April 14th – I have a dilemma…well, I have more than one, but
this one is sort of tricksy, anti PC (if you’ve got a skin with the sensitivity
of a new-born piglet left out in the sun) but quite sort of…uplifting in its
own, quirky style.
I’ve mentioned before (ad nauseum) about my feelings for what
are laughingly called modern musicals. Of how it seems that any historical,
social or peripheral-to-the-human-race story, regardless of its interest or suitability, gets turned into a
musical; I await the day when the musical, ‘Scenes from My Colonic Irrigation’
comes rolling into the theatre with a certain amount of trepidation…
So, musicals. It just seems they are
all prepped to the same template; the lost love of summat with the found love
of summat all with a little sexual difficulty of one sort or another along the
way just to confuse the plot even further…and plenty of room for the woman’s
showstopper number followed by the guy’s showstopper reply all shoehorned into
the drama no matter how unsuitable or inappropriate. And I hate to say it, but
these two numbers in particular (the guys and gals but, in truth the majority
of the songs and the dance routines) are so much like the last ten you saw
and…so…well, so gay. Maybe it’s that androgynous style of singing complete with
the massive, high-pitched, over-the-top dramatic last note (complete with
unnecessary vibrato) and the sudden
ending-snap to black on the rapid,
skip-leap exit closure that the character always uses…?
Anyway, best stop now, I guess I’m in
enough trouble as it is. Anyone here like Barbara Streisand? Thought so (more
trouble brewing then). Never
been a fan (nor she of me, I hear, so, works both ways) as I find her voice
akin to that noise of chalk down a blackboard or the noise a cat makes just as
you switch on the blender. It’s the nasal, shouty-shouty way she puts over a
number that I can’t get on with and, I have to be honest and say that I never
thought she could act her way out of a paper bag (nor she of me, I hear, so,
works both ways). Well, cut to the chase, on this day in 1969, she shared the
Best Actress Academy Award with none other than Katherine Hepburn – Ms.
Streisand for Funny Girl and Ms. Hepburn
for The Lion in Winter…Katherine
Hepburn…she of ‘African Queen’ and ‘On Golden Pond’ fame…THAT Katherine
Hepburn.
Now I don’t know about you but I
really can’t see how Ms. Streisand could be considered to be in the same acting
solar system as Ms. Hepburn but, OK, let that pass, that’s just subjective.
Putting Funny Girl, which is basically
a film about an unknown, ugly person becoming a beautiful super-star (gosh,
there’s original, a kind of Ugly Betty
forerunner…but with songs, if you can imagine anything that bad) and losing her husband in the process (selfish, but
an opportunity for that; ‘massive, high-pitched, over-the-top dramatic last
note (complete with unnecessary vibrato and the massive, high-pitched, over-the-top
dramatic last note – complete with unnecessary vibrato – and the sudden ending-snap to black on the rapid, skip-leap exit moment) alongside The Lion in Winter, a film about Henry
II and Eleanor of Aquitaine which contains classic lines like;
“If you think you’re going to put
that boy on the throne there’ll be bacon in the treetops come morning!” ?
No competition.
There would be no struggle for me to
choose between the two actors; Ms. Streisand, by all accounts was a difficult
and self-serving actor to work with who put her self first and the work second;
Ms. Hepburn, by all accounts, was a supportive and giving co-actor who put the
work first and herself… Nope, Ms. Hepburn would be the girl for me, every
time…until…
Not so very long ago (2008) Ms.
Streisand donated 5 million dollars to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in L.A.
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