Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  The birthday girl herself finally emerged, wearing a long wool dress that she’d bought at Filene’s Basement while the show had been in previews in Boston. Softness made sure to tell everyone that she’d paid $12.50 for it—marked down from $100. That was what the press had come to expect from Barbra’s wardrobe. Thrifty. Quirky. Kooky.

  Elliott was at her side. For her actual birthday he’d given her a rose, which had made her happy, though she’d told her mother that he’d given her cash. At least that’s what she told the press that she’d told her mother. It was getting hard to know what Barbra really said versus what she said that she said—or what her publicists said that she said.

  At her party, Barbra didn’t approach anyone; people came to her. Marty ran interference, keeping all but a few from getting in too close. Terry Leong never even got a chance to say hello to his old friend, even though he was planning to move to Europe soon to study fashion. Barry, pleased and surprised to have received an invitation, nevertheless was kept at arm’s length by Marty every time he tried to start a conversation with Barbra. Barry felt that the obstruction was “deliberate.” He believed that Barbra had given instructions to Marty beforehand “to keep her old friends at a distance.”

  Bob, however, was more sympathetic as always. He pointed out that with such a large crowd, intimacy was impossible. If anything, Bob blamed Elliott for the distance they felt from Barbra. From the start, Elliott had been uncomfortable around Barbra’s old friends, perhaps because they knew a part of her that he didn’t. Largely because of the “vulnerability” he perceived in Elliott, Bob had withdrawn, no longer asking Barbra to join him at some of their favorite old haunts. Their long telephone conversations and late-night makeup sessions were now things of the past. Barbra hadn’t shared much with Bob about her relationship with Elliott, but Bob thought he could figure it out. Elliott was very much in love with Barbra, which no doubt must have been exhilarating for her, given what she’d been through with Barry. And with Elliott “really lusting after Barbra,” she had “total control over him,” Bob observed. What more could Barbra want?

  As they stood off to the side, catching glimpses of Barbra through the crowd, Bob and Barry both had a sense that their old friend had left them for good. “I always thought you would be the legend,” Bob told Barry in a moment of reflection.

  “I don’t want to be a legend,” Barry insisted. “I just want to be a working actor.”

  Behind them, flashcubes were popping and people were applauding. Barbra was slicing her birthday cake.

  6.

  Her hair done up in a bun, Barbra rode onto the stage in a motorized cart with Robert Goulet, the star of Camelot, at the wheel. The announcer introduced them, but they seemed not to hear very well, since Barbra waved to the audience when Goulet’s name was mentioned and he waved when hers was. It was all part of a silly opening number on the May 29 episode of The Garry Moore Show, in which pairs of performers tramped across the stage in three-legged pants singing about teamwork. Barbra and Goulet were spared that indignity, though they struggled to sing along, mostly succumbing to giggles instead.

  Sharing the stage was Barbra’s rival for the Fanny Brice show, Carol Burnett, who most observers figured had better odds at landing the part since she was better known and already an Emmy-winning star comedienne. Perhaps for that reason the writers of the Moore show had given them no scenes together—a pity, because their humor might have worked well in tandem. Instead, Barbra was largely on her own. Moore introduced her after delivering his pitch for the show’s sponsor, Winston cigarettes. “One of the biggest thrills for a guy who’s been around this business as long as I have is the advent of a bright new young star.” The teleprompter speech he was reading from had been prepared from materials submitted by Barbra’s publicists, and they’d made sure to indicate exactly how to say Barbra’s name. With clear, specific emphasis, Moore enunciated “Streisand” as if he’d been practicing it or if he were reading from a pronunciation guide. The mispronunciation of her name during introductions was one of Barbra’s pet peeves, and she’d insisted to her publicists that it must not happen here.

  Moore went on, using the line about Wholesale that Softness had practically patented by now (“she stopped the show cold”) and then summed up with “I was delighted to learn during rehearsals this week that she is equally effective in straight numbers as she is when she’s being zany.” Moore was setting up a bit of business for later in the show, but Barbra usually seemed to find a way to have that point made in her television appearances.

  The camera moved over to a set designed to look like a tenement balcony. Barbra opened the doors and came walking out, all slinky, nothing like the giggly child glimpsed in the opening act. Her hair was long and loose around her shoulders, and she wore a dark, formfitting dress with straps that crossed over her chest. She sang “When the Sun Comes Out,” never stepping from her spot as she used her arms to make a grand, sensual sweep, bouncing ever so slightly as the lyrics heated up: “And the rain stops beating on my windowpane . . .” It was a startlingly sexy performance. As the camera moved in for a close-up, Barbra looked gorgeous, full-figured and full of passion. In that moment, it was easy to understand why Elliott was so turned on by her.

  Barbra was always at her sexiest and most attractive when she was feeling confident, and on the Moore show she was brimming over with belief in herself. When she finished the number and the host joined her onstage, their banter, though rehearsed, flowed easily, as if it were completely extemporaneous. “Barbra, I saw you in I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” Moore said, “and while you do have a comedy role, I also suspect that you are a very fine dramatic actress.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Garry,” Barbra agreed, delivering the line exactly right, disguising the arrogance with humor, placing her hand on Moore’s shoulder and hanging her head for an instant, laughing at herself as the audience laughed with her.

  Moore asked if she could prove her claim of being a great actress, and Barbra replied that she had a speech prepared. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she suddenly shouted, gripping the balcony railing as if she were a South American dictator addressing her people. Laughing for a moment, she quickly recovered her mock serious tone. “I ask you . . . to stay with us!” Gesturing dramatically, her voice grew louder and more Shakespearean. “We! Shall return! Immediately! After a word from our sponsor!” Moore mimed wiping a tear from his eye as they cut to a commercial. Barbra had been absolutely endearing, confident enough to have a little fun with herself and her own ambition.

  But it was in her next number that she proved transcendent. If anyone doubted that underneath her kooky, musical comedy exterior beat the heart of a woman who still wanted to play Juliet, all they had to do was watch her perform “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It was part of a regular segment on the Moore show called “That Wonderful Year,” in which the songs and events of various years were remembered. Tonight, the year was 1929. “Let’s be honest, 1929 was not a wonderful year,” Moore said, referring to the stock market crash. “On that Black Tuesday in October, there were many expensively dressed people without a penny to their name.” Cue the piano introduction to “Happy Days” as the camera switched over to the set of a darkened bar with a waiter wiping down tables. In walked Barbra, swathed in mink, diamonds dripping from her ears.

  One of the show’s composers, Ken Welch, who’d helped with arrangements on Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, had come up with the idea to use the song as an ironic commentary instead of the usual upbeat rallying cry. Barbra had jumped at the opportunity to prove—all kidding aside—that she really could act. No doubt it was the rehearsals for “Happy Days” that Moore had alluded to when he’d said he’d learned that Barbra was “equally effective” in straight as well as zany numbers.

  She was more than effective, actually. She was a revelation. In the three-and-a-half-minute number, Barbra created a fully realized, fully human characterization. Before she sat down at the table, she ran
a finger along the seat of the chair, withering the waiter with a disapproving look because of the dust. It was clear that this was a woman used to the finer things in life. But, like most people in 1929, she was broke. “Will a four-carat earring buy a glass of champagne?” she sang, removing the bauble from her ear, in lyrics specially written for this little introduction. The waiter, played by Bob Harris , a former chorus member on The Fred Waring Show, nodded and took the earring, heading off to fetch some bubbly. In song, Barbra went on to muse that she needed to celebrate, since her last million dollars had just gone down the drain.

  She was positively giddy in her denial of what awaited her. She was broke, she was poor, she was right back where she started from. The waiter brought the champagne and she downed the glass, immediately declaring she’d have another. The waiter pointed to her remaining earring. With a smile, she handed it over, then launched into the song. “Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again . . .”

  She sang louder and more boldly than most singers did on television, perhaps out of habit from singing every night on the Broadway stage. And though she kept a smile on her face, it was clear through the ironic words of the song that Barbra was feeling the pain and terror and desperation of her character. Snapping her fingers, she brought the waiter back for a third glass, this time giving him a ring in return. She seemed like a woman on the verge of tears—or madness. A bracelet was exchanged for a fourth glass of champagne, and when she sang about her cares and troubles being gone, the heartbreak was palpable. She ended the number shedding her mink and sensually caressing the champagne bottle. The applause went on for twenty seconds, longer than usual. Moore blew her a kiss and murmured under his breath, “Powerful.”

  The host was clearly impressed. So were the millions watching at home. Peter Daniels was in the wings, and in that moment he knew “Happy Days” had to go into Barbra’s act. It had the potential to be a signature song, as quirky and as unexpected as “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” but far more profound and poetic. In such roughs as TV variety shows, Daniels realized, were the occasional diamonds found.

  7.

  It seemed as if Ray Stark was always in the air. He lived in Beverly Hills, but every ten days he flew to New York, where he had a suite at the Hotel Navarro on Central Park South, and once a month he continued on across the pond to Europe, usually to Paris or London, but sometimes other cities as well. Stark logged about half a million miles in the air a year.

  But somehow this never slowed him down. For a man such as Stark, there was no time for jet lag. So, after his latest trip to Europe, he’d accepted Jule Styne’s invitation to see David Merrick’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale before he headed back to the Coast. There was a girl in the show, Styne told him, who’d make a perfect Fanny Brice. Since he was at an impasse with Robbins over the casting and eager to find someone to knock Anne Bancroft out of the running, Stark was very glad to consider any and all suggestions. The girl’s name, Styne said, was Barbra Streisand.

  After seeing the show, Stark had agreed that the Streisand kid was good. But her Miss Marmelstein was far from the vision he had for Fanny. The part needed pathos and intelligence and anger and sacrifice, not just broad comedy and a big voice. Styne agreed. That was why he insisted that Stark accompany him next to the Bon Soir. Barbra had started another run at the nightclub, and after seeing her once, Styne had been back every single night, so mesmerized had he become by her voice and personality. One regular patron thought that the composer seemed “smitten like a schoolboy.”

  And so, on a night in late May, Ray Stark carefully navigated his way down those dark, steep steps. Finding a table with Styne, he settled in to wait for Barbra Streisand. In that tiny room, on that tiny stage, she’d be so close he’d be able to see her sweat.

  The fact that Styne was so enthusiastic about the kid carried considerable weight with Stark. Jule Styne, who’d composed the music for High Button Shoes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, My Sister Eileen, Gypsy, and other shows, as well as many popular songs—including the Oscar-winning “Three Coins in the Fountain”—was already a Broadway and Hollywood legend. That was precisely why Stark had hired him to compose the music for the Fanny Brice show: He wanted only the best for a show about his mother-in-law.

  Stark had been trying to get the project off the ground for more than a decade. Shortly before her death in 1951, Brice had been writing a memoir, sitting down with a tape recorder and a good friend—none other than Goddard Lieberson. After Brice’s death, Stark had taken these reminiscences and, with the help of a paid writer, assembled them into a book. But the final product so displeased the family that Stark had paid the publisher $50,000 to get the plates back, which kept the book from ever being published. Instead, Stark decided to turn Brice’s tape-recorded notes into a film, commissioning first Ben Hecht (His Girl Friday, Notorious) and later Isobel Lennart (Anchors Aweigh, It Happened in Brooklyn) to write the screenplay. When the film idea failed to attract interest, Stark turned his eyes to the stage, asking Lennart to adapt her screenplay into a book for a musical. Like Robbins, Lennart had saved her career during the inquisitions of the 1950s by naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was, perhaps, an unspoken bond between her and Robbins, as the two had grown extremely close.

  Stark, however, wasn’t as enamored of Lennart as his director was. She had assured him that she could easily adapt her screenplay even though she’d never written for the theater before. To the producer’s mounting dismay, Lennart had yet to make good on her promise. Jule Styne and his partner, Bob Merrill (who’d come in when Stephen Sondheim bowed out), had written some extraordinary music. A ballad called “People” was especially good, and so was the rousing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” But the book was still lacking—a fact that even so ardent a supporter of Lennart’s as Robbins couldn’t deny.

  That night, as Stark waited in the dark for the show to begin at the Bon Soir, he was probably more worried about getting the book right than he was about finding the right actress to play Fanny. The book was the project’s Achilles heel, and he knew it. If there was one thing Ray Stark had learned, right at the beginning of his career, it was the importance of story. He’d started out as a literary agent, representing Ben Hecht and Raymond Chandler, among others. He’d learned that “the story” was the “essential foundation” for any project. No amount of great directing, great music, or great acting could make up for the lack of good story.

  Stark saw the Brice project not as “a literal biography,” but as “an affectionate one,” which meant the writer was free to take liberties in telling Brice’s story. Neither Stark nor his wife cared much about the parts of Brice’s life that the public most remembered—her zaniness, her crazy faces, her Baby Snooks radio character. Instead, they wanted to tell the tragic love story between Brice and her second husband, the gambler Nick Arnstein, and to do so, Brice needed to be elevated to a dignified, even aristocratic, status. In private life, the offbeat comedienne was noted for her style and class; in her later years, she worked as an interior decorator, hailed for her restrained, elegant taste. This was the Brice the Starks wanted to memorialize, not the nonsense-jabbering Snooks, even if it was a bit of a distortion. Kaye Ballard had recorded an album of Brice’s songs with an eye toward playing the comedienne herself. But Fran Stark quickly nixed the idea. “Fran Stark had this fantasy that her mother was this beautiful, delicate creature,” Ballard complained. “Fanny was beautiful,” she said, “after you got to know her, but not beautiful in the way [the Starks] wanted to portray her.”

  To those who knew them, it wasn’t surprising that the Starks wanted to portray Fanny Brice as cultured and refined. It was the image they had cultivated for themselves as well, hosting swanky parties at their Beverly Hills home, assembling an impressive collection of art, and sending their children to prestigious private schools. Ray Stark projected an air of affluence, as if he’d been to the manor born. But, like so many other power broker
s in show business, he hadn’t always been so prosperous; he’d done his share of hustling to get where he was.

  Stark’s grandfather had emigrated from Silesia, now part of Poland, and worked as a piano tuner, eking out a living for his family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century. His son, Max, had set his sights higher, working as a clerk in the office of the Manhattan borough president. He also married a young woman of some means, Sadie Vera Gotlieb, whose father was a florist and the owner of a large piece of property at 32 East Fifty-eighth Street, at Madison Avenue, worth about $50,000 in 1930. The florist shop was on the ground floor of the brownstone building; the family apartments were above. It was here that in 1915 Raymond Stark was born.

  Although he shared with Barbra Streisand a third-generation Jewish immigrant identity, Ray Stark enjoyed a childhood far more comfortable than the one endured by the singer he was waiting to hear. For one thing, the Starks employed a live-in Irish maid, something Barbra would have found completely unimaginable. But she would have recognized Ray’s drive. As a boy, he had helped out in his uncle’s florist shop, but he made it clear that his ambition extended beyond roses and peonies. At fourteen—sometimes he’d add “and a half”—he was accepted into Rutgers University, though he was cagey about whether he ever actually graduated. Only rarely did Stark admit the truth: that he was thrown out of college, more than once, for “inattention to his studies.”

  The problem was that Stark’s ambition seemed always to get ahead of itself. After working as a cub reporter on several New York papers, Stark turned his eyes west, driving across the country with a sixty-seven-year-old neighbor to share expenses. In Hollywood, he took a job making floral wreaths at Forest Lawn cemetery, grateful, at least temporarily, for his experience in his uncle’s shop. But when he landed a position in the publicity department at Warner Bros., Stark found his life’s passion. Showbiz. And that became even more apparent to him when, not long after, he met Frances Arnstein and her famous mother.