Barbra Streisand brought the audience at the Oscars ceremony to its feet by capping an In Memoriam speech offered in tribute to Robert Redford with a stanza from the theme song for “The Way We Were,” the 1973 romantic drama in which they costarred.
Streisand’s appearance on the telecast was much-rumored but still brought a significant bolt of electricity to the proceedings, given that she has been effectively retired from live performance since she wrapped up her “The Music… The Mem’ries… The Magic!” tour in 2017 and has been open about how singing live gives her “the willies.”
Streisand’s 40-second musical performance followed a three-and-a-half minute spoken homage in which the singer-actor-director spoke about the resonance that the film they starred in has social relevance today, as well speaking to Redford’s “backbone on and off the screen.”
“After I read the first script of ‘The Way We Were,,’ I could only imagine one man in the role and that was Robert Redford,” Streisand began. “But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone. He doesn’t stand for anything, and he was right. So many drafts later, Bob finally agreed to do it. He was a brilliant, subtle actor, and we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in a scene. And I’m thrilled that “‘The way we were”‘The Way We Were’ is now considered a classic love story, but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late ’40s and early ’50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths.
“Now, Bob had real backbone on and off the screen. He spoke up to defend freedom of the press, protect the environment and encouraged new voices at his Sundance Institute, some of whom are up for Oscars tonight, which is so great. He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, and won the Academy Award for best director, and I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me. He’d call me Babs, and I’d say, ‘Bob, you know, do I look like a Babs?I’m not a Babs, you know.’ But the way he said it made me laugh.
“And many years later we were chatting on the phone about the usual — politics, art, our favorites, and as we were hanging up, he said, ‘Babs, I love you dearly and I always will.’ And in the last note I ever wrote to Bob, I ended it with, ‘I love you, too, and I signed it ‘Babs.’”
There was precedent for Streisand reviving “The Way We Were” on the Oscars: She previously did it in 2013 in tribute to composer Marvin Hamlisch during that telecast’s In Memoriam segment.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
Redford died in September at age 89. At the time, Streisand remembered him in an Instagram post. “Every day on the set of ‘The Way We Were’ was exciting, intense and pure joy,” she wrote. “We were such opposites: he was from the world of horses; I was allergic to them! Yes, we kept trying to find out more about each other, just like the characters in the movie. Bob was charismatic, intelligent, intense, always interesting — and one of the finest actors ever.”
She continued, “The last time I saw him, when he came to lunch, we discussed art and decided to send each other our first drawings. He was one of a kind and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him.”
The song “The Way We Were” won Hamlisch and his co-writers Alan and Marilyn Bergman the Oscar for best original song at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. Hamlisch also won best original score, the only other Oscar the film received, although Streisand was nominated for best actress, among its six total nominations. “The Way We Were” also won the Grammy for song of the year in 1975, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. It served as the title song of a Streisand solo album and spent three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 upon its original release.
From Variety US