AFI Honors Barbra Streisand With Life Achievement Award

In an evening filled with music, poignancy and a bit of history, Barbra Streisand received the 29th annual American Film Institute Life Achievement Award Thursday. The Brooklyn-born actress and singer became the first woman director to ever achieve this honor.

“This is an historic night for AFI,” said Jean Picker Firstenberg, AFI director and CEO. “Not only is Streisand the first woman to be honored as a director, she is more.” Pointing to Streisand, she said: “You are a national treasure.”

The 58-year-old Oscar winner joins such artists as Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, Steven Spielberg, James Stewart, Orson Welles, John Ford, Billy Wilder, Sidney Poitier, Gregory Peck and Alfred Hitchcock who have received the AFI’s top award. Firstenberg also promised Streisand that, though she may be the first woman director to receive the Life Achievement Award, “you will not be the last.” (Lillian Gish, who received the honor in 1984, did direct one film during her career--the 1920 silent “Remodeling Her Husband,” but she was never known as a director).

Poitier, the only African American to have received the AFI Life Achievement honor, presented the award to an appreciative and visibly moved Streisand.

“I was not prepared for this,” she said. “I didn’t think my life and career could fill a whole evening. I can’t tell you how deeply humbled I am to be in the company of the men and woman who have come before me.”

The star-studded event at the Beverly Hilton had a much cozier, homier feel than past AFI tributes. Instead of a glitzy set, the stage reflected Streisand’s love for antiques and pink roses. The set included a piano, decorated with a vintage shawl--and played for much of the evening by composer Marvin Hamlisch--a Tiffany lamp and vases filled with pink roses. During the dinner, Streisand mingled at the tables, talking to such friends as Lauren Bacall and Anjelica Huston.

Directors and co-stars from many of Streisand’s past films were on hand, including Bacall and Jeff Bridges from the Streisand-directed “The Mirror Has Two Faces”; Amy Irving and Nehemiah Persoff from “Yentl,” also directed by Streisand; Ryan O’Neal from “What’s Up Doc?” and “The Main Event”; and Kris Kristofferson from “A Star Is Born,” among others.

The evening opened with a rousing performance by young singer Lauren Frost, who played the adolescent Barbra on Streisand’s recent tour. Frost sang a specialty number penned by Hamlisch and Marilyn and Alan Bergman (who wrote “The Way We Were”) that reflected Streisand’s dream as a child to perform.

Comedian Phyllis Diller was the first presenter and she joked that most people in the crowd were probably asking: “What is she doing here?” Streisand actually opened for Diller back in 1961 at a Greenwich Village club. “I felt we were kindred spirits,” she said. “I am totally thrilled to be your opening act.”

The evening was peppered with excerpts from a recent interview of Streisand talking about her craft, as well as film clips from “Funny Girl,” “Hello, Dolly!,” “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” “The Way We Were,” “What’s Up Doc,” “A Star Is Born” and the three films she has directed: “Yentl,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces” and “The Prince of Tides.”

Among the treasures in the clip package were an excised sequence from the “Swan Lake” number in “Funny Girl,” Streisand’s first major TV appearance on “The Jack Paar Show” in 1961 and her directing Mandy Patinkin in “Yentl.”

But one clip brought unintentional guffaws from the audience--Streisand performing “Evergreen” at the 1993 inauguration of President Clinton. The audience burst into laughter when the camera panned to Clinton who was swaying to the music and holding hands with wife Hillary Rodham Clinton with his brother Roger Clinton in the background.

Presenter Elizabeth Taylor admitted she had always been scared of Streisand. “You were too perfect . . .; too wonderful,” she said. But since Streisand married actor James Brolin two years ago, she felt Streisand had become more approachable. “I felt I could reach you,” Taylor said.

The clip shown from 1970’s “On a Clear Day” featured Streisand with young Jack Nicholson as her ex-stepbrother. Nicholson, decked out in his customary black shades, said to Streisand: “I didn’t remember I was in a Barbra Streisand film.”

Irvin Kershner, who directed Streisand in 1972’s “Up the Sandbox,” admitted he had heard that Streisand was difficult to work with, but that turned out to be false. “I had the most wonderful joyous time of my career.”

Dustin Hoffman recalled meeting Streisand back in 1960 when they both had working scholarships at an acting studio in New York. He was the janitor in the men’s room; Streisand cleaned the women’s bathroom. They never dated, he said, because they both wanted to “step up.”

Kristofferson, who co-starred with Streisand in 1976’s “A Star Is Born,” and who looked like he was making “Cast Away II,” said doing the film “was a challenge I didn’t always respond to gracefully. The critics clobbered it. It was great training for me for ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ ”

Streisand’s only child, Jason Gould, said that playing her son in 1991’s “The Prince of Tides” deepened and expanded their relationship on a personal level.

Director Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”), a graduate of the AFI Conservatory, received the 11th annual Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal.

The tribute will be telecast as a two-hour special this spring on Fox.