Oscar Tie, Part 2

The other (and please, feel free to read that as lesser) Best Actress of 1969 was Barbra Streisand, who won the award for her debut film performance in Funny Girl. (She later went on to become the only person to date to win Oscars for an acting performance and Best Song.) The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Kay Nedford).

Streisand plays Fannie Brice, a poor girl from the Jewish slums of 1920s New York who rises to stardom as a vaudeville comedienne, but struggles to hold together her personal life, as her husband bristles at the idea that his wife finds greater success than he does. It's essentially a retelling of A Star is Born, made that much less necessary by the fact that, a few years later, Streisand starred in a direct remake of A Star is Born.

I have to wonder how the Academy voters could possibly have felt that this performance was the equal of that given by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. Hepburn's performance was brilliant, a masterful balance of funny and heartbreaking, of sympathetic and coldly manipulative. Streisand, as Fannie Brice, had a few funny lines, but was mostly just annoying and obnoxious. She relies a bit too heavily on silly voices for her comedy here, and her drama relies too heavily on her ability to cry and sing at the same time. The story is one that has been told a million times before. As such, it depends on a unique, winning performance from its star in order to separate itself from the others. This film, in my opinion, simply does not have that distinctive performance. I suppose, if you're a fan of Streisand's singing career, the songs are good. I'm not a fan of her singing, so they didn't really do much for me. In short, this film is really just a star-making vehicle for Streisand, so if you are not a fan of Streisand, there is not much reason to watch it. Two and a half hours long, and I sat through it with no real enjoyment or emotional involvement. The things I sometimes do for you, my faithful readers!

Movie trivia question: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were a classic comedy pairing. They starred in 8 movies together (not including cameos together and a film in which Lemmon directed Matthau to a Best Actor nomination). Their first pairing, one of their lesser-known films, captured a best Supporting Actor Oscar for Matthau. What was the film?