Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  There were millions of Barbaras out there, she reasoned. But by dropping one little vowel, she would become “the only Barbra in the world.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Summer 1960

  1.

  It was time to get serious again. That’s what Barbra was telling her new friend Bob Schulenberg as they strolled through Times Square. She was pointing up at the marquees—Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker at the Playhouse Theatre and Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke in Bye Bye Birdie at the Martin Beck—and wishing her name was up in those lights. This was where she wanted to be, not in some little club on the first floor of a brownstone in the Village.

  Bob seemed to understand her like no one else did. He was so different from Barré, who in his push for Barbra to sing seemed to have forgotten that what she really wanted to do was act. In fact, Barré had seemed to forget her entirely of late. He’d been spending most of his time up in Central Park, where Henry V had opened on June 29. Barbra felt his absence keenly, especially since most nights she had to trek back to Brooklyn and stay with her mother if she wanted a roof over her head. She had never been very good at playing second fiddle, even to William Shakespeare.

  That summer day, she was lonely and feeling not a little bit insecure, her friends believed. Here she had given herself to a man she thought truly loved her, and now suddenly he was gone for long stretches at a time. Her fears weren’t difficult to understand. The knowledge of Barré’s bisexuality “was always there in the back of her mind,” said one friend. When he wasn’t with her, Barbra wondered, where was he?

  One friend also believed that a certain amount of professional jealousy had bubbled to the surface. When the Times review came out the day after Henry V opened, Barré had been ecstatic to see he’d gotten a mention. Critic Arthur Gelb had felt that Barré’s scene was “as funny as Shakespeare intended.” Getting his name in the New York Times was thrilling—and even the omission of the accent aigu hadn’t dampened his excitement. Of course Barbra was happy for him. But it wasn’t long after this that she resolved “to once again get serious about her own acting career,” her friend observed.

  And no one seemed to encourage her as much as Bob did. He was an old friend of Barré’s whom Barbra had met late one night just after he’d arrived in New York from Los Angeles. Bob was staying with Barré until he could find a place of his own. He was a good-looking young man who, when Barbra first met him, was wearing a conservative suit and glasses. But when he’d looked at Barbra’s outfit, he’d revealed a rather eclectic interest in fashion. “Are those authentic T-strap shoes?” he had asked with excitement.

  Barbra had smiled and told him that they were indeed. Bob adored the shoes, as well as Barbra’s knee-length velvet skirt of mulberry violet and her pink nylons. “Who knew there were pink nylons!” Bob exclaimed. Heading over to the Pam Pam, an all-night diner on Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, the three of them had talked until nearly dawn about clothes, theater, and ambition. Bob was an artist; his tattered sketchbook was rarely out of his hands. He’d come to New York to be an illustrator, though in the interim he was paying his bills by working for the advertising agency Ellington & Co. at their Fifth Avenue offices. Like Terry, Bob was an artist stuck, for the moment anyway, in a nine-to-five job.

  Yet it was precisely that nine-to-five schedule that allowed Bob to spend more time with Barbra lately than Barré was. And now that Bob had found his own apartment on Gay Street, Barbra found it easier to store her clothes at his place than at Barré’s, since she never knew when Barré would be home. The sequined skirts sparkling next to Bob’s tweed jackets had led more than one of his friends to inquire jokingly if he’d become a transvestite since moving to New York. “No, just the friend of a girl who’s going to be a big star,” he would reply. Barbra, of course, was enchanted.

  2.

  A measure of relief washed over Barbra. She’d been asked by Curt Conway to take over the part of Hortense the French maid in The Boy Friend, slated for the following month at the Cecilwood Playhouse, the Theatre Studio’s summer theater in Fishkill, New York. To be chosen to perform at the Cecilwood was quite an honor. Although all Theatre Studio members were eligible, no student was “promised participation as a condition of his training.” Barbra was ecstatic that her teachers seemed finally to be recognizing her talent and hard work.

  But before she did anything else, she had to see Barré in Henry V. For weeks she’d been saying that she would and now it was Saturday, July 16, closing night. Although Shakespeare Festival productions were free, Barré had arranged for Barbra and Bob to be given special house seats up close to the stage. He desperately wanted Barbra to see his “first real moment of triumph on stage.” Scoping out the sight lines, Barré had assured himself that his ladylove would be able to view him perfectly.

  For the occasion, Bob was giving Barbra a whole new look. At her temporary house-sitting digs on West Fifty-fourth Street, Bob painstakingly glued false eyelashes to Barbra’s lids, extending them around to the sides of her face the way Claudette Colbert and Katharine Hepburn had popularized in the 1930s. From studying photographs of movie stars, Bob knew it wasn’t the length of a woman’s eyelashes that made them beautiful, but the thickness. So he cut a second pair of lashes very short and glued them just above the first pair, providing the fullness Barbra’s eyes needed to really pop out.

  This wasn’t the first time Bob had experimented with different looks for Barbra. When they went out on the town, he sometimes glued sequins to her eyelids, a trick he’d learned designing Ice Capades shows at UCLA. Another time, while having herring for dinner, they’d both admired the fluorescent skin of the fish and wondered if it might work better than the sequins. So they tried cutting it up with the idea of gluing it to Barbra’s eyes, but the skin stunk so much that they soaked it in perfume overnight. In the morning all the color was gone. They stuck with the sequins.

  Another night, on a whim, Bob had told Barbra to pick out everything she had in red. Out came a knit dress, a belt, shoes, and a cloche hat. Sitting Barbra down in front of a mirror, Bob applied her makeup in similar shades of red. Not just her lips and cheeks, but also her eyelids, which “made it seem as if red was her natural color,” Bob said. The whole look was finished off with a classic black trench coat.

  Of course, such glamour needed to be shared, Bob declared. Even though it was close to midnight, they ambled over to the all-night Brasserie in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue. Along the way, people stopped and stared at the woman in red with the gorgeous legs, long neck, and tiny waist. At the brightly lit Brasserie, the usual clientele of artists and sophisticates cast their eyes in Barbra’s direction as she sauntered in, dramatically flung her coat over a chair, and ordered choucroute garnie—sauerkraut with sausages and potatoes. A man came by the table and told her he’d loved her at the Lion. He asked her to sign his napkin. Barbra was thrilled. Bob, she felt, was turning her into a star.

  At long last people were seeing her as she’d always believed she should be seen. Bob was bringing out an inner beauty that even Barbra hadn’t suspected was there. When Bob had first turned her around in her chair to face the mirror, she’d found herself liking what she saw reflected there. No Method acting was required, no exercise in self-persuasion. She honestly saw how beautiful she could be, and the sensation was intoxicating.

  In the last couple of weeks, Barbra and Bob had grown very close. Barbra sensed her new friend had something more in common with Barré than just their years together at UCLA. Bob eventually admitted that he, too, was gay to Barbra, though, like Barré, he wasn’t fully open about it yet; telling friends back in L.A. that he lived on Gay Street in Greenwich Village was never easy for him. As she did with Barré, Barbra accepted the information placidly, though she rarely brought it up.

  Bob found that, free of the kind of sexual tension that existed between Barbra and Barré, he could take real pleasure in shaping his protégée, who was making remarkable progress. Not so long ag
o, he wouldn’t have risked taking Barbra to the Brasserie. When he’d first met her, she didn’t have what he called “restaurant smarts.” The napkin never went into her lap, for example; instead, Barbra would clumsily set her plate on top of it. If a vegetable was unrecognizable, she’d pick it up and dangle it across the table between her long fingernails to ask Bob what it was. Horrified, Bob realized that Barbra’s mother had never taught her the fine points of etiquette that had been so meticulously imparted to him. But instead of embarrassing Barbra by alerting her to her mistakes, he just made sure that she saw everything he did, from putting his napkin in his lap to keeping his elbows off the table. It was difficult, Barbra admitted, training herself “to keep one hand” in her lap. But eventually, to Bob’s great admiration, she caught on.

  This night their outing was supposed to be very simple. No restaurants, no nightclubs, no particular etiquette. Just a trip to Central Park to see Barré’s show. Still, Bob wanted Barbra to look striking. He dressed her in a black turtleneck and black Danskin tights under a black cardigan. He applied her makeup in shades of ash and gray. It took time to get her look just right. Bob would step back and look at his creation, who would sometimes turn to catch glimpses of herself in the mirror. “Patience,” he’d tell her, and Barbra would giggle in anticipation. She was never happier than when a man was fussing over her. A little more blush, Bob decided, then another layer of mascara.

  Meanwhile, the hands on the clock behind them continued to turn. Neither of them noticed the time, or at least neither of them commented on it.

  Uptown in Central Park, however, Barré did notice the time. It surprised him how much it mattered that Barbra see him in this play. Maybe it was because of all the time he’d spent preparing her for the Lion, and he wanted some acknowledgment, some support, in return. Barbra always seemed so indifferent to Barré’s own work, his own goals. As showtime neared, he kept peeking out to see if she and Bob were there yet. As the curtain went up, their seats were still empty.

  It was a warm evening. Temperatures had reached eighty degrees that day, with humidity near seventy percent. People sat on the grass that surrounded the stage fanning themselves with their programs. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, turning the waters of Belvedere Lake pink. By the time Barré made his entrance in the second act, long blue shadows had stretched across the park. Taking “a quick gander” out at the audience, he could see through the dusky night that the house seats he’d reserved for Barbra and Bob were filled. Barbra must be there watching him, Barré thought. He felt that he played his scene better than ever that night and that the applause went on even longer than usual.

  But when the play was finished and the footlights went out, he realized he didn’t recognize the two people in the house seats. Barbra and Bob must have been too late, Barré realized, and their seats had been given away. Scanning the crowd, he spotted his errant friends hurrying toward the stage, “fighting their way upstream against the exiting crowd” as if they had just arrived.

  As Barbra neared him, Barré asked her, “You just got here?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she admitted.

  Bob stepped up, blaming their lateness on the subway and on how long it had taken him to get Barbra’s clothes and makeup just right. “But she looks great, though, Barré,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  Yes, Barré thought to himself, she did look great. And looking great, he realized, had meant more to her than making it to his show on time. This show was the first thing he had done in New York “that had made any kind of a dent,” he kept repeating to himself, “and she couldn’t be bothered to come.”

  Unable to speak, he stood there “chewing on his fury.” Meanwhile Bob kept up a running commentary in Barbra’s ear about all the people who were admiring her. “There’s a handsome man across the way staring at you,” he whispered. “And another one over there. Look away. Look bored.”

  And Barbra, sweltering in her black turtleneck, did just that.

  3.

  Not long after, a contrite little girl knocked at Barré’s door.

  She didn’t apologize—Barbra rarely said she was sorry—but she was clearly wrestling with guilt. Barré let her in. She seemed scared, unsure of herself. The insecurities she usually kept so well hidden were suddenly bubbling up into view. She seemed to need to talk. So Barré let her ramble.

  She felt farblunget, she said. “All mixed up.” The owner of the Lion, Ernie Sgroi, had persuaded his father, the proprietor of the Bon Soir, one of the most important nightclubs in the Village, to give her an audition. But did Barbra really want to keep singing for a living? Would it take away from learning her part for The Boy Friend, which required a French accent? Pacing around Barré’s apartment, Barbra was confused, indecisive, and a little bit teary—a far cry from the poised creature in black who’d swaggered across the grass of Central Park just a few days earlier.

  But it wasn’t just her career that left her feeling farblunget, Barré sensed. Barbra’s head was filled with thoughts, she said, and her tinnitus was ringing in her ears. She’d taken Barré’s absence during the last few weeks of Henry V very personally. He knew that, but he couldn’t decide whether Barbra’s state of mind reflected the genuine feelings she had for him or just the narcissism he’d come to recognize in her,

  Others, however, were inclined to be more sympathetic. Bob had come to believe that Barbra was “very much in love with Barré.” Another friend thought Barbra’s guilt over missing Barré’s show had made her realize “how much she cared about him and how much she didn’t want to lose him.” After all, Barré was Barbra’s first lover, which was a powerful connection for an inexperienced eighteen-year-old girl. She had come back to Barré now with as much humility and contrition as she could muster—never much in Barbra’s case—but the fact that she was there at all spoke volumes.

  She also needed him. She had the Bon Soir audition to prepare for.

  Barré took her in his arms. He blamed Bob for “seducing” her into missing the show. Barbra had been “carried away” by her new friend, Barré believed, spellbound by the way Bob could transform her from an ugly duckling into a swan. So, sitting her down on the couch, he reassured her that he was still committed to helping her in any way he could. That seemed to make her relax, and for the rest of the afternoon they snuggled on the couch, practicing the French accent she was going to need for The Boy Friend.

  But something else was bothering her. It may have been that day, or one very much like it, that Barbra announced she wanted to have her nose fixed. Having had a taste of what being beautiful felt like, she seemed hungry for more. All she would need to do, Barbra believed, was “change the tilt . . . and take off a little bit.” The bump in the center of her nose, she said, would be left intact because Bob had told her if she changed too much of her nose, she’d have to change her chin, too. Besides, she “loved her bump,” she said. Her nose was her father’s nose. When she thought about changing it, she felt disloyal.

  Barré told her that she shouldn’t change a thing, that she was perfect as she was. No doubt that’s what she wanted to hear. It’s what Bob had told her too, but no doubt she really wanted to hear it from Barré. Cuddling next to him on the couch, she wanted very much for their relationship to work out. By the middle part of the summer of 1960, all of their friends knew that Barbra had fallen deeply in love with Barré. And not a few of them wondered if that was really such a good thing.

  4.

  Walking back from lunch with his sister, Sheldon Streisand told Barbra to walk a few feet behind him. He was joking, but the runs in the backs of her stockings did embarrass him. Never one to take jokes at her expense very kindly, Barbra bristled. “They’re not ripped in front and I don’t see them in back, so they don’t bother me,” she told her brother, and walked on ahead of him defiantly.

  For a girl who was usually so fastidious about her appearance, the runs in her stockings bespoke just how strapped for cash she was that summer. The money fr
om the Lion was over, and The Boy Friend was still weeks away. Sheldon had come to her rescue, securing her a job at the ad agency he worked for, Ben Sackheim, Inc. But Barbra could take only so much of his help. When Sheldon offered to buy her a new pair of stockings, Barbra adamantly refused. She was already in debt to her brother enough as it was, and being in debt to Shelly was too close to being in debt to her mother.

  With a halfhearted gait, Barbra trooped back up the steps of the Plaza Hotel at Central Park and Fifth Avenue, where Sackheim had its offices. Stepping into the elevator, Barbra was well aware that Shelly shared their mother’s concerns that she’d never make good. To a coworker, he called his sister “uncontrollable.” The two siblings, so far apart in age, had little in common. They probably exchanged few words as they rode the elevator back up to the twenty-first floor. There, Shelly went one way, heading back to his office, where he worked as an art director, and Barbra went the other way, trudging glumly to the front desk. She’d been put in charge of the switchboard for two weeks, replacing the regular operator who was out on vacation. To alleviate the boredom, Barbra often answered the phone using different accents, usually French, practicing for The Boy Friend—a way, she said, to keep her “acting alive.”

  It may have been that day, or one very similar (they all blurred together for Barbra anyway), that Shelly suddenly reappeared over her shoulder and told her there was a problem. Barbra, it seemed, was keeping callers on the line so long, rattling on in all her “made-up foreign languages,” that Sackheim employees couldn’t get calls in or out. And if the problem wasn’t her practicing accents, it was her penchant to gab with Bob, who was always amused by Barbra’s inept mastery of the switchboard. Never entirely sure which person’s extension was which, Barbra would be gabbing away with Bob when she’d suddenly announce that one of her lights was flashing. Bob would eavesdrop as she’d say, “Good afternoon, Ben Sackheim agency” and then connect the caller as best she could—a process she often got wrong, plugging people together who hadn’t called each other. Many times Bob listened in as Sackheim employees ordered lunch from a nearby deli, covering his mouth to muffle his laughter as the deli’s return call got routed to a person who insisted that, no, absolutely no, he had not ordered herring for lunch. Dissolving in laughter at his office fourteen blocks downtown, Bob couldn’t help but imagine Barbra playing the tangled-up switchboard scene from Auntie Mame.