Up the Sandbox
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Irvin Kershner
Barbra Streisand
David Selby
Ariane Heller
Terry Smith
Gary Smith
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Young Manhattan housewife Margaret Reynolds is a good mother to her two young children, Peter and Elizabeth, but feels vaguely unsatisfied with her life. Although her husband Paul, a history professor, adores his wife and children, he is distracted by his career and is preoccupied with finishing his book. One day, after learning that she is pregnant again, Margaret goes to Paul's office to tell him, but finds him deeply engaged in conversation with a female colleague. Unable to tell Paul her news, Margaret fantasizes about asking the colleague if she is having an affair with Paul. The woman confirms the affair and claims that it enhances their working relationship, but assures Margaret that Paul loves his family. Seeing the woman leaving Paul's office soon after, Margaret realizes that the interaction was a day dream. Later at the children's park, Margaret listens perplexed as her friend Cathie raves about her husband's accomplishments while other mothers berate Cathie for her excitement, complaining that husbands never celebrate their wive's successes. Later, Margaret's old college professor Dr. Loffert, sees her at a lunch counter and compliments her on a political paper she once wrote for him, then invites her to a political event. Swept up by being recognized for her intellectual capabilities, Margaret fantasizes that she and Loffert attend a press conference for Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who castigates Americans for not giving women equal opportunities. However, when Castro insists that women need to become military leaders, Margaret openly contradicts him, vehemently insisting that mothers are needed to raise boys who will not resort to violence to resolve conflict. After a flurry of reporters eagerly interview Margaret, she is led to Castro's hotel room by a militant feminist entymologist who specializes in praying mantas, which, she gleefully reminds Margaret, decapitate her male partner during intercourse. After proudly announcing that the entymologist was merely a whore before the revolution, Castro invites Margaret to work beside him for women's empowerment and asks her to share his secret with the world. Bearing his chest, Castro reveals that he is a woman, shocking Margaret back to consciousness. Days later, Margaret's nagging mother, Mrs. Koerner, arrives unannounced at the apartment, insisting that she and Paul move to the New Jersey suburbs to be near her. Unable to tolerate her mother's insults about her housekeeping, Margaret leaves with her children. After a brief encounter on the elevator with a stern black man carrying a suspicious package, Margaret wades through a political protest to reach the park, where she falls easily back into her fantasy world. While a black woman takes care of her children, Margaret rushes off with four black radicals in a speedboat to the Statue of Liberty at nightfall. After planting explosives in the building, Margaret hears someone enter. While her cohorts flee, Margaret, trying to avoid human causalities, rushes to the top of the statue where she finds a man about to attempt suicide. Desperate to save him, Margaret wrests him from the ledge while the foundation explodes beneath them. Back in the present, Margaret awakens that night to find Paul in a fit of pique because their daughter has drawn all over his book draft. Determined to keep her husband happy despite his childish ranting, Margaret stays up all night rewriting the draft. Days later, Margaret and Paul attend her parents' 33rd wedding anniversary with a houseful of relatives in New Jersey. Once again Margaret's mother badgers her about moving to New Jersey. In a moment alone with Paul, Mrs. Koerner confides that Margaret wants to move to New Jersey, but denies herself because she does not want to inconvenience Paul with a long commute. Paul is unmoved by the manipulative tactics, but Margaret grows so frustrated that she fantasizes telling her mother that she would never raise her children in such a bigoted, narrow-minded community, then pushes her mother's face into the anniversary cake. Days later, Margaret and Paul attend a party for celebrated anthropologist Dr. Beineke, who waxes on about matriarchal tribes. Bored after listening to self-aggrandizing academic talk between her husband and large-breasted graduate student Vicki, Margaret begins fantasizing that she is unable to hide her huge pregnant belly from Paul. Rushing to the restroom, Margaret forces her bulging belly into her breasts in hopes of engaging Paul with her new cleavage, but Paul takes little notice, causing her breasts to deflate. Waking from her fantasy, Margaret explodes at Paul, reminding him that she has not had time to be an "interesting woman," being too busy cooking, cleaning, feeding and running errands for their family. Doing laundry in the basement that night, Margaret fantasizes that she fights off an intruder with one punch then calls Dr. Beineke. The bumbling professor invites her to join him in Africa for field research, where they encounter a matriarchal tribe who hold the secret to painless childbirth, but Margaret and the professor are soon speared by the warrior women. After finding Margaret passed out in the basement, Paul attempts to care for her but is unable even to make toast without burning it. Fantasizing, Margaret manically suggests to Paul that she must have a large brood of children. Paul then insists that his useless wife must have mandatory abortions after two children, which prompts Margaret to throw herself out the window. Margaret wakes in the bedroom where Paul promises to help her become fulfilled, but reminds her that he will continue to act childishly until she stops treating him like one. After telling him that she wants a day off, Margaret leaves the children with Paul for the day. Fantasizing that she is about to succumb to an abortion, Margaret is saved by Paul, who fights off the nurses and rushes her out of the clinic. Still on a gurney, Margaret is propelled into the park and tumbles into the sandbox. Upon awakening from her reverie, Margaret goes to the park and finally tells Paul that she is pregnant to which Paul responds with joy. Sensing that she is regaining some sense of self, Margaret leaves the children with Paul and drives off to enjoy the rest of her day alone.
Director
Irvin Kershner
Cast
Barbra Streisand
David Selby
Ariane Heller
Terry Smith
Gary Smith
Jane Hoffman
John C. Becher
Jacobo Morales
Paul Benedict
George Irving
Pearl Shear
Carl Gottlieb
Joseph Bova
Mary Louise Wilson
Marilyn Curtis
Cynthia Harris
Iris Brooks
Vassili Lambrinos
Marina Durell
Barbara Rhoades
Conrad Bain
Isabel Sanford
Carol White
Danny Black
Conrad Roberts
David Downing
Ji-tu Cumbuka
Paul Dooley
Jane Betts
Anne Ramsay
Margo Winkler
Lois Smith
Renee Lippin
Terry O'mara
Lee Chamberlin
Jennifer Darling
Marilyn Coleman
Jane House
Pitt Herbert
Janet Brandt
Tammy Lee
Randy Ginns
Stanley Appleman
Moosie Drier
Jessamine Milner
Mark Vahanian
Juan Decarlos
Caryn Matchinga
John Dennis
Norman Field
Efrain Lopez Neris
Steven Britt
Stockard Channing
Rita Karin
Dee Timberlake
Juan Canos
Alicia Castroleal
Kevin Bersell
Sully Boyer
Miriam W'abdullah
Beth Luzuka
National Senegalese Dance Company
Somburu Tribe Of Kenya
Crew
Bernard Abramson
Richard F. Albain
Clinton R. Althouse
Eric Anderson
John P. Austin
Tom Bartholomew
Jeff Benjamin
George Berrios
Arthur Booker
James Brubaker
Colin Campbell
Robert Chartoff
Cis Corman
Betty Crosby
Janet Crosby
Robert De Vestel
Joe Ellis
Martin Erlichman
Henry Gellis
Billy Goldenberg
Gloria Gonzales
David Haber
John Hammell
Lee Harman
Paul Herd
Harry Horner
Richard Jackson
Danny Jordan
Lawrence O. Jost
Howard W. Koch Jr.
Robert Lawrence
Alan Levine
Terry Lewis
Andrew Marton
Lambert Marx
Rodger Maus
Harry Mines
Eva Monley
Robert Moore
Arnold Orgolini
Lisbeth Owen
Leon Perer
James Plannette
Hal Polaire
Richard Portman
Kaye Pownell
Salvador R. Robinson
Joel Rosen
Peter Salim
Jerry Shapiro
Harold Shiffman
Frank Shugrue
Ralph Singleton
Keith Stafford
Tony Stimolo
Shirlee Strahm
Bernie Styles
Norman Suffern
Edward Thompson
Jack Whitman
Dwight Williams
Gordon Willis
Irwin Winkler
Albert Wolsky
Sheila Woodland
Paul Zindel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Character names for actors Jane Hoffman and John C. Becher, listed in the onscreen credits respectively as "Mrs. Koerner" and "Mr. Koerner," are listed as "Mrs. Yussim" and "Mr. Yussim" in the film's pressbook and some reviews. A few other minor character names are also listed incorrectly in the pressbook. Although copyright records list a running time of 88 minutes, that is probably an error as all other sources list a running time of either 97, 98 or 105 minutes.
The film, like the best-selling novel Up the Sandbox! by Anne Richardson Roiphe, featured many fantasy sequences in which "Margaret Reynolds" (Barbra Streisand) daydreams about situations that take her out of her ordinary existence. At the time of the novel's release it was considered by many critics to be a feminist questioning of the role of motherhood in the modern age.
Up the Sandbox was the first Streisand film for First Artists Production Company, which she formed jointly with actors Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Sidney Poitier in 1969, and which released its first film, Pocket Money, in February 1972. Many of the film's interiors were shot in Los Angeles, with extensive location shooting in New York City and Nairobi, Kenya. Interiors for the sequence in which Margaret visits her husband's office were shot in the Edward L. Doheny Memorial Library at USC, with exteriors for the same sequence shot at Columbia University in New York. In an article in Daily Variety on August 15, 1972, producer Robert Chartoff was quoted as estimating that production costs in Los Angeles ran $13,000 per day, while in New York City, they ran $19,000, but only $8,000 per day in Africa.
According to a October 30, 1972 Daily Variety news item, a negative roll of footage from a party scene had been lost at Technicolor. The article reported that, because the lost footage did not involve Streisand or other principals, they would not have to reshoot the scenes and would edit together outtakes for the film.
The National Senegalese Dance Company of Dakar, Senegal made a special appearance in the film performing the tribal ritual fertility dance during the African sequences. Modern sources include Jason Gould, son of Streisand and then-husband Elliot Gould, in the cast as a young boy.
Key art for Up the Sandbox featured a stylized picture of a pregnant Streisand tied to a life-sized baby bottle. Reviews were mixed for the film, with most reflecting the comments made in New Yorker that the picture was "A Joyful Mess-a picture full of sass and enthusiasm and comic strokes that doesn't seem to have discovered what it's meant to be about." In the opinion piece "There's a Cop-Out in the 'Sandbox'," by Rosalyn Drexler in the Sunday, January 21, 1973 New York Times, the author wrote that the film "becomes a clumsy reafirmation of the notion that staying at home and having babies is the best thing for a woman to do, especially if her husband 'generously' likes babies and is willing to give her one day a week off."
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1972
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1972
