The Way We Were (1974)

When the Sydney Pollack-directed movie The Way We Were was previewed in San Francisco in July 1973, audiences reacted very favorably to the theme song.

Marvin Hamlisch, who met Streisand when he was the rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl, wrote the theme song for this movie – Barbra’s seventh film. 

Hamlisch had previously  composed scores for The Swimmer, and Woody Allen’s Bananas, but in 1973 he was still new to film scores and theme songs. As Hamlisch told Cash Box Magazine, it was producer Ray Stark who “called me up and told me he needed a song that was roughly a cross between Michel Legrand and Carole King.” If the song worked, Stark would hire Hamlisch to write the score for the movie, too.

Hamlisch wrote in his memoir, “I put in weeks and weeks of struggle to find the right theme.”  

He explained that “on the surface it was a pretty difficult assignment.  I thought about the script and I was quite depressed because the perfect combination didn’t come to me right away.  I went to bed one night, still depressed, but I woke up at 2 a.m. and I had the song. It was there. I wrote it down and when I got up the next morning I made some minor changes and had the finished product.”

Hamlisch wrote the song in a major key. He felt a song composed in a minor key would be the obvious, “sad” choice for a tearjerker movie. “By doing this,” he said, “I tried to give a sense of hope to this tragic story.”

Hamlisch was also customizing a song for the formidable Streisand. “I wanted to give her the notes that let her soar,” he wrote. “I was determined not to write something drippingly sentimental.”

Hamlisch had an emotional, not intellectual response to the “right” melody. “When I feel the emotional tug, when I react the way I hope the audience will, then I know I’ve got it.”

Ray Stark hired Marilyn and Alan Bergman to write the lyrics to Hamlisch’s melody. “Our lyrics are designed to be an integral part of motion pictures,” Alan Bergman said. “They are created to set or heighten a mood or reveal something about the story’s characters or move the plot from one point to the other.”

Marilyn Bergman elaborated on working with Hamlisch on “The Way We Were.” “Well, first of all it's a wonderful title,” she said. “The main title of the movie had to function as a passage way back in time. We were underscoring the flashback, in a way.”

Hamlisch eventually auditioned the song for Streisand at her house.  “She loved it,” he wrote, “but she made a very important suggestion.”

“[Barbra] made two suggestions,” Marilyn Bergman recalled. “One was the change of a note in the first phrase of the tune. And the other was a change of a word, a very important suggestion. We had the lyric beginning with ‘daydreams light the corners of your mind,’ and she suggested that the first word of the song be ‘mem'ries.’

Columbia Pictures serviced a promotional 7-inch record of “The Way We Were” to movie theaters to help publicize the film.  It was an orchestral arrangement with no humming.

Meanwhile, work began on a pop single version of the song.

“The song as performed by Barbra in the movie did not work for a pop record,” explained Marty Paich, who arranged and produced the hit single. “‘The Way We Were’ in the movie was very laid back. It worked fine with the picture, with the visuals, but for radio, for the ears only, it kind of put you to sleep. So, they called me in, and Marvin and I went over to see Barbra, to her house on Carolwood, in Beverly Hills. They played the song for me and asked if I'd do something with it, to make it more commercial. So, I took it home and worked on an arrangement. I rewrote it with a much hipper rhythm section.”

Streisand, Paich, and Hamlisch recorded the single on September 12, 1973 at RCA Recording Studios in Los Angeles.

Carol Kaye, who played bass on many studio recordings, recalled the session for “The Way We Were:” 

“The huge orchestra finally assembled from our break, and we did 33 straight takes of ‘The Way We Were’ with Barbra singing every one, with Marvin Hamlisch conducting, and the songwriting team (Marilyn & Alan Bergman) in the booth ... Take after take, we kept going, each take as intensive as the last one, until I looked at Paul Humphrey the drummer like, ‘When is this going to end?’ ... After a few arpeggios, especially in the bridge, it felt like ‘the’ take, I looked up and caught Ms. Streisand's fast gaze from her little sound booth as she was holding a long note (through the glass window), our eyes locked like, ‘Wheeeee. This is it,’ and finished the take. Paul looked at me and we both smiled, having played on a lot of hits together ... We knew this was the take, too.”

Marty Paich continued, “I know that when we recorded it there was a tremendous sense of urgency about it. We had to do it right now … So, Barbra stayed on to repair a few lines, and we worked straight through the night. I think it was four hours for the recording, and four hours for the mixing, which goes to show if you have the right artist and the right orchestra, you can make a hit record in one night.”

“The Way We Were,” b/w “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” was released by Columbia Records as a single September 1973 (#4-45944). By February 2, 1974, the song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and stayed at #1 for three weeks.  “The Way We Were” was Barbra Streisand’s first number one single!

“It’s the first song we’ve ever written for a motion picture which immediately jumped out and became a hit,” Alan Bergman exclaimed.  “What pleases us even more is that it became popular as a result of a brilliant recording by Barbra Streisand,” added Marilyn Bergman.

It should be noted that the single version of the song contains a different vocal by Barbra than the album version. Streisand sings some of the lines a little differently on the single – and for some reason over the years, the album version of “The Way We Were” is the one that’s been memorialized on different Greatest Hits albums, not the single.

Meanwhile, with the theme song played on radio stations around the country, Streisand and Redford’s The Way We Were opened in movie theaters October 1973.

Columbia Records had a huge hit with the soundtrack to the film The Graduate and therefore  proposed a soundtrack album for The Way We Were featuring Hamlisch’s music score. This album featured  Streisand’s vocals on the opening and closing song, with Hamlisch’s orchestral accompaniment.

But Streisand also  delivered this studio album for release alongside the soundtrack album.  Titled The Way We Were and featuring the pop single of the song (a different version!), Streisand recorded three new songs in the studio with producer Tommy Lipuma (arrangements by Nick DeCaro) on December 14, 1973 at United Recorders in Los Angeles. Those songs were:  “All In Love Is Fair,” “Something So Right,” and “Being At War With Each Other.” (A fourth song recorded at that session, “Make the Man Love Me,” by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil remains unreleased).

The rest of the songs used on The Way We Were album were unreleased, salvaged from previous recording sessions. “The Best Thing You've Ever Done” “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?” “Summer Me, Winter Me,” “I’ve Never Been A Woman Before,” and “My Buddy / How About Me” were all produced by Wally Gold and arranged by Peter Matz.  The songs were recorded in 1969 and 1970 for an abandoned album that Barbra wanted to call The Singer.

For “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?”, Alan Bergman recalled that “Barbra came over for dinner, and we had just finished the song that day,” he said. “It was on the piano and she passed the piano and saw the title — Michel [Legrand] was staying with us — and she said, ‘I like the title, can I hear it?’ So we sang it to her and she said, ‘Let me hear it again.’ She said, ‘Let me sing it.’ We have on tape the first time she sang it and it's all there, every nuance.”

Columbia released the soundtrack and studio album in January 1974. Barbra’s studio album fared better, rising to #1 on the Top 200 Albums Chart in March, and staying in the top ten for four more weeks.  “The Way We Were” was Barbra’s first number one single and the album was her second number one album.

“I’ve Never Been A Woman Before” was by Ron Miller who also wrote “If I Could” (from Higher Ground, 1997), and the drag queen classic “I’ve Never Been To Me.” “I’ve Never Been A Woman Before ” was the eleven o'clock number from the musical Cherry, based on William Inge's Bus Stop. (Cherry finally opened on Broadway in 1972, but only lasted three performances). Barbra used to sing this song in her Las Vegas act. Claus Ogerman, her Vegas music director, arranged the song as recorded on this album.

Martin Charnin wrote “The Best Thing You’ve Ever Done.” Charnin is most famous for his lyrics to the musical Annie. He also wrote lyrics for Harold Arlen for a while in the mid-1960's (Streisand recorded Arlen/Charnin's “That's a Fine Kind of Freedom”). Charnin told writer James Kimbrell how “The Best Thing” came to be written. “I was in New York and I ran into Herb Ross who was directing The Owl and the Pussycat at the time,” Charnin said. “He asked me if I'd be interested in writing a song for Barbra to sing in the film when the characters separate. I told him I'd like to see the rough cut of the film first, but that I was interested. I wrote the song, sent it to Barbra's people and that was it. Later, when the film was released, all the music was done by Blood, Sweat and Tears, so I thought my song was just dropped. Barbra, though, liked the song and it ended up on one of her albums three years later.” Barbra also recorded a more stripped-down version of “The Best Thing” with only a trio accompanying her (it's unreleased). Still a third version of “Best Thing” was released as a 7-inch single in 1970.

Barbra first sang “My Buddy/How About Me” on her 1967 television special, The Belle of 14th Street. Mort Lindsey arranged the songs for that show. Since the Belle soundtrack was never released by Columbia Records, it's possible that Streisand wished to resurrect the medley. She recorded it fresh in 1969 with an arrangement by Peter Matz. “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life” was recorded during the same September 1969 session with another Matz arrangement.

“Summer Me, Winter Me” is another classic Legrand/Bergman song with a gorgeous Peter Matz arrangement.  Legrand wrote the melodic theme for an obscure 1969 movie called Picasso Summer.  Later, the Bergmans added their exquisite lyrics.

This Streisand album featured a striking cover photo by Steve Schapiro and a duo-toned back cover photo by David Bailey. Bailey concentrated on Streisand’s long fingernails. An alternate shot from the session  reveals that Streisand is actually smoking in the photo.

Steve Schapiro did a sitting with Streisand at her home and photographed her wearing different outfits and hairstyles, both inside and out. “She was in all black and knew exactly where she was going to put her fingers so that you saw the red nail polish,” Schapiro recalled. “We shot it all outdoors under natural light in the afternoon, so it would glow.”

The Way We Were album cover was also altered by the record company nearly a year after it was released. Columbia Records exec Bruce Lundvall told a Streisand biographer, “[Ray] Stark wasn't getting a cut of the second LP, so he threatened to sue,” said Lundvall. The Rastar Productions lawsuit centered on the use of the title of the film on Columbia’s studio album, which they felt confused record buyers and diminished the sales of the movie’s soundtrack album. “We had to drop the title of the movie from the album cover,” Lundvall said.

Columbia responded by reissuing the studio album with the art deco title letters removed.  Instead, they packaged the album with a big, pink sticker that said, “Including the hit singles THE WAY WE WERE and ALL IN LOVE IS FAIR.”

Years later, when the remastered CD was released, the red title, The Way We Were, was restored to the cover art.