Playboy magazine | 478, 481-482, 496, 504
“I remember being kind of shocked when Warren Beatty once told me bluntly that ‘a movie star has to be fuckable.’
Well, I was a movie star, so I guess some people thought of me that way.
Did I ever think I was sexy? No.
And now Playboy was saying that they wanted to put me on the cover of the issue with my interview. They told me that would be a first for the magazine, and I thought, Well, no one will expect that. So I said okay, as long as I had photo approval. At the shoot they handed me the Playboy Bunny costume… basically a skimpy black bathing suit with a push-up bra. Let’s just say I had nothing like that in my closet. It was so different from my image and my own sense of self that it was almost disconcerting to put it on, but I have to admit it was also kind of fun, and quite flattering to my figure. But I didn’t like the symbolism of the outfit. After all, I was a feminist and I didn’t want to do anything that might be interpreted as a betrayal of the movement. And frankly, I thought, Better not look too sexy, because then people might not take me seriously as a filmmaker.”
Pleshette, Suzanne | 109
Poitier, Sidney | 284, 285, 314, 353, 582, 614, 828, 898, 958
Pollack, Sydney | 366-367, 369, 375, 377, 379-380, 383-386, 388-391, 393-395, 446, 448, 487, 585, 612, 619, 631, 656, 684, 795, 882, 897, 905, 937, 953
“Porgy and Bess” | 614-615
“Porn film” | 316
“This was the moment when Felix and Doris wind up making love, after they each got evicted from their own apartments and rang the doorbell of Felix’s friend… played by Robert Klein, a gifted comedian who would open for me later in Las Vegas. His girlfriend, by the way, was played by Marilyn Chambers (billed here as Evelyn Lang), who went on to star in the porn film Behind the Green Door. Maybe they should have asked her to do the nude scene!”
Porter, Cole | 604, 648
“The Poseidon Adventure” | 348
Powell, Colin | 773-774, 958
Prentiss, Paula | 109
Presley, Elvis | 449-450, 605
“Wow! Elvis had agreed to be the second person to play this room (two thousand seats, with an extra two hundred packed in) after my monthlong stint was up. On closing night he attended my show and came backstage afterward. He walked in with two bodyguards, and then gave the guys a look and gestured with his head (like in the movies), which clearly meant ‘Scram.’ So the two of us were alone in my dressing room. I was a bit nervous to meet him, so I started putting polish on my nails, because I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not good at small talk, and I wasn’t a big Elvis fan at the time (I came to really love him later). My shyness was paralyzing. I have no memory of our conversation. I barely looked up. But at the same level as my eyes was a huge silver belt buckle and his belly button, because his suit jacket was open to the waist and he had no shirt on, just his bare chest. His thick head of hair was dyed jet-black, and I thought, Why would a young man dye his hair like that? He was only thirty-four. Maybe he was prematurely gray?”
Preston, Kelly | 297, 828, 880
“Pretty Woman” | 465, 720
Prévert, Jacques | 200
Previn, André | 883
“That’s when the glorious music began. This was a piece I had fallen in love with, written by André Previn for the movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I first heard it on an album of movie themes that John Williams put together and sent to me, because it included ‘Papa, Can You Hear Me?’ I remember thinking, I want to walk down the aisle to this... it was so lush and romantic.”
Prince | 915-916
Prince Charles/King Charles III | 421-422, 816-819
“The Prince of Tides” | 510, 639, 678-682, 690, 692, 720, 727, 733-734, 738, 742, 745, 747, 750, 758-759, 764, 767, 794, 803, 830, 845, 847, 853, 899, 905, 927
Princess Alexandra | 593
Princess Diana | 730-731
“I was impressed with the way Diana visited hospitals and held the hands of AIDS patients. Her kind, open attitude did a lot to destigmatize the disease. And she was lovely to look at… tall, pretty, with a great figure. I liked her cropped hair, her blue eyes, and her longish nose. She was warm and friendly, and it was fun to sit next to her in the balcony of the theater at Leicester Square, watching the film. When it ended, people started to applaud. The lights came up. I was told that the princess has to stand up first… that was royal protocol… but instead Diana was smiling and clapping along with everyone else and she whispered to me, ‘You must stand up.’
I said, ‘Really? You’re supposed to stand up first. Are you sure it’s all right?’
She said, ‘Absolutely!’ and gave me a little push.”
Princess Margaret | 220, 257
Private home mall | 247, 276
Pro-Barbra protest (see: Oscars snub) | 597
“I really didn’t feel like pretending, so I stayed home and watched [the Oscars] on TV. I was amazed to see protesters outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. A women’s group dedicated to equality in the film business had gathered in support of me. One sign said, ‘Oscar, can you hear me?’ I was touched.
Out of our five nominations, only Michel, Marilyn, and Alan won for Best Original Song Score. Well, at least we got one.”
“Producer mode” | 592
Proper pronunciation of “Streisand” | 60
“Because I couldn’t change Streisand, even though everybody has always mispronounced it. They say ‘Stryzand’ or ‘Stryzin,’ but why are they saying a z if there’s no z there? You’d think people would see ‘sand’ and pronounce it with a soft s, like sand on the beach… but they don’t. Maybe I should have changed the spelling to “Strysand” with a y, but I didn’t like the look of that. So I just figured I’d keep it as it always was.”
Proust, Marcel | 648
Puccini, Giacomo | 439, 850, 859
Puente, Tito | 74
Pulitzer Prize | 880
Putting up walls | 272
“Pygmalion” | 580
Quayle, Dan | 822
Queen Elizabeth II | 175, 429, 552, 768
“Queen & Slim” | 589
“The Quiet Man” | 874
Quinn, Anthony | 91
Rabin, Yitzhak | 834-836
“A few months after I met Rabin, a script came to me that opened with a conversation among White House aides who were preparing for that pivotal meeting in the Rose Garden. Then it went back in time to cover fifty years of Middle Eastern history as told through the parallel stories of two boys… Rabin and [Yasser] Arafat… who became leaders of their rival factions. What I didn’t know and what really interested me was that they were both born in Jerusalem and grew up only a few miles apart… and yet they were worlds apart in ideology. Their diametrically opposed beliefs were like a wall between them, and although their histories were intertwined, they had never met until that day at the White House.”
Rainey, Ma | 52
“A Raisin in the Sun” | 284
Reagan, Nancy, 642
“And then Craig has a coughing fit as they’re standing in front of an electronics store, where twenty five TVs in the window are all tuned to Ronald and Nancy Reagan dancing at the inaugural ball.”
Reagan, Ronald | 123, 327, 628-629, 634-635, 641-642, 761
Redford, Robert | 366-370, 373, 376, 379-380, 382, 389-391, 393, 395, 472, 543, 681, 696, 756, 775, 794, 897, 916, 923, 935-937
“Winds were rocking the boat, and bats were swooping down at night. All I could think of was rabies, because Robert Redford had been bitten by a bat on Lake Powell just before we started filming The Way We Were, and had to undergo weeks of painful injections in his stomach.”
Redgrave, Vanessa | 263
Reed, Rex | 800
“Reel Models: The First Women of Film” | 840
Reincarnation | 58, 102, 300-301, 303, 305, 597
Reiner, Carl | 350, 398
Reiner, Rob | 631
Rembrandt | 89, 90, 128, 136, 546, 554, 563, 927
Reno, Janet | 773-774
“Reputation for being difficult” | 732, 743
“Rescuers: Stories of Courage” | 839
Resnick, Lynda | 398
“The Revenant” | 951
Richman, Linda | 830
Rickles, Don | 179
Ridley, Daisy | 939, 957
Right side of face | 355
Richie, Lionel, 779, 956
Ritt, Martin | 655-656, 658, 660-662, 666-669
“The River” | 939
Rivera, Chita | 109
Rivera, Geraldo | 579
Rivers, Joan | 40
Roach, Jay | 903
Robards, Jason | 171, 226, 851
Robbins, Jerome | 109, 110, 111, 112, 135, 136, 137, 142, 143, 154, 156, 157, 163, 164, 165, 166-169, 186, 208, 209, 255, 269, 616, 954
Roberts, Julia | 647
Roberts, Tony | 640
Robinson, Edward G. | 139
“Rocky” | 471
Rodgers, Richard | 51, 55, 73, 103, 120, 290, 604, 615, 626, 739-741
Roe v. Wade | 356, 838, 959
“You hope certain people will be with you forever, but then reality strikes. I’ve lost too many friends recently . . . Peter Bogdanovich, Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell, and my brilliant friend Madeleine Albright, who was such an inspira- tion to me.
What she wrote about in her 2018 book Fascism: A Warning has come to pass, as authoritarians take charge in more and more countries. And one of their first targets is women. History has shown that a crackdown on women’s rights is one of the initial signs of a crackdown on democracy. And we’re seeing it right now in America with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. For almost fifty years, women had the right to choose whether or not to have a child, which is a no-brainer. That decision should not belong to the state.
Have women become too successful, rising to prominent positions in board- rooms, courthouses, and the halls of government? Are some men so desperate to limit a woman’s autonomy? Because this sure sounds as if they’re saying, Go back to the kitchen, babe.”
Rogen, Seth | 917-918
Rogers, Ginger | 234
Rogers, Kenny | 505
Rogers, Mimi | 852
Rolex | 881
Rolling Stone magazine | 441, 505
“Roman Holiday” | 236
Rome, Harold | 739
“Romeo & Juliet” | 432-433, 516
Rooney, Mickey | 91
Roosevelt, Franklin D. | 115, 833
Roosevelt, Teddy | 776, 844
Rose, Bill | 421, 423-424
“The Rose Tattoo” | 35, 422
Ross, Betsy | 842
Ross, Diana | 505, 764
Rossellini, Roberto | 729
Roth, Lillian | 93
Rowlands, Gena | 849, 851
Royal Winnipeg Ballet | 323
Ruffalo, Mark | 647
Ruiz, Don Miguel | 902, 903
Russell, Kurt | 631
Russell, Leon | 459, 469, 477
Russell, Rosalind | 233, 238, 926,
Rydell, Mark | 588, 651-655
Saint, Eva Marie | 178
Salinger, Conrad | 614-615
Same-sex marriage | 646-647
“The Sandpiper | 198
Sands, Diana | 79, 313
“Santa Claus is dead” | 103
Santana, Carlos | 453
Sardi’s | 97, 129, 180
“By now it seemed almost absurd that I had allowed myself to get involved with Sydney [Chaplin]. Like many a man who’s been told he’s delightful too many times, he loved to hear himself talk, and he would tell the same stories over and over. I was getting bored. All we had in common was the show. His favorite haunt was Sardi’s, where I always felt as if we were on display. I preferred diners.”
Sargent, John Singer | 169
Sarkozy, Nicolas | 910
Sassoon, Vidal | 417
“Saturday Night Fever” | 499
“Saturday Night Live” | 830
Scaasi, Arnold | 256, 257, 261, 262, 303, 323,
“Scarangella, Angelina” | 43
“Scarface” | 342
Scavullo, Francesco | 441, 498
Schapiro, Steve | 402
Schiele, Egon | 125, 210, 310, 909-910
Schiffrin, Lalo | 497
“Schindler’s List” | 823
Schlesinger, John | 644
Schwarzkopf, Norman |774
Schneider, Bill | 819
Scorsese, Martin | 405, 531, 709
‘Same thing with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. When I read that script, no director was involved, so I missed my chance to work with the extraordinary Martin Scorsese. I was also hesitant because I didn’t think people would accept me as a lousy lounge singer. (Little did I know I would end up playing one ten years later, in a flop called All Night Long.)’
Scott, Ridley | 730,
Screen Actors Guild | 862; strike, 532
Séance | 513-515
Sedaka, Neil | 478, 485
“Neil brought his wife, Leba, and she told me that she was initially afraid to come because she had read some gossip that I had birds flying around loose inside my house.
What? The reality was that I had two parakeets in a cage, just like plenty of other Brooklyn girls! I was so fed up with all these ridiculous stories, and instead of driving myself crazy by trying to respond, I decided to turn my feelings into a song. I already knew what the title would be: ‘Don’t Believe What You Read.’”
See-through pantsuit | 261-262, 264
Segal, George | 314-318, 354, 589, 849, 852
Selby, David | 729
Sellers, Peter | 220, 265
Serling, Rod | 91
“Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” | 644-645, 836-839, 845, 849
Seurat, Georges | 609, 621
“Seven Beauties” | 732-733
Sexual insecurity | 288
“Shadowlands” | 905
Shakespeare, William | 226, 431-433, 511, 516, 643, 891
“In English class that year, the books I chose to report on were by Stanislav- sky. I read My Life in Art, his autobiography, and An Actor Prepares, the first book of a trilogy that explained his theories about acting, and continued with Build- ing a Character and then Creating a Role. I wrote a paper on Shakespeare’s sonnets. I remember taking the subway all the way up to the Heckscher Theatre on Fifth Avenue and 104th Street to see George C. Scott in Richard III on a very cold and snowy night. I loved Shakespeare.”
Shalala, Donna | 819
Shalhoub, Tony | 643
“Shampoo” | 422
Shankar, Ravi | 45
Sharaff, Irene | 227, 247, 248, 249, 251, 275-277, 281
Sharif, Omar | 231, 245, 246, 248, 253, 260, 261, 270, 280, 425, 543, 923
Shaw, George Bernard | 31, 42, 100, 293, 580, 661, 836
Shawn, Dick | 138
Sheen, Martin | 350
Shimar, Yitzhak | 595
“The Shining” | 545
“Ship of Fools” | 314
Shoplifting | 21-22
“I loved the five-and-dime. There were so many items that were not very expensive . . . combs, bobby pins, lipsticks. But I also had another method of getting what I needed, which I’m not too proud of. Sometimes I would steal things.
This was not as simple as random shoplifting. I was a very logical girl and I had my own system. It was all based on something I had noticed … people often discarded their receipts on the floor. I would look for them and pick them up. Most things were a dollar then, and the tax was three cents. So I would take an item that cost $1.03, something small like a lipstick or a compact that was relatively easy to slip into my bag. Then I’d head straight to the refund window . . . my heart beating fast . . . where I’d turn in the item with the receipt, collect the cash, and then use the money to buy something I really wanted.”
Shore, Dinah | 132
“Show Boat” | 614-615
Showtime | 835-835
Shriver, Eunice Kennedy | 429
Signoret, Simone | 303
“The Silence of the Lambs” | 730
“Silkwood” | 587
Sills, Beverly | 442
“Silver fillings” | 279
Simmons, Jean | 293, 790
Simon, Neil | 586
Simon, Paul | 330, 401
Sinatra, Frank | 179, 180, 303, 439
“I saw Frank later that year in Las Vegas, when I was preparing my show at the MGM Grand and he was performing nearby. After his show, he joined me and Marty for a late supper and we wound up going to see Don Rickles to- gether. But what I remember most about Frank is another night much earlier in my career, when I ran into him at a party and he said, ‘Kid, if anybody ever bothers you, just call me. I’ll take care of it.’”
Singer, Isaac Bashevis | 339, 501, 506-508, 510, 516, 519, 526-528, 537, 573, 580, 582, 728,
“Singin’ in the Rain” | 614, 724
“Singing live, or nuclear annihilation” | 629
The Singing Nun | 150
Singleton, John | 731
Siri | 118
Six-Day War | 245
“$6 million home movie” | 469
“Skinny and Cat” | 681, 905
“The Slender Thread” | 366
Smith, Bessie | 52, 333
Smothers Brothers | 70
“So I booked the guy over the head with my pocketbook” | 495
Socrates | 648, 682, 686
“Who was it that said ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ (I just looked it up. It was Socrates.) But therapists are only human, and some whom I’ve met seem pretty confused.”
“Sold out in 18 minutes” | 789
“Someone behind me pinched my butt” | 597
Sondheim, Stephen | 127, 154, 608-611, 616, 619-621, 625-626, 732, 752-755, 765, 781-782, 784-785, 794, 924-927, 938, 953, 954
“I was determined to make this movie. I even decided to give people a little preview in the Back to Brooklyn concert. The first act finished with a Jule Styne medley that featured two songs from Gypsy, including a bit of “Rose’s Turn.” After all the publicity about whether the movie was on or off, it was like a declaration . . . I was going to play this role no matter what!
But there was one more obstacle. All the original authors had to give their approval, and Sondheim had one condition. As he told me, “You can act or direct. I just don’t think you should do both jobs.”
‘Is it that you didn’t like Yentl?’ I asked him.
‘No, no,’ he replied, ‘I liked Yentl. I just think in this case it would be too hard.’”
“South Pacific” | 113, 751
Speaking Chinese | 15
“Spider-Man” | 465
Spielberg, Steven | 508, 544, 582-585, 631, 759, 795, 938,
Spinella, Stephen | 643
“Splash” | 535
Springsteen, Bruce | 631
Stage fright | 231, 779-780, 782-784, 790-792, 794-795, 944
Stahl, Lesley | 746
Stalker | 481
“It’s interesting . . . as a teenager, you dream of being beautiful and seductive enough to attract men, but when the opportunity presented itself to me, I shied away from it. I had actually become scared of men coming after me, which wasn’t irrational . . . at this point I was dealing with a stalker who one night broke into Kim’s office adjacent to my house and took a shower. Another time he came back, stole my little convertible, and checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, saying that he was my husband, the king of Israel, and that I was his queen.”
Stanislavsky | 30-31
Stanley, Kim | 49
Stapleton, Maureen | 656
“A Star is Born” (1954) | 26, 114, 141, 582, 825
“A Star is Born” (1976) | 67, 332, 405, 407, 440, 508-509, 570, 684, 699, 756, 916, 917, 951, 953, 956
Starbucks stock | 895
“Starfucker” | 37
Stark, Frances | 108, 109, 112, 154, 234
Stark, Ray | 106, 108, 109, 111, 139, 140, 142, 143, 156, 157, 159, 163, 169, 170, 172, 182, 183, 186, 204, 206, 207, 221, 222, 225, 227, 233, 234, 236, 239, 240, 242, 252, 255, 256, 257, 313, 314, 315, 319, 335, 364, 365, 366, 367, 371, 389, 402, 403, 420, 422, 424, 427-428, 430-431, 535, 579, 599, 740, 822
Starr, Ringo | 398
Steele, Tommy | 220
Steiger, Rod | 294
Stein, Gertrude | 648
Steinem, Gloria | 352, 634
Stern, Bert | 175
Stevens, Kaye | 109
Stewart, Jimmy | 233
Stewart, Sandy | 118
Stiller, Ben | 645-646, 903
Stock trading | 894-896
“While I was consumed with the state of the country, I had also developed another absorbing interest. As I wrote in my journal, “I’m addicted to the stock market . . . the risk and the reward. It gives me the drama I need for the day.” From about 1998 to 2000, I was trading Monday through Friday, from 6:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (which proves my level of commitment, because I’m not a morning person). But somehow the siren song of the stock market penetrated my sleep.
At 6:25 my eyes would open wide, without an alarm. I’d get up, throw on my bathrobe, sit down at my new desk with a cup of hot chocolate, and start trading.”
Stone, Oliver | 730
Storaro, Vittorio | 545-547, 561, 592, 603
Storch, Larry | 56
“La Strada” | 593
Strasberg, Lee | 36, 37, 48, 49, 133, 176, 182, 431-433, 833
Strasberg, Susan | 20, 30, 37
Streep, Meryl | 586
“A Streetcar Named Desire” | 813
The Streisand Effect | 906-907
“Let me say this loud and clear. Contrary to the explanation on Wikipedia, I did not attempt to “suppress” a photograph of my house. My issue was never with the photo … it was only about the use of my name attached to the photo. To cut a long story short, when a wealthy businessman took it upon himself to photograph thousands of homes along the California coast and create a web- site in 2002, all the homes were identified only by longitude and latitude and not by the owners’ names . . . except for five celebrities, including me. Suddenly there was a photo on the internet with my house, my name, and the exact co- ordinates where I lived. That put the safety of my family and myself at risk. We had already experienced several incidents with intruders over the years. So I hope you can understand my concern.
And this is what every description of the “Streisand effect” gets wrong. I wasn’t trying to remove the photo. All I asked was that this man please just treat me like everyone else and remove my name, for security reasons. But he refused.”
Streisand, Emmanuel | 8, 9, 14, 31, 98, 171, 242, 290, 405, 461-462, 513-516, 521, 544-545, 565, 568, 573, 576, 577, 589, 594, 716, 744, 759-760, 763, 791, 802-803, 805, 834, 851, 875, 891-892, 930, 931, 933, 961, 962, 964-965
“The Streisand method” | 615
Streisand, Sheldon | 513-516, 594, 795, 825, 883
Stritch, Billy | 778
“Stromboli” | 730
Stuart, Gilbert | 769
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | 284, 350
“Stupidest deal I ever made in my life” | 348
Styne, Jule | 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 134, 140, 142, 152, 154, 155, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 185, 186, 187, 188, 195, 205, 542, 739-740, 765, 825, 915, 924, 925, 927, 954,
Sullivan, Ed | 20, 52, 118, 132, 138, 750
Summer, Donna | 497-498
“Sunday in the Park with George” | 608, 754
“The Sundowners” | 109
“Sunset Boulevard” | 123, 750-751, 784
Super Bowl | 134
Susskind, David | 47, 91, 92
Swanson, Gloria | 123, 751
“Sweeney Todd” | 493
“Sweet Hearts Dance” | 677
“Swept Away” | 593
Swimming naked | 325, 345
Swinton, Tilda | 957
“Sylvia Scarlett” | 511
Tamia | 858
Tandy, Jessica | 733
Taylor, Elizabeth | 175, 198, 219, 289, 586, 775, 897
“And Elizabeth Taylor, now that’s a movie star! After I got to know Elizabeth, I realized she was one of the great broads, as down-to-earth as they come and hilariously raunchy.”
Taylor, James | 359
Taylor, Laurette | 813
Taylor, Reneé | 71, 149
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, 648
“I was discovering more and more classical music. I would stand there and conduct Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet in front of the bathroom mirror, with tears streaming down my face.”
“Tender Mercies” | 587
“Terms of Endearment” | 587
“Thank God for Prozac…” | 901
“In March 2002, I was at my mother’s bedside when she died. For the past six years she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Thank God for Prozac . . . when she started to get very agitated, her doctor prescribed it and that was incredible . . . she forgot to be angry.”
Thant, U | 321
Thatcher, Margaret | 552
“Thelma and Louise” | 730
“Them!” | 94
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” | 366, 404
“This Property is Condemned” | 366
Thomas, Clarence | 748, 959
Thomas, Danny | 145
“Thoroughly Modern Millie” | 274
Thulin, Ingrid | 339
“Tin Men” | 656
Tinnitus | 16, 17, 52, 623, 801
Tolstoy, Leo | 24
“Anna Karenina was also the first classic novel I ever read. I went straight from Nancy Drew to Tolstoy. I was completely taken with Anna, dying for love. After all, isn’t passion what we all want in our lives?”
“The Tonight Show” | 130
Tony Awards | 99, 100, 121, 330, 940, 955
“Too demanding?” | 672
“Topless” | 316-317
Tormé, Mel | 145, 146
“A Touch of Class” | 390
Tracy, Spencer | 318, 342, 508
Traffic accident | 865
Tramont, Jean-Claude | 531, 535-536
Travolta, John | 297, 828, 880
TriStar | 847-848
Trudeau, Justin | 327, 328, 819
Trudeau, Pierre | 258, 319-328, 675, 757, 824, 826
Truffaut, Francois | 487-488
“I remembered something François Truffaut told me when we met at my friend Mike Medavoy’s house. We were talking about the difficulty of finding good material. And he said, ‘So every picture might not be great, but at the end of your career, you have a body of work . . . some good, some not so good, but you have to keep working. You can’t wait for something perfect.’”
Trump, Donald | 940-943, 947-948, 950, 955
“I was with Jimmy in the truck (his beloved Raptor), and we had the radio on, listening to the news and hearing Trump with his lies again. It was making my head spin. As I’ve said before, I can’t stand being lied to, and I don’t think the country should be lied to either. And I just couldn’t comprehend how he could tell all these lies with absolutely no guilt (clearly he’s not Jewish).”
Truth & honesty | 625, 661, 676, 718, 736, 745, 749, 773, 836, 838, 853, 877, 950, 956, 959, 960
Tucker, Sophie | 236
Turner, Ted | 840
Turner, Tina | 626
Turning forty | 556
Turturro, John | 640
Twain, Mark | 511-512
“Twelve Angry Men” | 235
“20/20” | 877
Twitter | 957
“Two Hands That Shook the World” | 835
Tyson, Mike | 674
UCLA | 547
Ullmann, Liv | 336, 339
“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” | 199
“Unforgiven” | 771
United Artists | 353, 536, 539, 540, 541, 576, 679
United Nations | 231, 321
Universal Studios | 651, 775, 840, 904, 927
“Up the Sandbox,” | 353, 355, 360, 362, 363, 367, 534, 570
Vacarro, Brenda | 828, 852, 869
Valentino | 957
Valentino, Rudolph | 139
van Gogh, Vincent | 125, 145, 927, 931
“And then there was the more regal side of the town, like going to a dinner party at the home of Bill and Edie Goetz. He was one of the original partners in what became 20th Century Fox, and she was the daughter of one of the founders of MGM, Louis B. Mayer. I had never seen a home like this, with paintings by Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, and Modigliani hanging on the walls. There was a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh that particularly fascinated me, because it was unfinished. (Later, I think the whole thing was determined to be a fake.) But this was the first time I realized that some people could actually buy a great painting and have it in their home. That was amazing to me.”
“Varian’s War” | 839
Verdon, Gwen | 352
Verhoeven, Paul | 706
“Verklempt” | 830, 938
“Back to 2015. It was nice to find myself seated next to two other old friends, Stephen Sondheim and Steven Spielberg, when we were all at the White House in November. We were about to receive what they call the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Obama. He was very engaging that day, warming up a formal occasion with funny ad-libs. For example, when he started to read the description of me: ‘Born in Brooklyn to a middle-class Jewish family,’ he stopped, turned to me, and said, ‘I didn’t know you were Jewish, Barbra.’ That got a huge laugh. He mentioned what he called my chutzpah (pronouncing it perfectly), then continued, “And it helps when you’ve got amazing talent, all of which made her a global sensation—one whose voice has been described as ‘liquid diamonds’ .. Off the stage, she has been a passionate advocate for issues like heart disease and women’s equality. I’m getting all verklempt just thinking about it.”
Viagra | 894
“I read about this new drug for men called Viagra and thought, That’s going to be very popular! It was made by Pfizer, so I immediately bought some shares. I chose Apple because I liked their products. Renata loves Starbucks coffee, so I bought Starbucks. One time I picked a stock because it had my initials. (I don’t pretend to be any smarter than a monkey throwing darts, as they say.)”
Viertel, Peter | 365
Vietnam War | 350, 397, 903, 936
“They say art imitates life, but sometimes it’s the other way around. A few months after we finished filming The Way We Were, in the spring of 1973, I was asked if I’d be willing to do a fundraiser for Daniel Ellsberg, who was on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. He put his life on the line because he believed that if Congress, and the American people, could finally read the truth about the Vietnam War, they would put an end to it.
Well, I’m a stickler for the truth, I was against the war, and just like Katie, I felt it was important to support people who were willing to stand up for their principles.”
Vitti, Monica | 592
Vogue magazine | 175, 215, 219, 441
von Fürstenberg, Diane | 586
von Sydow, Max | 336, 337
Vreeland, Diana | 215
Vulnerability in men | 310
“I love strength but it’s the vulnerability in a man that goes straight to my heart.”
Wagner, Robert | 140
Wallace, Mike | 76, 77, 91, 92, 93, 742-746
Wallach, Eli | 656, 662
Waller, Fats | 60
Walters, Barbara | 877
Walters, Julie | 589
“The War of the Roses” | 904-905
Warhol, Andy | 229
Warner Bros. | 340, 341, 348, 433, 446-447, 467, 473, 539, 650-651, 653-655, 658, 668-669, 755-759
Warren, Diane | 877
Warren, Lesley Ann | 407, 409, 416
Warwick, Dionne | 626
Washington, George | 769, 772-773
Watergate | 398
Waters, John | 28
Watkin, David | 548
“The Way We Were,” | 291, 298, 364-397, 399, 401-402, 406, 431, 612, 652, 681, 684, 756, 794, 914, 916, 919, 920, 923, 936, 952
Wayne, John | 233, 329, 874
Webb, Jimmy | 330
Webber, Andrew Lloyd | 750-751, 784
Weber, Lois | 840
Wedding to Elliott Gould | 141, 142
“Then Elliott and I had a fight. Poor guy . . . he must have done something to bother me because I was pissed off and angry on our wedding night. I can’t even remember what it was about, probably because it was only a symptom of something deeper that was troubling me. As Elliott says now, ‘I don’t think you really wanted to get married.’”
Wedding to James Brolin | 878-887
Weill, Kurt | 331, 332
Welch, Raquel | 359, 421
Welles, Orson | 293, 362, 680
West, Cornel | 842
Werfel, Alma | 839
Werfel, Franz | 839
Werner, Oskar | 314
Wertmüller, Lina | 592-593, 732-733, 853
“West Side Story” | 80, 109, 111, 274, 361, 607, 616, 749-750
“What Makes a Family?” | 644-645, 839
“What’s Up, Doc?” | 341, 348-349, 366, 398, 405, 412, 447, 756, 852
“Where’s Poppa?” | 315
Whitman, Walt | 648
Whitney Museum | 857
The Who | 603
“Who fucked up your hair?” | 868, 872
“Jim [Brolin] was also a very good driver, from racing cars when he was younger. He was kindhearted and sensitive, and he made me feel safe. He told me, ‘I fell in love with you the first night we met, when you said, ‘Who fucked up your hair?’ I knew from that moment we would be together.”
That made my heart skip a beat. And when he came home, as Jim says, ‘It was like a shampoo commercial. We just ran into each other’s arms.’”
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” | 274, 315
“Who’s in charge in this country?” | 595
Wieseltier, Leon | 774
Wikipedia | 906-907
Wilder, Billy | 751
“Will anyone ever love me unconditionally?” | 800
“That’s always been my question. Will anyone ever love me unconditionally? It took years to come to terms with that. And part of that involved accepting my mother for who she is. As a wise friend once told me, “Suffering is the resistance to what is.’”
Williams, John | 883
Williams, Paul | 452, 454, 472, 477
Williams, Robin | 631
Williams, Tennessee | 34, 35, 48, 132, 133, 648
“The first significant scene I did was from Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo. I was playing a young girl who is intensely attracted to a boy but is so sexually inexperienced that she doesn’t know quite what to do.”
Willis, Bruce | 631
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” | 414
Wilson, Patrick | 940
Wilson, Rita | 828, 880
Winfrey, Oprah | 118, 391, 908, 935
“Even now, after six decades in show business, people are still mispronouncing my name. Does anybody say Oprah WINE-fry? No. Judy Gar-LAND. No.”
Winger, Debra | 650-651
Winkler, Henry | 631
Wirth, Tim | 630
Withdrawing from people | 535
Withers, Bill | 419
“The Wizard of Oz” | 371, 552, 724
Women’s liberation | 356, 444
“I’m all for women and women’s rights, but people will just tune out if you’re too abrasive. I didn’t understand why feminists were burning their bras. What did bras have to do with it? (Maybe it was a symbol of constriction?) I hardly ever wore one anyway. Now I understand it in the context of revolution… sometimes you have to go to extremes in order to come back to the middle, a more balanced place.”
Wonder, Stevie | 401, 614
“Wonder Woman” | 589
Wood, Natalie | 140, 175, 234, 273
“There was something very endearing about [Gene Kelly’s] smile. I watched him fall in love with Natalie Wood on-screen and imagined what it would be like to have someone fall in love with me. But I was just a teenager, grateful to be in an air- conditioned movie theater eating
Mello-Rolls and Good & Plenty. And that’s the Cinderella story of my life…”
Woods, James | 386
Woodstock Music Festival | 228
“The weather was not our only challenge. Marty was worried about people being able to hear. This was two years before Woodstock and the era of big outdoor concerts. The typical sound systems weren’t designed to cover a huge expanse like Sheep Meadow… ninety acres. So he hired Phil Ramone, a sound engineer who was known to be inventive. And Phil rigged up a system of twelve towers throughout the meadow, with new “long throw” speakers on top.”
Woodward, Joanne | 263, 350
Woolf, Virginia | 648
Woolsey Fire | 951, 952
“The worst reviews of my career” | 470
Worth, Irene | 20
Wyler, Talli | 549
Wyler, William | 160, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250-254, 262, 264, 280, 344, 383, 427, 448, 464, 549, 579, 656, 728-729, 896
Wynn, Steve | 746-747
Yablans, Frank | 576
“Yankee Doodle Dandy” | 422
Yates, Peter | 587
Yeats, W.B. | 823
“Yentl” | 10, 74, 203, 294, 336, 339, 475, 499-501, 503, 506-513, 516-519, 522-523, 525-528, 530-533, 535-536, 545-548, 550, 552-553, 554-557, 559-560, 563-574, 578-581, 583-584, 586-591, 595-597, 600-602, 612, 619, 634, 636, 651, 653, 656, 680, 694, 696, 698, 702, 704, 728, 731-733, 738, 748, 757-758, 794, 814, 816, 827, 834, 838, 847, 861, 916, 924, 926, 927, 957, 958, ; “Yentl as demonic,” 528
The Yentl Syndrome | 911
“Years before, Dr. Bernadine Healy, the first female director of the National Institutes of Health, had identified what she called ‘the Yentl Syndrome’ to describe what happens when a woman goes to the emergency room with symptoms that don’t conform to those of the classic male heart attack. Often she’s not taken seriously, misdiagnosed, and undertreated. Maybe she’s told she’s having a panic attack and is sent home with an antacid. Sometimes she takes the pill, goes to bed, and never wakes up.”
YouTube | 739, 940, 957
“Meanwhile, Jim was looking at Twitter and YouTube on his phone and showed me what people were posting as they headed home from the show… like a video taken in the tube station, where the crowd continued the concert by breaking into their own rendition of ‘The Way We Were.’ That really warmed my heart.”
“You’ve got a great ass” | 407
Zahedi, Firooz | 803
Zanuck, Richard | 282
Zeffirelli, Franco | 592, 850
Zimmerman, Don | 706
Zsigmond, Vilmos | 422
Zuckerman, Pinchas | 706, 715
