The Way We Were - Production

Production

In 1937, while an undergraduate at Cornell, Arthur Laurents was introduced to political activism in a student who became the model for Katie Morosky, a member of the Young Communist League and an outspoken opponent of Francisco Franco and his effort to take control of Spain via the Spanish Civil War. The fiery campus radical organized rallies and a peace strike, and the memory of her fervor remained with Laurents long after the two lost touch.

Laurents decided to develop a story with a similar character at its center, but was unsure what other elements to add. He recalled a creative writing instructor named Robert E. Short who felt he had a good ear for dialogue and had encouraged him to write plays. His first instinct was to create a crisis between his leading lady and her college professor, but he decided her passion needed to be politics, not writing. What evolved was a male character who had a way with words but no strong inclination to apply himself to a career using them.

Because of his own background, Laurents felt it was important for his heroine to be Jewish and share his outrage at injustice. He also thought it was time a mainstream Hollywood film had a Jewish heroine, and because Barbra Streisand was the industry's most notable Jewish star, he wrote the role of Katie Morosky for her. Laurents had already known Streisand for some time, having cast her in his 1963 Broadway musical I Can Get it For You Wholesale. Hubbell Gardiner, initially a secondary character, was drawn from several people Laurents knew. The first name was borrowed from urbane television producer Hubbell Robinson, who had hired Laurents to write an episode of ABC Stage 67. The looks and personality came from two primary sources: writer Peter Viertel and a man Laurents referred to only as "Tony Blue Eyes," an acquaintance who inspired the scene where the creative writing instructor reads Hubbell's short story to his class.

Laurents wrote a lengthy treatment for Ray Stark, who read it on a transcontinental flight and called the screenwriter the moment he arrived in Los Angeles to greenlight the project. Laurents had been impressed with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and suggested Sydney Pollack direct. Streisand was impressed that he had studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan and seconded the choice. Stark was less enthused, but agreed because Pollack assured him he could deliver Robert Redford for the role of Hubbell, which Laurents had written with Ryan O'Neal in mind. O'Neal's affair with Streisand was at its end, and Stark wanted to avoid conflicts between the leads.

Laurents ultimately regretted recommending Pollack. The director demanded the role of Hubbell be made equal to that of Katie, and throughout filming, for unexplained reasons, he kept Laurents away from Redford. What was intended to be the final draft of the screenplay was written by Laurents and Pollack at Stark's condominium in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Laurents, dismayed to discover very little of his work remained when it was completed, left the project. Over time eleven writers, including Dalton Trumbo, Alvin Sargent, Paddy Chayefsky, and Herb Gardner, contributed to the script. The end result was a garbled story filled with holes that neither Streisand nor Redford liked. Laurents was asked to return and did so only after demanding and receiving an exorbitant amount of money.

Because the film's start date was delayed while it underwent numerous rewrites, Cornell was lost as a shooting location. Union College in Schenectady, New York was used instead. Other locations included the village of Ballston Spa in upstate New York, Central Park, the beach in Malibu, and Union Station in Los Angeles, the latter for a scene Laurents felt was absurd and fought to have deleted, without success.

Laurents was horrified when he saw the first rough cut of the film. There were a few good scenes, and some good moments in bad scenes, but overall he thought it was a badly photographed jumbled mess lacking coherence. Both stars appeared to be playing themselves more often than their characters, and Streisand often used a grand accent that Laurents felt hurt her performance. Pollack admitted the film wasn't good, accepted full responsibility for its problems, and apologized for his behavior. The following day he retreated to the editing room to improve it as much as possible. Laurents felt the changes made it better but never as good as it could have been.

A decade after the film was released, Redford, having made peace with Laurents, contacted him to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a new project, and eventually the two settled on a sequel to The Way We Were. In it, Hubbell and his daughter, a radical like Katie, would meet but be unaware of their relationship, and complications would ensue. Both agreed they didn't want Pollack to be part of the equation. Laurents sent Redford the completed script but, aside from receiving a brief note acknowledging the actor had received it and looked forward to reading it, he never heard from him again. In 1982, Pollack approached Laurents about a sequel Stark had proposed, but nothing transpired following their initial discussion. In 1996, Streisand came across the sequel Laurents had written, and decided she wanted to produce and direct it as well as co-star with Redford, but didn't want to work with Stark. Laurents thought the script was not as good as he remembered it being, and agreed to rewrite it once Stark agreed to sell the rights to the characters and their story to Streisand. Again, nothing happened. The following year, Stark asked Laurents if he was interested in adapting the original film for a stage musical starring Kathie Lee Gifford. Laurents declined, and any new projects related to the film have been in limbo ever since.