... Streisand to London Daily Mirror, 1967

A helicopter was also used to film Streisand inside the passenger car of the train. Pictured above in the blue circles are two cameos!  That's Barbra's dog, Sadie on the lap of her best friend and future business associate, Cis Corman.

According to Ross Rowland, who worked for the railroad during the filming, the scene in which Barbra sings inside the coach car “required seven takes and it was a beastly hot and humid day. Because of the extreme heat, the facial makeup of all the actors was only good for about 5-6 minutes before it began to melt off their faces, so we had to back up to the beginning of the lake, stand still while they re-made-up the actors, then quick shoot another take and repeat that about 7 times.”

Paul Helmick relates some interesting tales about filming Barbra in the Pullman Car in his memoir. “Communications links were required, including [audio] playback on both the train and the camera helicopter,” he wrote. “There were extras dressed in period costumes, meals, and so forth…”

Hemlick then explained that he was called away from the location to meet with Army officers who proceeded to tell him the crew was filming on U.S. Government property — Picatinny Arsenal. With the threat of having all the film they shot that day confiscated, the Funny Girl crew had to clear out … after Hemlick pleaded with the officers for one more take.

Music Supervisor Walter Scharf revealed that there was a technical snafu with the helicopter cameras that was only discovered when the film was developed, and the crew was back in Los Angeles. Scharf said that “the cameras were running at the wrong speed. There should be five sprockets for every frame. We had seven. So for two thousand feet, two sprockets had to be taken out of every frame and the whole lot joined together.”

It would have been impossible to refilm the sequence.  Scharf also noted that, because of the removal of sprockets, “it sounded as though Barbra and the orchestra were stuttering.”  So Scharf, Streisand, and an orchestra went into a recording studio. “It all had to be redone — with Barbra, wearing headphones and watching the screen doing her number over again, so that we had a smooth track.”

The Funny Girl company returned to California to begin principal photography on the studio sets starting August 7, 1967. First to be filmed on set was the Swan Lake parody followed by “His Love Makes Me Beautiful.”

Journalist Pete Hamill visited the Funny Girl set and wrote his impressions of how the company worked together. “Occasionally, Ross would finish, say the scene was fine, please print it, and want to move on,” Hamill wrote. “And then Barbra would have an idea, some minor alteration, and they would go through it again and she would be right and the scene would be marvelous. Other times, she was just moving a simple scene into a more baroque version, adding scrollwork and curlicues as tormented as the artwork on the pasteboard walls of the reconstructed dance hall. Producer Ray Stark would look in once in a while, knowing the production was behind schedule, hoping it would catch up.”

Hamill also consulted a call sheet — the daily document used on a movie set that outlines the shooting schedule and all the aspects of production needed that day. For instance, on one of the days they filmed “I’d Rather Be Blue” on the Keeney’s Music Hall set, Hamill noted: “There were 138 extras sitting in the audience in bowler hats and moustaches and bustles; 12 musicians in the pit; 10 show girls from the chorus line, dancing marvelously on roller skates; 4 assistant directors; 18 lamp operators; 11 hairdressers; 15 costumers; 9 men working on the cameras; 7 prop men: 8 grips [scene shifters]; 2 still photographers; and 1 cop, standing at the door.”

Paul Helmick stated that “we tried to hold the expensive sets and Columbia stages until at least the musical numbers were cut together in rough form” — in case Herb Ross had to return and reshoot anything.

Funny Girl finished principal photography in December 1967.

Some movie magic! Streisand holds her bride music right before she makes her debut in the Ziegfeld Follies. The scene was actually shot in front of a blue screen so that filmmakers could magically add the theater background to the scene later. See how they did that?!

Below:  A photo gallery of Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, and more ... behind the scenes, making “Funny Girl.”

“Funny Girl” Filming Locations

• “Don't Rain On My Parade” 
• The station scenes were shot the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Jersey City terminal building and ferry head house [doubling for Baltimore]. Unit Production Manager Paul Helmick explained, “with the Jersey Central Railroad in bankruptcy and inactive, I found it quite easy to make a deal for use of the ornate, turn-of-the-century train station where Pullman cars were already on the tracks.”
• The Funny Girl company was transported by excursion boats from their Manhattan hotel near the cruise ship piers to the N.J. dock near the train station, avoiding the Holland Tunnel, traffic, and ground transportation.
• The moving train scenes were shot (from a helicopter) on the Army's Picatinny Arsenal trackage outside Dover, NJ. The day coach was pulled by the North Plainfield High Iron Company along a little used High Bridge branch of the railroad. 
• Streisand ran down Pier 36 at the foot of Clinton Street.
• Santa Monica Pier — this California pier stood in for Baltimore in the scene outside the lobster shack when Fanny and Nick kiss.
• The Warner Theater on 7^Th Street in downtown Los Angeles stood in for interior of the New Amsterdam Theatre (where Barbra sings “Second Hand Rose” and has her flashbacks).
• The exterior of The New Amsterdam Theatre seen at the beginning of the film was a theater façade and alleyway situated on the Columbia backlot (now the Warner backlot) on one of its period streets called Modern Place.
• Columbia Ranch and its “Brownstone Street” was where “People” and other outdoor scenes in Fanny's neighborhood were shot.
• A stately Tudor Revival style house (in the Oak Knoll subdivision of San Marino) was used for exteriors of the Arnstein Long Island home in Funny Girl. Also known as Thornton Gardens, the Funny Girl crew utilized some of its interiors for the movie, too, especially the beautiful carved staircase.

Maury Winetrobe, who edited many of the Funny Girl musical numbers, gave a very technical description of how the songs were filmed. “They prerecord the songs and shoot to [an audio]  tape with start marks,” he explained. “They do parts of the song from consecutive start marks, starting from the beginning. The music editor gives you a combine of the master, which has on it the vocal and the instrumental, coded with a music number. Instead of matching the dialogue code number, you’re matching a music code number. You cut it like most other things; you try and get the best angle where you are in a song.”

“My Man” was originally filmed to a prerecorded track.  Streisand told Robert Rodriquez, “And now, I go out, and I have to do a lip-synch, which I’m terrible at … So, they played it in dailies the next day, and everybody was applauding … And Willie turned to me and he said, ‘Barbra, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘Willie, it could be much better because we have to shoot it live.’”

Barbra Streisand explained that the first way they filmed it “was too musical, too commercial, too perfect. It needed to be more dramatic. I felt strongly and they agreed that we should do it live instead of pre-recorded and start with the close-up instead of the far shot. So we did it that way, unconventionally, and starting with the close-up we could go with the live sound.”

So, in December 1967, Barbra sang “My Man” live at Columbia’s soundstage 4. 

It’s true that the second half of the song, where the tempo picks up as Barbra sings “oh, my man, I love him so,” is dubbed, not live. 

Jack Solomon helped technically on this number. “We can use the playback, but the master shot has got to be with a tight lens so I can get the microphone right there. [Streisand] was hearing the orchestra [playback] real low. I fed her with a little tiny speaker—that's why we had a tight lens on, so that I could put the speaker there. Later, we put the full track over it.”

Emotionally, director William Wyler helped Streisand as well. “It was the last day of the shoot,” editor Robert Swink told writer Jan Herman, “everybody was going home. He got Omar Sharif to stand behind these black curtains—the whole scene was black—and he told him to talk to Streisand between takes. He wanted him around to help build up her sadness. They must've done at least ten takes.”

Sharif confirmed this to Streisand biographer Donald Zec. “It was the last scene of the film and I was at home packing. We had already said ‘goodbye’ to each other and everything. The studio called and said, ‘She wants you on the set.’ So I left my suitcases half packed and went into the studio. What she wanted was this: She wanted me to go behind the curtain and play that scene over again so that she could come out very much moved, and sing. And I say, ‘You are beautiful.’ And that line moved her enormously when I said it because I really believed it. So we went behind the curtain and said these line and she came out and did the song absolutely brilliantly.”

Columnist Joyce Haber visited the Funny Girl set that day and reported: “This afternoon Herbert Ross, who is responsible for the musical numbers, was directing. William Wyler was not present. Barbra discussed camera angles in detail with old pro Harry Stradling. She discussed the key of the song with Ross. She discussed lighting with the head electrician. Elliott Gould, Barbra's husband, was on the sound stage.”

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