4.
Cis and Harvey Corman were eating dinner when Barbara wandered in. They weren’t expecting her. They looked up with some surprise as she approached the table.
“Ya know,” she said. “I’m going to enter a contest for singing.”
“Why would you do that?” Cis asked. “You don’t know how to sing.”
“Yeah, I do.”
This they didn’t know. “Well, sing for us,” Cis said.
“I’m too embarrassed,” Barbara replied.
They encouraged her, saying that she had no reason to be embarrassed around them. So Barbara decided she’d sit on the table and face the wall. Setting down their forks, Cis and Harvey gave her their full attention. Barbara began to sing.
“When a bee lies sleepin’ in the palm of your hand . . .”
It was the Harold Arlen song “A Sleepin’ Bee,” originated by Diahann Carroll in the musical House of Flowers. Truman Capote had contributed to the lyrics, and June Christy had covered it a couple of years earlier. Barré had taught it to Barbara over several painstaking days in his apartment. The Cormans listened raptly.
Barbara finished with “A sleepin’ bee done told me I will walk with my feet off the ground when my one true love I has found.”
Slowly she turned around, anxious to see how her friends had responded. Cis and Harvey were “drenched in tears,” as Cis would admit. None of them would ever forget the moment.
5.
The King Arthur Room was a small, intimate space tucked within the spacious if low-ceilinged Roundtable on East Fiftieth Street. Formerly the Versailles, the venue was the New York home of the Dukes of Dixieland, and it was here that Barré brought Barbara on this special night. With his father’s Diners Club card, he’d splurged on a dinner of steak and mashed potatoes. Yet no matter how tasty the London broil, it was for what came after dinner that Barré had brought Barbara to the Roundtable.
That tonight was a celebration at all was a relief. Barbara had won the contest at the Lion! Barré had been worried that the two numbers she’d felt comfortable enough singing—“A Sleepin’ Bee” and “When Sunny Gets Blue”—were both ballads, and he knew the crowd at the Lion tended to go for more up-tempo show tunes. But there’d been no time to practice anything new, so they’d gone with what they had. Terry had dressed Barbara in a feathered boudoir jacket and layered skirt, all in shades of lavender—appropriate, given the venue. But then, on the way to the club, she’d gotten the jitters, and Barré had had to talk her through them by reminding her that a good actress could play any part, even a nightclub singer.
The place had been packed. The talent shows, held Tuesdays at eleven pm, were very popular. Given that Barbara’s competitors that night were a couple of typical comics, Barré figured she had the thing aced—until he’d looked up to see a striking young woman stride into the club, all legs and self-confidence. She was Dawn Hampton, a jazz singer and dancer who was tight with Burke McHugh, the club’s manager. She was also part of a family of musicians well-known in the world of jazz, and she had performed at the Apollo Theater and Carnegie Hall. McHugh thought Hampton “sang like there was no tomorrow.” With her expressive eyes, spirited laugh, and gorgeous legs, Dawn Hampton was everything Barbara was not: experienced, polished, and lovely. Plus she had connections. Barré’s heart had sunk.
Hampton had indeed been spectacular when she got up on stage, bringing down the house with her hot jazz. But Barré had noticed a very different alchemy when Barbara took the microphone. Maybe the gay men in attendance had been rooting for the homely girl over the pretty one, the underdog over the luminary. Whatever their motivation, the audience had responded to her intimately. Their usual raucous bar behavior had been stilled. There’d been something about the simplicity of it all, this small girl in purple feathers, standing beside a piano, singing an uncomplicated song about a sleeping bee. Dawn Hampton was a polished pro. Barbara was a tenderfoot, though she made it all seem so terribly easy. The lyrics that came from her lips were “liquid and languorous,” Barré thought, and even when she’d decided to improvise a bit, taking the mike and walking among the tables—plunging herself into darkness when the spotlight couldn’t find her—she hadn’t lost the audience. She’d kept right on singing. Even tripping over a patron’s chair on her way back to the stage hadn’t stopped her from ending with the big finish she’d practiced in Barré’s apartment. The room had exploded into cheers for her, and she won the contest.
Cheers meant something for a girl like Barbara. Dawn Hampton had heard them many times before—at Carnegie Hall, no less. The comics and pianists at the Lion had also basked regularly in the hoots and whistles of the crowd. But for Barbara, this was something very new. She’d taken her bows for Picnic and Driftwood and The Insect Comedy—but she’d been part of ensembles then, and the audiences had been cheering for everyone, not just her. That night at the Lion, however, the cheers had been solely for her, and they went on and on. Suddenly the invisible girl from Brooklyn was being seen by everyone in the room. What’s more, they liked what they saw.
The Lion expected her to appear again, on Saturday night, and sing on a bill with three other acts. Barbara was leery about being roped into a gig that might keep her from auditioning for roles in the theater. She told friends that she only agreed to the Lion’s request because they promised dinner—a line that quickly became a running joke among Barré’s friends, that Barbara could be had for a baked potato. But Barré had convinced her that a gig at the Lion would be great exposure for her, as both a singer and an actress. And he pointed out that they had nearly a week this time to prepare a really strong repertoire.
That was why they’d come to the Roundtable. In between rehearsals for Henry V in Central Park, Barré had been playing his records nearly nonstop for Barbara, seeing if anything from Ethel Waters or Ruth Etting might tickle her fancy. He instructed her to listen to the way they all told stories with their songs. As an actress, she could do that, too. “A Sleepin’ Bee” could be a three-act play, Barré suggested, told first by a young girl, then by a grown woman, then finally by an old lady looking back. Barbara responded well to the technique. But she insisted she couldn’t “learn from a record,” and Barré agreed. So he’d brought her here to the Roundtable so she could watch and listen to someone on whom she might model her act.
By this point, Mabel Mercer was an old crust of a chanteuse, sitting like a dowager queen on a throne before her audience, her voice croaky and tattered from decades of singing in smoky rooms like this one. Barbara watched closely as Mercer came out onto the stage wearing a brocade gown. A soft pink light picked her out in the dark mahogany room. At sixty, she looked much older. Her cinnamon skin had turned to leather. With perfect posture Mercer sat down in her chair, barely moving at all as she started to sing. The most she did was occasionally lift a shaky hand toward the audience.
Mercer began her first song, and Barbara wasn’t impressed. “She can’t sing,” she whispered to Barré.
Barré understood that Mercer was “an acquired taste, like certain ripe cheeses.” So he tried explaining to Barbara that the old pro was a “song stylist” and that she should concentrate on her phrasing, not her voice.
Barbara complied. She listened to Mercer rasp her way through a couple of ballads, a storyteller as much as a singer. “I can do this,” she whispered to Barré at last. It was the same conviction that made her sure that she could play Liesl or Hamlet or Juliet—the belief that she could do anything if just given the chance.
Mercer ended with Bart Howard’s “Would You Believe It?” Looking out over the audience with half-lidded eyes, she suddenly snapped her fingers, just once, as she was finishing the song. Barré had never seen Mabel Mercer snap her fingers before, and he was overjoyed, leading the applause with enthusiasm.
Barbara was less enthusiastic. But Barré had seen how she’d observed the old pro, taking note of the way Mercer had turned her head, the way she’d sung her songs with beginnings,
middles, and ends. It was exactly the way Barré had been coaching Barbara to do. He hoped she’d picked up enough bits and pieces to make into her own.
Barbara, however, when she was asked, insisted that watching other performers taught her absolutely nothing—except “what not to do.”
6.
The first time they’d tried to make love Barré had stopped midway through because he didn’t have protection. He’d made that mistake before, and he told Barbara they should plan their first time carefully. They should pick a night, he said, and he’d buy some rubbers, and she’d bring some baby oil. Barbara complained that this didn’t feel very spontaneous, but she went out and bought the baby oil.
Now, watching Barré lather his face in the bathroom mirror, wrapped only in a towel, she told him she’d never seen a man shave before. Sheldon had been out of the house by the time she was paying attention, and she’d certainly never looked at Lou Kind for any longer than she absolutely had to. That Barré’s beard was so heavy intrigued her. Barbara found it “very masculine,” she said, so much so that she couldn’t resist lifting a corner of Barré’s towel and purring like Mae West, “Whaddya got under there, big boy?”
Barré had told her that he was bisexual. While other girls might have been taken aback by such an admission from a boyfriend, Barbara had seemed to view it as a challenge. In the last few weeks she’d become increasingly sexually aggressive, quite a step for a girl whose mother had done her best to instill in her a fear of sex. “You don’t screw anybody until you get married,” Barbara remembered her mother saying, or words to that effect. And Barbara was hearing such admonitions from her mother more frequently these days. Her lack of funds had forced her into the once-unimaginable scenario of retreating back to Brooklyn several nights a week.
Making love to Barré was the logical next step, and a little bisexuality shouldn’t prove to be an obstacle. They were always flirting, throwing around Mae West double entendres that they had picked up from late-night movie viewings. And so Barbara kissed the back of Barré’s neck and played with the towel around his waist. “What’s the matter with your animal?” she cooed, using their favorite West line. But Barré once again begged off, arguing he’d be late for rehearsals. Barbara wanted to know when they’d finally make love. He promised her soon.
He kept that promise. On a night after Barbara had wowed them yet again at the Lion and agreed to defend her title once more the following Tuesday, Barré took out a canister of marijuana, rolled a couple of joints, and taught Barbara how to smoke. Soon they were both high, and naked, and making love. Nothing the matter with the animal now.
Barré believed that he was Barbara’s first lover. She told him he was, and that she was giving herself to him. Holding her in his arms, he felt her tremulous vulnerability. During daylight hours she might believe fervently that she could do anything and be anyone. But at night—naked in Barré’s arms—the little voice that insisted she wasn’t good enough, or beautiful enough, was as real as anything else. In these more vulnerable moments, Barbara needed reassurance, and Barré did his best to give it to her. Lying there with Barbara in his arms, he felt the enormous weight of the trust she had placed in him, and he hoped he would never hurt her.
Of course, she wasn’t entirely vulnerable. With sensuous strokes of her long fingernails, Barbara caressed Barré’s back, a sensation both relaxing and arousing, but occasionally painful, too. Barré realized that Barbara’s nails—by now three inches long, forcing her to use a pencil eraser to dial a phone—would forever “prohibit a certain degree of intimacy” between them, or between Barbara and anyone else. Never could she fully touch another human being with her hands. And if her nails symbolized her own reluctance to get too familiar, they were also ever-present reminders that if anyone trespassed too closely, she could, and would, fight back.
7.
Burke McHugh ran the Lion like his own little Vegas showplace. It didn’t matter that the club was just a cubbyhole in a brownstone on West Ninth Street near Sixth Avenue, the kind of place that never saw its shows listed in the calendar section of the Times. McHugh still populated his stage with people he considered stars, such as Dawn Hampton, whose hot jazz regularly burned up the back room. The Streisand kid—the one who’d been winning his contests for the last few weeks—also had potential. She was back again tonight, handing her music to pianist Pat McElligott, telling him that she’d added a couple of new numbers. If she won again tonight, McHugh had decided, he’d have to retire her from the contest so somebody else could have a chance. He regretted having to put an end to Barbara’s run, however, since the little waif had been good for business. Word had gotten around that she was special. “Talented in a way nobody else is,” patrons were saying. And what showman didn’t love discovering someone like that?
She was a sharp cookie, that Streisand. After winning her second contest, she’d told McHugh that she wanted three pictures of herself, not just one, on the sign promoting the Saturday night show. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a look, McHugh thought. He would know. With his classic all-American handsomeness, he’d been one of the nation’s top male models. For several years he’d been the man shaving his face in the Gillette razor television commercials. He’d also managed his own modeling agency, where he’d learned that beautiful people weren’t always the best salespeople. “Perfect” models didn’t have the same appeal, McHugh believed, as those who looked “real,” who were “believable,” and thus “saleable.”
Barbara was as real as they got, and the Lion’s regulars had taken to her. She’d been hired to work the coat-check room during the week. The offbeat characters who patronized the club all adored her. Barbara had quickly figured out that the clientele was largely gay, but had nonetheless been surprised to learn just how gay. That first Saturday she’d performed, Cis had come to cheer her on, and Barbara had pointed out that they were the only women in the house, as if Cis couldn’t have seen that herself.
For tonight’s competition, Barbara was adding “Why Try to Change Me Now?” and “Long Ago (and Far Away),” both Sinatra standards, to her set. She and Barré had been practicing them all week, giving the songs as many unusual touches as possible. It was Barbara’s offbeat personality as much as her gorgeous voice that drew other performers to the Lion to check her out. Popular stage and television actor Orson Bean was brought by some friends one night, and he’d thought she was “simply fabulous.” Paul Dooley, who’d recently made a splash in Fallout, a revue at the Renata Theater on Bleecker Street, was another who’d heard about this “crazy girl with the beautiful voice” and came by the Lion to see for himself. Dooley was struck by the fact that Barbara “had the poise of a forty-year-old saloon singer” when she was only eighteen years old. Of her audience she seemed to demand, “Look at me!”—and, indeed, Dooley found that he couldn’t look away. “Young people don’t usually have that kind of confidence,” he said. “They don’t usually trust their talent.”
Yet Barbara was so unusual that not everyone responded to her in the same way. While Bean and Dooley saw her as fabulous and confident, Walter Clemons, who played piano for Mabel Mercer and, like the others, had slipped in to see what all the fuss was about, perceived her as “terribly nervous.” In Clemons’s view, Barbara was “hostile” to her audience, with none of Mercer’s legendary generosity. Her eccentric syntax seemed to him “convoluted and interior,” leaving him confused as to what she was talking about. All he could feel coming from her was the “terrible resentment of an ugly girl.”
But Clemons was in the minority. That night Barbara won the contest once again, and Burke McHugh made much hoopla over the fact that he was retiring her as the Lion’s “undefeated champion,” which, of course, only prompted more hoots and hollers and whistles from the crowd. Barbara would perform one more week as the winner, then it had to be someone else’s turn.
Standing off to the side, Barré noticed the look in Barbara’s eyes. He’d seen it every time she’d been declar
ed the winner, the champion, the best. Her face would come alive as if she’d been “plugged into the wall,” an “electric” look generated by the power of the applause. Barbara had been so hungry for attention, so desperate for praise and affirmation, Barré thought—and “now she was getting it.” And the look in her eyes told him that she believed “she could go on getting it for the rest of her life.”
8.
In the cab on the way over to one of her final performances at the Lion, Barbara told Terry Leong that she was changing her name. He was surprised. He didn’t think she’d ever do such a thing.
Not her last name, Barbara told him. Her first.
Terry had always known his friend wanted to be unique. But he also knew that she didn’t want some made-up stage name such as Joanie Sands, which some people had been suggesting, “because that was too false.” The name Barbara had never thrilled her—in fact, she said that she “hated” it —but ditching it entirely seemed too drastic, an indication that she was “losing touch with reality.” So she told Terry that she had come up with a different idea.
When they got to the club, she strode over to Burke McHugh and instructed him to change the spelling of her name on her posters. “I wanna take an ‘a’ out of Barbara,” she said. An “a,” he repeated, not understanding. “Yeah,” she said. “The second one.” From now on, she insisted, her name would be spelled B-A-R-B-R-A.
Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand Page 6
