Photo: Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Barbra Streisand as Judy Maxwell, directed by Peter Bogdanovich
If any single film captures Barbra Streisand at her most purely funny, it is What’s Up, Doc? from 1972. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich as a loving homage to the screwball comedies of the 1930s, above all Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, the film gives Streisand the role of Judy Maxwell, a whirlwind of a young woman who pursues a bewildered musicologist across San Francisco with total confidence and no sense of propriety whatsoever. It is fast, silly, affectionate, and brilliantly performed, and it remains one of the great American screen comedies of the 1970s.
The plot is gloriously contrived. Howard Bannister, played by Ryan O’Neal, is a straitlaced academic who has travelled to San Francisco with his fiancée Eunice Burns, played by Madeline Kahn, to compete for a research grant. He carries a plaid overnight bag containing valuable igneous rocks. Unfortunately, three other identical plaid bags are circulating through the same hotel: one belonging to Judy, stuffed with clothes and a dictionary; one containing secret government documents; and one holding a fortune in jewels. The resulting mix-ups propel car chases, hotel-room chaos, mistaken identities, and a climactic chase through the streets that ends, memorably, with a piano crashing through a plate-glass window.
Judy Maxwell is the engine of all this chaos, and Streisand plays her as a force of nature. Judy has been expelled from several universities, knows an astonishing amount about everything from gemstones to musicology, and decides within minutes of meeting Howard that he is the man for her, fiancée notwithstanding. She follows him, corrects him, teases him, rescues him, and generally refuses to accept any boundary he tries to erect. Streisand delivers Buck Henry, David Newman, and Robert Benton’s rapid-fire dialogue at breakneck speed without ever losing clarity, and her comic timing — a raised eyebrow, a perfectly timed interruption, a sudden switch from flirtation to pedantry — is a masterclass in screwball performance.
Bogdanovich, fresh from the critical triumph of The Last Picture Show, directs with evident joy. He shoots San Francisco in bright, cartoonish colours, stages slapstick with the precision of a silent comedy, and fills the background with visual jokes that reward repeat viewing. The film’s famous opening, in which Streisand sings Cole Porter’s “You’re the Top” over the credits, sets the tone: this is a comedy that loves old Hollywood and wants the audience to love it too. Bogdanovich also understands that screwball comedy depends on a heroine who is smarter and more alive than everyone around her, and he builds the film around Streisand’s energy rather than trying to contain it.
Ryan O’Neal is the perfect foil. His Howard is earnest, repressed, and increasingly unravelling, and O’Neal plays bewilderment with a straight face that makes Judy’s antics even funnier. Madeline Kahn, in her feature film debut as the shrill, possessive Eunice, steals every scene she is in, and her performance announced a major comic talent. Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, and the rest of the supporting cast keep the farce at full throttle. Yet the film never feels like an ensemble piece that happens to star Streisand; it feels like a vehicle built for her particular gifts, and she repays that trust with one of her most relaxed and joyful screen performances.
What makes Judy Maxwell more than a comic tornado is the intelligence underneath the madness. Judy is not a ditzy heroine who accidentally causes trouble; she is a brilliant, self-educated woman who has been thrown out of institutions that could not contain her, and who uses humour and audacity to make her way in a world run by pompous men. That reading gives the comedy a feminist edge that was very much of its moment in 1972, and it connects Judy to Streisand’s other heroines: women who refuse to be quiet, decorative, or grateful for small allowances. Judy does not wait to be chosen; she chooses, and she pursues her choice with delightful ruthlessness.
The film was a major commercial success, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1972 and Bogdanovich’s most profitable picture. Critics praised its energy and Streisand’s performance, and it has only grown in reputation since, now regarded as a classic of the screwball revival. It also marked an important moment in Streisand’s career: after the musicals and the sharp contemporary comedy of The Owl and the Pussycat, she had proved she could lead a pure farce, hold her own in physical comedy, and generate the kind of audience affection that sustains a long career.
For Past Tunes readers, What’s Up, Doc? is also a reminder of how musical Streisand’s comedy is, even when she is not singing a full number. Her dialogue has rhythm, her entrances have tempo, and her scenes build like songs, with verses of banter leading to choruses of chaos. Bogdanovich understood that, and he lets her set the pace. The result is a film that feels like a party: noisy, generous, and impossible to watch without smiling.
Revisiting it today, the pleasures are undiminished. The San Francisco locations glow, the jokes arrive at a pace that modern comedies rarely attempt, and Streisand’s Judy remains a creation of rare comic confidence. She is the woman who walks into a staid academic’s life and rearranges it completely — and, by the end, makes him grateful that she did.
Part of the film’s enduring charm is its generosity toward its characters. Even Eunice, the supposedly villainous fiancée, is played by Madeline Kahn with such comic invention that audiences laugh with her as well as at her, and even the hotel staff, jewel thieves, and government agents caught in the bag mix-up are given funny, human moments. Bogdanovich clearly loved the screwball tradition he was honouring, and he filled every corner of the frame with that affection. Watching the film with an audience, or even alone on a quiet evening, it is easy to understand why it became a word-of-mouth hit: it is a comedy that wants everyone, characters and viewers alike, to have a wonderful time.