Barbra Streisand is reportedly dickering to direct and star in a motion picture remake of Gypsy. I'm not sure this is a good idea and I'll tell you why. It's not because the last film version was so good or even any good. It's because what was wrong with it will probably be wrong with a Gypsy starring Streisand. This show is about a woman — Momma Rose — who was willing to do anything (lie, cheat, steal, anything) to make at least one of her daughters a star. Why? Because Momma Rose didn't want her kids to live in near-poverty as she had, and also because Momma Rose couldn't have been a star herself so she wanted to live vicariously through her kid. That's what the whole "Rose's Turn" number is all about: I did it for you but I also did it for me.
The movie starring Rosalind Russell never worked for me because, among its other flaws, Rosalind Russell could not suppress her image as an elegant, successful woman of talent and breeding. That is not Momma Rose. It's like Cary Grant trying to play a guy with no looks and no class. I obviously never saw Ethel Merman do the original on Broadway but when I hear the cast album and imagine her up there, she seems perfect to me. Ethel Merman had the star power and talent necessary to carry a lead role like that but she looked and talked like a waitress in a greasy spoon cafe.
Can you buy Barbra Streisand as a woman who could never have been a star herself? Who had to push her daughters into vaudeville (and one, indirectly, into stripping) in order to have even a vicarious taste of stardom? If she makes the film, I'll try…but she's going to have to throw away a lot of what makes her Barbra Streisand to be credible as Momma Rose. Frankly, I'd rather see her go in front of a green screen for a week or so, refilm all her scenes from Hello, Dolly! and have them digitally insert them over her old performance in the 1969 movie. This would be the perfect time to do that because she's just now getting to be the right age for the part.