Barbra Streisand On Kris Kristofferson Hickeys and Moody Mandy Patinkin

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 13, 2023 |

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 13, 2023 |

Barbra Streisand has lived a goddamn life. And now, at age 81, the legendary EGOT winner is mentioning it all in her long-awaited memoir, My Name Is Barbra. I have yet to read Babs’ 992-page opus, but, luckily, loads of juicy details about her love life have made their way to the Internet. Woohoo!

First up, Kris Kristofferson’s hickeys. Barbra and Kris, now 87, starred in 1976’s A Star Is Born. But, before that, they had a brief relationship that kicked off after Barbra saw him perform at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. She writes that Kris looked “incredibly sexy”:

“We saw each other for a while after that. 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!”

Years later, Barbra was co-producing A Star Is Born with her then-partner, Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper played him in Licorice Pizza). The couple originally offered the lead role to Elvis Presley, but Colonel Tom Parker’s outrageous demands got in the way. The studio passed. Barbra writes that she doesn’t regret losing Elvis, cuz “Kris was it”: “cast the right person, and you’re already halfway there.”

Then there’s Warren Beatty. After a recent phone call with now-86-year-old Warren, Barbra asked herself, “Did I sleep with Warren?” The answer is complicated:

“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.”

I mean, chances are, she did. Warren dated countless female celebrities, including (but obviously not limited to) Madonna, Mamie Van Doren, Iman, Mary Tyler Moore, Joni Mitchell, Elle Macpherson, Jane Fonda, and Raquel Welch. His ex Natalie Wood once said, “Warren goes through women on an industrial scale, but he does it with charm.” Charming? Sure. Memorable? Not for our girl Babs.

Someone Barbra definitely didn’t hook up with was her Yentl co-star, Mandy Patinkin. Full disclosure: I think Yentl-era Mandy Patinkin is the sexiest thing since… I dunno, sex was invented. But Barbra wasn’t into him. She writes that Mandy’s behavior “disturbed” her “equilibrium” on set of the 1983 musical.

A couple weeks into the shoot, while filming a scene at the yeshiva, Mandy refused to look Barbra in the eye: “He just stared at my forehead.” Later, Barbra confronted Mandy in the dressing room: “His face crumpled and he said, ‘I thought we were going to have a more personal relationship’”. She continues:

“‘What?’ I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, ‘I thought we were going to have an affair.’ I looked at him as if he were crazy… 1) I would never have an affair with an actor I was directing, 2) he was married, and 3) I wasn’t at all attracted to him. But I couldn’t tell him he was not exactly fascinating to me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I simply said, ‘I don’t operate that way.’ Tears rolled down his cheeks.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks. Barbra told Mandy that if he didn’t change his attitude, she would replace him: “I’ve waited fifteen years to realize my dream and I will not let you destroy it.” She didn’t end up firing Mandy, but it doesn’t sound like things improved. Their working relationship got so bad that Barbra actually scrapped a sex scene between their two characters:

“By this point Mandy had been making my life miserable for months, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of making love with him. I’m not that good an actress. So I changed it. I rewrote the scene. And now that I look back on it, I wonder if I allowed my frustration with Mandy to overrule my instincts. Maybe I should have let Yentl… and the audience… have that moment.”

As someone who just watched Yentl for the first time last week, and was literally screaming at Yentl and Avigdor to bang out their crazy sexual tension, YES, BARBRA. YES, YOU SHOULD HAVE LET US HAVE THAT MOMENT. But, hey. A boss has gotta do what a boss has gotta do. Years later, Mandy blamed his bad behavior on “being scared.” Barbra writes: “I guess people have different ways of reacting to fear. I was scared, too, but it made me quieter.” Mandy, now 70, has been married to Kathryn Grody since 1980, and he has not commented on Barbra’s memoir.

Barbra also wrote about her first marriage to Elliott Gould:

“I wasn’t particularly attracted to Elliott, until one day when I happened to see the back of his neck … and that did it. I’m not sure why. It was just a bit of exposed flesh. Suddenly he became more than a friend.”

And her fling with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau:

“Very dapper, intelligent, intense … kind of a combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (only taller). And he was doing important work. I was dazzled.”

And, finally, Marlon Brando. Barbra writes that Marlon was her teenage crush, and, years later, after singing at a benefit, she suddenly “felt someone kissing my back. Who would dare do that? I turned around and it was him.” When Barbra told Marlon to stop, he replied, “You can’t have a back like that and not have it kissed.” Barbra writes that one of Marlon’s favorite phone signoffs was, “I kiss you gently on your inner thigh and on your lips.”

In the nineties, Marlon visited Barbra for dinner, and “he couldn’t extract himself from his car”. She writes that he had “gained so much weight” that he got stuck behind his steering wheel: “I had to grab hold of his arms and pull him out.” Later that night, he rubbed her feet and told her about making On the Waterfront.

OK, I gotta read this book!