by Anne Edwards
‘I was a character in the movie,’ she says. ‘Not the actress, but the character. Not Vivien Leigh but Scarlett O’Hara. It was me up there and those attractive men were pursuing me!’ She was greatly impressed by Gone with the Wind when in 1954 it was reissued in wide screen and stereophonic sound. Just turned twelve, she none the less identified with Scarlett – the determination, the fight for independence, the woman invading a man’s world and being more exciting for it. The movies were more than a form of escapism, they had become a higher form of reality for her. She judged the humdrum experiences of her everyday life and the people she shared them with by what she saw in the movies. Those celluloid images were movers and shakers not observers and naysayers. She thought less of Diana for letting herself be a doormat for Louis Kind’s bullying. The mother–daughter conflict was made all the more tense by Diana’s inability to see Barbara as anything more than an unattractive girl with an aggressive and wildly imaginative nature. But in movies and her fast-growing dream of becoming a star and a part of that celluloid world, Barbara found what others sought in religion.
None of this could Diana comprehend. Mother and daughter were of vastly different temperament. Diana lacked Barbara’s avid curiosity, her quick intelligence and ability to dream. Very much a pragmatist, when Barbara talked about becoming famous one day, Diana could not see that such a thing would ever occur. It was impossible, she would tell Barbara. ‘You’re not pretty enough.’ She believed that to be true and felt she had to get her daughter to concentrate on a more reasonable goal. Barbara would come back with a cutting remark about Diana’s lack of motivation, her allowing herself to be mistreated by Kind. The two women knew how to hurt each other most effectively.
Barbara entered Erasmus Hall High School in September 1955. Diana wanted her to take typing as an elective course her first term, to get all the nonsense about movies out of her head, to consider a sensible career, like being a secretary. Barbara would not hear of it and let her nails grow to ward off the dreaded prospect of typing lessons. She spent hours painting her lips a dark magenta and shadowing her eyes with blue make-up bought surreptitiously with her school-lunch money. ‘Somehow,’ she says, ‘it made me think I was attractive.’ She was hungry a lot of the time, and skinnier than ever, but it seemed important for her to prove to her mother and to Kind that she could be pretty. She remained a loner during her first year at Erasmus. It was not that she didn’t want friends, she did, it was that she found it difficult to make the overtures. She had an unfortunate manner of putting potential friends off with what one schoolmate called, ‘a smart-ass remark, just something that made you feel she thought she was smarter than you, like she was saying, “You dumb ox, don’t you know that!”’
Erasmus Hall High School was one of the compensations for the many Jewish families living in Flatbush, for it held the highest scholastic rating of any public high school in Brooklyn or Manhattan. Founded in 1786 as a private academy by the venerable Dutch Reformed Church and on gifts from Aaron Burr, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and other intellectuals, it became part of the public-school system two hundred years later. The original academy building with its hand-carved beams and clapboards was left standing in 1905 during the construction of a three-storey stone castellated building. The new edifice, a massive stone complex that took up a square city block, collegiate Gothic in design and separated by a grassy courtyard, was constructed around it. The school’s enrolment exceeded 7,000 when Barbara, troubled and antisocial, entered aged thirteen, a year ahead of most of her peers.
The principal, Dr James McNeil, had been an air force colonel during the war and was an English teacher of some repute. Strait-laced and unapproachable, he dressed in dark suits, conservative ties, vests, white shirts and pointed collars and operated the school like a flight squadron during wartime manoeuvres. His administrative assistant was Miss Grace L. Corey, who would dock teachers for being a minute late. One student recalled, ‘That’s the kind of school they ran. Nobody stepped out of line.’
It was the only high school in New York that taught classical Greek, and did not have girl cheerleaders. ‘In every other high school, the kids went to study hall. In Erasmus, they went to “chapel” – which was the auditorium, but it had stained-glass windows. The Erasmus kids who were in government wore shirts and ties. They were college bound,’ a classmate of Barbara’s remembers.
Built like a medieval castle with an endless criss-crossing of corridors, the walk from one class room to another was exhausting and often difficult to make by the bell. ‘I never knew how big Erasmus was,’ another student recalled. ‘I just walked in a door and stayed inside, going from classroom to classroom. I was a senior before I found out about the quad [the grassy square around the original structure] in the middle of the building.’ Every day Barbara went from an apartment she loathed to a school that was a fortress, huge, intimidating. She almost always walked through the forbidding corridors by herself, posture haughty, diverting the glances of fellow students, always, always feeling the outsider.
Erasmus Hall serviced a large district with a variety of neighbourhoods and there was a dichotomy ‘between the kids from the poor part of Flatbush ... and the ones from the rich’. Barbara lived in a lower-income but not an economically impoverished section of the area. It was true that a student’s background often dictated the group with which he or she socialised. Yet, in a school the size of Erasmus with its highly diversified enrolment, taking in many ethnic roots and economic strata, there was certainly a niche for Barbara. But to find it she needed counselling and there was none to be had. Male students paid her little attention. Diana warned her never to hold hands with a boy, an idea that made her laugh.
‘I was never asked out to any of the proms, and I never had a date for New Year’s Eve,’ she has said. ‘I was pretty much of a loner. I was very independent. I never needed anybody, really.’ This seems far from the truth. A classmate of hers recalled that Barbara often did do things to try to win friends and attention. ‘Some of the kids wanted to set up a surprise for a teacher we liked who was celebrating his birthday. Barbara came up with a plan. She would “faint” in the hall adjoining the classroom. The teacher was called and ran to her side. A gift was then put on his desk. Barbara remained in a “faint” until all was clear. The teacher was completely fooled by her act. For a few days she seemed one of us. Then something happened. I don’t know exactly what it was. But I think it had something to do with class elections. Her name was submitted for some office. But she wasn’t elected, in fact she came in last.’
‘She often appeared lonely,’ a neighbour was later to claim. To counteract this she dug into her studies and was consistently in the top 10 per cent of her class. Knowledge excited her, was the only thing that made her feel exceptional. She liked knowing the answers, being the first one to raise her hand in class, to finish a test.
Still foregoing lunch in order to have an extra dime or quarter in her pocket, she would pose after school behind the curtains in photo booths, imitating her screen favourites. She had the voluptuous Mae West down pat – except for the swivelling hips which seemed to elude her, not surprisingly since she had so little flesh on her bones. She had seen a number of old Mae West movies and was fascinated by the ex-Brooklynite who had gone on to become a legend. To amuse her classmates she would do a takeoff of West spouting some of her most famous movie witticisms: to George Raft playing a gangster – ‘Is that your gun in your pocket or are you really glad to see me?’, or her oft-quoted philosophy – ‘It’s not the men in my life that count, it’s the life in my men.’ Yet Barbara never bothered to audition for school plays, ‘Why go out for an amateurish high school production when you can do the real thing?’ she later commented. Of course she was not doing ‘the real thing’ and it is much more likely that she was simply fearful of rejection.
One afternoon in 1956 when Barbara was fourteen, Louis Kind left the house on Newkirk Street ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes. He never re
turned. Once again Diana found office work and relied on neighbours to look after Rosalind. Although the apartment no longer had a tyrannising man at the helm, Kind’s absence did not make Barbara’s relationship with her mother any easier.
Without a man’s presence, Diana lost interest in keeping the apartment attractive. Rather, she was concerned with minimising her work load. The couch and chairs in the living room were now covered in clear plastic and a girl’s bare legs stuck to it on hot days. Lampshades were also covered, light switches wore protective shields and the kitchen floor was littered with newspaper after it had been washed. Barbara hated the pungent smell of the plastic, the absence of flowers, plants and bright toss pillows that she saw in other people’s apartments. She seldom brought children home and Diana never entertained. They lived an insular life. Their occasional visits to Pulaski Street were never happy occurrences. They occasionally saw Manny’s brother Phil and his wife Sylvia, but Aunt Anna, whom Barbara liked, lived in Connecticut and was too far away to visit often.
For many months after Kind’s defection, Diana had only the small income she made from her office job. Finally, on 7 May 1957, she obtained a legal separation on the grounds of Kind’s verbal abuse and was awarded $37 a week in support. Too often Kind fell far in arrears and never made up the deficit. This was the most difficult time in Barbara’s childhood. There was not always enough to eat and Diana took on a second job, selling women’s undergarments from a small valise she carried with her to the office or from apartment to apartment in her building.
In her freshman year Barbara took chorus and was a member of the Erasmus Choral Club, an interest she kept up throughout high school. She was aware that she possessed a good, dear voice, but had not given it much serious thought. Surrounded now by other singers of her age, she realised just how good her voice was and how fast she was able to grasp her part. Because her voice was stronger than other members of the chorus, Cosimo De Pietto, the choral director, placed her in the rear so that she would not overpower them. This disturbed her but she did not sing more softly to oblige. Solos, to Barbara’s disappointment, usually went to Trudy Wallace, a pretty blonde with a pleasant soprano voice. Barbara had an unusual range, being able to sing both in chest and in head. She could reach and hold a high B flat. But she preferred the lower register that was used to advantage in popular and show music. She was therefore placed in the alto section of the Choral Club, where few female solos were required in the music that was performed.
She claims she had no thoughts of ever becoming a singer, although she had been singing for years to herself in the hallways of their apartment building, listening to the ‘great echo sound ... thinking, “Oh, that’s pleasant. It doesn’t sound bad.”’ She knew an enormous number of songs from Broadway shows, films and records. In winter she would often sit on the stairway with other kids in the building and lead them in the current popular songs. This won her new admiration. She was looked at for the first time in a different light and unlike her later experience at high school, it was because she had a strong voice, ‘the loudest in the neighbourhood’. Conversely, she placed little importance upon this talent. Singing, she felt, was no big deal. ‘It’s only wind and noise. I open my mouth and the sound comes out,’ she would later say. Much of this philosophy came from Diana, who thought popular music and the ability to sing it were of little worth.
Despite her own and Diana’s dismissal of popular music and her singing talent, back in 1951, when she was only nine, Barbara had suddenly become consumed with the idea that she could be another Joni James, her favourite singer at the time and badgered Diana into taking her into New York and up to the studio of MGM Records, her idol’s record label. As Diana had some errands to do in the city she had finally agreed to go with her to the recording studio. Barbara found out where the offices were and was the one who insisted on being heard once they got there. Mother and daughter had come in cold, without an introduction, agent, accompanist or musical arrangement. This took great chutzpah on Barbara’s part and shows the tenacity of her will and her ability, even at this early age, to overpower her mother, who was certain her daughter’s efforts would fail. When Barbara wanted something she jumped in, pushing aside all obstacles. In this instance, she also revealed a private need to prove she had talent as a singer that belies her future denials that she considered her singing voice was of no consequence.
For her audition, she sang Joni James’s ‘Have You Heard?’ inside a glass booth, without accompaniment. Being caged in was a terrifying and claustrophobic experience that was to take years to overcome. Told to go home, study, and practise more, she did exactly that, but without benefit of professional help. Instead she spent more time in the hallways and lobby of their apartment house letting her voice bounce off the walls and echo back to her. When a neighbour complained, she would take herself to another part of the building or up to the roof to practise.
In the summer of 1955, the year she entered Erasmus Hall, Diana and the two girls had vacationed for a week in the Catskills, a gift paid for by Diana’s family who were concerned about her health. They became friendly with a piano player from Brooklyn. Diana and Barbara sang some songs with him and he told them about Nola Studios in Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan. The idea of recording her own singing voice appealed to Diana. The pianist agreed to go into New York with them. The Steinway showroom was on the ground floor, above it were studios occupied by theatrical teachers – dancing, piano, drama, voice – professional photographers and agents. Steinway Hall had several recording studios used mainly by fledgling singers and composers to make records to disperse to booking agents and producers. Anyone with four dollars to spend was welcome to cut two sides of a record. A sound engineer was supplied. You were given ten minutes to rehearse and then the needle cut into the acetate while the record was made. There were no retakes; what was recorded at that time was what you got.
In bird-like sound bites, Diana sang ‘One Kiss’, an operetta favourite. Barbara chose ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’, a Judy Garland standard, and the 1930s ballad ‘You’ll Never Know’, made popular by Alice Faye.
‘My mother went first,’ Streisand later recalled. ‘She could hardly get a chorus in edgeways because the piano player kept launching into endless, elaborate refrains. As soon as he started that with me, I told him, “No, no we’ll just do a little interlude and then I’ll come back in.” I had planned a simple ending for “You’ll Never Know”, but got carried away. Those last few notes “... if you don’t ... know-oh-oh ... now” took me by surprise. I guess it was my first musical improvisation ... [After I listened to the record] I wondered, “Who was that? Where did that come from? It was like The Exorcist.”’
The making of this acetate record was one of the rare occasions where mother and daughter shared a creative experience. Diana, in hopes of earning some extra money, had renewed early aspirations to pursue a stage career. Any such hope was shattered when she heard the playback. Her voice was ordinary and she knew it. The amazing thing is that she did not recognise her daughter’s talent. The record, preserved lovingly by Barbara into her adult life, displays not only a burgeoning talent but a rare individuality of style, but Diana told Barbara to put aside any thoughts of a singing career. She believed she was being protective, but was motivated by her own low esteem, fear of venturing into unknown directions, her background that preached a woman was nothing without a man, and that a career was something he had while she worked, mainly to support herself until she married, and after, to supplement the family income.
The following year, without Diana’s knowledge, Barbara auditioned with a group of other girls from her school for a radio show. She did a speech from Shaw’s Saint Joan – ‘He who tells the truth shall surely be caught.’ (‘I always felt that about myself,’ she later said.) She was rejected, but one Saturday afternoon in April 1956, she took the five dollars she had been given as a gift from Diana for her fourteenth birthday (meant for her to purcha
se a blouse or a sweater) and made her first solo trip out of Brooklyn by subway. The local paper had printed a story that the Hollywood producer-director, Otto Preminger, on a massive talent search for a young girl to play the title role of Saint Joan in his next film, was having his staff conduct preliminary interviews in New York on this day. It seemed fated. She went back to Saint Joan, studying it at home and on the subway into New York. By the time she reached the United Artists’ offices where the interviews were being held, she could almost feel the fire that had consumed Joan of Arc. When she filled out her application, she was told she was too young. Mr Preminger was looking for a girl in her late teens, nearer the age of Joan of Arc when she raised the siege at Orleans. Barbara argued with the assistant to give her a chance and began to recite some lines from Shaw’s play.
‘I’m sorry,’ the assistant said, and turned away. ‘Next!’ he called.
She left the building feeling cheated, angry. She had not been given a fair chance. The film company’s offices were mid-town. She walked over to the Cort Theater on 49th Street and bought a ticket for the matinée performance of The Diary of Anne Frank, a poignant story about a sensitive young Jewish girl who grows into womanhood while hiding from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam with her family. She had chosen this particular play because it had been discussed in her English class at school. ‘At first, I was awfully disappointed, looking at the dreary setting,’ she later commented. Then she became deeply and emotionally involved.1 Seated at the rear of the second balcony, she recalled thinking that she could go up on the stage and play any role ‘without any trouble at all’. Perhaps Saint Joan would have been a stretch, but Anne Frank and her family were people she could identify with – they were Jewish and had suffered. She had found a more accessible target for her unfocused ambitions – the stage.