by Anne Edwards
Well aware that she was carrying the show, that if she failed it would ultimately fail, too, her responsibility was awesome. ’She had a killer instinct,’ one member of the company said, ’very sophisticated for someone so new to the theatre. Whenever a new scene or song was introduced that could in any way take the spotlight from her we knew it would either get cut or twisted around to her advantage. And it always did. Syd had a solo, I think the only one he had left at that point, and she began improvising dialogue that she interjected as he sang [‘You Are Woman’]. Well, her lines were great and it did help the number when Styne and Merrill turned the solo into a duet with Barbra filling in counter-harmony with comic patter. But since she now had all the gag lines it quickly became her scene. There was a good supporting character, a beautiful Ziegfeld girl, Georgia, who was the great producer’s mistress. The part got whittled down until it just disappeared.’ Except for Kay Medford’s role as Mama Brice, that left no other woman in a major part.
Allyn Ann McLerie, a bright, talented dancer and singer whom Kanin particularly liked and who had received excellent reviews in the co-starring part of Amy in a recent Ray Bolger revival of Where’s Charley?, had been cast as Georgia. McLerie originally had a song and dance called ‘Baltimore’, but by the time Funny Girl began rehearsals in Boston, the number first had been shifted to Streisand and then cut. When they left for Philadelphia, McLerie’s role was excised from the show. Kanin was not happy about this for he felt that Georgia gave Streisand someone to play off in the second act. Streisand did not agree. For Fanny to have a beautiful showgirl as a confidante was not in character. The show was considerably overlong and McLerie’s role was not germane to the plot. Georgia could be cut without additional rewriting. Kanin finally gave in and the character was sacrificed.1
Kanin was under fire. He and Jule Styne were at loggerheads. Ray Stark was sending memos, numerous pages in length. Fran had her say through her husband in equally lengthy dictated letters. Chaplin was disgruntled, Lennart near collapse, Irene Sharaff and Carol Haney fighting over the dance costumes, and the whole cast having problems with the amplification system in the Shubert. Despite these tensions, cast members insist Kanin was at all times a gentleman, handling cast and crew with strength, but also with tact and with respect for their feelings.
Styne was one of the few composers at the time who liked heavy microphone amplification and had even installed hidden mikes in the footlights when Ethel Merman, known for her ability to project, had starred in Gypsy. Streisand found the body mike offensive. When she realised that some lyrics and dialogue might be lost without them, she complied, but the mechanical device slowed her costume changes and was uncomfortable to wear. The microphone was most frequently attached under the front section of her wigs beneath either forehead curls or bangs. The wires ran under the wig, down the back of her neck and were connected to batteries in a mike pack strapped to the inside of her thigh.2
‘I don’t know what happened at this point to change Chaplin’s attitude toward Barbra, but about the second week in Boston they suddenly became chummy,’ Kay Medford said. With Elliott in New York, Streisand was no doubt lonely and in desperate need of someone to turn to for support. She had alienated many members of the cast and crew. Being the ‘star’ was a new experience for her and perhaps she didn’t handle her position well. She distanced herself from those who did attempt to befriend her and was thought to be aloof, cool, always guarded.
Despite Chaplin’s good looks and apparent charm, Fanny and Nicky were not setting off sparks when together on stage, a chemistry that was needed for the story to work. Streisand had much to gain by encouraging Chaplin’s attention. She would have a close confidant in the company and her scenes with him would play better. There was a steady parade back and forth between their rooms. Chaplin arranged some quiet dinners for the two of them and Streisand was extremely flattered by his attention. In rehearsals he softened his attitude towards her. On stage, new excitement generated between them. It turned ‘You Are Woman’ into a sensual, sexy number and made the final dénouement when the two parted more poignant. Unhappily rumours began to appear in some Broadway columns. ‘What new musical comedy star and her leading man are a romantic duet off stage to the fury of the actor’s beautiful wife?’3 Earl Wilson wrote. Nothing was said about Elliott, but he was no fool and there were accusatory, emotional telephone calls in which he displayed his jealousy toward Chaplin and she blamed him for upsetting her at a time when she had to be as collected as possible.
Possessing a striking, distinguished manner and good looks which he came by naturally as the son of Charles Chaplin and his second wife, the enchanting silent-screen actress Lita Grey, Chaplin was a formidable suitor. He told Streisand stories about his father and Hollywood and the stars and she learned from him about the shocking effect of the McCarthy years on the film industry when Chaplin and so many other brilliant film-makers had been persecuted. She devoured Chaplin’s narratives as hungrily as she did their private dinners, often served in her hotel suite. They were both married and as public figures in danger of being exposed as lovers at a time when moral standards were rigid. Streisand was also taking a chance of jeopardising her marriage.
Funny Girl opened in Boston on 13 January. After the performance the company all waited in a restaurant next door to the theatre for the morning reviews. ‘For some reason,’ John Patrick says, ‘I was given the critics’ reviews to read aloud at the table where we all sat. When I read aloud one critic who said, “Miss Streisand can sing, but she certainly can’t act,” Streisand put her head down on the table and burst into tears. I remember saying to her, “That’s nonsense – you can act!” But I don’t think she paid much attention. She left the table almost immediately after.’
A few days later, Variety reported: ‘Funny Girl is a gem of a show which took off at the Shubert [in Boston] and shows considerable box office strength. Barbra Streisand provides brilliance in every scene – singing, dancing, clowning, mugging. She has a wonderful voice and the right fizz to carry the Fanny Brice role in high musical comedy style.’ This should have cheered Streisand, but the critic had added: ‘Show however, needs polishing and work in its second act ... With some thirty minutes already cut from [a benefit performance the previous night], Funny Girl can gain by more editing – especially in the second act.’
The length of the show remained a problem. ‘Our curtain went down at 11:09 Saturday night,’ Ray Stark advised Kanin, adding that with all the new material Lennart was writing the curtain would not come down until 11:31. ‘Do you feel this estimate is reasonably accurate?’ he asked. ‘And is there anything you would like me to do in reference to the situation?’ Kanin responded by speeding up the movement and cutting a large production number, ‘Sleep Now Baby Bunting’, as well as ‘Baltimore Sun’, and three other numbers.4
After a week of performances in Boston the company left for Philadelphia. It did not take a genius to know that the show was in for a bumpy ride. Playwright/screenwriter and well-known play doctor, Norman Krasna, flew in from Klosters, Switzerland where he had a home, to work with Lennart on the libretto, which still had John Patrick as consultant and the Kanins, the Starks and Styne and Merrill adding their ideas. ‘Isobel felt ignored,’ Patrick recalled, ‘and once burst into tears at being shunned. Thereafter, I always stood behind her chair [during story discussions] so it would look as if questions being directed to me to take notes on were directed at her.’
Stark remained adamant in wanting to fire Sydney Chaplin and both Hal Linden and Darren McGavin (at different times) were brought secretly to Philadelphia to audition privately, but neither had the right chemistry and Stark dropped the idea. Streisand was comfortable with Chaplin, who she knew would not diminish or compete with her star turn. He was charming and adequate in the role, no more. Her concern was that Kanin would not bring the show together in time for its Broadway opening. Gripped by fear that her great chance for stardom might get sidetracked, or even derail
ed, she went to Ray Stark and complained, ‘I think I’m not being directed enough. I need a lot more direction.’
Stark was in a quandary. Jule Styne, who had the hotel suite below his in Philadelphia, claimed that one morning Stark lowered a bedspread outside his window, a note attached to the end of it printed with the word HELP! Stark finally turned to Jerome Robbins, whom – as he was both a choreographer and a director and had previously been involved in the project – he felt would be able to pull things together. Robbins was not sure he wanted to take on the task and for the moment remained in New York. Funny Girl opened on 4 February 1964, at the Forrest Theater in Philadelphia to glowing notices for Streisand. ‘All in all, the evening is a Streisand triumph,’ reported the critic on the Philadelphia Inquirer.
‘But in dealing with the unhappy marriage between Fanny Brice and gambler Nick Arnstein, who is stiffly played by Sydney Chaplin, Funny Girl is unfortunately weighted down by a dull and unimaginative treatment,’ the critic for the Evening Bulletin added. ‘There are long arid stretches that will have to be eliminated and, no doubt, director Garson Kanin knows exactly where they are.’
Apparently Ray Stark did not think that was the case because the day before the show closed in Philadelphia, the Kanins received an expensive present of antique china from the Starks, and the next day Jerome Robbins arrived on the scene. He was not to replace him, Kanin was told, but to act as Production Supervisor. From the moment of his arrival, Streisand turned to Robbins for the direction she had asked for. But his appearance at this late date caused a great deal of upheaval in the company.
‘Whatever Ray Stark wanted to call Jerry’s involvement I considered that I had been fired,’ Kanin said. ‘I did not desert the company entirely, but I withdrew and Jerry took over. The final credit, “Directed by Garson Kanin – Production Supervised by Jerome Robbins”, was as confusing to me as it was to everyone else.’ The Kanins remained in Philadelphia for the show’s run and silently attended the pre-Broadway New York rehearsals.
John Patrick left the company as soon as Robbins (like Lennart, an informer before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee) was hired. ‘My own impression [of the show in New York] was that he took out a lot of good things that Gar had put in, and added a few absurd ones of his own,’ Patrick commented. The company returned to New York to prepare for a series of previews before the planned opening, which would eventually be postponed four times. Meanwhile, Lennart holed up once again in her hotel room and with Krasna’s help began to rewrite part of the second act and the ending once again. The final scene eventually had forty-one revisions, almost certainly a Broadway record, before the show opened.
Streisand went home to her Manhattan penthouse and to Elliott, her affair with Chaplin apparently over. With no job offers in view, a good portion of Elliott’s time was spent in bolstering his wife and making sure she took care of herself. (‘Sometimes, I think Barbra is twenty-two, going on eight,’ he was heard to comment.) The day began with him shouting to her on the intercom from the floor below their bedroom where she was still resting, ‘Come and get your chicken soup!’ He made sure that the kitchen was stocked with the foods she liked. Streisand ate like a woman three times her weight, which miraculously remained at 125 pounds. They had installed a small refrigerator in an antique chest beside their bed so that she could dig into a pint of coffee ice-cream while watching late-night television. On top of the chest was a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and How to Achieve and Maintain Complete Sexual Happiness in Marriage. She was, however, more of a romantic than her reading material would suggest.
She ordered two dozen gardenias to be delivered to the apartment each week. They floated in an urn in the kitchen, a cut crystal bowl in the dining room, a Baccarat champagne glass in the master bathroom, and a shallow Victorian dish beside her bed. ‘A gardenia is like a free spirit,’ she told one reporter. ‘Its fragrance cannot be captured. It’s like it doesn’t want to be tied down and destroyed by all the sterility of the modern times.’ After a short pause, she added, ‘I think sensory. I always tell Elliott to speak to me sensory.’
Ray Stark viewed her in a different light. ‘She is like a barracuda. She devours every piece of intelligence to the bone,’ he asserted. One of the actors in the company told a Time interviewer, ‘She is like a filter that filters out everything except what relates to herself. If I said, “There’s been an earthquake in Brazil,” she would answer, “Well, there aren’t any Brazilians in the audience tonight, so it doesn’t matter."'
Streisand was self-absorbed when she worked. Everything was geared to succeeding in Funny Girl, to becoming a Broadway star. She had added to her performance a dazzling spray of gestures, inflections and small takes that had made the role distinctively hers. She felt ready to carry the show on her own, and there were many who believed that this had been her intent from the very start. In the fifteen weeks in which the show had made its precarious way to the Winter Garden, she had submitted herself to an intensive education in the art of stagecraft, how to project her speaking voice, move, walk, exit. Miss Marmelstein had been mainly a singing role. Now she had to age, to show many different emotions, love, anger, joy, bitterness. She was seldom off-stage and during those times she had many costume and mood changes to master. If she had not been self-absorbed, she probably would not have been able to rise above the additional and multitudinous problems in the out-of-town try-outs.
Once back in New York from Philadelphia, her relationship with Chaplin moved on to a more professional level. Whatever free time she had was spent with Elliott. They still fought but they appeared, like a Tracy-Hepburn movie, to be fiercely in love. ‘He looked at her adoringly,’ one friend said, ‘and she always lighted up when he was near. There was a lot of touching – his arm around her waist, her hand on his arm or chest, her fingers going through his hair. They shared quantities of food, always with mutual gusto, whispered to each other – secret jokes apparently. Barbra would not be able to control her squeals of giggle-laughter. Elliott was protective, caring and amazingly understanding. She could run hot and cold about people. And she had a quick temper. Very combative. But he knew exactly how to handle her. She could not be diverted or cajoled. You had to stand up to her. She respected that and I never saw Elliott back down.’
Her long hours of rehearsals and then as the previews began, the performances and daily changes in the script and music that had to be memorised at short notice, left him extended time alone. His part in the television production of Once Upon a Mattress had not generated any potential jobs. Calls to his agent were disappointing. He had worked for only twelve weeks that year and had earned very little money. He found it difficult to be supported by his wife, not to have cash in his pocket. Before her Funny Girl involvement he had collected unemployment. He later said, ‘I felt like such a failure collecting that fifty dollars. I couldn’t justify taking it and I hated waiting in line to collect it.’ He drifted back to gambling, small bets with a bookie on horses or sports events. If Streisand was aware of his problems she was able to block them out as she ploughed straight ahead in her consuming passion to make the critics recognise her acting acumen and Funny Girl a smash hit.
Like many other recording artists who had risen to the top of the charts with shocking suddenness, Streisand did not know how rich she was. Accountants took care of her financial affairs and paid her bills. She claims she took a weekly allowance of twenty-five dollars. However, she seldom paid for anything out of pocket. She was living high but certainly not loose. Never would she divest herself of that love of bargaining, an art at which she had already become expert. Whether she was dealing with the butcher or an antique dealer, a discount was anticipated. ‘Let’s see, with twenty per cent off that makes –’, she would begin. ‘Whaddaya mean that’s your price?’ she would ask with dismay if the answer was negative, ‘I deserve something.’
Before going on the road she had recorded Barbra Streisand/The Third Album which was released in F
ebruary while Funny Girl was in New York previews. A few weeks later she cut the cast album, with a Life reporter and photographer chronicling the session. She wore ‘smudged white Capri pants, knee-high crocodile boots, a flowing, fur-collared cape and a hat like a bishop’s miter’, Life reported. ‘She was an hour late, but she entered the roomful of irritable musicians with the confidence of Clyde Beatty. You could almost see the cane chair and the whip in her hand. She took no warm-up, and when she sang she was the complete pro.’
The Funny Girl cast album was Number Two on Variety’s list of best-selling albums within three weeks of its release – before the show opened. The Third Album surfaced at Number Twenty-One and began to make its way up the list where The Second Album was still in the top ten. Simultaneously ‘People’ was in the top ten on the singles chart. Streisand was making more money from her records than she could ever accrue from the show. Marty Erlichman felt she was actually losing money, as he could have booked her for high fees in the best night clubs in the country. She would think about that at another time. Now her concentration was on her role in a show that was moving inexorably – despite all its postponements – to zero hour, opening night.