If her upcoming memoir clocking in at 992 pages is any indication, Barbra Streisand has a lot of stories to tell. One particularly scandalous one involves late actor Marlon Brando, who became a friend of the star. According to Streisand's book, Brando once propositioned her while his wife was in the very next room. The Oscar-winner turned him down, but it wasn't the end of their relationship. It also wasn't the last time that he hit on her.
Read on to find out more about Streisand and Brando's relationship, which traces back to her crush on him before they ever met.
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Brando propositioned Streisand in 1966.
Bettmann / Getty ImagesStreisand was interviewed by Vanity Fair ahead of the Nov. 7 release of her memoir, My Name Is Barbra. The profile recaps a chapter of the book titled "Brando," in which Streisand writes that the actor asked her to have sex with him while they were at a party in 1966. At the time, she would have been 24 while Brando was 42.
According to the book, Brando told Streisand, "I’d like to [expletive] you" while his wife was in an adjoining room. (The article does not state which wife was present, however. Brando had overlapping marriages with Movita Castaneda and Tarita Teriipaia, though the Castaneda marriage was later annulled.)
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They became long-time friends.
Fotos International/Getty ImagesAccording to her book, Streisand and Brando became friends and stayed that way until his death in 2004. The now-81-year-old also writes that after Brando saw the 1968 film adaptation of Funny Girl, he called her and said, "You were really good, but you run funny." Vanity Fair's Radhika Jones told Streisand that "Brando" is "one of the wilder chapters [she's] ever encountered in literature." The author responded, "Well, he's Marlon Brando!"
Streisand told another story about Brando trying to seduce her.
During a 2012 appearance on Piers Morgan Tonight, Streisand told another story about spending time with Brando. This one was about a road trip they took together in the '70s.
"[Brando] wanted to take me to the desert, to see the wildflowers," she said, adding that he said he wanted to "sleep over in a ghost town."
Streisand said that she rejected his advances. "I was such a nice Jewish girl that I just said, ‘Marlon, I can’t stay overnight with you. I’ll go with you for the day.'" Again, she added that they remained friends and would talk on the phone "for hours and hours."
Evidence of Streisand and Brando's friendship was shared by John Travolta in on Instagram in 2020. In a "flashback Friday" post, Travolta shared a photo of himself, his late wife Kelly Preston, Streisand, her husband James Brolin, Brando, and others. In the picture, Streisand sits on Brando's lap. Travolta wrote in the caption, "A special party for Marlon Brando at Barbra Streisand’s house #FBF." He did not specify what year the photo was taken.
Brando had been Streisand's childhood crush.
Long before they ever met, Brando became Streisand's celebrity crush after she saw him in 1955's Guys and Dolls.
"Since I was 13, Marlon Brando was my favorite. I saw him in Guys and Dolls—and that was it," she told W magazine in 2016. "Interestingly, there was a period of 27 years when I didn’t sing in public, because of stage fright, and when I finally did, I created a scenario in which I sang 'I’ll Know' with Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls. I put myself in his movie! I invited Brando to my house to see the piece, and he made me take him through my entire show. We then watched a movie together. It was wonderful: He was my idol, my biggest crush."
"I'll Know" is a song from the Guys and Dolls. When Streisand performed the song at Madison Square Garden for her 1994 live album The Concert, she spoke about Brando and the film before singing it.
"This friend of mine named Barbara Sankell, who knew that I wanted to be an actress told me about this actor named Marlon Brando, who was in a movie called Guys and Dolls, which I also didn't know was from a Broadway play. And so I went to see it, and it was truly a life-altering experience seeing Marlon Brando for the first time. It was the only movie that I ever sat through twice—just to get to see him again and to have another Mello Roll. Anyway, I'll never forget this song."
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