It’s a painful story. I don’t like to even talk about it. You know, it’s just a person who had a crush on me, which was unusual. And when I said to him, you know, I don’t want to be involved with you, he turned on me in in such a way that was very cruel. I think he started muttering under his breath. While I was talking on stage, he would mutter terrible words to me, sort of curse words, and he wouldn’t look into my eyes anymore.

 I I haven’t had much fun in my life, tell you the truth, and I want to have more fun. Hollywood turned on Barbara Stryisan because she rejected a co-star advances. What happened next was 30 years of coordinated revenge that destroyed her love for performing. But when I came to America, I sadly tell you that it was so different here.

You know, the people were terrified. They were um cold. The industry used rejection as justification to launch warfare against any woman who dared say no to powerful men. Is I don’t enjoy performing. Okay. So, uh, it’s I always have a bit of stage fright and, um, it’s not a comfortable feeling. This is how they turned the most confident performer of her generation into someone too terrified to sing live for 27 years.

 March 1964 was supposed to be the greatest moment of Barbara Stryand’s young life. At 22, she was starring as Fanny Bryce and Funny Girl at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater, delivering performances that had critics comparing her to Judy Garland. The show was selling out every night and Barbara was becoming the biggest new star on Broadway.

 Her co-star was Sydney Chaplan, the 38-year-old son of comedy legend Charlie Chaplan. Cydney carried himself with the confidence of Hollywood royalty. He’d already won a Tony Award for Bells Are Ringing and was considered one of Broadway’s leading men. On paper, they were perfect together. The established star and the rising sensation playing tragic lovers in a story about ambition and heartbreak.

Playing Nick Arnstein to Barbara’s Fanny Bryce, Sydney had to create believable romantic chemistry eight shows a week. The intimate scenes, the passionate dialogue, the hours spent together rehearsing and performing, it created a pressure cooker environment where professional boundaries could easily blur.

 Both were married, Barbara to actor Elliot Gould, Sydney to actress Noel Marshall. But the intensity of their stage relationship began affecting their off-stage interactions. According to multiple sources who worked on the production, Sydney developed genuine feelings for his young co-star. He was charmed by her talent, her unconventional beauty, and her fierce intelligence.

 The 16-year age gap didn’t seem to matter to him. He was smitten with the Brooklyn girl who was taking Broadway by storm. But Barbara wasn’t interested in destroying two marriages for a workplace romance. She had seen how affairs could devastate families and careers, and she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her integrity or her marriage for romantic flattery from an established star.

 When Sydney made his intentions clear, she told him no directly and professionally. She wanted to keep their relationship strictly about the work. You know, it’s just a person who had a crush on me, which was unusual. And when I said to him, you know, I don’t want to be involved with you, he turned on me in in such a way that was very cruel.

 I think Sydney Chaplain didn’t handle rejection gracefully. The son of one of the world’s most famous comedians, he was used to getting what he wanted. When Barbara drew a firm boundary, something dark awakened in him. If he couldn’t have her romantically, he would make sure she paid professionally. What Sydney did next was calculated, vicious, and designed to break Barbara’s spirit night after night in front of paying audiences.

 During their most intimate scenes, when thousands of people were watching what they believed was passionate love between Fanny and Nick, Sydney began his campaign of revenge. He started muttering under his breath while I was talking on stage. He would mutter terrible words to me, sort of curse words, and he wouldn’t look into my eyes anymore.

While the audience saw romance, Sydney was calling Barbara degrading names. While they heard declarations of love, he was telling her she was worthless as an actress. While they watched what appeared to be tender passion, he was cursing at her and describing in crude detail what he thought of her talent. The audience had no idea that the romantic scenes they were witnessing were actually moments of verbal abuse disguised as love.

 The torture continued relentlessly. Every romantic scene became an opportunity for Sydney to whisper new insults. Every embrace became a chance to tell her she’d ruined another moment. Every declaration of love from Nick to Fanny was accompanied by Sydney’s whispered hatred directly into Barbara’s ear. The effects on Barbara were immediate and devastating.

She started vomiting before every performance, her body’s natural response to knowing she would be tortured for 2 and 1/2 hours while having to pretend to be in love with her tormentor. Her doctor had to prescribe opium drops just to calm her stomach enough for her to function. But no medication could address the root cause of her distress.

Threw me into analysis, how to talk logic to somebody who wouldn’t stop doing this. The abuse was so severe and relentless that it forced a 22-year-old woman at the peak of her career into therapy. Here was someone who should have been experiencing pure joy, having to seek professional help to cope with workplace torture happening in front of thousands of people every night.

 Cast members began noticing that something was seriously wrong. Linda Gerard, who was in the ensemble and later became Barbara’s understudy, could see from the wings that Sydney was deliberately trying to upstage Barbara during her signature song, People. Dance captain Larry Fuller later said he could feel Sydney’s anger radiating across the stage during their scenes together.

 The hostility was so intense, it was palpable, even from the orchestra seats. By August 1964, Sydney’s resentment had grown so obvious that he was giving bitter interviews to the New York Post. publicly complaining about playing what he called a nobody role opposite Barbara. He told reporters that audiences didn’t root for him, that they were only there to see her, and that he was lucky they didn’t wait outside the theater to lynch him for getting in the way of their beloved Fanny Bryce.

 The situation became so toxic that Actors Equity, the theatrical union, had to intervene. In June 1965, they called what they diplomatically termed a friendly discussion meeting at Sardis. the famous theater district restaurant to address Sydney’s conduct. Multiple cast members were questioned about his behavior and its impact on the production.

 When Cydney was finally fired from Funny Girl that same month, Variety reported that he received a settlement that would pay him through the end of his contract, over $86,000, an astronomical sum in 1965. The producers were willing to pay that enormous amount just to get him away from Barbara and restore some peace to the production.

 But the damage Sydney inflicted would follow Barbara for the rest of her career. He had destroyed something fundamental that every actor needs. Trust. Trust in your scene partner. Trust in the collaborative process. Trust in your own instincts and abilities. He had systematically replaced all of that with paranoia, self-doubt, and a fear of vulnerability that would poison her relationship with live performance for decades to come.

 In 1968, hoping that movie work would provide a safer environment than the hostile theater world she’d experienced, Barbara Streryan walked onto the set of Hello Dolly in Garrison, New York. What she encountered was Walter Matthau, a 48-year-old veteran character actor who had just won an Academy Award for The Fortune Cookie and represented everything that was most toxic about old Hollywood’s attitude towards successful women.

 Mathal was the epitome of the gruff, non-nonsense performer who had earned his reputation through decades of hard work in an industry that rewarded masculine toughness above all else. He was experienced, respected by his peers, and absolutely unwilling to take creative input from a 26-year-old woman, no matter how talented she might be or how much money her name could bring to a picture.

 The casting of Hello Dolly was already controversial. Everyone involved knew that Barbara was fundamentally miscast as the middle-aged widow Dolly Levi. She was too young for the role by at least 20 years. The character lacked maternal warmth and life experience, but she was also the biggest box office draw in Hollywood at that moment.

 Fresh off her Oscar-winning performance in Funny Girl, and her name above the title guaranteed the film would be profitable regardless of artistic concerns. The explosive confrontation that would define their entire working relationship happened on June 6th, 1968. A date that carries special significance because it was the day after Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination.

 The entire country was reeling from yet another traumatic polit just 2 months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Everyone on set was already emotional and on edge. The national mood was dark and uncertain, and the oppressive summer heat of the New York location was hovering near 100°. It was in this charged, griefstricken atmosphere that Barbara made what seemed like a perfectly innocent, creative suggestion about a scene involving a wagon.

 She had been thinking about how to make the moment more visually interesting, how to add some comedy or character development that would better serve the story. The other cast members around her started laughing at her idea, appreciating her creative input and the collaborative spirit she was bringing to the production.

 But Walter Matau completely lost control. His reaction was so disproportionate and vicious that it shocked everyone present and brought all other activity on the set to a complete halt. According to multiple eyewitness accounts, he screamed at her in front of the entire cast and crew. his voice carrying across the location and making it impossible for anyone to pretend they hadn’t heard every word.

They see a certain side of me that people might call difficult. They say I’m difficult. Matau demanded to know who she thought she was. Aggressively pointing out that he had been in 30 movies while this was only her second film. He dismissed her creative suggestion entirely, not based on its merits, but simply because of who had made it.

 But he didn’t stop with professional criticism. He delivered the line that would become Hollywood legend for all the wrong reasons, telling her that she might be the singer in the picture, but he was the actor and that she didn’t have the talent of a butterflyy’s fart. The calculated cruelty of this public attack was breathtaking in its precision and timing.

 Here was Barbara already struggling with severe confidence issues from Sydney Chaplain’s and the stage fright it had created being publicly eviscerated by a respected veteran actor for the simple crime of having a creative idea that other people actually found worthwhile and amusing. Matthau later admitted to entertainment journalists that he was in a mean foul mood because of Kennedy’s assassination and that he had essentially used Barbara as an emotional punching bag for his grief and anger.

 But his explosive rage revealed something much deeper than temporary stress or national trauma. It exposed the fundamental resentment that many Hollywood men felt toward any woman who dared to have opinions about her own work. It’s interesting when that word perfectionist is applied to a man, uh, he’s very respected, but when it’s applied to a woman, it’s like, why are you such a perfectionist? It’s it seems to negative, a negative, a criticism.

The media manipulation that followed Matau’s outburst was perhaps the most insidious aspect of the entire incident. He had publicly destroyed a young woman for having a creative idea that everyone else appreciated. But somehow the press coverage managed to transform him into the victim of the story.

 The narrative that emerged painted Barbara as the difficult diva who was impossible to work with, while Matau was portrayed as the long-suffering professional who was just trying to do his job under impossible circumstances created by her alleged demands and attitude. What followed the initial confrontation was months of systematic workplace harassment that made every day on the Hello Dolly set a form of professional torture for Barbara.

 Matau embarked on a deliberate campaign of humiliation designed to make her life as miserable as possible and to poison the entire production atmosphere against her. He started calling her Miss Tamine, which was his charming nickname derived from the bacteria that causes food poisoning. a calculated insult that compared her very presence to something toxic and nauseating.

 He would tell anyone who would listen that she had more talent in his smallest fart than she did in her entire body. A line that was both deliberately crude and designed to completely diminish her abilities while elevating his own bodily functions above her artistic achievements. The harassment escalated to the point where Matau refused to be in the same room with her except when they were actively filming scenes together.

 Between takes, during meal breaks, during any moment when the cameras weren’t rolling, he would physically leave rather than share space with her. This behavior created a hostile work environment that affected the entire production, forcing everyone else to navigate carefully around his petty animosity and making normal collaboration nearly impossible.

 The situation became so absurd that during the film’s wedding scene, when their characters Horus and Dolly were supposed to kiss, Matau refused to actually let their lips touch. The cinematographer had to use creative camera angles and careful positioning to create the illusion that they were kissing without their mouths actually meeting.

 Here was a supposedly professional actor allowing his personal animosity to interfere with the most basic requirements of his job. Yet somehow Barbara was still being painted as the problematic one. Mata even went so far as to complain directly to studio head Richard Xanic, claiming that working with Barbara was negatively impacting his physical and mental health and demanding that the studio intervene on his behalf.

 Xanax’s response became Hollywood legend. He told Matthau that he’d like to help him out, but unfortunately the film wasn’t called Hello, Walter. But the absolute worst moment of the entire production came when Matau delivered a line specifically designed to isolate Barbara completely from any support system among the cast and crew in front of everyone present.

He told her that nobody in the company likes you. Those seven words weren’t chosen randomly. They were strategically crafted to make her believe she was completely alone. That everyone secretly resented working with her. and that her talent and success meant nothing if she couldn’t get along with people on a basic human level.

 The combined trauma from Sydney Chaplain’s whispered curses and Walter Matau’s public humiliation had achieved something truly devastating. They had taken the most fearless performer of her generation and transformed her into someone who was genuinely terrified of the very thing she loved most. The confident young woman who had once commanded Broadway stages with nothing but raw talent and unshakable self-belief was now approaching every performance with dread, anxiety, and a crushing fear of making mistakes that would give her

enemies new ammunition. I don’t enjoy performing. Okay. So, uh it’s I always have a bit of stage fright and um it’s not a comfortable feeling. Think about the heartbreaking implications of that simple admission. One of the greatest performers in the history of entertainment was confessing that she no longer enjoyed the thing that had made her famous.

 The thing that brought joy to millions of people around the world. The thing that was supposed to be her life’s calling and greatest source of personal fulfillment. This wasn’t the normal pre-performance butterflies that many artists experience. This was deep lasting damage that had turned performing from a source of joy into a source of fear.

 The transformation hadn’t happened overnight. It was the insidious result of years of systematic abuse that had slowly but surely convinced her that her instincts were wrong, her contributions unwelcome, and her success somehow illegitimate or undeserved. Every night of Sydney’s whispered hatred during their romantic scenes, every day of Matau’s public humiliation and crude insults, every encounter with male executives who treated her creative input as presumptuous interference had built layer upon layer of anxiety. The

Central Park concert on June 17th, 1967 became the moment when all of Sydney Chaplain’s damage finally exploded in the most public and devastating way possible. Barbara was performing in front of 150,000 people, the largest live audience in entertainment history at that time with CBS cameras rolling to capture the historic event for national television broadcast.

 Everything had been going perfectly until she reached When the Sun Comes Out, which was supposed to be the final song before intermission. That’s when it happened. In front of the largest audience of her career with cameras capturing every second for posterity, Barbara experienced every performer’s worst nightmare.

 She completely forgot the lyrics. Not just a line or two, but a complete mental blank that left her standing speechless in front of 150,000 people who had come specifically to hear her sing. But this wasn’t just a random mistake that could happen to any performer. This was the moment when every seed of doubt that Cydney Chaplain had planted 3 years earlier suddenly bloomed into full-blown terror.

 Every night he had made her question herself, made her doubt her abilities, made her fear forgetting her lines or making mistakes. All of that accumulated damage crystallized in this single devastating moment. And so this is great because Netflix like for $10 a month, the whole family could see any show and I don’t have to perform it.

The aftermath of that forgotten moment was unprecedented in entertainment history. From 1967 to 1994, 27 years, one of the greatest voices ever recorded, refused to perform concerts because of those few seconds of vulnerability in Central Park. The woman who had once thrived on the spontaneous energy exchange between performer and audience, now preferred recorded performances where she could control every variable and eliminate the possibility of public failure.

 When she finally did return to live performing in 1994 with her first concert tour in decades, it was only after elaborate preparation and with significant technological assistance. She needed teleprompterss displaying every lyric, carefully rehearsed banter between songs, and controlled environments where she could minimize the risk of anything going wrong.

 Even then, the anxiety was often overwhelming, and she would only agree to do very limited engagements under extremely specific conditions. the industry that had damaged her so severely then used her own honesty about these struggles as a further evidence against her. When she spoke publicly about her stage fright and performance anxiety, they twisted it into proof that she couldn’t handle pressure or was somehow mentally unstable.

 When she admitted that she had needed years of therapy to deal with the trauma inflicted by her colleagues, they portrayed it as personal weakness rather than evidence of the systematic abuse she had endured. I I haven’t had much fun in my life, tell her the truth. But I want to have more fun. Perhaps the most heartbreaking revelation came in her recent interviews when one of the most successful entertainers in history admitted that she hasn’t had much fun in her life.

Here was someone who had achieved everything. sold 250 million albums, won every major award, created iconic performances that moved millions of people, confessing that the journey had been more about survival than enjoyment. The woman who had once improvised brilliantly on stage, who had connected with audiences through pure spontaneity and emotional honesty, now approached every public appearance with the kind of careful preparation usually reserved for diffusing bombs.

 The fearless young performer who had walked onto Broadway stages with nothing but confidence and talent had been replaced by someone who needed extensive safety measures just to share her art with the world. They had stolen more than just her joy in performing. They had stolen her fundamental trust in the collaborative process that makes great art possible.

Every new project, every working relationship, every creative partnership had to be filtered through the trauma of what Sydney Chaplain, Walter Matau, and countless others had done to her when she was young and vulnerable and should have been experiencing nothing but the pure happiness of artistic success.

 The most tragic aspect is that we’ll never know what was lost during those decades when fear kept her from fully sharing her gifts with live audiences. Even when Barbara achieved what should have been the ultimate protection by directing her own films, the pattern of male entitlement and hostility continued to follow her.

 During the making of Yentol in 1983, she thought she had finally found a way to escape the toxic dynamics that had plagued her entire career. She was in complete creative control, choosing her own cast and crew, telling a deeply personal story that had taken her over a decade to bring to the screen. But even in that supposedly safe environment, the deeply ingrained attitudes that had defined her Hollywood experience reared their heads in disturbing ways.

 Her leading man, Mandy Patenkin, began displaying the same kind of volatile behavior that had become all too familiar to her over the years. In the book, you say you you you took him aside and said, “What’s going on? You seem so agitated. You’re banging at doors.” All that all that kind of stuff. And he said, “I thought we were going to have a more intimate relationship.

” What do you mean? I thought we were going to have an affair. I don’t know where this came from. The point is that I was trying to help him with his behavior. Patankin was creating a hostile work environment through his explosive anger and unpredictable mood swings. He would scream at crew members over minor issues, slam doors when things didn’t go exactly his way, and generally make everyone around him walk on eggshells to avoid triggering his volatile temper.

 As the director, Barbara had a responsibility to maintain a professional atmosphere and protect her cast and crew from this kind of abusive behavior. She approached him diplomatically, pulling him aside privately to ask what was wrong and hoping to understand the source of his anger so they could find a way to resolve whatever issues were causing his disruptive conduct.

 She handled the conversation with the kind of maturity and professionalism that should be standard in any workplace, assuming there must be some external stress or personal problem affecting his performance. However, his answer revealed the same disturbing mindset that had driven so many of her male colleagues over the years.

 Even when she held all the creative power, even when she was literally his boss as the director of the film, Patankin still couldn’t separate his personal desires from their professional relationship. His assumption that working closely together meant they would naturally become involved showed how deeply these toxic attitudes were embedded in Hollywood’s culture.

 The assumption that any professional collaboration with a woman must involve romance was just one manifestation of an industry that fundamentally couldn’t see women as equals. Throughout her career, Barbara had encountered endless male executives, directors, and co-stars who seemed personally offended by her competence and success, as if her achievements somehow diminish their own status or challenge their authority.

 These men had created a perfect system for undermining successful women through language manipulation, professional exclusion, and systematic character assassination. They had weaponized the very qualities that made her great as an artist. Her attention to detail, her creative vision, her refusal to compromise her artistic standards and turned them into evidence that she was somehow problematic or impossible to work with.

Hollywood turned on Barbara Stryisan because she rejected advances and refused to be controlled by men who felt entitled to both her body and her compliance. Their revenge campaign lasted decades, destroyed her relationship with live performing, and robbed the world of countless artistic moments we’ll never get to experience.

The industry that claims to celebrate talent actually punishes it when it comes packaged with independence, integrity, and the audacity to set boundaries. That’s the truth they tried to bury for 60 years. Anyway, that’s it for the video, folks. Bye.