Streisand

by Anne Edwards

  To add to her pressures Hello, Dolly!, starring Carol Channing, had just opened and was being hailed as the biggest musical hit since My Fair Lady debuted eight years earlier. Streisand feared her own success would be overshadowed by Channing, who was the toast of Broadway, the darling of the reviewers. Both Hello, Dolly! and Funny Girl would be compared as period musicals with strikingly similar numbers – Streisand’s ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ and Channing’s ‘Before the Parade Passes Me By’. Both shows were about strong, controlling women, although Dolly gets her man in the end.

  The day before opening night, the first and final scenes still were not set. Jerry Robbins now had Fanny entering with two Russian wolfhounds on a leash. Handling the dogs while crossing the stage, pausing midway to shrug her shoulders and then continuing, proved – thanks to the misbehaviour of the animals – to be more daunting than any of her splashy musical numbers. The scene remained until the last preview, after which – Streisand in a frazzle – the dogs were fired. The next morning the scene was rehearsed with Fanny sweeping on and across the stage as before but sans animals. The last scene was rewritten and rehearsed just three hours before the curtain rose on opening night, 26 March 1964.

  A state of anxiety enveloped Streisand. Elliott remained in her dressing room with her until her last call. She crushed out the umpteenth dgarette she had puffed on sporadically while she waited. Her dresser gave her costume and hair a final check. The assistant stage manager escorted her across the vast backstage area to the wing from where she would make her entrance.

  Milton Rosenstock led the orchestra into the final chords of the overture. The curtain began to rise and she started forward on stage to her entrance. There was wild applause the moment she reached mid-stage, a surprise as she had not realised so many of her record fans would be in the audience. The applause remained thunderous after each one of her solos. Her ability to match Fanny Brice’s gifts for hilarity and pathos overrode any objections to the weak book, or the skimpiness of the Ziegfeld Follies numbers that the rising cost of the production had exacted. Her regal descent down a Ziegfeld staircase, dressed as a pregnant bride as a tenor sang ‘His Love Makes Me Beautiful’ was as memorable as Channing’s descent down the famous red-carpeted stairway at the Harmonia Gardens. There were no dancing waiters to sweep her off her feet at the bottom of the staircase, but her ‘Oy vey, am I beautiful!’ as she openly advertised her condition by placing her arms around the swollen stomach beneath her lavish wedding gown, brought the audience to its feet just the same. It was also clear that the number that was almost scrapped, ‘People’, which she sang standing alone on a stage lit by a summer moon, was the hit of the show and that whatever fate was in store for Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand was now a bonafide star.

  The standing ovation she received when she took her curtain bows brought this smack home to her. She was in a state of high exhilaration when Elliott came backstage directly afterwards. He understood, better than anyone, what her personal success meant to her. Although she had always said she wanted to be an actress, her ambition was to become a star. Never would she have been satisfied to act without stardom as so many fine professionals do and as Elliott thought would probably be true in his case. Barbra needed stardom as a way to validate her worth and he was glad for her yet frightened at the same time that her fame might adversely affect their relationship.

  A lavish party at the Rainbow Room following the opening had been arranged by Ray Stark. Wearing borrowed diamonds as her own had been stolen the week before from the Starks’ palatial East Side apartment, Fran presided elegantly over the party. The cavernous Rainbow Room, sixty-five storeys above the streets of New York, its window wall looking out on a brilliantly lit Manhattan night view, was filled with illustrious guests, who for some reason were greeted on arrival by the band with several resounding choruses of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Former New York State Governor Thomas Dewey and Dr Ralph Bunche, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1948 Arab-Israeli truce, were chatting warmly. New York Senator Jacob Javits was talking to an ebullient Sophie Tucker, the last of the red-hot mamas. Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis was hosting a large table of high-society guests. Bette Davis, Gary Cooper and his stunning, socialite wife, Rocky, and something like 300 others had gathered and were waiting at their tables, along with those in the company who had already arrived, for the star to appear.

  At the stage door of the Winter Garden, with Elliott clearing a path, Streisand forced her way through the throng of fans, reporters and well-wishers. Microphones were pushed in front of her, cameras flashed in her face, blinding her. She clung to Elliott. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she muttered, terrified. People were pawing her even as Elliott and a chauffeur helped her into the rear seat of her newly purchased Bentley. She had just experienced perhaps the single, greatest, personal triumph Broadway had seen in many years. There had been too many curtain calls for her to count. Channing was marvellous in Hello, Dolly! but it was a role that many others could and would play, eventually including Streisand herself. Funny Girl would be a hit only because Streisand’s performance was memorable. And because she had made the role so very much her own – as with Yul Brynner in The King and I – it would impede the success of any other performer doing it.5

  She looked elegant as she entered the Rainbow Room on Elliott’s arm, he in a handsome tuxedo and she in a dramatic, form-fitting black gown. Her hair, cut short for the wigs she had to wear in the show, was coiffed in a gleaming copper helmet around her face. A tremendous ovation greeted her arrival. Everyone stood up, even Bette Davis who was notorious for her lack of enthusiasm in matters of theatrical protocol. Ray Stark rushed up to his star and guided her through the groups of cheering people while the band played ‘I’m the Greatest Star’ and then segued into ‘Coronet Man’. She finally sat down with Elliott at a reserved table overlooking the dance floor where the seventy-five-year-old Sophie Tucker plunged into a frenzied dance with a young man one-third her age. Champagne was poured, food was served in great abundance while everyone, including Diana in a designer gown bought for her by Streisand, waited for the morning papers with the reviews to arrive.

  ‘This is a talent, total, complete, utter and practicing. Vast talent, the kind that comes once in many years. That talent in Funny Girl flares and shimmers,’ wrote Whitney Bolton in the Morning Telegraph. ‘When she is a clown, she is an all-out clown, and when she is young Fanny fetched by handsome, dapper Nicky, confronted by a romance that could lead to more intimate association she manages first to josh the whole idea, then to hurl herself at their relationship and take it whole to her heart. Miss Streisand, also like Fanny, is no pretty girl, no merely pretty girl. She does not need to be and never will. That talent will flame for a long time. Much longer than the vapid accident of beauty.’

  That about said it all, but the rest of her notices were nearly as glowing. When the reviews were read there was much cheering and applauding. Champagne glasses were raised and raised again. A crush of people moved towards Streisand. Elliott held on to her elbow. He knew that crowds petrified her and he was giving her tangible support. Guests and the press brushed by him trying to get her attention. She was too caught up in the moment to be aware that her husband was being socially acknowledged but otherwise ignored. There was too much else to think about.

  She had made it as a Broadway star. The accomplishment was exhilarating. She more than gloried in her fame, she revelled in it, reading everything that was printed about her. She confided to the few old friends like Cis Corman (who was now a casting director) that she was glad she had never changed her last name, as all her early detractors now knew she was famous and there was great satisfaction to be gained from that. And yet, already that was not enough. Broadway stars seldom attained the kind of fame she dreamed about. The great fantasy of her childhood and youth remained out of reach – although closer. Her contract with Ray Stark stipulated that if Funny Girl was made into a movie she would repeat her role as Fa
nny Brice. Only then would she be truly famous, recognised all over the world – perhaps even immortal. All her considerable energy would now be pressed into service to make that dream a reality.

  Footnotes

  1 Garson Kanin’s Funny Girl files contain an exchange of letters between Kanin and Allyn Ann McLerie regarding this episode. On 28 February 1964, as the show got set for its New York previews, Kanin wrote McLerie, ‘I would have had it otherwise, Allyn Ann. I believed, then and now, that you brought a note to the show which it needed and needs now. You are wildly attractive and brilliantly talented. You are original and one hell of an actress.’ McLerie answered that she did not blame him in any way, it was just ‘the hazards of the trade!’

  2 According to the sound designers T. Richard Fitzgerald and Otis Munderloh, Funny Girl was the first Broadway show to use body mikes. Golden Boy, which opened six months later, was the second.

  3 Sydney Chaplin was married to dancer Noelle Adams.

  4 From the time of its first performance in Boston until it moved on to Philadelphia at least six songs were cut: ‘Baltimore Sun’, ‘A Helluva Group’, ‘It’s Home’, ‘Took a Little Time’, ‘Sleep Now Baby Bunting’ and ‘Absent-Minded Me’, which Streisand later recorded on a single. Other numbers that were cut either before Boston or after Philadelphia were: ‘I Tried’, ‘I Did It on Roller Skates’, ‘A Temporary Arrangement’, ‘My Daughter, Fanny the Star’, ‘He’s Got Larceny in His Heart’, ‘He’ and ‘Do Puppies Go to Heaven?’ Although the majority of these songs were never mounted in the production, the sheer number written for the show is unusual.

  5 Although Carol Channing would make a career of playing Dolly Levi in various touring companies and revivals, the black version with Pearl Bailey was a huge success, as were productions starring Ginger Rogers, Dorothy Lamour and Betty Grable.

  Making It

  ‘I always knew I wanted to be famous.

  I knew it; I wanted it; I was never contented.

  I was always trying to be something I wasn’t.

  I wanted to prove to the world that they

  shouldn’t make fun of me.’

  BARBRA STREISAND, 1966

  14

  A DAY SELDOM passed without Streisand’s name appearing in the press–what she said, what she wore, where she went. The spotlight had caught her in a blaze of stardom. She was ’the Face’, she was everywhere – on the cover of five major magazines, on the pages of Vogue, the jackets of three best-selling albums, the theatre pages of the nation’s leading newspapers. She could, as well, have been called ’the Voice’ as her records were played so frequently on radio and over Musak, piped into elevators and through restaurant sound systems. She had made it from the enormous, grim society of Nobodies into the small, enchanted circle of Somebodies.

  Vogue described her as having an ‘odd, compelling beauty ... the length of her neck, the slant of eyes, the round mouth. The way she moves her arms, her hands, with rare grace – but not too much’. A few months earlier she had been called a kook for the way she dressed, now she was a controversial fashion leader who by the end of the year appeared on the lists of both the ten best-dressed and the ten worst-dressed women.

  ‘Some stories make it sound like I used to be an outrageous ragamuffin and now only wear designer fashions,’ she said shortly after Funny Girl opened. ‘To keep warm I used to wear layers and layers of clothing – boots, leotards, wool dresses, big heavy coats, scarves, the works. As soon as the first leaf falls from a tree, I’m chilled to the bone. Now I can afford fur, and it’s like discovering a whole new world.’ A pony-skin peacoat was lined in bleached raccoon with a matching sailor cap and boots also made out of pony skins. Jaguar skins were used for a severely tailored, double-breasted man’s-style suit. The old caracul coccoon-shaped coat, purchased two years earlier for twenty dollars at a thrift shop, had been copied in white fur. She shopped with Elliott for men’s shirts and ties to wear with the men’s wear suits she currently favoured and that looked especially good with her new, boyish bob, adapted for a better fit of her costume wigs. She refused to wear the then obligatory girdle because she believed in ‘a minimum of underwear so that the body is unconfined’.

  ‘What about formal gowns?’ a fashion reporter asked her.

  ‘I can always take down the drapes and make a dress!’ she said, eyeing the deep red velvet ones near where she was sitting. Then with a good imitation of Scarlett O’Hara, rose from her chair, sidled over to the plush fabric and drew a corner of it under her chin. ‘Fiddle-de-de,’ she trilled in a Southern accent, ‘who cares!’

  There was a Streisand look, far out but fashionable, and a Streisand sound, the nasal Brooklyn-Jewish tone. After her performances in Funny Girl the rich and famous who were in the audience came to her dressing room to meet and congratulate this new phenomenon. She was invited to, and enjoyed attending, celebrity parties, revelling in the knowledge that she was now one of them. The master pianist Vladimir Horowitz confided, ‘I like listening to Streisand. I don’t know why but I do. I have her records although I don’t listen much to popular music ... A recording should have a balanced programme – like she does it.’

  She gave copies of her albums to all the members of her family. ‘Would you believe my Aunt Muriel and Uncle Larry didn’t know it was me when I played my first record for them,’ she commented. That her Aunt Anna had died the day she made her debut on television with Orson Bean, nagged at her. Family recognition meant a great deal.

  Much of the credit for the selection of the songs in her albums belonged to Streisand, but Peter Matz’s arrangements and the quality of the orchestra under his baton gave them their shining excellence. Matz had begun his musical career by creating the orchestrations, vocal arrangements and dance music for Harold Arlen’s House of Flowers (the score containing Streisand’s favourite song, ‘A Sleepin’ Bee’), and the composer’s next show, Jamaica, which starred Lena Horne. These had been followed with the arrangements for Noël Coward’s celebrated Las Vegas engagement and his Broadway show Sail Away. Matz was expert at working with unique singers and unusual material. His skills were perfectly suited to Streisand’s talents.

  In his artful arrangements, Matz avoided gimmicks or other crutches. He backed her as a master jeweller positioned a precious diamond in a setting to display all the gem’s facets and call no attention to itself. Like Streisand he was a perfectionist. She would insist on many more takes than the record producer asked for and was severely critical of her performance. She recorded her fourth album, People, in August 1964. Released the first week in September it quickly rose to the top of the charts. Most of the collection was devoted to good songs that were seldom heard or had just come into their own. But it also included a sophisticated version of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s ‘When in Rome’, a masterful arrangement of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s ‘My Lord and Master’ (from The King and I) which recast a pentatonic song into a pop song, and offered a new (and perhaps the best) arrangement of ‘People’ – this time with a quiet, touching ending, her voice soft but steady with emotion.

  The same quest for perfection that she pursued in her recordings was evident in her attention to every detail of the production of Funny Girl once it had opened. Chronically late to rehearsals, she was never late once the show opened. Due to an impacted wisdom tooth, she agreed to let her standby, Lainie Kazan, play Fanny for that evening’s performance. Kazan, who would later become well known in cabaret, films, and television, alerted the press. When word of this got back to Streisand she appeared, minutes before curtain, and went on heavily dosed on painkillers. The critics thus saw the star of the show in one of her poorer vocal performances, although she gave her spoken scenes an added urgency.

  The next day, in agony, the tooth was extracted and she was forced to remain home that evening for fear of haemorrhage. Once again Kazan notified the press that she would play Fanny Brice that night. Mention of her ability to carry off the role exceptionally well appeared in t
he press the next day. Fuel for Streisand’s wrath towards Kazan was added as Kazan was seriously involved in a romance with Peter Daniels, whom she subsequently married, and sang arrangements he had made for Streisand in her cabaret act. A schism between Daniels and Streisand over this took years to heal. She expected absolute loyalty from her friends. Infractions were not to be tolerated.

  Although she gloried in being the star, she did not enjoy the monotony of repeating the same performance eight times a week. ‘Truthfully, I couldn’t wait for the show to close,’ she later said. ‘Once the show was frozen, I felt frozen too. Suddenly I felt I was expected to do the same things in the same way, night after night. But that’s not the way I work ... When I’m on stage I’m living the moment; no two performances are ever exactly the same. That’s the challenge–to make every night as fresh as opening night.’ These changes in performance – a pause taken before a line, a new hand gesture or voice intonation – were microscopic to an audience, but to an artist like Streisand they were enormous.

  One evening she became incensed because the wax flowers used in a scene had not been dusted; another that a spotlight had not been well directed. Her habit was to write notes immediately upon her last curtain listing what was amiss in the performance and hand them to the stage manager to attend to the next day, when she would check out that they had been. She had learned quickly the meaning of star power and how to exert it.

  Less than a month into the show’s run, Elliott left for Jamaica to play a deaf mute, a small supporting role, in his first film, Quick Let’s Get Married, starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. It would prove to be thankless for a movie debut. None the less, it was work and it was the movies. ‘Look what playing a deaf mute did for Jane Wyman,’ he joked, a reference to Wyman’s Academy Award performance in Johnny Belinda. He was in Jamaica on 24 April, Streisand’s twenty-second birthday. As she took her curtain, a member of the audience shouted out his greetings and the rest of the theatre took up the cry. Milton Rosenstock led the orchestra in an enthusiastic chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’. An armful of roses was presented to her and she tossed them one by one over the footlights. Backstage, Ray Stark had arranged a cast party with champagne and a two-tier chocolate cake. Her co-workers gave her an irresistible fluffy, white, miniature poodle with melting brown eyes, the first dog she had ever owned. She named her Sadie and fell in love with her immediately.