Paramount purchased the film rights in April 1966 for $750,000, and Lerner (who wrote the screenplay) teamed up with Howard W. Koch to form a production company with Koch as producer. While Lerner and Lane liked Barbara Harris' performance in the play, Howard Koch could not risk a multi-million dollar production on an actress who wasn't a big box office name. Instead, Koch wanted to cast Audrey Hepburn for the leading role of Daisy Gamble but she passed on the part. He then went to Barbra Streisand, who he had seen on Broadway in Funny Girl and thought "stunning." Since Streisand had already been signed to make the film version of Funny Girl (1968), Koch felt that she would be a safe bet. However, the actress, then appearing in Funny Girl in London, turned him down because she was pregnant. While he tried half-heartedly to find a replacement, Koch couldn't let go of the idea of Streisand. Not needing a firm commitment from her or any other star until the end of 1966, Koch waited it out. The producer tried again when Streisand returned home to New York shortly before the birth of her son, Jason Gould. This time, he offered her $350,000 (a big increase from her Funny Girl salary) and the ability to choose her director and her co-star. Streisand agreed, later explaining that she wanted to play the role because "the two parts in Clear Day come close to my own schizophrenic personality. The frightened girl as compared to the strong woman in me. Just heaven!" There was one catch - Streisand would not be available until she gave birth, and then filmed Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly! (1969). Koch and Lerner would wait.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was very loosely based on both John L. Balderson's 1929 play Berkeley Square and the famous "Bridey Murphy" case in which a 1950s Colorado housewife supposedly recalled minute details of a previous life in 1800s Ireland while under hypnosis. In the film, Daisy Gamble is a modern-day New Yorker who attends a class by psychiatrist Dr. Marc Chabot (Yves Montand). Under hypnosis, Daisy shows definite psychic abilities, and Chabot is intrigued. When Daisy's fiancé, Warren (Larry Blyden) asks her to stop chain-smoking, she turns to Chabot for help. In a hypnotic trance, Daisy reveals her past life as the elegant and sexy English courtesan Melinda Tentrees, who lived in the early 1800s. Chabot finds himself becoming infatuated with the long-dead Melinda, while completely unimpressed with Daisy. Also in the cast were Jack Nicholson, Bob Newhart, Mabel Albertson, Roy Kinnear, Simon Oakland, and Pamela Brown.
Despite the fact that the popularity of film musicals was in decline by the late 1960s, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was a top-notch production at Paramount. Nelson Riddle, famous for working with Frank Sinatra, was in charge of music supervision, which included arranging and conducting the score. Although some songs were cut from the original production, the film's soundtrack would include the future standards What Did I Have That I Don't Have (a hit for Eydie Gormé) and the title track. Streisand modern-day clothes were created by her own personal choice, Arnold Scassi (who had dressed stars like Joan Crawford and Natalie Wood, but had never designed for film), and while the period costumes were done by Cecil Beaton, who had created Audrey Hepburn's gowns for My Fair Lady (1964).
Getting a co-star proved difficult. British actor Richard Harris kept them waiting for weeks before turning the role down, as did Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, and Louis Jourdan. Although Jourdan refused, he left the producers intrigued with the idea of having a "sexy Frenchman" in the role, and they approached French actor-singer Yves Montand, whose acceptance of the role necessitated a name change for the character from Dr. Bruckner to Dr. Chabot. To be convincing as an Englishwoman in her scenes as Melinda, Streisand hired actress Deborah Kerr to help her get her accent down pat.
Production began in January 1969 at Paramount Studios, with location shooting at the Rose Garden in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles, various sites in New York City, including the Pan Am Building and Central Park, and locations in the seaside resort of Brighton, England, including the famous Royal Pavilion. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever required eight weeks rehearsal and pre-recording of the musical numbers at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios which would be lip-synced later on screen. All of these elements and delays made the budget soar to $10 million, an enormous sum for the late 1960s.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever opened at the Loew's State I theater in New York City on June 17, 1970, where it received mixed reviews from critics like The New York Times' Vincent Canby, who wrote that it was "quite ordinary and Broadway-bland in most of its contemporary sequences," but that "Minnelli's love of décor transforms the movie into very real fantasy, and the star into a stunning looking and funny character who mouths her arch, pseudo-Terence Rattigan lines as if she were parodying Margaret Leighton. [...] It's apparently Montand's fate to be emasculated by big Hollywood actresses, and his role is largely that of a line-carrier for Streisand. He behaves himself like a gentleman, however, as do some other decent performers, including Bob Newhart, Larry Blyden, and Jack Nicholson." Canby had no doubt that Streisand's career would survive a mediocre film, writing that "Talent such as hers will not break when tested; it becomes enriched." On a Clear Day You Can See Forever would go on to make $14 million at the US box office, and Barbra Streisand would go to both star and direct films for the next four decades.
SOURCES:
http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=23487
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=onacleardayyoucanseeforever.htm
Canby, Vincent "Screen: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever Begins Its Run" New York Times 18Jun 70
The Internet Movie Database
Nickens, Christopher and Swenson, Karen The Films of Barbra Streisand
"Please Don't Pick on Daisy" TIME 29 Oct 65
By Lorraine LoBianco
