Word: barbra
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Rose is exactly the kind of vehicle one would expect for Midler's screen debut: it aspires to the tradition of Funny Girl and Lady Sings the Blues, musicals that boosted Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross to fast movie stardom by casting them as legendary singers of the past. Still, there is a basic flaw in The Rose's design that makes the film hard to take seriously. While Streisand and Ross were reasonably plausible stand-ins for Fanny Brice and Billie Holiday, Midler is not credible as a bluesy rock belter. Her strident Broadway voice and campy...
...owners believed that the Nixons would have attracted curiosity seekers and destroyed what one blackballer called the ambiance of the building on the corner of Madison Avenue. "Just imagine," she said, "what would happen if the Shah of Iran visited him." For similar reasons, the same fate has befallen Barbra Streisand, Pat Lawford and even dashing Princeton-educated Prince Saud, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, who was voted out of a Fifth Avenue flat because of fears of anti-Arab protests...
...happier than old ones, with boy getting girl after all, or star surviving rather than perishing. In Apache (1954), Burt Lancaster was first killed, then allowed to live on. What's Up Doc? (1972) initially ended with a bittersweet goodbye between Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand at an airport, but by the time the film was released Barbra was on the plane and cuddling with Ryan. Irene Dunne died heroically in A Guy Named Joe (1943) and joined Spencer Tracy in heaven, but came back to life after MGM ordered a new finish. Tracy stayed dead...
...Barbra Streisand may be the only female star in films with the box-office power to do almost anything she wants. That being so, it passeth all understanding why she would want to star in and produce (with her housemate, the distinguished hair stylist Jon Peters) anything as misbegotten as The Main Event...
Rocky II is the most solemn example of self-deification by a movie star since Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born. Though ostensibly the story of Rocky's marriage to mousy Adrian (Talia Shire) and his rematch with World Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), the film is not overly concerned with matters of romance or pugilism. The pivotal scenes all illustrate, in picture-book fashion, the hero's saintliness. We learn that Rocky loves animals: "I love animals," he announces early on, and then proceeds to devote a sizable amount of screen time...