The Way We Were

Told partly in flashback, it is the story of Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) and Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford). Their differences are immense; she is a stridently vocal Marxist Jew with strong antiwar opinions, and he is a carefree White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with no particular political bent. While attending the same college, she is drawn to him because of his boyish good looks and his natural writing skill, which she finds captivating, although he does not work very hard at it. He is intrigued by her conviction and her determination to persuade others to take up social causes. Their attraction is evident, but neither of them acts upon it, and they lose touch after graduation.

The two meet again towards the end of World War II while Katie is working at a radio station, and Hubbell, having served as a naval officer in the South Pacific, is trying to return to civilian life. They fall in love despite the differences in their backgrounds and temperaments. Soon, however, Katie is incensed by the cynical jokes that Hubbell's friends make at the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and is unable to understand his indifference towards their insensitivity and shallow dismissal of political engagement. At the same time, his serenity is disturbed by her lack of social graces and her polarizing postures. Hubbell breaks it off with Katie, but soon agrees to work things out, at least for a time.

When Hubbell is offered the opportunity to adapt his novel into a screenplay, Katie believes he is wasting his talent and encourages him to pursue writing as a serious challenge, instead. Despite her growing frustration, they move to California, where, without much effort, he becomes a successful screenwriter, and the couple enjoys an affluent lifestyle. As the Hollywood blacklist grows and McCarthyism begins to encroach on their lives, Katie's political activism resurfaces, jeopardizing Hubbell's position and reputation.

Alienated by Katie's persistent abrasiveness, and though she is pregnant, Hubbell has a liaison with Carol Ann, his college girlfriend and the divorcee of J.J., his best friend. After the birth of their child, however, Katie and Hubbell decide to part, as she finally understands he is not the man she idealized when falling in love with him, and he always will choose the easiest way out, whether it is cheating in his marriage or writing predictable stories for sitcoms. Hubbell, though, is exhausted, unable to live on the pedestal Katie erected for him and face her disappointment in his decision to compromise his potential.

Katie and Hubbell meet by chance some years after their divorce in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Hubbell is with a stylishly beautiful woman and, apparently content, is now writing for an unnamed television show that is broadcast live. Katie, now remarried, invites Hubbell to come for a drink with his lady friend, but he turns down the invitation. Hubbell inquires about their daughter Rachel, and if Katie's new husband is a good father to her. He shows no intention of meeting her, implying that he has not been a part of Rachel's life in the past, nor does he plan to be in her life in the future, to which Katie seems resigned, but content.

Katie has remained faithful to who she is; flyers in hand, she is agitating now for "Ban the bomb", the new political cause. Their past is behind them, and all the two share now (besides their daughter) is missing what they once had together, the memory of the way things were.

In 1937, while an undergraduate at Cornell, Arthur Laurents was introduced to political activism by 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.[10]

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 known Streisand for some time, having cast her in his 1962 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.[11]

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 to direct. Streisand was impressed that he had studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan and seconded the choice. Stark was less enthusiastic, 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.[12]

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. Laurents, dismayed to discover very little of his work remained when it was completed, left the project. Over time, 11 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.[13]

Because the film's start date was delayed while it underwent numerous rewrites, Cornell was lost as a shooting location [source?] , as was Williams College, where the novel "The graduate" had been written 10 years earlier. 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, California; and Union Station in Los Angeles, the latter for a scene Laurents felt was absurd and fought to have deleted, without success.[14]

Laurents was horrified when he saw the first rough cut of the film. He thought it had 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 was not 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.[15]

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 did not 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 did not 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.[16]

The musical score for The Way We Were was composed by Marvin Hamlisch. A soundtrack album was released in January 1974 to much success. At the time of its initial release, the album peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200. On October 19, 1993, it was re-released on CD by Sony. It includes Streisand's rendition of "The Way We Were", which at the time of the film's release was a commercial success and her first number-one single in the United States. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1973 and charted for 23 weeks, eventually selling over a million copies and remaining number one for three nonconsecutive weeks in February 1974. On the Adult Contemporary chart, it was Streisand's second top hit, following "People" a decade earlier. It was the title track of a Streisand album that reached number one.

In North America, the film was a massive commercial success, grossing $49,919,870.[17] It ranked fifth among high-grossing films of the year, earning an estimated $10 million in North American rentals in 1973,[18] and a total of $22,457,000 in its theatrical run.

In Gilda Radner's concert film Gilda Live, her character Lisa Loopner performs "The Way We Were" on the piano. Loopner says of the film "It's about a Jewish woman with a big nose and her blond boyfriend who move to Hollywood, and it's during the blacklist and it puts a strain on their relationship."

The Simpsons had two episodes, one called "The Way We Was" (first aired in 1991) and the other "The Way We Weren't" (first aired in 2004), although their plots are unrelated to the film.

In his autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, cult star Bruce Campbell recalls a roommate who had a poorly functioning record player. Campbell writes "A tinny 'The Way We Were' kept me awake."

In season one of Gilmore Girls, Lorelei attempts to guess Dean's darkest secret is that he secretly wanted Robert Redford to dump his wife and children for Barbra Streisand. Dean admits that he has not seen "The Way We Were". In another episode of Gilmore Girls, Lorelei tells Sookie that she is reminded of The Way We Were because she hid from Luke the fact that she had lunch with Christopher. In season five of Gilmore Girls, Lorelei calls Luke after they have broken up and tells him that she was thinking about The Way We Were and reminded him of how Katie called Hubbell after they had broken up and asked him to come sit with her because he was her best friend and she needed her best friend.

On the show Friends, Rachel Green lists The Way We Were as the most romantic movie of all time.

In That '70s Show, Kitty Forman says that The Way We Were was a nice film after Eric explains a scene in Star Wars.

In Sex and the City, Carrie uses The Way We Were as an analogy for her relationship with Big. The girls proceed to sing the film's theme song, and later, when Carrie bumps into Big outside his engagement party, she quotes a line from the film.

In the movie The Jerk, Marie (Bernadette Peters) is sobbing over the demise of her relationship while a drunk Navin Johnson (Steve Martin) is writing checks for $1.09. He is badgering her and asks why she is crying and why she is wearing an old dress from one of their very first meetings. She responds "Because I just heard a song on the radio that reminded me of the way we were." "What was it?" he asks. She sobs in reply "The Way We Were."

• List of American films of 1973

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• The Way We Were at IMDb
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• The Way We Were at the TCM Movie Database
• McCarthyism and the Movies
• Barbra Archives: The Way We Were cut scenes and song demos