In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 1

 

[When CNN announced in the early evening of Monday, 9 September 2024, that esteemed actor James Earl Jones had died that morning at 93, I immediately e-mailed my friend Kirk Woodward, a theater enthusiast of the first water like me.  He declared succinctly that Jones was “magnificent,” and I emphatically agreed.  “Yes, he was!  I got to see his Jack Jefferson at Arena (where [The Great White Hope] preemed) before it came to Broadway,” I replied.  “I was flabbergasted!” 

[The Great While Hope by Howard Sackler (1929-82) had débuted at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage on 7 December 1967 and ran through 14 January 1968 under the direction of Edwin Sherin (1930-2017).  The production starred James Earl Jones as Jefferson and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Bachman.  I don’t remember exactly when I saw it—with my folks undoubtedly—but I’d have come home to D.C. from college in Virginia for the Christmas-New Year holiday (and my 21st birthday) during the middle of its run.

[The production moved to Broadway’s Alvin Theatre with the original cast largely intact, where it ran from 3 October 1968 to 31 January 1970 for 23 previews and 546 regular performances.  Produced by Herman Levin (1907-90), it won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Sackler); three 1969 Tony Awards: Best Play (Sackler and Levin), Best Actor in a Play (Jones), Best Featured Actress in a Play (Alexander); and two 1969 Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Performance (Alexander and Jones), Outstanding Director (Sherin).

[As I’ve revealed before on Rick On Theater—I mention it in “A Broadway Baby” (22 September 2010), among other posts—I used to keep a mental list (I never wrote it down and I don’t keep the list anymore—I stopped in the late ‘70s) of the best individual performances I’d seen.  It included Zero Mostel in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (which I saw at the National Theatre in D.C. where it premièred in 1962), Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity (1966), Stacy Keach in Indians (which I saw at Arena where it began in 1969), Alec McCowen in Hadrian VII (1969), Ben Vereen in Pippin (1972), Virginia Capers in Raisin (1973), Jim Dale in Scapino! (1974), Henry Fonda in Clarence Darrow (1974), Anthony Hopkins in Equus (1974), Donald Sinden in London Assurance (1974), Meryl Streep in A Memory of Two Mondays/27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1976), Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy together in The Gin Game (1977), and (as I recounted in “Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute,” 14 and 17 August 2022) Pat Carroll in Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (1979).  Jones’s Jack Jefferson was right at the top of that list.

[I also saw his Troy Maxson in Fences in July 1987. 

[Fences by August Wilson (1945-2005), developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 1983 National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut, premièred at New Haven, Connecticut’s Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985.  The production, directed by Lloyd Richards (1919-2006) with James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson; Mary Alice (1936-2022) as his wife, Rose; and Courtney B. Vance as Cory, his son, transferred to the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway from 26 March 1987 to 26 June 1988, where it played 11 previews and 525 regular performances.

[The play garnered Wilson the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the production won four 1987 Tony Awards: Best Play, Best Actor in a Play (Jones), Best Featured Actress in a Play (Alice), Best Direction of a Play (Richards).  The show also won three 1987 Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Actor in a Play (Jones), Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play (Alice).

[I remember saying to my companion after seeing Fences that if it weren’t for Jones’s performance, the play wouldn’t be very interesting because so little actually happens.  I can’t prove it’s related, but shortly after Jones was replaced by Billie Dee Williams on 2 February 1988, the play closed—on 26 June.

[It was Jones’s undisputable star power that sustained the show, as statistics suggest.  Before Jones left the production at the end of January 1988, attendance was close to capacity; when he departed, ticket sales dropped to around half.  (Denzel Washington—another star who played Maxson in the 2010 limited Broadway revival—played to near capacity audiences for its entire run.) 

[I guess all of us who are true theater enthusiasts have some kind of brush with undiscovered greatness once or twice in our lives.  In D.C., at the Arena, I saw not only Jones in GWH—by which I was mesmerized!—before he came to Broadway, but also Edward Herrmann (1943-2014) in Moonchildren, before his career took off (he didn’t come to New York with the Off-Broadway transfer).  In addition to Streep in ’76, I saw Annette Bening in Coastal Disturbances at Second Stage Theatre in 1986 before she got famous in Hollywood.  They all stood out somehow.

[In a letter to the editor of New York (in response to a review by the magazine’s theater reviewer, John Simon), the well-known actress Colleen Dewhurst (1924-91), who served as president of the stage actors’ union, the Actors’ Equity Association, from 1985 to 1991, wrote:

More than fifteen years ago, I played Gertrude in a production of Hamlet produced by Joe Papp at the Delacorte [Central Park, 1972] in which James Earl Jones played King Claudius; it is the only time to my knowledge that Claudius took the reviews.  Jones’s talent was such that both critics and audiences recognized only that he was the king and that I, as the queen, was obviously mad for him (“Letters: Role Models,” New York 24 April 1989).

[I don’t have any idea how that phenomenon works, but I’ve experienced it several times—the sense that I’m witnessing something extraordinary.  It was as if these actors had their own spotlights whenever they came on stage. 

If anyone asks me to explain how this special genius manifests itself, however, I’d be unable to come up with the words.  I guess that’s what was known as the “It” factor—undefinable but palpable.  To paraphrase Potter Stewart (in another, not analogous circumstance), I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it!

[Whatever it is, I suspect it’s why Jones never really succeeded on series TV.  It’s too limited a medium to handle his innate power.  Normally, when a good actor, say, Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94) or Clive Revill (in the Columbo episode, “The Conspirators” (season 7, episode 5 – 13 May 1978), works in television, he gets more to do as an actor because he can do more—his talent opens up the possibilities that the writers have to work with.  Sometimes, however, the TV screen just can’t contain an actor with tremendous range.  (One exception might be Robin Williams [1951-2014] as Mork in Mork & Mindy [1978-82].)

“JAMES EARL JONES, RESONANT VOICE

OF STAGE AND ‘STAR WARS,’ DIES AT 93”

by Robert D. McFadden 

[James Earl Jones’s obituary ran in the print edition of the New York Times of 11 September 2024 in Section A (the news section), on pages 1 and 22-23.  It was accompanied by the second article below.]

He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.

James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday [9 September] at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.

The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.

From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.

So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s [As the World Turns and Guiding Light; both CBS, 1966]; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.

The rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.

Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.

Under the artistic and competitive demands of daily stage work and heavy commitments to television and Hollywood — pressures that burn out many actors — Mr. Jones was a rock. He once appeared in 18 plays in 30 months. He often made a half-dozen films a year, in addition to his television work. And he did it for a half-century, giving thousands of performances that captivated audiences, moviegoers and critics.

They were dazzled by his presence. A bear of a man — 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds — he dominated a stage with his barrel chest, large head and emotional fires, tromping across the boards and spitting his lines into the front rows. And audiences were mesmerized by the voice. It was Lear’s roaring crash into madness, Othello’s sweet balm for Desdemona, Oberon’s last rapture for Titania, the queen of the fairies on a midsummer night.

[Jones did King Lear twice, in the early-mid-1960s and 1973; Othello at least 4 times, 1950s-1980s; and Midsummer Night's Dream in the ’60s.]

He liked to portray kings and generals, garbage men [Claudine, 1974; with Diahann Carroll] and bricklayers; perform Shakespeare in Central Park and the works of August Wilson [Fences, 1987] and Athol Fugard [“MASTER HAROLD” . . . and the boys, 1982] on Broadway. He could strut and court lecherously, erupt with rage or melt tenderly; play the blustering Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (2008) or an aging Norman Thayer Jr. in Ernest Thompson’s confrontation with mortality, “On Golden Pond” (2005).

Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.

Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. “Because of my muteness,” he said in “Voices and Silences,” a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, “I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.”

Another of his theatrical techniques was to stand alone for a few minutes in a darkened wing before the curtain went up, settling himself and silently evoking the emotion he needed for the first scene. It became a nightly ritual during performances of Mr. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” (1987), in which Mr. Jones portrayed a sanitation worker brooding over broken dreams, his once promising baseball career cut short by big league racial barriers. It ran for 15 months on Broadway, and Mr. Jones won a Tony for best actor.

Voice of Vader

Mr. Jones’s technique in the first “Star Wars” trilogy — “A New Hope” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983) — was another trademark. To sustain Vader’s menace — a voice to go with his black cape and a helmet that filtered his hissing breath and evil tidings — Mr. Jones spoke in a narrowly inflected range, almost a monotone, to make nearly every phrase sound threatening. (He was credited for voice work in the third film, but, at his request, he was not credited in the first two until a special edition rerelease in 1997.)

Mr. Jones was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on the daytime soaps, playing a doctor in “The Guiding Light” and in “As the World Turns” in the 1960s. Television became a staple of his career. He appeared in the dramatic series “The Defenders” [1962 and ’64], “Dr. Kildare” [1966], “Touched by an Angel” [1997] and “Homicide: Life on the Street” [1997 (3 episodes)], and in mini-series, including “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), playing the author Alex Haley.

Mr. Jones’s first Hollywood role was small but memorable, as the B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on nuclear war, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

While drama critics recorded his steady progress as an actor, Mr. Jones did not win film stardom until 1970, when he played Jack Jefferson, a character based on Jack Johnson [1878-1946], the first Black boxing champion [1908-15], in “The Great White Hope,” reprising a role he performed on Broadway in 1968. He won a Tony for the stage work and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie.

Although he was never active in the civil rights movement, Mr. Jones said early in his career that he admired Malcolm X [1925-65] and that he, too, might have been a revolutionary had he not become an actor.

He said his contributions to civil rights lay in roles that dealt with racial issues — and there were many. Notable among these was his almost overlooked casting in the 1961 play “The Blacks,” Jean Genet’s [French; 1910-86] violent drama on race relations. It featured a cast that included Maya Angelou [1928-2014], Cicely Tyson [1924-2021], Louis Gossett Jr. [1936-2024] and Billy Dee Williams, some wearing gruesome white masks, who night after night enacted in a kangaroo court the rape and murder of a white woman. Mr. Jones, the brutal and beguiling protagonist, found the role so emotionally draining that he left and then rejoined the cast several times in its three-and-a-half-year run Off Broadway.

But the experience helped clarify his feelings about race. “Through that role,” he told The Washington Post in 1967, “I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.”

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, to Robert Earl and Ruth (Connolly) Jones. About the time of his birth, his father left the family to chase prizefighting and acting dreams. His mother eventually obtained a divorce. But when James was 5 or 6, his frequently absent mother remarried, moved away and left him to be raised by her parents, John and Maggie Connolly, on a farm near Dublin, Mich.

Abandonment by his parents left the boy with raw wounds and psychic scars. He referred to his mother as Ruth — he said he thought of her as an aunt — and he called his grandparents Papa and Mama, although even the refuge of his surrogate home with them was a troubled place to grow up.

“I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black,” Mr. Jones told the BBC in a 2011 interview. “She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.” She blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen,” he said, and her ranting compounded his emotional turmoil.

Years of Silence

Traumatized, James began to stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly, and was so mortified by his affliction, that he stopped talking altogether, terrified that only gibberish would come out. In the one-room rural school he attended in Manistee County, Mich., he communicated by writing notes. Friendless, lonely, self-conscious and depressed, he endured years of silence and isolation.

“No matter how old the character I play,” Mr. Jones told Newsweek in 1968, “even if I’m playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.”

In high school in nearby Brethren, an English teacher, Donald Crouch, began to help him. He found that James had a talent for poetry and encouraged him to write, and tentatively to stand before the class and read his lines. Gaining confidence, James recited a poem a day in class. The speech impediment subsided. He joined a debating team and entered oratorical contests. By graduation, in 1949, he had largely overcome his disability, although the effects lingered and never quite went away.

Years later, Mr. Jones came to believe that learning to control his stutter had led to his career as an actor.

“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak.”

Mr. Jones enrolled at the University of Michigan on a scholarship, taking pre-med courses, and joined a drama group. With a growing interest in acting, he switched majors and focused on drama in the university’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. In a memoir, he said he left college in 1953 without a degree but resumed studies later to finish his required course work. He received a degree in drama in 1955.

In college, he had also joined the Army under an R.O.T.C. [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] commitment, then washed out of infantry Ranger School. But he did so well in cold-weather training in the Rockies that he considered a military career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War [1950-53], and was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.

In 1955, however, he resigned his commission and moved to New York, determined to be an actor. He lived briefly with his father, whom he had met a few years earlier. Robert Jones had a modest acting career and offered encouragement. James found cheap rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, took odd jobs and studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.

A Run of Shakespeare

After minor roles in small productions, including three plays in which he performed with his father, he joined Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival [now the Public Theater] in 1960; over several years he appeared in “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” During a long run as Othello in 1964, he fell in love with Julienne Marie, his Desdemona.

They were married in 1968, but they divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married the actress Cecilia Hart, who had also played Desdemona to one of his Othellos [American Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford, Connecticut, 4 August-5 September 1981; Broadway, 3 February-23 May 1982]. She died in 2016. They had a son, Flynn Earl Jones, who survives him, along with a brother, Matthew.

In the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Mr. Jones was in constant demand for stage work in New York, films in Hollywood and television roles on both coasts. He took occasional breaks at a desert retreat near Los Angeles and at his home in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County [1½ hours north of New York City].

But his long run with “Fences” in 1987 and 1988, including a national tour, proved too taxing. He did not return to Broadway for many years, and made movies almost exclusively. His notable film roles included an oppressed coal miner in John Sayles’s “Matewan” (1987); the king of a fictional African nation in the John Landis comedy “Coming to America” (1988), a role he reprised at 90 in 2021 in “Coming 2 America”; an embittered but resilient writer in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” (1989); and a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).

Mr. Jones received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush at the White House in 1992, Kennedy Center honors in 2002, an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement, and in 2017 a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard University.

In 2015, Mr. Jones and Cicely Tyson appeared in a Broadway revival of D. L. Coburn’s 1976 play, “The Gin Game,” portraying residents of a retirement home making nice, and sometimes not so nice, over a card table. For the 84-year-old Mr. Jones, it was, as The Times noted, his sixth Broadway role in the past decade.

In 2022, Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.

Alex Traub contributed reporting.

[Robert D. McFadden was a Times reporter for 63 years. In the last decade before his retirement in 2024 he wrote advance obituaries, which are prepared for notable people so they can be published quickly upon their deaths.]

*  *  *  *

“A SIGNATURE GRAVITAS AND DIGNITY

THAT ELEVATED MANY OF HIS ROLES”

by Noel Murray 

[This run-down of James Earl Jones’s film roles was published with the actor’s obituary in the 11 September 2024 issue of the New York Times, on page 23 of Section A,  (There was also an article by Elisabeth Vincentelli on Jones’s stage work in the next issue of the Times, but his post is too long to add it, so I will post it as a follow-up on Wednesday, the 25th—this is, after all, ostensibly a theater blog—with some additional coverage of the renowned actor.)

[Jones, as the Times has reported, would eventually work in some 90 television programs, specials, TV movies, and episodic series, and about 120 movies, as an actor, narrator, or voice actor.  Arguably, Jones’s most famous film “appearance” was as the voice of Darth Vader.  (Probably his second most recognized role was the voice of Mufasa in both the 1994 traditionally animated film The Lion King and the 2019 photorealistically animated remake, plus all the spin-offs.) 

[When Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) was released in May of 1977, I was puzzled.  I was certain I recognized Jones’s voice behind Vader’s mask, but his name hadn’t been in the opening credits.  I’d seen him on stage in 1967 or ’68—ten years earlier, sure, but his performance, not to mention his melodious and resounding baritone, had made a permanent impression on me. 

[(I had identified Jones as the “Voice of CNN” right off the first time I heard him intone “This . . . is CNN” on television in 1990.  He didn’t need a credit line by then.  As a spokesperson for the network wrote on X, formerly Twitter, Jones “uniquely convey[ed] through speech instant authority, grace, and decorum”—and, in the case of Vader, menace.)

[As for Star Wars, I waited for the final credits, but Jones’s name was nowhere in the crawl.  I was flummoxed.  I was sure I couldn’t be mistaken, but why hire James Earl Jones and not only omit his name from the credits, but never show his face anywhere in the movie?  It didn’t make sense!

[Of course, it was soon common knowledge that the voice of Darth Vader, one of the most prominent characters in what was immediately a cinematic phenomenon—and soon to be acknowledged as one of filmdom’s most renowned villains—was, indeed, that of the emerging stage star, Jame Earl Jones, possessor of one of the most recognizable voices in the English-speaking world.]

A look at standout movies featuring the actor, who died on Monday at the age of 93.

James Earl Jones died on Monday [9 September 2024] at the age of 93. Like his contemporary Sidney Poitier [1927-2022], Jones helped change the perception of Black actors in Hollywood, creating indelible movie and TV characters who defied the prevailing stereotypes.

Born in Mississippi and raised in Michigan, Jones spent much of his early career in New York, working in theater, TV and radio, where he trained his deep, booming voice. Because of his rich vocal tones and authoritative air, the actor was in high demand throughout his professional life, as both a narrator and as someone who could bring a sense of seriousness to supporting parts.

The 12 movies below predominantly showcase Jones’s voice and his skills as a character actor. But the few leading roles show that if he had been given the same kind of opportunities as Poitier, Jones might have been just as big a star.

‘Dr. Strangelove’ (1964)

Not many actors have the good fortune to make their big-screen debut in one of the greatest films of all time. Jones only appears in a handful of scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s grim nuclear war comedy “Dr. Strangelove,” but he does a lot with those few minutes, playing a bombardier whose consummate professionalism leads him to follow the orders of any crackpot commander or incompetent politician who barks in his ear.

‘The Great White Hope’ (1970)

Jones received his only competitive Oscar nomination (becoming the second Black man, after Poitier, to receive one) for his first major leading film role. In an adaptation of Howard Sackler’s stage play — sensitively directed by the great Martin Ritt [1914-90] — Jones plays Jack Jefferson, a character based fairly closely on the early-20th-century boxer Jack Johnson. Both the fictional and the real Jack dealt with widespread social hostility because of their cockiness, success in the ring and interracial relationships. The star is so outsize and charismatic in “The Great White Hope” that he makes those objections seem petty.

‘The Man’ (1972)

Casting a Black actor as the president of the United States has become a Hollywood cliché over the past couple of decades, but it was so radical in 1972 that Rod Serling [1924-75], the creator of “The Twilight Zone” [CBS-TV, 1959-64], was called in to write the screenplay for the big-screen adaptation of Irving Wallace’s [1916-90] best-selling novel “The Man” [1964]. Though the movie overplays the novelty — making most of his administration’s crises race-related — Jones still fleshes the character out, making him into a person, not a symbol.

‘Claudine’ (1974)

The early ’70s were a boom time for African American actors in movies, provided that they were willing to appear in broad comedies or violent genre pictures. “Claudine” was the rare film with a Black lead that was more like the rich character dramas that the “New Hollywood” directors were making circa 1974. Jones plays a garbage man whose romance with a single mother, played by Diahann Carroll, is threatened by her concern that their cohabitation could threaten her welfare payments. Honest about ghetto life without becoming strident, “Claudine” benefits greatly from Jones’s and Carroll’s performances, which are filled with more humor and heart than despair.

‘The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings’ (1976)

This Motown-produced look at the 1930s heyday of barnstorming baseball teams — made up of players too old, too young or too independent for either the major leagues or the Negro leagues — features an A-list ensemble cast, including Billy Dee Williams as an opportunistic cynic and Richard Pryor [1940-2005] as a slick talker looking to pass himself off as anything but Black. Jones plays a home run-hitting activist (modeled after Josh Gibson [the second Negro league player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972; 1911-47]) who is deeply concerned about whether African Americans would control their own future if Major League Baseball were to integrate. “Bingo Long” revisits the carnival atmosphere and showmanship of itinerant sportsmen, while also arguing that even people who make their living playing games deserve to be treated fairly.

‘Star Wars’ (1977)

It would be a disservice to the great David Prowse [1935-2020] — the actual physical presence under Darth Vader’s shiny helmet and black cloak — to say that Jones is primarily responsible for creating one of the best-known villains in movie history. So call it a collaboration between Prowse and Jones, who worked together to give Luke Skywalker’s father both a sense of menace and an unexpectedly sympathetic tragic dimension. Give credit also to George Lucas for hiring someone with a properly grave voice to accentuate the dark lord’s power.

‘Matewan’ (1987)

For whatever reason, Jones rarely worked with the great filmmakers of his era. One of the most prominent and welcome exceptions was “Matewan,” written and directed by John Sayles, who applied his typically novelistic approach to the true story of a violent 1920s clash between West Virginia miners and their employer’s hired goons. Jones plays one of a contingent of Black miners, who have divided loyalties because they can’t all afford the privilege of principled idealism.

[The movie’s plot is set during struggle of the coal miners with the mine owners and their strikebreakers.  Known as the Coal Wars (1890s-1930s), the struggle depicted in Matewan occurred from 1919, when the miners went on strike from 1 November to 10 December in an attempt to unionize the mines of Logan and Mingo Counties, West Virginia, until September 1921.  It included the Matewan Massacre of 19 May 1921 and culminated with the Battle of Blair Mountain, 15 August-2 September 1921, an armed conflict between the miners and their supporters and the lawmen and strikebreakers controlled by the mine owners.]

‘Field of Dreams’ (1989)

In W. P. Kinsella’s [1935-2016] novel “Shoeless Joe” [1982], an Iowa farmer hears voices that tell him first to carve a baseball diamond out of a cornfield and then to find the reclusive novelist J. D. Salinger [1919-2010]. The movie version (renamed “Field of Dreams”) changes the author to the fictional Terence Mann, and casts Jones in the part, relying on the actor’s venerability to sell Mann’s sudden change from irascibly reluctant to a true believer in the hero’s cause. While the film can get awfully hokey, Jones’s speeches about baseball, America and hope always ring true.

[Joseph Jefferson “Shoeless Joe” Jackson (1887-1951) was a Major League outfielder who is most associated now with the 1919 Chicago White Sox team known for the Black Sox Scandal.  Members of the team engaged in a conspiracy to fix the World Series.  After the 1920 season, Jackson was banned from baseball and excluded from the Baseball Hall of Fame.]

‘The Lion King’ (1994)

In addition to Darth Vader, one of the 20th century’s best-known voices helped bring to life yet another of pop culture’s most imposing dads: Mufasa in “The Lion King.” The latter father is much kinder and more beloved than the former, but in both cases, the patriarch’s shadow stretches far, falling over the young heroes as they go through coming-of-age odysseys. Few other performers of Jones’s era could have made characters so vivid while sitting in front of a microphone.

‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ (1995)

The first movie version [1951; British production] of Alan Paton’s [1903-88] 1948 anti-apartheid novel starred a young Poitier as an activist priest helping an older colleague understand the realities of racial strife and poverty in Johannesburg. In the 1995 adaptation [South African-American production] — released after the end of apartheid — Jones is the older priest, embodying a simple, soulful way of life that was lost when South Africa tore itself apart.

‘A Family Thing’ (1996)

Billy Bob Thornton and his screenwriting partner, Tom Epperson, penned this unusually thorny feel-good dramedy, with Robert Duvall playing a Southerner who discovers that he is half Black and has a brother in Chicago he never knew. Jones is the brother, and has been aware — and resentful — of the family secret his entire life. The movie is about the gradual, fitful process of both racial and domestic reconciliation, but Jones carries a lot of deep anger in his performance, making it plain that when it comes to the more shameful corners of American history, forgiveness won’t ever come easy.

‘The Second Civil War’ (1997)

An underrated entry in the filmography of Joe Dante (an underrated director), this HBO movie was prescient in the way it satirizes anti-immigrant hysteria and skewers the rising influence of cable news on politics. Jones here is perfectly cast, playing an old-school broadcaster adjusting to his new bosses, many of whom play fast and loose with the facts in the name of stoking outrage and driving up ratings. It makes sense to have the voice of CNN in this part, representing an age of dignity about to fade into memory.

[Noel Murray is a freelance writer and critic who’s been writing professionally about movies, television, music, and comics for over 20 years, for publications like The Dissolve, The A.V. Club, Vulture, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

[As I said above, I will be posting again on James Earl Jones on Wednesday, 25 September.  I hope you will all return then for further coverage of this great screen and stage actor.]

Barbra Streisand, 2023 Life Achievement Honoree of the Screen Actors Guild

 

[I saw the Barbra Streisand première of Broadway’s Funny Girl (26 March 1964-1 July 1967).  I don’t remember when in Streisand’s run I saw that show—she left the production in December 1965 and I saw the original cast—but I suspect it was relatively early, though after it’d been declared a hit.  (Given the dates, it’d have to have been either in the spring of ’64, when I was 17, or the fall of ’65, when I was 18.)  Her performance as Fanny Brice was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

[I know a thing or two about awesome performances, having caught the end of Broadway’s Golden Age (which I extend into the ’60s and the early ’70s).  Just among the musicals—I saw some astounding acting in straight plays, too, of course—a few of what I can compare Streisand’s Fanny Brice to include Tom Bosley in Fiorello! (1959), Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1959), Mary Martin in The Sound of Music (1959), Andrews, Richard Burton, and Roddy McDowall in Camelot (1960), Robert Morse and Charles Nelson Reilly in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Jerry Orbach and Kaye Ballard in Carnival! (1961), Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Beatrice Lillie in High Spirits (1964), Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity (1966) and then in Chicago (1975), Ben Vereen in Pippin (1972), Virginia Capers in Raisin (1973), and several others.

[(The gap between 1966 and 1972 is largely from my army service from December 1969 and February 1974.  I actually saw Pippin in ’74—the dates I use above are the years in which the productions premièred—when Vereen returned to the show for several months.  During my army service, I never got closer to New York than four months in 1971 in Baltimore—and half my service was in West Berlin.)

[I can say without hesitation that Streisand’s performance in only her second Broadway outing (I didn’t see I Can Get It For You Wholesale in 1962—I was in prep school in New Jersey) easily stood up next to any of the work of these stage vets.  It was, indeed, something I have carried with me in memory for almost 60 years.

[Both the profile of Barbra Streisand (b. 1942 in Brooklyn, New York City) and the transcript of the interview of the actress by Fran Drescher (b. 1957 in Queens, New York City; elected President of SAG-AFTRA in 2021) ran in the Spring 2024 issue of SAG-AFTRA (volume 13, number 2).  SAG-AFTRA is the official publication of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.  

[Known as SAG-AFTRA, this is the union that represents film and television actors, journalists, radio personalities, recording artists, singers, voice actors, and other media professionals worldwide.  The organization was formed in 2012 following the merger of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG, created in 1933) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (created in 1937 as the American Federation of Radio Artists [AFRA], becoming AFTRA in 1952 after merger with the Television Authority). 

[(Actors’ Equity Association, the union for theatrical performers and stage managers formed in 1913, is still a separate organization.)

[As you will see, the SAG Life Achievement Award retains the name under which it was established in 1962.  It’s awarded for “outstanding achievement in fostering the finest ideals of the acting profession.”]

“HER NAME IS BARBRA”

Celebrating SAG Life Achievement Award Recipient BARBRA STREISAND

There’s always been something about Barbra Streisand. For over six decades, she has defied and redefined expectations as a singer, actor, producer and director. She has received awards and accolades from numerous industry institutions, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award [1994], Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award [2000], a special Tony Award [Star of the Decade, 1970], the Presidential Medal of Freedom [2015] and many others. The SAG Life Achievement Award ceremony, held during the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Feb. 24, was preceded by many who praised Streisand for her talent, unequivocal work ethic and lifelong accomplishments.

But when it comes to Barbra Streisand, there’s always more to be said.

Streisand got her start on Broadway, performing in productions such as I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962), but with the release of her debut album, The Barbra Streisand Album (1963), she became known to the world as a singer. Still, even with music as her medium, it was clear to listeners and concertgoers that her vocal performances were rooted in acting. As Maestro actor Bradley Cooper said when presenting her award, “Acting is the lens that Barbra has always seen performance [through] . . . She never just sings a song; she tells a story. So while it may seem that Barbra began as a singer, she’s been acting all along.”

Her on-screen acting debut came in 1968 with the musical film Funny Girl, in which Streisand reprised her Broadway role as Fanny Brice, and later received the Academy Award for Best Actress. Other roles through the ’60s and ’70s included Hello, Dolly! (1969), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and A Star Is Born (1976).

However, the heights Streisand reached in those early years did not come without strife. In her memoir, My Name Is Barbra (2023), she describes feeling “absolutely powerless” in steering films towards her creative vision. She was particularly against The Way We Were director Sydney Pollack’s [1934-2008] decision to cut key scenes between her and co-star Robert Redford.

The drive she felt to bring her imagination to life on the screen is what ultimately led her to transition into directing and her career-defining project Yentl (1983), the story in which its eponymous character, played by Streisand, disguises herself as a man for the opportunity to study Talmudic law. [Study of Talmud was forbidden to women by the custom of Yentl’s community, a shtetl—a small town with a predominantly Jewish population in Eastern Europe before World War II—in Poland in 1904.] The production, which took 15 years to greenlight, was not only the first time Streisand served as director, star, co-writer and co-producer, but the first time any woman had undertaken all four roles concurrently in a major studio film. In his review, the late film critic Roger Ebert [1942-2013] wrote [in the Chicago Sun-Times, 9 Dec. 1983] that the romantic musical “treats its romances with the respect due to genuine emotion, and its performances are so good that, yes, I really did care.” During the 1984 awards season, Streisand became the first woman to receive the Golden Globe for Best Director, and remained the only woman to win the award for nearly four decades.

[The Hebrew term Talmud (literally ‘study,’ ‘teaching,’ or ‘learning’) refers to a compilation of ancient teachings regarded as sacred and normative by Jews from the time it was compiled until today.  It’s still regarded in this light by traditional religious Jews. The Talmud is the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology.

[The compilation of the Talmud started with Ezra the Scribe (Book of Ezra) in the 5th century BCE.  It was first published in 1523-24 in Venice, Italy, with later editions following. From the time of its completion, the Talmud became integral to Jewish scholarship.

[During the 15th and 16th centuries, an intense form of textual analysis in Talmud study called pilpul (Hebrew, loosely meaning ‘sharp analysis’), arose. In the 19th century, modern methods of textual and historical analysis were applied to the Talmud.

[The study of Talmud and halakha Rabbinic literature traditionally takes place in a yeshiva (from the Hebrew for 'sitting' or ‘meeting’), a Jewish educational institution. Historically, yeshivas were for men only, but today, non-Orthodox yeshivas are open to women. (New York City’s Yeshiva University began as a traditional yeshiva in 1886, but in 1928 began granting a bachelor’s degree and took its current name in 1945.  It still offers Torah and Talmud study, but enrolls many non-religious, even non-Jewish students.)]

Despite this accolade and many others for her subsequent projects, The Prince of Tides (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Streisand never received an Oscar nomination in the directorial categories. Even in the face of what many attribute to sexism within the industry, Streisand’s spirit is one of perseverance. Today, she is seen as a pioneering figure among female directors, and, in the end, her longtime advocacy for The Way We Were’s original scenes resulted in a re-cut of the movie’s ending — just in time for its 50th anniversary release in 2023.

[As director Pollack had died in 2008, the new “Director’s Cut” of The Way We Were for its 50th anniversary was edited by Streisand, who restored two scenes cut from the original theatrical version. Streisand had kept clips in her private archive of the deleted scenes, which had explained why her character and Redford’s had divorced, and she had them restored for the 2023 re-release. The new DVD included both the 1973 and 2023 versions of the film.]

But her enduring work hasn’t just been limited to Hollywood. The Streisand Foundation, established in 1986, has provided funding for numerous organizations that support women’s rights, civil liberties and the environment, among other causes. In 2021, she endowed the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA, and since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022, has served as a UNITED24 ambassador, helping to raise funds for humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

[UNITED24 is a Ukrainian government-run platform launched in May 2022 to raise money for Ukraine’s war efforts. Its “ambassadors” are prominent people, both Ukrainian and international figures, who promote the cause of Ukraine around the globe and raise money for Ukraine’s defense and other wartime needs.]

With such a stellar career, an incomparable body of work and countless moments of personal triumph and professional perseverance, it was impossible to guess what Streisand would say when she took to the stage to accept her honor. In the end, her acceptance speech was so quintessentially her: self-reflective, rich with stories about lifelong friends, mentors and colleagues, and full of heartfelt gratitude towards actors and the influence acting has played throughout her life and career.

“I always thought acting was my education: trying to understand the character, having to do research, and immersing [myself] into the period,” she said. “It is really a privilege to be part of this profession. For a couple of hours, people can sit in a theater and escape their own troubles — what an idea!

“To my fellow actors and directors, I’ve loved working with you, playing with you and inhabiting that magical world of the movies with you. Most of all I want to thank you for giving me so much joy [by] just watching you on the screen! Thank you for that.”

Nominated and voted on by the SAG-AFTRA National Honors and Tributes Committee, the SAG Life Achievement Award is bestowed to those who have contributed to improving the image of the acting profession and have a history of active involvement in public service endeavors. Streisand is the awards’ 59th recipient.

*  *  *  *
“ACTOR TO ACTOR: FRAN DRESCHER INTERVIEWS BARBRA STREISAND” 

With a decades-spanning career in music and film and a lifelong commitment to numerous philanthropic causes, Barbra Streisand is beloved by fans around the world. Among them is SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, The Nanny star [CBS-TV sitcom, 1993-99] whose character, Fran Fine, never missed a moment to fangirl over her favorite performer.

In the days leading up to the 30th Annual SAG Awards, Streisand and Drescher sat down for an Actor to Actor interview, discussing Streisand’s career on the stage, behind the camera and beyond. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.  [“Actor to Actor” is a continuing feature of SAG-AFTRA magazine.]

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher: You’re getting the SAG Life Achievement Award. Now, this is the highest honor that your union can give anyone. Congratulations on the award, because it’s a big deal, and it’s so well deserved.

Barbra Streisand: Thank you.

Fran: You’ve been a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and now SAG-AFTRA, since 1961. What is the single most valuable acting lesson that you’ve learned in your career?

Barbra: A great actor has to rely on the truth. . . . The audience can feel that. They know when you’re telling the truth. Like, I’m making a new record now — which I can’t talk about — but I have my conductor that breathes with me. He sees me in my booth singing and he’s out there with the orchestra, but he can tell, because I don’t sing the song the same twice.

Fran: Do you watch any of those singing competition shows on TV? The coaches, who are professional, very accomplished singers, are always trying to train these amateur performers to feel what they’re saying. “Tell the story, don’t just do acrobatics with your voice.”

Barbra: Exactly. Why do you go high sometimes? It’s only because the character is feeling great love at that moment. That’s why you go high. It’s like, sometimes when I sing it . . . I’m not feeling so much love for this character, I may not go for that high note. You have to be in the moment.

Fran: Have you ever, though, had to work with an actor that doesn’t listen, but is just waiting to say his next line?

Barbra: Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s somebody I did a movie with, and I put something in that wasn’t in the script, and the guy wouldn’t look because it was his wrong side; something like that. That’s not being in the moment.

Fran: No, it’s not organic.

Barbra: I was doing a movie with Bob Redford, The Way We Were; we had to be very observant. Sometimes I smiled when I said something, sometimes he laughed. We both had to react in the moment. You have a preconception always about how you’re going to play something, but then, life intrudes. And life is spectacular, right?

Fran: I want to talk a little bit about Yentl because that was an unbelievable achievement on so many different levels. First of all, you wore so many hats in the movie. You got the Golden Globe for Best Director.

Barbra: Which I was very shocked to get because I was up against great directors, I mean, really wonderful directors.

Fran: And you said it took you 15 years to get that movie made.

Barbra: Yeah. Because who wanted to do a movie about, you know, a Jewish girl who wanted to study Talmud, and she had to dress as a man in order to get into school?

Fran: You were breaking the ceiling in filmmaking for women by having the tenacity to say, “I can do more than just be in front of the camera.”

Barbra: Exactly.

Fran: So did you realize in the moment that you were doing something that was even bigger than the sum of its parts? Because you were leading women and girls into a future that looked different than the one that you came out of.

Barbra: I think it has nothing to do with male or female. If you have a vision, it’s a complete vision. That’s why I had to do all those jobs. I had a responsibility; I had that on my shoulders.

Fran: To women and girls, or just to the movie?

Barbra: No, to women and girls and the movie. It’s all one thing. In other words, I have a vision, and people are frightened that I can’t control financial things. I enjoyed that position: having to say, “Okay, if we shoot today and it’s gray out, but I want lights on the water, I want the sun to be shining, to give us a hopeful feeling when Yentl is crossing that little river to go to her school,” I have to weigh that. I’m weighing; tell me the cost. I’m capable of, you know, handling finances.

What will it cost if I put it off till tomorrow and wait for the sun? In other words, I loved balancing the reality of the budget to the aesthetic. That’s just a grown-up [thing]. I’ve noticed — because [I] watch a lot of films, and there are so many more women directing now. It’s like, it used to be such a shock, “directed by a woman,” but in the last few years, many women have been directing movies.

Fran: And I think television opened that up first. There are a lot of women directors that are in television, both in one-hour and multi-cam, which is what I did, and I directed some of those.

Barbra: You know, I made a documentary about the first women in film [Reel Models: The First Women of Film; TV Short produced by Barwood Films (formed by Streisand in 1972) and AMC Productions; 30 May 2000 on American Movie Classics; 2001 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Special]. When I was making Yentl, I did research about these women. And even [though] D. W. Griffith [1875-1948] is called the father of film, these women were making films in 1916, before he made his great film [probably a reference to 1915’s The Birth of a Nation].

Fran: That’s why they call it his-story, not her-story.

Barbra: That’s right; very good point.

Fran: So you’ve done TV, you’ve done Broadway and, of course, you’ve done film and you’ve done them all well. But is there something that you like the best? 

Barbra: Well, I love film, but when I was in Funny Girl [onstage] — oh, my god! I love the experimental part of the job, meaning —

Fran: “Putting it together,” like Sondheim said.

Barbra: Yes, putting it together. We had 41 different last scenes for Funny Girl. Opening night was the 42nd — good number too, by the way — that we’d closed the show with that. You know, the 42nd version. I loved the different versions. I loved experimenting! [Streisand was in Funny Girl at the Winter Garden Theatre from March 1964 to December 1965. She was nominated for a 1964 Best Actress in a Musical for her performance, but did not win.]

Fran: Of course, it speaks volumes for you as a director. . . . So you started in comedy and then you transitioned into drama. They say that comic actors make the best dramatic actors. What do you have to say to all that?

Barbra: Life is both. Life is funny at times and life is sad at times, and the most interesting comedies have something serious at the core. Tragedy sometimes starts with a clown, right?

Fran: Needless to say, especially in our industry, there are a lot of people that carry the burden of insecurities. How do you leverage your own insecurities as a help rather than a hindrance?

Barbra: I would be suspicious of any actor who wasn’t, somewhere, insecure. It’s part of the game, because the actor has to expose his inner self, his soul, his secrets. And that makes him very vulnerable, which is great, allowing that. Now, I mean, I can be both things: I can be very confident — well, no, I’ve never gone on stage [confidently]. When a new concert comes up, I always think, “Well, they won’t come,” or “They’ll walk out.” I have that [insecurity], but I also know that there is strength and confidence in even being insecure. And having the confidence to be insecure as well.

Fran: Right. Have the confidence to be vulnerable and own it. It’s trying to mask it or be afraid of it happening that’s the torture.

Barbra: I mean, I’m confident in my singing a song about vulnerability, but I have to be open to that part of me that is singing . . . Nobody’s just insecure or nobody’s that confident. Except assholes. . . . Confidence, such total confidence, is kind of a turnoff. Do you know what I mean?

Fran: Definitely.

Barbra: You know what I would suggest to anybody? Examine your dreams. [They are] the key to your unconscious before you are ready for it to be conscious . . .

Fran: You love working with actors. What is your process to get [your vision] out of them?

Barbra: Well, I’ll give you an example. When I was doing The Mirror Has Two Faces, [with] Lauren Bacall [1924-2014] . . . It’s a scene where she is up all night; I’m her daughter. It was the night before she had to film it, and I came in to just rehearse it with her. And she was using a toothpick, and she didn’t know her lines very well. . . . I said to her, “Forget the lines. You don’t even have to know the lines. Just tell me what you feel about this. What do you feel about how you’ve spent your life and what you didn’t do? What you didn’t get done? What are your regrets, in a sense?” She spoke from her heart. She spoke from her truth. Her memories of what she was like as a younger actress in the movies. I got the performance that I wanted, [and] we didn’t have to shoot it in the morning. Another moment I wanted where she said something, “It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful,” but her reaction when we were filming was [flatly], “It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.” And I said, “Turn off the cameras.” . . . [And then I asked her] “When you were in those movies, like when you first met Humphrey Bogart [1899-1957] and he became your husband [1945] and stuff, and you were just wanted by everybody and every director, what was that like?” She had to think about it, and very quietly, she said . . . [emotionally] “It was wonderful.”

Fran: And that’s what we see in that movie.

Barbra: That’s in the movie, and in [another] scene as well. And she was nominated, and she got the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. I had to get to understand her, to know her, to love her . . . Do you know what I mean?

Fran: As a director, you have to be a little parental, right?

Barbra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be loving; you have to love them in a way.

Fran: You’ve made three movies, you’ve received 14 Academy Award nominations. Many of the actors achieved some of the best performances that you got out of them. What would you like to be remembered for?

Barbra: Well, I would say my films, my records, my book now and my philanthropy. Philanthropy is very, very important in my life. 

Fran: I’m so glad you brought that up because that was an area that we never got to. 

Barbra: Yeah, it’s important. I was able to start my foundation . . .

Fran: The Streisand Foundation.

Barbra: . . . in 1986, when I was horrified by what happened at Chernobyl. And that’s why I agreed to sing again: to raise money for five Democratic senators that took over the Senate. We became Democratic. I knew that [they] shared my values, and [were] against nuclear proliferation. It was for women’s rights. It was for protection of the environment because I was scared in 1986 about what was happening to the earth. . . . What struck me and made me very happy was George Shultz, who was Reagan’s secretary of state, came up to me and said, “Thank you.” And I said, “For what?” You know, I thought he liked my singing or my acting or my movies, whatever. He said to me, “No, for what your foundation funded to fight against nuclear proliferation.” Now that is something that I’m very proud of. Do you see what I mean, like — just trying to save the fucking world.

[The worst nuclear disaster in history, and the costliest disaster in human history, the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat in northern Ukraine occurred on 26 April 1986. The consensus is that approximately 30 people died from the immediate blast and radiation poisoning after the disaster, with 60 in total in the decades since. There are varying estimates of increased mortality since 1986, ranging from 4,000 to 16,000, with some figures as high as 60,000. The response to the accident has had an estimated cost of $700 billion.]

Fran: Yes. You’re a very special woman: very dear, very intelligent and I’m wildly impressed by you.

Barbra: [laughs] Well, I’m impressed by you, too. We’ll meet again, I’m sure.

Fran: I hope so.

[Many of Barbra Streisand’s credits for the stage, film, and publishing are named in the two SAG-AFTRA articles republished above.  Most of them are dated; for the rest, I’ve inserted dates; and for a few, I’ve added additional identifying information. 

[I think it would be informative or, at least, interesting for ROTters to have more information about these achievements, so I’ve compiled a list of the works named above, in the order they appear in the text, with exact dates, theaters for plays, studio names for films, and some important personnel, and so on.

I Can Get It for You Wholesale – stage musical; Streisand’s stage début; Shubert Theatre/Broadway Theatre; 22 March-8 December 1962 (2 previews, 300 regular performances); book by Jerome Weidman (1913-98), music and lyrics by Harold Rome (1908-93); based on the 1937 novel I Can Get It for You Wholesale by Weidman; directed by Arthur Laurents (1917-2011), musical staging by Herbert Ross, scenic and lighting designed by Will Steven Armstrong, costumes designed by Theoni V. Aldredge (1922-2011); principal cast: Elliott Gould as Harry Bogen, Streisand as Miss Marmelstein, Lillian Roth (1910-80) as Mrs. Bogen, Marillyn Cooper (1934-2009) as Ruthie Rivkin; 1 Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Barbra Streisand); cast album released by Columbia Records, April 1962.

The Barbra Streisand Album – début album; recorded on 23-25 January 1963, released by Columbia Records on 25 February 1963; nominated for 5 1963 Grammy Awards, won for Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal Performance; reached #9 on the Billboard Top LPs; certified a gold album (500,000 U.S. sales), sold 1 million copies worldwide by 1966; inducted into Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.

Funny Girl – film adaptation of the 1964 stage musical (see below); Columbia Pictures with Rastar Productions; filmed from August to December 1967 (after rehearsals which started in July), released in the U.S. (New York City) on 18 September 1968 (première); produced by Ray Stark (1916-2004), founder of Rastar and the son-in-law of Fanny Brice (1891-1951), the character played by Barbra Streisand and on whose life the play and movie is based; screenplay by Isobel Lennart (1915-71); directed by William Wyler (1902-81), score by Jule Styne (1905-94) and Walter Scharf (1910-2003); production design by Gene Callahan, costume design by Irene Sharaff (1910-93); principal cast: Streisand as Fanny Brice, Omar Sharif (1932-2015) as Nicky Arnstein, Kay Medford (1909-1980) as Rose Brice (Fanny’s mother); nominated for 8 1969 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Score of a Musical Picture – Original or Adaptation, winning 1 for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Streisand, in a tie with Katherine Hepburn for A Lion in Winter); Streisand also won the 1969 Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; Funny Girl was the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the U.S., having earned $24.9 million; Funny Girl was declared “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress in 2016 and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. .

Hello, Dolly! – film adaptation of the 1964 stage musical; Chenault Productions and 20th Century Fox; production from September 1967 to August 1968, released in the U.S. on 6 December 1969; produced by Ernest Lehman; screenplay by Ernest Lehman and Michael Stewart; based on the play The Matchmaker (1954) by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975); directed by Gene Kelly (1912-96), score by Jerry Herman (1931-2019), and Lionel Newman (1916-89), costume design by Irene Sharaff, art direction by Harman A. Blumenthal and Jack Martin Smith; principal cast: Streisand as Dolly Levi, Walter Matthau (1920-2000) as Horace Vandergelder, and Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl, and featuring Louis Armstrong (1901-71) as the Orchestra Leader; nominated for 7 1970 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning 3 (Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound, Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture); also 5 Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actress – Comedy or Musical (Streisand), no wins.

What’s Up, Doc? – screwball comedy film; Saticoy Productions and Warner Bros., filming from August to November 1971, released 9 March 1972 (New York City); produced by Peter Bogdonovich (1939-2022); screenplay by Buck Henry (1930-2020), David Newman, and Robert Benton; directed by Bogdonovich, production and costume design by Polly Platt; principal cast: Streisand as Judy Maxwell, Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023) as Howard Bannister, and Madeline Kahn (1942-99) as Eunice Burns; 1 1973 Golden Globe nomination: Most Promising Newcomer – Female (Kahn); won the Writers Guild of America 1973 Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen award for the screenwriters; was the highest-grossing film of 1972 in the U.S.

The Way We Were – film romance; Rastar Productions and Columbia Pictures, filming from September to December 1972, released in the U.S. on 19 October 1973; produced by Ray Stark; screenplay by Arthur Laurents, Francis Ford Coppola, Paddy Chayefsky (1923-88); based on Laurents’s autobiographical novel The Way We Were (1972); directed by Sydney Pollack, score by Marvin Hamlisch (1944-2012), production design by Stephen B. Grimes, costume design by Dorothy Jeakins and Moss Mabry; principal cast: Streisand as Katie Morosky, Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner, and Bradford Dillman (1930-2018) as J. J.; 6 1974 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress in a Leading Role (Streisand) with 2 wins for Best Original Song (“The Way We Were,” Hamlisch) and Best Original Dramatic Score (Hamlisch); 2 1974 Golden Globe nominations, including Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Streisand), no wins; considered one of the best romantic films; soundtrack album was a gold record and so was the single “The Way We Were,” which sold 2 million copies and was named the #1 pop hit of 1974 by Billboard magazine; the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

A Star Is Born – remake of 1937 film starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March; Barwood Films (formed by Streisand in 1972), First Artists, and Warner Bros.; released on 17 December 1976 in the U.S.; produced by Jon Peters with Streisand as executive producer; screenplay by John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion (1934-2021), and Frank Pierson; directed by Pierson, production design by Polly Platt, costumes designed by Seth Banks and Shirlee Strahm; principal cast: Streisand as Esther Hoffman, Kris Kristofferson as John Norman Howard, and Gary Busey as Bobby Ritchie; 4 1977 Academy Award nominations, including 1 win for Best Original Song (“Evergreen” by Streisand and Paul Williams); 5 1977 Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical, Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical (Kristofferson), Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical (Streisand), Best Original Score (Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher), and Best Original Song (“Evergreen,” Streisand and Williams); second-highest grossing movie of 1976; soundtrack album was Grammy-nominated in 1977.

My Name Is Barbra (2023) – memoir/autobiography; hardcover: Viking Press, E-book: Kindle Edition (Viking Press; with additional photos). audiobook: Penguin Audio (narrated by Streisand, who relates some anecdotes not included in print edition; takes ca. 48+ hours to listen to); released on 7 November 2023 (all versions); bestseller, sold 55,000 copies in first week.

Yentl – romantic musical film adaptation of the 1962 short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”; United Artists, Barwood Films, and Ladbroke Entertainment; production from April to October 1982, released in the U.S. on 6 January 1984; produced by Rusty Lemorande and Streisand; screenplay by Jack Rosenthal, Streisand, and Singer; directed by Streisand (her directorial début), score by Michel Legrand (French; 1932-2019), production design by Ray Walker, costumes designed by Judy Moorcroft; principal cast: Streisand as Yentl, Amy Irving as Hadass, Mandy Patinkin as Avigdor; 6 1984 Academy Award nominations, including 1 win for Best Original Score (Legrand, Alan Bergman, and Marilyn Bergman); 6 1984 Golden Globe nominations, including Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical (Streisand) and 2 wins: Best Director – Motion Picture (Streisand) and Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical; Streisand was the first woman to be nominated for a best-directing Golden Globe (though she did not then receive an Oscar nomination as a director).

The Prince of Tides – romantic drama film; Columbia Pictures, Barwood Films, and Longfellow Pictures; production from January to October 1990, released in the U.S. on 25 December 1991; produced by Andrew S. Karsch and Streisand; screenplay by Pat Conroy (1945-2016) and Becky Johnston; based on Conroy’s 1986 novel; directed by Streisand, score by James Newton Howard, production design by Paul Sylbert, costumes designed by Ruth Morely; principal cast: Streisand as Susan Lowenstein, Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, Blythe Danner as Sally Wingo; 7 1992 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Nolte), Best Writing (Conroy and Johnston), Best Original Score (Howard), no wins; 3 1992 Golden Globe nominations, with 1 win for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (Nolte) – other nominations were for Best Director – Motion Picture (Streisand) and Best Motion Picture – Drama.

The Mirror Has Two Faces – romantic comedy-drama film; TriStar Pictures, Phoenix Pictures, and Barwood Films; filming from October 1995 to May 1996, released in the U.S. on 15 November 1996; produced by Arnon Milchan and Streisand; screenplay by Richard LaGravenese; based on the 1958 French movie Le Miroir à deux faces written by André Cayatte (1909-89) and Gérard Oury (1919-2000); directed by Streisand, score Marvin Hamlisch, production design by Tom H. John, costumes designed by Theoni V. Aldredge; principal cast: Streisand as Rose Morgan, Jeff Bridges as Gregory Larkin, and Lauren Bacall (1924-2014) as Hannah Morgan; 2 1997 Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Song (“I’ve Finally Found Someone,” Streisand, Hamlisch, and Bryan Adams), no wins; 4 1997 Golden Globe nominations, including 1 win for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical (Bacall) – other nominations were for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical (Streisand), Best Original Song – Motion Picture (“I’ve Finally Found Someone,” Streisand, Hamlisch, and Adams); 1 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Bacall).

Reel Models: The First Women of Film – TV documentary short produced by Barwood Films and AMC Productions; produced by Jessica Falcon; written by Christopher Koch and Susan Koch; directed by Susan Koch; aired 30 May 2000 on American Movie Classics (AMC); 1 2001 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Special.

Funny Girl – stage musical, Winter Garden Theatre/Majestic Theatre/Broadway Theatre; 26 March 1964-1 July 1967 (17 previews, 1,348 regular performances); book by Isobel Lennart, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill (1921-98); produced by Ray Stark (see note above in film adaptation); based on incidents in the life of Fanny Brice; directed by Garson Kanin (1912-99), dance arrangements by Luther Henderson, production supervised by Jerome Robbins (1918-98), vocal arranger assisted by Marvin Hamlisch, scenic and lighting designed by Robert Randolph; costume designed by Irene Sharaff; principal cast: Sydney Chaplin (1926-2009) as Nicky Arnstein, Streisand as Fanny Brice, Kay Medford as Mrs. Brice, and featuring Jean Stapleton (1923-2013) as Mrs. Strakosh and Lainie Kazan as Vera/standby for Fanny Brice; 8 1964 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Bes Producer (Musical) (Stark), Best Actress in a Musical (Streisand), Best Actor in a Musical (Chaplin), and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Medford), no wins.

[Of course, Streisand has accomplished more in her career so far than is mentioned in the articles above or listed here.  This is by no means a complete catalogue, and I leave it to readers to look up any other achievements in which they may be interested.]