Streisand

by Anne Edwards

  Elliott could not wait that long. He flew directly from London to Los Angeles where she was still appearing. The day after he arrived was his birthday. They were eating in the coffee shop of her hotel. The waitress set down a piece of cake with a flickering candle on it. ‘Make a wish!’ Streisand demanded.

  ‘I hope the Dodgers win the pennant!’ he replied, and blew out the flame.

  She laughed, that inimitable sound she made half-way between a snortle and a yelp.

  He leaned across the table. ‘Let’s get married,’ he amended.

  ‘Too late. Candle’s out,’ she snapped back. Elliott was disappointed but not despairing, certain that eventually she would say ‘yes’.

  A few days later they left in a leased car for Lake Tahoe, a picturesque year-round vacation and gambling town high in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the California/Nevada state lines. The hotels and casinos almost all overlooked the unbelievably deep, clear lake that is fed by many mountain streams. At every performance she received a standing ovation, always graciously acknowledged by a smiling Liberace, who enjoyed telling the crowd that he was proud of their enthusiastic reception because he had discovered her. Elliott almost never left her side. Neither did he gamble, which he took as a good omen. Streisand counted on his being there when she came off-stage, to talk to her about her performance, to hold her in his bear arms when she was tired and needed comforting. He never gave up his entreaties that they get married. After all, he would reason when passion had not won his cause, most people already thought they were married.

  Finally, she accepted his proposal and on 13 September 1963, they drove to nearby Carson City, Nevada, the state capital where the Comstock lode was found in the bluish desert sand in 1859 and scores of men became fabulously rich in silver mined there. Vestiges of the Old West had been preserved, but Carson City was now firmly entrenched in the twentieth century. With Marty Erlichman as best man, they were married by a justice of the peace who had never heard of her and appeared shocked at the passionate kiss they exchanged at the end of his short, no-frills ceremony. Elliott let out a whoop when they were outside again, picked her up and carried her to the car. She was now Barbra Joan Streisand Gould.

  The Second Barbra Streisand Album hit Number 1 on the Variety charts, sold over 300,000 copies and had earned well up into six figures. She was richer than she could ever have imagined, enough for her to get the New York apartment she had dreamed of one day renting. It turned out to be a spectacular seven-room duplex penthouse once the home of the urbane lyricist Lorenz Hart, in the Ardsley, on the twenty-first and twenty-second floors with a view from Central Park West clear across the park to the East side. Anyone who had been anyone on Broadway in the twenty years before World War Two had been in this apartment. Streisand claimed she could still feel the vibes of the former occupant. When she and Elliott returned from the West Coast a few days after their wedding, they drove directly from the airport to their new home.

  Packing cases were everywhere as she had been collecting items from England and on her tour. She had encamped like a gypsy. The kitchen was in a shambles, deep-red patent leather (her original idea) only half applied to the scraped-down walls, scraps of old paper and pots of glue were underfoot. A glorious Aubusson rug that was to adorn the living-room floor was rolled up in brown paper across the foyer, the walls of which were being decorated with flocked red velvet paper. One upstairs bedroom had been made into a sewing room and all her antique hats, shoes and oddments were stacked in boxes as the wardrobe, where they were to be stored, had not yet arrived. The only room that appeared to be complete was her small dressing area with its built-in vanity, mirrors and professional hair dryer set off by a tasseled drape that hung on the one narrow wall with a window.

  The first new acquisition she showed Elliott was the fully stocked freezer-refrigerator bulging with TV dinners (Swanson’s frozen fried-chicken dinners were her favourite), coffee ice-cream, green dill pickles and delicatessen meats – salami, tongue, pastrami. Then she grabbed his hand and marched him through the dining room with its French gilt chairs, to the den where an ebony Steinway grand piano almost filled the room, and then up to the master bedroom dominated by a huge Jacobean four-poster canopy bed that sat on a raised dais of two steps. The interior of the wood canopy was magnificently carved. She jumped on to the quilted mattress and squealed, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?’

  But it did.

  Not only was she rich, she was in love and happy in her work, although she liked it much better when she was off the road and performing at the Bon Soir, which had become her ‘room’. Clubs with featured singers were at their zenith. Top performers drew loyal fans and glittering audiences. Streisand’s two best-selling albums had made her a national, much talked-about celebrity. The Bon Soir was packed whenever she appeared. Mention of her name evoked immediate interest, ‘I saw her at The Lion Club,’ an apocryphal claim, for The Lion Club was too small and her engagement too short to encompass the many people who were said to have seen her there. At twenty-one this was pretty heady business. Her time in Hollywood had further fuelled her dream of becoming a movie star. She needed a leading role in a big-budget Broadway musical, a showcase for Hollywood to see that she could act as well as sing.

  Marty Erlichman kept up with all the shows that were currently in development, but the 1962–3 musical comedy season had been dismal. Even Irving Berlin’s Mr President had closed after a disappointing eight-month run. Only one musical, Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s adaptation of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, had been a hit. Erlichman, despite his enthusiasm for his client’s talents, could not have foreseen a lead in a Broadway musical in her immediate future. He was, after all, well aware of her ethnic image, of the lack of roles that might suit her. Dutifully, he put out word that Streisand would welcome a Broadway role again, in a part more fulfilling than Miss Marmelstein.

  For a year, a musical on the life of the Ziegfold Follies star, Fanny Brice, had been a work in progress. A few years before her death in 1951 at the age of fifty-nine, Fanny Brice had made several unprofessional tapes recording memories, impressions of people, the highs and lows of her private life. The tapes were to be used in the writing of her autobiography titled The Fabulous Fanny for which she had been paid a $50,000 advance (substantial at the time) by Random House, who expected her to reveal the more scandalous episodes in her life and in those of other celebrities she knew. Brice found herself unable to do this and she never completed the book. Eventually, Ray Stark, Brice’s ambitious son-in-law, a former agent turned producer and a man of tremendous tenacity and indomitable moxie, bought back the rights for the original advance.1 He hired Ben Hecht and several other top film writers to adapt the book for the screen, with no success.

  Stark turned to Isobel Lennart whose 1945 original musical, Anchors Aweigh, with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, had been a huge moneymaker for MGM. Her screenplay was also rejected. Studios were not only concerned with the weak script but with how audiences would accept another actress portraying Brice, who remained well remembered and well loved. The original concept was to use Fanny Brice’s old recordings on the soundtrack as had been done with The Jolsen Story. None of these efforts came to fruition and Stark then decided to have Lennart’s screenplay adapted for the theatre.

  When playwright John Patrick, who had been the scriptwriter on Stark’s first film venture, The World of Suzie Wong, turned him down, Lennart was recalled. She was a capable and often inspired writer, but she lacked theatrical experience. However, Brice’s story was a good one, a tale that was filled with laughter and tears, a winning theatre combination as Brice, herself, had noted. Fanny Brice made her mark at the age of nineteen when the exceptional showman, Florenz Ziegfeld, signed her as a headliner in his Follies. A natural comedienne, she also had a strong contralto singing voice that could be filled with humour or pathos at a tum. She understood a lyric, every song she sang became a self-contained scene, and she could move with a sudden grace tha
t made her audiences wonder why she was considered homely. Brice had fallen in love with Nicky Arnstein, an inveterate gambler and a stylish ladies’ man. He quickly became ‘Mr Brice’ as her star rose ever brighter and his luck ran out. When he was accused of fraud and forgery in a bond scandal, she refused to believe the charges.

  ‘Are you sure your memory is as bad as that, Miss Brice?’ the district attorney asked her during an investigation into Arnstein’s whereabouts.

  ‘Yes, it is very bad,’ she replied. ‘I can only remember songs and telephone numbers.’

  The day Arnstein went to jail, Brice appeared in the Follies, dressed – not in her usual comedienne’s costumes but in a clinging, black satin gown, standing in the light of one bright spot and singing English lyrics by Channing Pollock for the French torch song ‘Mon Homme’.

  ‘It cost me a lot but there’s one thing that I’ve got

  It’s my man ...’

  With her poignant rendition of that song, sung in a husky alto voice and which became her signature piece, audiences worldwide fell under Brice’s spell, regarding her suddenly as much more than a comedienne. She was now a woman who had overcome personal tragedy with great dignity. Her comedy matched Charlie Chaplin’s poor, little tramp or Buster Keaton’s sad-faced loser. Lennart wrote numerous versions of Brice’s life. There were almost as many titles: Fanny Brice, My Man, The Funny Girl, and finally simply Funny Girl.

  Fran Stark, Ray Stark’s wife, watched over the story development with vigilance. Her father, Nicky Arnstein, was still alive and she wanted him presented in a sympathetic fashion, his culpability in the securities swindle that sent him to prison underplayed. The timing of certain events had to be altered: in no way was Lennart to indicate that her parents had lived together unmarried until after her birth. Nor did the restrictions end there: since Fanny Brice’s second husband, the composer-showman Billy Rose, was alive and litigious, the story was only to encompass Brice’s great love for Nicky Arnstein.2 Ray Stark felt he needed an experienced theatre man to help transfer the story to the stage and joined forces with Streisand’s former nemesis, David Merrick, the theatrical producer of The World of Suzi Wong. For the score he turned to Jule Styne (composer) and Stephen Sondheim (lyricist) who had collaborated on Gypsy. After West Side Story and Gypsy, where he had been limited to writing only the lyrics, Sondheim wanted a show where he could write the entire score. Nor could he imagine Mary Martin, Stark’s choice for the lead, as Fanny Brice. When Sondheim refused Stark’s offer, Merrick paired composer Styne with lyricist Robert Merrill. After they had written four songs,3 Mary Martin decided she did not want to do the role.

  Casting around for an alternative, Fran Stark settled on Anne Bancroft, whom she had loved in the original stage version of William Gibson’s Two for the Seesaw and had her heart set on this fine dramatic actress to play her mother. Jule Styne once said, ‘Merrick was never in favor of Anne Bancroft. He asked me to go down to the Bon Soir and see Barbra Streisand ... It was the first time I had seen Streisand perform in a café and I saw a tremendous star dimension ... I returned to the Bon Soir twenty-seven nights out of twenty-eight in a row. I took several of my friends to see her and got opinions from all sides.’ One of his friends was Jerry Robbins, at that time thought of as the future director for the show. Both agreed that Streisand would be right in the role but Stark, with his wife pressuring him, remained adamant in his choice of Bancroft. No one was sure if she could sing well enough, and Stark asked her to audition for Styne and Merrill. She sang numerous songs – ballads and up-tempo numbers – with surprising panache. Everyone thought that she was a good enough performer to carry it off and the Starks went away certain that she would agree to play the role and that their casting problems were over.

  In early summer of 1963, John Patrick and Stark met in his New York apartment. ‘I pointed out that Bancroft would be miscast and would probably realise that. I remember him saying to me, “She wouldn’t dare tum down a role like this.” The phone rang and I answered it for Ray. It was Bancroft on the line – declining the part.’

  Patrick was committed to Stark to write two scripts, a contract that guaranteed him $1,300,000. He told Stark how sorry he felt, but he could not adapt Lennart’s screenplay-cum-playscript because he was not a fan of Fanny Brice. ‘I thought she was often vulgar and her material sometimes in bad taste.’ Stark turned the script back to Lennart but asked Patrick to become part of the production team as his assistant or so-called editor.

  ‘A classmate of Ray’s from Rutgers’ came to me and suggested I recommend Streisand to Ray as he had seen her at the Bon Soir,’ Patrick recalled. ‘I went down to see her for myself. She seemed right for the part and I knew she would do justice to Jule and Bob’s score. When I suggested Streisand, I remember his reaction. He thought she was unattractive and showed no enthusiasm. I pointed out to him that Fanny Brice, his mother-in-law, had never been a beauty, but sang “My Man” like an angel.’

  Stark would not be convinced. He turned to Eydie Gormé and then to Carol Burnett, who told him honestly, ‘You need a Jewish girl to play this. It’s a whole different quality.’ John Patrick called Marty Erlichman to inform him that he was going to bring Fran and Ray Stark down to the Bon Soir but not to let anyone except Barbra know this. Streisand was extremely nervous on the appointed night. This was the opportunity she had been hoping for. The room was packed, a very receptive audience, and she responded with a performance that was one of her best.

  ‘Ray thought she sang well but Fran hated her, and told me, “I’ll never let that girl play my mother.”’ Brice’s private and public persona differed drastically. On stage she was the raucous ethnic comedienne; socially she was an elegant, Americanised, well-spoken woman with exquisite taste,4 a talented interior decorator whose home was a sophisticated showplace and who dressed with great style. Fran Stark only saw Streisand’s Jewishness and was vehement that her mother not be portrayed in that light.

  Disregarding the Starks’ objections to Streisand, Erlichman and Robbins arranged for Streisand to read a few scenes from the play with Merrick, Styne, Merrill, Isobel Lennart, the Starks and Patrick present. ‘I can’t tell you how horrible she looked,’ Patrick alleged. ‘She wore a Cossack uniform kind of thing. She read the scene where Fanny’s husband Nicky Arnstein has just left her. Tears were called for and she could not manage it.’ Ray Stark was now as adamant as his wife that Streisand would not play Fanny Brice.

  Robbins and Styne insisted she be given another chance. The group gathered for the second time. Again Streisand could not cry. This time she whipped around to Robbins at the end of the scene. ‘Mr Robbins,’ she said sharply, ‘I can’t cry with those words!’

  Shortly thereafter, Robbins left the project and Funny Girl looked as though it would be cancelled. Then Bob Fosse was hired to replace Robbins and the show was once again on. A few weeks later, Fosse quit. The producers turned to Sidney Lumet. After telling them that the book needed drastic revision, he was gone. All this time Streisand was in anguish, believing in her heart that here was her chance to prove that she could be a star.

  Fortunately, the show’s producers refused to let Funny Girl slide into oblivion. They knew the book was the problem and called Garson Kanin, who had been a close friend of Brice’s, and asked him if he would consider collaborating with Isobel Lennart on a rewrite. Kanin, who had successfully written four filmscripts with his wife, actress-writer Ruth Gordon, declined. ‘Isobel was an excellent screenwriter, but she had no experience in the lyric theatre,’ Kanin explained. ‘When I met with Stark and Merrick, I told them their difficulty was not that they had a bad book but that they had no book at all.’ The story was the all-too-familiar backstage drama of the ugly-duckling-novice who becomes a star at the sacrifice of the man she loves. Kanin had previously worked with Jule Styne on Do Re Me, but they had not got on well and he was hesitant to go through a similar experience again. Despite this, when offered the job as director, he accepted. Stark was pl
eased because he felt that with John Patrick and Ruth Gordon (who always was at her husband’s side) unofficially overseeing the script along with Kanin, Lennart would be able to pull it off.

  Streisand now found her mentor to be none other than David Merrick. His instinct, he told Kanin, was that she should play Fanny. Streisand was currently appearing at Basin Street East. The Kanins found that her act was beautifully conceived, paced well – strong ballads balanced by humorous set-pieces and, like Brice, she had the ability to move her audience to both laughter and tears. She was that strange anomaly: a woman who could be called homely by some and stunningly beautiful by others.

  The Kanins were convinced that Streisand was the ideal choice and that with Garson’s close knowledge of Fanny Brice and his ability to work with strong women (Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers had been the leading ladies of films that he had either written or directed) he could get a terrific performance from her. A lunch was arranged for them to get acquainted and to see if he could work with her.

  Nothing was going to stop Streisand from getting this role. Determined to charm the Kanins, she read as much as she could about them. Ruth Gordon had been one of the great leading ladies of the American stage, as well as a successful playwright and screenwriter. By now in her early sixties, a petite, vital woman, with an expressive rather than beautiful face and a shiny dark cap of hair to frame it, she was quick-witted, merry, and a walking encyclopedia of theatre knowledge. She was the first woman of Streisand’s acquaintance who was so multi-talented, which greatly impressed her. Garson Kanin, a decade younger than his wife, was equally sharp, a short, feisty, spry man with intelligent brown eyes and a smile that slid saucily across his face when he was amused – which was often – and who appreciated the turn of a woman’s ankle as well as her intelligence and talent.