MORE CASTING ABOUT: Barbra

Streisand has her feelers out for the best possible actor to play with her in "Yentl." She sent an emissary to catch Richard Gere's star turn in "Bent" on Broadway. Barbra's now mulling him over. (Gere got high marks.)

I asked Gere the other night if it took bravery to abandon films at the height of his first success and do a play on stage where in he portrays a rather unsavory homosexual. He shrugged: "No courage I decided what to do strictly by the script or screenplay. If 'Bent' had been a movie instead of a play, I'd still have said yes to it."