A funny story about Funny Girl and other Hollywood history

Friends and former associates shared stories about longtime relationships with legendary film producer Ray Stark at a three-day tribute hosted by the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Stark and his wife, Frances, founded the school’s Peter Stark Producing Program in honor of their late son.

The celebration opened Sept. 27 with a panel discussion and screening of Funny Girl, the 1968 musical smash starring Barbra Streisand in her Oscar-winning role as film star Fanny Brice. The retrospective continued on Wednesday and Thursday with screenings of The Goodbye Girl and Steel Magnolias.

“Ray stories” highlighted the panel discussion on Tuesday. The panel included Hawk Koch, former president of the Association of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Marykay Powell, producer and former president of Rastar Film; and Frank Price, former head of Columbia Pictures and chairman of the cinematic arts school’s Board of Councilors. Richard Dreyfuss, who won an Academy Award in 1977 for his role in The Goodbye Girl, sent a video tribute in which he credited Ray Stark for discovering him.

Powell told a story about the night when Stark and Streisand met to discuss a Funny Girl sequel. The luminaries, she said, had a complicated relationship stemming from the original production.

“They had an amazing relationship,” Powell said. “There was going to be a sequel to Funny Girl, but she was still mad at Ray — all of those years later. I said, ‘Can we sit down? Just Barbra and Ray and me and figure this out so the world can have this film.’ It was one of the most amazing nights of my life. I got to be Freud.”

Powell said that Stark and Streisand refused to speak to each other directly. Every bit of conversation had to go through her, even though Streisand and Stark were at the same table.

“Ray would say, “Marykay, I gave this really great party for Barbra and she sat in the corner the whole time,’ and Barbra would say, ‘Marykay, Ray won’t understand that I was afraid of all of these people,’ and Ray would say, ‘Markay, ask her how she can be afraid when she’s the biggest star in the world.’

“At the end of dinner, I asked, ‘Have we concluded anything? Have we accomplished anything tonight?’ Barbra said, ‘No, I’m not finished. Let’s go into the living room.’ Five hours later, they left and we had solved nothing.”

A reliable associate

Price said Stark was the most reliable producer he could have.

I had a lot of producers, but I made a judgment fairly quickly that Ray was absolutely outstanding.

Frank Price

“Motion pictures were appealing to me, but Columbia Pictures was in terrible shape,” Price said. “I wanted to do motion pictures … and I met Ray at that point. I regarded and still regard Ray as an incredible force in my life. We were friends. He was my mentor. We weren’t always in agreement, but I enjoyed the arguments. I had a lot of producers, but I made a judgment fairly quickly that Ray was absolutely outstanding.”

Koch said Stark saw one of his films and called him into an emergency meeting. At the meeting, Stark offered him a job and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“He asked me ‘How did you make those movies?’ I told him it was passion, and I fought like crazy. Ray said, ‘You’re gonna do the same thing for me’ and I was hired. I didn’t have a choice. Ray was unbelievably smart, and he had great taste. Ray also knew how to cultivate relationships better than anybody I ever knew.”

Stark was one of the most successful and prolific independent producers in postwar Hollywood. His credits include West Side Story, The Misfits, Lolita, The Night of the Iguana, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Funny Girl, The Goodbye Girl, Annie and Steel Magnolias. Stark accepted the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1980. Stark, who was born in New York in 1915, passed away in 2004 at the age of 88.