Streisand

by Anne Edwards

  With Matz conducting, Streisand began to record on 23 January 1963. She was in the hands of ultimate professionals and she knew it. She came dressed in an old, loose sweater and a pair of khaki pants, no eccentric clothes. There was no audience, no one to play to. It didn’t matter that her hair needed washing and hung limply. Except for a smudge of lipstick and the pencil lines that extended the width of her eyelids and had become habit, she wore no make-up. The acne had greatly subsided since Wholesale and her relationship with Elliott, but in the photographs taken during these sessions the marks from it are plainly visible on her chin and right cheek. She usually masked this evidence of her adolescence with make-up. She was, however, here to work, not to impress, and present only were Matz, the recording producer Mike Bemiker, the engineers and the musicians. She badgered all of them into excessive overtime to try ‘just one more’ take.

  Obsessed with the need to get it right, as perfect as she could, she approached the making of this album as she would every subsequent endeavour of her career. She would listen to a replay over and over, hearing things others often did not, a breathiness in her voice that she did not like, a word in a lyric not emphasised to its best advantage. She refused to settle, to compromise, to consider the time and effort this was costing other people. This was her record. She would be the one to be judged.

  In three days, she recorded eleven songs for The Barbra Streisand Album, most of them numbers she performed in cabaret but with new arrangements: ‘Cry Me a River’, ‘My Honey’s Loving Arms’, ‘I’ll Tell the Man on the Street’, ‘A Taste of Honey’, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’ and ‘Soon It’s Gonna Rain’ on one side, ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, ‘Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now’, ‘Much More’, ‘Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking’ and ‘A Sleepin’ Bee’ on the other. ‘Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking’, a comic number, was written by Cole Porter for a television production of Aladdin. It presented her with her most difficult problem. She seemed unable to get a proper handle on the lyrics, which were not Porter’s best (it was his last show and his usually trenchant wit had failed him}. But ‘Soon It’s Gonna Rain’ and ‘Cry Me a River’, sung with a full, rich vocal quality, were so moving that even the experienced technicians who worked on the final cut (with Streisand standing over their shoulders) claimed they got goosebumps each time they heard them.

  Columbia executives, however, were mixed in their opinions, uncertain about the marketability of a concept album with no new songs on it that might take off and help it hit the charts. To make the album even more chancy, she had insisted on using on the cover a photograph of herself singing at the Bon Soir, her face half-concealed in darkness (even her bright china-blue eyes look brown in this picture}, and wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a bow at the neck and a loose-fitting herring-bone vest. Where was the sex?

  Ten years later she was to say, ‘I hear that first album of mine, where I’m geshreying and getting so emotional, I think, “Oh my God, how did they ever like me?” I’m embarrassed by it. The ending was totally wrong. It was the end of the world, “Happy Days”. It went Oooooo, aaaaaay, my voice cracked. It was crazy. I guess in a sense that was the purest me. I was yearning for just so much that you hear it in my voice. It’s very young, very high, very thin, like a bird. I think my voice has actually gotten better, warmer, mellower. But I probably lost some of my high notes. I don’t think I can sing as high.’

  On the record’s release, 25 February 1963, Streisand was sent on a promotion tour which began that week with a return engagement at the Blue Angel and was to end with an appearance at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach on 27 March. ‘Her nose is more evocative of moose than muse, and her eyes at best could be called Nilotic only by way of mascara, but about 2 a.m., when she sings “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home”, she’s beautiful, if home is only Brooklyn,’ wrote Robert Rourk, a respected critic, reviewing her Blue Angel opening. ‘She has a three-octave promiscuity of range, she packs more personal dynamic power than anybody I can recall since Libby Hollman or Helen Morgan. She can sing as loud as Ethel Merman and as persuasively as Lena or Ella.’ And he continued, ‘She is the hottest thing to hit the entertainment field since Lena Horne erupted, and she will be around SO years from now if good songs are still written to be sung by good singers.’

  By the second week in March The Barbra Streisand Album had made the charts. She was a recording star with huge revenues from royalties almost within her grasp. On the other hand, Elliott was having a tough time getting cast in another Broadway show. ‘My mate was making it and was very happy about it. I had to deal with it and I did,’ he says. They were both offered roles in the first London production of the Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical On the Town, Streisand in the part created on Broadway by Nancy Walker and Elliott to play the clownish sailor Ozzie, one of the three male leads in this ensemble piece. Erlichman advised her against leaving the country at such a critical time in her career. She was singing at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach at the time and a jobless Elliott was with her.

  Insecure at leaving her behind with the buzzards of success endrcling her, he kept up a running argument on why they should get married right away. She wouldn’t have to deal with Broadway wolves, and – more importantly – it would give them both a purpose in what they were doing. He had signed to appear in the production of On the Town only for the first three months of the show – and hey – she could come over to be with him during that time if only for a few days or a week.

  ‘How would it look in a piss-elegant place like London for us to stay together and not be married?’ he asserted.

  Elliott was actually proposing in a back-handed manner. Streisand, not yet ready to make such a commitment, agreed only that it might be a problem and with her usual flair for fictionalising her past life to the press, issued a story that they had just been married in Florida by a justice of the peace. The news hit all the columns. Friends and associates sent congratulations. Even Diana, who had met and liked Elliott, believed her daughter was now Mrs Gould. Two days after the fraudulent wedding announcement, Elliott left for London.

  Streisand was to follow shortly thereafter. She had been invited to sing at the Kennedy White House on 17 May, at a gala in honour of the Foreign Press Correspondents and at which she wore her first-ever, genuine ball gown, a glamorous white satin affair with miles of material in the skirt and a provocative neckline that exposed her well-divided cleavage. The gown was a great change from her flea-market wardrobe, but this was a special occasion. She was in genuine awe of President Kennedy – whom she had been too young to vote for – of being a guest at the White House, of the First Lady whose style and class she greatly admired.

  ‘You’re a doll,’ she told the President when they were introduced.

  He laughed and she instantly liked the crinkles on his face. ‘How long have you been singing?’ he asked.

  ‘About as long as you’ve been president,’ she replied.

  She had just celebrated her twenty-first birthday (24 April 1963), and she had made it big enough to meet the President and the First Lady of the United States. Pretty good for a girl from Brooklyn whom everyone thought was too homely to go on the stage.

  On the Town was to open in London in a week’s time. Streisand and Elliott had spoken for an hour or more daily since their parting. Whether it was neediness or longing, motivated by a fear of losing him or a love that she neither knew how to express nor to control, she could not bear to be away from Elliott. It made her crazy and terrified at the same time. More and more she was asserting her independence in her career, gaining a sense of power, the feeling of exhilaration that came from her success. And yet she longed to be with Elliott, missed him dreadfully. She needed to be loved and to love, but she was driven even harder by her need to concentrate all her efforts on her career. She was torn, but two days after her appearance at the White House, she flew to London to join him. London was swinging. A spirit of re
bellion had swept over this once conservative society. Skirts were up, restrictions down. She trusted Elliott but not her ability to hold him with a vast distance between them.

  Footnotes

  1 John Latouche (1917–56) was a brilliant lyricist, considered by current musicologists to be the precursor of Stephen Sondheim. He was noted for his original rhyming talents and the depth of feeling his lyrics expressed. Streisand would later record both ‘Lazy Afternoon’ and ‘Takin’ a Chance on Love’.

  2 A bootleg album of this cabaret tape entitled Barbra Streisand – Life, 1963 surfaced in 1985. Streisand sued the company and the album was withdrawn.

  3 Eight songs from this aborted album were included in Streisand’s 1989 four-disc collection Just for the Record. ‘Codfish Ball’ was excluded and another recording of ‘A Sleepin’ Bee’ included.

  11

  ON THE TOWN opened to cool reviews on 26 May 1963, just a few days after Streisand joined Elliott in London. Elliott received almost no personal notices: ‘long, lean and galvanically fit’ was all the Daily Telegraph said about his performance. Elliott, his hopes unrealised, fell into frequent gloomy moods. Streisand’s antidote was to keep him busy when he wasn’t appearing on stage. On Saturdays before his matinee, she dragged him down the many side streets off Portobello Road to weave in and out of the myriad displays of antiques, oddities, plain junk and souvenirs.

  One Sunday she hired a car and they drove out into the country, sampled bangers swilled down with beer at a pub and stopped at every antique shop on the way. She had discovered that the best values were Victoriana and 1920–30 art deco and as these periods had always appealed to her, she sent copious packages back to New York. She could afford almost anything she wanted. ‘A new apartment,’ she promised Elliott, ready for them when he came home. With the poor ticket sales of On the Town, it looked as if this might be sooner than they had anticipated.

  They were inseparable during her stay. ‘Elliott even looked happy despite the half-empty houses we played to at the Prince of Wales Theatre,’ one member of the cast recalled. ‘I think he wanted the show to be over so that he could go back to the States and be with Barbra. They were always touching and camping around. No one in Britain knew much about her yet. I remember some small mention of her in the London papers. Her first record was not yet released in Britain. They said they were married and no one had any reason not to believe it. Nor do I believe that anyone truly cared. She seemed to be gone almost as soon as she had arrived.’

  In fact, she had been booked on 9 June to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular television variety programme in America. ‘I liked Ed,’ she later carped, ‘but one thing that makes me crazy is how many people mispronounce my name. He was no exception. All during dress rehearsals I kept hearing him say, “And now let’s hear it from the Columbia recording star Barbra Streis-land!” It made me so nervous that during the actual broadcast, when it was my turn, I stepped behind the curtain whispering, “Streis-sand! Streis-sand! Like sand on the beach!” He ended up doing it right.’

  Three weeks later she was on her way to Las Vegas for an appearance as the opening act for Liberace in the massive show room at the Riviera Hotel. Streisand knew it was a mistake from the moment she stepped into the flashy lobby filled with slot machines and the jangling sound of the coins they take and dispense. Las Vegas is a gaudy Disneyland for middle-aged and retired people. It is not so much a place as an upside-down world where reality is checked at the front desks of garish hotels. People came to enjoy the desert heat, the gambling tables, and a chance to see in person the sophisticated old pros such as Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr, Noël Coward and the great stand-up comedians – Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Joey Bishop and Jerry Lewis – who had won early fame in the Catskills and went on to radio, films and television. Vegas audiences liked ostentation, the beautiful, long-legged showgirls in glitzy, sexy costumes, and the great female entertainers like Lena Home who knew how to razzle-dazzle her fans.

  Mid-June temperatures were in the 90s when Streisand arrived, her suitcase packed with the simple muted brown and tawny grey gowns she had chosen especially for the engagement. She had decided to dress ‘down’ for Vegas – elegantly, she believed, to create a stark contrast with the surroundings, to focus attention on herself. She chose slow ballads to sing to an audience to whom she was little known and who had paid a high price to see Liberace’s outrageous costumes and hear his flamboyant piano arrangements. Her act backfired, the audience tepid in their response. The hotel threatened to fire her. Liberace, who thought her voice and phrasing brilliant, prevailed.

  A meeting was called with the management. He would open the show, dressed in a red sequin tuxedo, with a big, up-beat number. Then he would introduce her as his discovery, make a big thing about it, play on his fans’ great love for him and promise to be back to play and sing all their favourites. Her act was cut from six to four songs and she was coerced into wearing a gold dress and some showy earrings that came from the hotel’s expensive boutique. She did not receive a standing ovation but the crowd, responding to the new theatricality of her appearance, were far more accepting and she won a host of fans. Still, her first night experience had been jolting. She had never previously appeared before a hostile audience. Liberace’s support had helped her through but her life-long struggle with stage-fright was born.

  She went on to the Coconut Grove, situated in the luxurious Ambassador Hotel and perhaps the most glamorous dinner-nightclub room in Los Angeles, able to accommodate over a thousand people and frequented by Hollywood’s famous and elite who kept up with who was new and hot in show business. This time she was the solo attraction, her material to include numbers from her first hit album, and ‘Miss Marrnelstein’ as an encore. This was her dream, to come to Hollywood and to be so sensational that she would be signed to a movie contract on the spot, an event that would show Diana that she was attractive enough to be in pictures. Once again she gave great thought to what she would wear.

  Clothes had become an important disguise for her. What she wore helped to define the person she wanted to be at a particular time. After her miscalculation in Vegas, for this engagement she had designed a red and white checked gingham jumper worn over a white cotton top with voluminous long sleeves – meant to be a parody of the kind of Swiss peasant dresses worn on Broadway by Mary Martin in The Sound of Music, which had been bought by Twentieth Century-Fox and would soon star Julie Andrews in the screen version. She thought it made a statement, showed how ’with it’ she was, and that it would catch the audience’s attention in a positive way.

  Both she and Marty Erlichman had been given accommodation at the Ambassador. Although she had a successful rehearsal on the afternoon before her opening, by the time she was due to appear stage-fright had enveloped her. It was nearly an hour before Erlichman managed to persuade her to leave her room on the fifth floor, step into the elevator and ride down to the Grove.

  A rumble of unrest and disapproval at being kept waiting had spread between the giant palm trees that grew incongruously in huge pots rimming the vast interior of the legendary room, three storeys high with a ceiling painted to look like a sky with sparkling stars. Her entrance was made from the back, a spotlight lighting her way. She was wide-eyed at seeing so many famous stars – Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Ray Milland and Edward G. Robinson were in the audience. As she went past a well-known producer and his heavily jewelled companion, she overheard the woman say as she stared at her gingham dress, ’And I’ve had to wait all this time to hear some farchadat [dopey] country singer?’ Never able to forget a detractor, she would comment sharply years later, ’I’m still here! I wonder where she is!’

  ’At first I guess they thought I was some kind of kook. I thought, “Gee, they’re going to hate me for being so late.” I made some cockamamie reason for it and they laughed. Henry Fonda even stood up and applauded after one song. Henry Fonda!’

  Her reviews were
sensational. The critics all commented wryly on her outfit. Hollywood enjoyed jokes on itself. But no one was interested in her for movies. Producers and agents in Hollywood spoke another language – ‘bankable’ (a star who could get financing for a film), ‘big at the box office’, and ‘a power to deal with’. Still, she liked the place, declared that one day soon she would be all three, that she and Elliott would set the town on its ass. Via long distance, Elliott cheered her on, soothed her nerves, told her how much he loved and missed her. The overseas calls were the highlight of his day. Every evening he expected to walk into the Prince of Wales and see a closing notice posted to the stage door, disappointed that it wasn’t there. He wanted to go home, to see Barbra, to make sure she was all right, that they still had a future together.

  He seldom went back to his digs after a performance. London was at the height of its gambling club popularity where members (or guests of members) could dine sumptuously and then go upstairs to the gaming rooms. Each club had select memberships. Theatre and film people were mostly concentrated at the White Elephant, the Curzon and the River Club, all three boasting elegant interiors. There was an excitement, an edge that permeated such establishments. Hit once again by the gambling bug, Elliott managed to run up several hundred pounds in debts, a significant sum considering the state of his finances at the time.

  ‘I didn’t have it to pay,’ he admitted later. ‘Five hundred dollars, and I think this was a larger sum, was enormous to me then. I went through some of the best acting I’ve ever done to escape; made up great inventive tales of why I was temporarily without funds.’ Fortunately, the show’s closing notice in early August spared him further humiliation. In Los Angeles Streisand was ending her Coconut Grove engagement, having just finished recording sessions with Peter Matz on her second album which included several Harold Arlen songs and some newer material like Billy Barnes’s dramatic piece, ‘I Stayed Too Long at the Fair’, already a favourite of hers, and Matz’s own ‘Gotta Move’. After all, she had just been named Entertainer of the Year by Cue magazine and the Top-Selling Female Vocalist by the National Association of Record Manufacturers. It pleased but did not satisfy her. She wanted to be recognised by her peers for a Grammy. Her contract terms settled, she accepted Liberace’s proposal to appear with him in Lake Tahoe, a three-hour drive from Los Angeles. After that engagement she would return to New York to start work on her third album for Columbia, who wanted to cash in as quickly as possible on her success.