The restrictions placed on the script by Robbins had exacerbated Fosse’s problems at the helm of Funny Girl. Shortly before he resigned, an itemized list of contributions made by his predecessor had been received from Robbins’s lawyer, who was finally parrying Stark’s legal maneuvers. Since Stark hadn’t attended creative meetings, Robbins’s lawyer had insisted, not only could he not say what Robbins’s creative contributions were, he could also not say for sure that he “didn’t make contributions.” An “upset and angry” Robbins had tape-recorded an hour-long recitation of every single scene, line of dialogue, song change, and character suggestion he’d ever made during his time with the project. The “only practical resolution,” Robbins’s lawyer said, would be to pay his client royalties if even one word or one idea of his was used in the show.
With such an exhaustive catalog of contributions, it was clear that nearly every page of the script owed something to Robbins—an idea Isobel Lennart couldn’t honestly challenge. Fosse may have felt the show was doomed, since the book was now in such drastic need of overhaul, though he couldn’t admit that as a reason for wanting out. It was more strategic to pin the blame on Stark’s backstabbing. “Mr. Stark imposed an atmosphere of distrust that I found too difficult to overcome,” Fosse wrote to Barbra and his other collaborators, never mentioning that the contract he left unsigned contained precisely the kind of language he’d insisted upon as self-protection.
The show was once again without a director, and for all intents and purposes, given Robbins’s threats, without a book. Just how rehearsals could begin in a matter of months was anybody’s guess.
Barbra knew that her contract with David Merrick meant they’d have to pay her a pretty penny if they postponed the show. Not for nothing did Barbra’s camp keep reminding the columnists—and through them, Stark and Merrick—that she was forfeiting a hundred grand in club dates by signing on for Funny Girl. But as much as she enjoyed having it, money was secondary to Barbra; it was the possibility of seeing this—her best and quite possibly only chance to star in a Broadway show—slip through her fingers that no doubt truly distressed her. Finishing her Lake Tahoe gig, Barbra likely found the few days of lounging around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel very welcome indeed.
She still planned to head back to New York, however; no one had yet called off rehearsals. In fact, Carol Haney was still on the job as choreographer, already auditioning dancers. The deal that Fosse eventually struck with Stark had allowed them to use his ideas and contributions if the threat of a lawsuit was dropped and if they kept Haney on board. So, at least to the outside world, the show was proceeding apace. The columns continued to buzz over who might be Barbra’s costar. Hedda Hopper reported that Hugh O’Brian was “ready to sign,” then reversed herself and said Tony Martin was in as Nick. Mike Connolly claimed Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., was in the running; Walter Winchell declared Nick was going to be played by Richard Kiley.
The one name no one ever mentioned was Elliott. He was clearly not viewed as a big enough name. But Elliott wasn’t likely all that eager to play second fiddle to his wife, either. Indeed, he’d recognized that he needed to establish himself independent of Barbra, and so he had decided to stick around on the West Coast even after Barbra went back East, staying “long enough to make one serious Hollywood bid,” he told columnist Barney Glazer. It would mean another separation from Barbra, but Elliott had to find a way to start bringing in some money to their household. Besides, Barbra wasn’t leaving California for a while: she had the Garland show to do in a couple of weeks, plus the concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Hansel and Gretel could frolic in the pool a while longer—even if Gretel did tend to cover Hansel’s face in photographs.
Meanwhile, Diana had sent them a wedding gift. She’d been saving for this day, a little bit from her paycheck over the years whenever she could afford it. She’d managed to accumulate $750. To Diana, that was a substantial sum with which to start married life. If her own mother had given her that much money when she married Emanuel, she would have been overjoyed and overwhelmed. Barbra expressed her thanks, of course, but her mother’s gift hardly registered among the multiple savings and investment accounts now being managed by Marty Bregman. The truth was, Barbra didn’t need any money from Diana. What she needed from her mother was something else entirely, but she had long ago stopped hoping to get it.
2.
As she’d been doing for the last few weeks, Judy Garland was playing The Barbra Streisand Album, becoming familiar with the young singer—twenty years her junior—who’d be appearing on her show. It was the first day of rehearsals, and Barbra would be arriving at the CBS Television City studios at Fairfax and Beverly within moments, if she wasn’t already there. When musical director Mel Tormé walked into Garland’s dressing room, he found the star singing along to “Happy Days Are Here Again”—except that she was singing her own song “Get Happy” from the movie Summer Stock. Tormé thought the combination sounded “electrifying” and decided on the spot that Judy and Barbra should sing the two songs in counterpoint on the show. Garland smiled. That had been her plan all along. She had just wanted it to be somebody else’s idea, in case Barbra didn’t like it.
At forty-one, Garland looked a decade older. Pills, alcohol, heartache, illness, roller-coaster dieting—and the recent ongoing battles with her husband over their children—had all taken their toll. This television show, for which she’d now taped eight episodes, was supposed to make her rich. That was what Begelman and Fields had promised. Garland was always broke, due to bad financial management and overspending. She envied male contemporaries such as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope who were rolling in the dough, much of it earned in television. This show, she hoped, would change all that. Her agents had never been wrong before.
But problems had arisen almost from the start. Garland’s first producer was fired after six weeks, and another crew was brought in. The format of the show went through several changes before it made it on the air. CBS President James T. Aubrey, Jr.—known as “the Smiling Cobra”—never liked the program. The network was spending a great deal of money on Garland: $100,000 to refurbish the stage alone. In addition, Garland’s dressing room was an elaborate one-hundred-ten-foot-long trailer decorated to resemble the star’s Brentwood home, and the hallway leading from the dressing room to the stage was a replica of the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz. Only if the show turned out to be a huge ratings hit would Aubrey feel the expense had been worth it.
The first episode had just aired on September 29. Although the official ratings weren’t in, overnight projections had showed Garland coming in second to NBC’s western drama, Bonanza. Still, supporters pointed out that in certain markets, such as Philadelphia, Garland had been number one, and nearly everywhere she’d left all other rivals in the dust, including the crime drama Arrest and Trial on ABC. That wasn’t a bad start at all. The reviews, however, had been decidedly mixed. Most seemed to feel Garland herself was “in fine fettle,” but no one seemed to like her comic foil, Jerry Van Dyke. The writing and pacing of the show came under fire.
Perhaps there were those at Television City who recalled the reviews for The Keefe Brasselle Show that had described Barbra as “a one-woman recovery operation.” Certainly Barbra had always been a standout guest on all her previous television spots. So it was with tremendous enthusiasm that Tormé and Norman Jewison, Garland’s producer, welcomed Barbra to the show. With the possible exception of Lena Horne, with whom they’d taped an episode in July, Barbra was the most exciting, most talked-about guest they’d had on their brand-new revolving stage since they’d started production. Everyone was hoping Barbra could bring a little of the razzle-dazzle she’d bestowed upon Brasselle and Garry Moore and Dinah Shore—and the ratings and the reviews as well.
In her trailer at the end of the mock Yellow Brick Road, Garland wasn’t unaware of the excitement being generated by the arrival of this Streisand kid. She was “nervous and anxious and jealous,” one friend, Tu
cker Fleming, observed. Looking at her face in the mirror, Garland ran her fingers down the wrinkles and creases she saw there, clearly aware of the youthful features of the singer she would soon be rehearsing with. It was one thing to perform alongside her own seventeen-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli, as Garland had done on a previous show, taped and waiting to be broadcast. But the only other female guests she’d had on the show so far had been Horne and June Allyson. Garland was “very aware of how she looked” as compared to the twenty-one-year-old Streisand, and “it made her very insecure and anxious,” Fleming said.
To Garland, Barbra wasn’t ugly or funny-looking. She was young, fresh-faced, her eyes undamaged by the battle between insomnia and sleeping pills. David Begelman had introduced his two clients in Lake Tahoe, where he’d brought Garland to see Barbra perform at Harrah’s. So the old pro had witnessed firsthand the confident, youthful energy Barbra exuded onstage. No wonder she was insecure. While Garland still conjured an exquisite alchemy in front of an audience, youth and confidence were two attributes she definitely did not possess.
Barbra also had a voice that everyone was raving about, in ways Garland “could only remember people raving about her,” said Fleming. That was why she’d come up with the idea of singing in counterpoint. Her “competitive nature had been fired up,” Fleming observed; she wasn’t going to just passively hand the show over to this young whippersnapper. She’d arrived on the set sharp and sober and ready to roll, her makeup done perfectly, her hair coiffed expertly, even if her hands did tremble as she lifted Barbra’s album from the turntable, pleased that Tormé had taken her hint.
The truth was that the unanimous chorus of voices that were shouting brava! for the Streisand kid was “daunting” to Judy, as Fleming could plainly see. Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn, and Jule Styne adored Garland, but even in all her years of glory, never had such a group of heavyweights ever coalesced behind her to deliberately boost her career in the way they were doing now for Barbra. There were “plenty of times when Judy could have used” such support, observed Fleming, “but she didn’t always have the backing of the musical-theater ‘establishment,’ so to speak, the way Streisand did.” Garland held no personal animosity toward the youngster. She was just anxious to prove she could hold her own against her.
By the fall of 1963, the patronage Barbra enjoyed from that “musical-theater establishment” made her a force to be reckoned with. Where she’d once been a popular, even best-selling recording artist and nightclub chanteuse, her casting in Funny Girl had turned her into a powerhouse. Wags had started referring to the “cult of Barbra Streisand,” which referenced the cabal of influential tastemakers who had decided that Barbra was “it” and who were determined to use their leverage to carry her to the top. Columnist Jack Gaver may have been the first to use the term: “A sort of Streisand cult,” he wrote, “has been mushrooming to the point where non-cultists soon might find themselves in danger of being picketed by the pros.” Then had come Lloyd Shearer’s article in Parade, which had bannered THE CULT OF BARBRA STREISAND in big black letters on its first page. That was what millions of Americans had seen on their Sunday kitchen tables, right beside their cups of coffee and bacon and eggs.
“In today’s show business world,” Shearer wrote, “thousands of girl singers are offered at eight cents a dozen. In the face of such tremendous imbalance, what is the magic ingredient that jets one girl to the top while others fall by the wayside?” Although he’d credited Barbra’s talent—“born of nature and practically no training”—Shearer had ascribed the lion’s share of her success to the influence of “a growing army of followers who insist that Barbra is in the great tradition of Helen Morgan, Judy Garland, Lena Horne.” Pageant magazine had gone a step further, naming names in that army: Arlen, of course, and Truman Capote and George Abbott. This kind of talk was what made some of Barbra’s contemporaries so envious.
No wonder Judy Garland’s hands were shaking as she headed down the Yellow Brick Road to meet Barbra Streisand, who was waiting for her on the soundstage.
3.
By rights, it should have been the other way around.
It should have been the twenty-one-year-old kid, the neophyte singer who’d been performing for barely three years, who was trembling to meet Judy Garland. But Barbra’s nerves were steady, her manner calm, as the cameras began rolling on Friday, October 4, for the final taping of the show. They’d had two days of run-throughs, plus a final dress rehearsal from five thirty to seven o’clock; now, at nine, Barbra felt confident she knew all her marks and dialogue. If the presence in the audience that night of the Smiling Cobra and other CBS brass unsettled Garland, it seemed to have no discernible effect on her young guest star.
Garland emerged to the applause of the audience wearing a light-colored, sparkly gown. “We have a very exciting show for”—her voice caught, and for a split second she lost her way, but she made a quick recovery—“planned for you tonight. We’ve got marvelous people.” This was part of her standard opening segment, called “Be My Guest,” in which Garland talked-sang the introductions. Her voice lifting uneasily, her nerves impossible to fully disguise, she trilled, “We’ve got Barbra Streisand—I think she’s nice and she has such poise and she’s got such elegance—It’s a joy to have her on my show—Darling!” As Garland beamed and reached out her arm, Barbra joined her on the stage. They kissed as the audience applauded.
The two made a striking contrast. Barbra stood a head taller than her hostess, and her dark velvet suit offset Garland’s lighter hues. As they’d practiced, they kept up the musical introduction sketch, Judy frequently reaching over to grab Barbra’s arm, as if to steady herself.
“Judy,” Barbra trilled, “it’s great to be with you . . .”
“Be my guest, be my guest . . .”
“You know I’ve been a fan of yours since I was two,” Barbra continued. It was a dig Garland’s writers had thrown in to exploit the age difference. But the bigger irony was the fact that Barbra hadn’t been a fan since she was two. She’d barely been a fan for a year, and even then, “fan” might have been pushing it since Barbra wasn’t a fan of many people, no matter how good they were, and she’d claimed not to have even heard of Garland not so long ago. Still, she understood that it was politic to give the impression that she’d been one of the millions who’d loved Judy all these years.
Yet if she had once been indifferent toward the lady, the last couple of days had changed Barbra’s take on Judy Garland. She had walked onto that soundstage feeling very “secure,” she admitted, unafraid “of failure or anything.” And then she met her hostess. The veteran star kept taking Barbra’s hands, touching her, putting her arm around her. She was trembling. Barbra was flabbergasted. Garland was older, successful, venerated. Why should she be shaking when meeting a girl who was just starting out? Barbra didn’t get it.
Her heart went out to Garland. An “instant soul connection” was how Barbra described her encounter with the older woman. She probably didn’t know the full story of what was going on behind the scenes, or the sense of trepidation that Garland lived with nearly every moment on the show. If the fragile star made one false step, she feared that they’d give her the ax. Aubrey was pursuing a strategy of “deglamorizing” Garland, bringing her down to the level of mortals. He thought it was the only way for the show to succeed. So the show’s writers were always poking fun at Judy. Digs about her weight issues, her tardiness, her nerves, her age—all were fair game according to CBS. So scripting a line for Barbra to say in that opening number—“Can I replace you?”—was par for the course, and no doubt it sent shivers down Judy’s spine.
But Judy didn’t give them the satisfaction of any oversized mugging. Whether it was her choice to do so or the advice of director Bill Hobin, Garland deflected the jab and moved without comment to introduce her next guests, the Smothers Brothers. Barbra smiled as her one-time lover walked out onto the stage, looking spiffy in a tuxedo. If the banter with Barbra had b
een banal, the lines between Judy and Tommy and Dick were even worse. The writers were scraping the barrel.
Then Garland turned back to Barbra and asked her what she wanted to do on the show that night. Barbra launched into their rehearsed skit. “I tawt I’d like ta do a lil numbah, ya know whud I mean?” she said in a bad imitation of old James Cagney gangster movies. Garland replied in kind, then Barbra switched to a slightly more successful English accent, saying she’d like “veddy much to do the ‘Song of India.’” Here the script called for a bit of business with Barbra insisting on having the actual Taj Mahal used for her number, but either the dialogue was scratched at the last minute or Garland got confused, because she turned back at that point to the Smothers Brothers. Certainly her halting manner suggested that she might have been confused or nervous or both. At times Barbra looked over at Garland in the midst of their scripted dialogue, and the sympathy in her eyes was impossible to miss.
As they were taping, Roddy McDowall, child star turned character actor and photographer to the stars, was running around the set, snapping pictures. A huge fan and friend of Garland’s, McDowall had become an ardent admirer of Barbra’s as well after seeing her at the Cocoanut Grove. McDowall had been snapping away throughout the dress rehearsal, documenting what he felt certain was someday going to be considered a “historic meeting of two great icons.” He was also aware of the special surprise the show had planned for the audience later on, and he’d be on hand to capture that moment as well.
Barbra sang two solo numbers that night. On “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” having changed into her white satin sailor’s blouse from the Grove, she was sublime. Shot in medium close-up, she looked absolutely stunning, and her confident, assured articulation of the lyrics displayed an exquisite rhythm and pacing of the song that was all her own (and Peter Matz’s). When she held the notes, the sheer power of her voice inspired shivers, her lower lip quivering every now and again with the intensity of her performance. It was a beautifully measured interpretation.
Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand Page 43
