Again, not a terrible, horrible person, but Gertrude Stein was unusually cozy with fascism and Nazism for a lesbian Jew.
Probably my favorite VG song, FTR. Great video too.
Barbra Streisand is certainly a perfectionist (much more so during the earlier years of her career) and driven to produce the best possible result in whatever she does; in a man, that is considered an admirable quality, the mark of a leader. In a woman, you know the term that’s often applied (rhymes with “witch”).
She has also given millions upon millions of dollars to children’s causes and many other causes through the Streisand Foundation and presently is continuing to devote herself (obsessively as usual) to the quest to save women’s lives through research into heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease in women.
I read that she may end up being personally responsible for saving thousands of lives.
She is probably the most generous public figure I have ever heard of.
So I’d give her a pass on insisting the roses in a scene be a certain shade of pink, so that they look harmonious with the drapes.
No in a man it is called “being a perfectionist asshole”. I dislike perfectionism in both genders and being a great artist is never an excuse for being an asshole. There is enough great art produced by nice people to disprove any hypothesis that one depends on the other.
Which is not to pass judgement on Streisand of who I know little. Sounds like she is a sometimes difficult person who has done great humanitarian work. Kudos for her good works and she should strive to be less difficult :).
Regardless she hardly seems to be in MZB territory. What a sad story that one is, in every aspect. Now her poor abused daughter has apparently decided homosexuality is the problem - that abuse is the pain that keeps on giving :(.
Just went and read up on this whole Marion Zimmer Bradley thing, as I had not heard about that before reading this thread.
Yes. Definitely horrible.
Wow I just read a Moira Greyland article. I am sorry she suffered, but what a fucking nutjob. The cadence of her writing is even mentally telling.
Not that I’m arguing Streisand should be on the list, because I definitely don’t think she should be on the list, but I just want to highlight here the suggestion that charitable works and social causes should be a mitigating factor.
A mitigating factor when the “crime” is being a stern taskmasker and/or difficult to work with? Sure, that works for me.
Still, there are plenty of horrible people who have/had the wealth and notoriety to advance worthy causes. Philanthropy isn’t necessarily a mark of decency. As philanthropy can have self-aggrandizing rewards, it can just as easily play into a person’s narcissism- especially when a person is wealthy enough that their financial contributions come from no personal sacrifice, and when personal involvement in the work of the cause amounts to personal appearances that are met with ovations of thanks and praise.
Bill Cosby has certainly been involved in a great deal of philanthropy over his lifetime and it certainly fit with his own vision of himself as a great man. It doesn’t make him not an asshole though.
When Griffith J. Griffith gifted the City of Los Angeles with an endowment to create Greek Theater and Observatory in Griffith Park, the city council voted to accept the gift but the park commission’s response was more along the lines of, “Seriously? That asshole gets his fucking name put on more cool shit? Fuck that, we’re going to have to draw a line somewhere!”
Im a fan of the silent era actress Louise Brooks. However, she was not the nicest of people. A self confessed snob she seems to have been a taker in life rather than a giver. Also, she had a rather prickly personality. If not for her attractiveness she would have been a person to steer well clear of. I doubt Brooks is the worst female in this thread but her personality was far from admirable.
Would that that were true.
What the hell are you talking about?
thelurkinghorror is talking about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter. Her name is Moira Greyland is her name.
Yes, Moira seems to certainly be damaged and traumatized by something. If anything, both her parents certainly gave her some extremely warped views about sexuality, which appear to be even more exaggerated than what is typically seen in sexual incest abuse survivors. If even half of what she is saying is true, she gets a pass on all that.
And I also want to say, learning all this about MZB does make me feel about 50 layers of conflicted…because I adore The Mists of Avalon!
Yes. The tl;dr is that her father called himself gay and so possibly did her mother, and both are pedophiles, therefore she thinks that all gay people are pedophiles.
And she says both her parents pushed the idea that everyone is actually a closeted homosexual, and that everyone should get to have sex with anyone, familial or not. And also that the only way to get everyone to accept their own homosexuality is early sexual activity, the earlier the better. That’s some of the most twisted, cringe-worthy “theories” about sexuality I have ever scrubbed my eyeballs across. I needed to bleach my brain after reading that.
I have to agree with your post completely, bienville. Just because you give to charity doesn’t mean you aren’t a horrendous person!
But I should have added these two points to my post about Streisand:
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That the complaints about her perfectionist behaviour were really confined to the early stages of her career. Back in 1982, when the tabloids tried to revive the rumours about diva-like behaviour on the set of “Yentl”(which she was directing in England at that time), the entire British crew, unbeknownst to Streisand, signed and sent a letter of protest to the press saying they had had the best possible working experience with her. There haven’t been any similar accusations ever since. So she seemed to learn and mature. That’s about all we can do.
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That her generosity seems to never have been a desire for pats on the back or more acclaim - for example, recently a long-time member of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon production team leaked the information that Streisand gave huge amounts every year on the condition that it* not *be announced or made known to anyone in any way (so why he finally told the story, I don’t know!).
So I think she’s pretty great and definitely doesn’t belong on any list of rotten women 
This isn’t horrible at all, just along the lines of typical diva behavior, but I’ll share it anyway.
My Aunt & Uncle owned the beach house on Fripp Island, SC that was used in the filming of Prince of Tides in about 1990. They are both deceased now, but were also personal friends of the author Pat Conroy, who had a home nearby. Babs rented the house next to theirs and lived in it during filming. In the evenings Nick Nolte and Blythe Danner would hang out and sit with my Aunt & Uncle and Conroy, along with various members of the crew. Streisand was very aloof, didn’t speak to them, despite their best efforts to be friendly and include her in their hospitality…I mean, they opened up their home for this movie, for quite a small compensation and quite frankly, a lot of headache and inconvenience, yet they were gracious about it. Crew members even stayed there at the house. Barbra would come out of her house next door and walk around on the deck and gaze out at the ocean, but would never come over, never look at anybody, etc…basically acted like these people weren’t worth her time, not even a simple “hello” could she be bothered with. And it’s not like my relatives were some kind of classless bottom-feeders, either, they were fairly wealthy, well-connected, educated people.
Again, not horrible. But awfully snotty. And I know every bit of this is true.
These are the kinds of stories that get out about entertainers that make people think less of them as humans.
I’m so glad none of my favourite authors have done anything so vile (that we know of)…
I recently purged all my Darkover books, because I realized that even looking at them made me kind of queasy based on what I know of her now. I’ve got a friend who really liked the Sword & Sorceress series that MZB edited, and is feeling the same way.
But, hey, could be worse: like, Madonna acting sexy when she’s over 50, or whatever.
Aw, c’mon…! I am slightly over 50 myself and I never said there was anything wrong with acting sexy over 50. Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, and quite a few others are well past 50 and manage to do sexy AND classy while still being true to themselves and their age, without a whiff of desperation wafting off them.
Madonna’s the one shoving her tongue down Drake’s throat when he didn’t expect it, causing the poor kid to look like he wants to vomit, promising to give blow jobs to anyone who would vote for Hillary, and making out on stage recently at Art Basel in Miami with Ariana Grande, when that shit was bordering on not quite right the first time years ago when she did it with Britney. There comes a time when you have to be more mentor than make-out partner to the younger generation. Look, I am no prude, but this isn’t sexy, it’s vulgar. She is who she is, her body of work speaks for itself, and nobody can take her legacy away from her, except herself.
And just so nobody accuses me of being harder on her because she is a woman, I’ll say I agree totally with Robert Plant’s (who is sex on a stick to me) attitude about performing as you age. He said that once he was past 50, then 60, there were certain songs he wouldn’t perform anymore, and he wasn’t to wear his shirt open and strut around like it was still the 70s because that “is a young man’s game” but that there was still plenty of room for the performances he wanted to do, because he had evolved, and he wasn’t that guy anymore anyway.