“Arthur remembers it being a 125 pages. I remember reading a 50-page treatment,” said Barbra Streisand. Regardless of how many pages of a synopsis, or an outline or a so-called “treatment,” that Arthur Laurents had written, Streisand wanted those pages, titled “The Way We Were.” Better yet, she wanted them now. “I fell in love with it!” she gushed.
More important, Streisand put her enthusiasm into the only words that count in Hollywood. “I want this to be my next movie,” she told the producer Ray Stark. Stark had produced “Funny Girl” on Broadway and also brought it to the screen, with Streisand reprising the role of Fanny Brice, who happened to be the producer’s mother-in-law.