Streisand and Joan Rivers Once Played Lovers

The lesbian kiss Joan Rivers shared with a teenage Barbra Streisand while performing in a play more than 50 years ago must have made quite an impression on the comedian, as she's still talking about. In a first person essay published on the blog of the Canadian newspaper National Post, Rivers remembers highlights of her life and career as she prepares to return to the red carpet at tomorrow's Academy Awards ceremony.

"The first play I did was in Greenwich Village in the early '60s. Barbra Streisand and I played lovers and we kissed," Rivers recalls. "This was before she was singing, before anything. I knew she was talented, but you never know what someone will be. She was a fabulous kisser, that's what I knew."

Rivers previously revealed the play was titled Driftwood and it was performed in New York in 1959. Rivers, then known as Joan Sandra Molinsky, says that the play originally called for a male character, but producers couldn't cast it and she offered to do the play if the characters were made lesbians. Rivers says Streisand was "really thrilled" with the idea.