Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  He was careful not to dictate to her, to never say anything as crass as “tone it down.” Barbra was far too headstrong to simply follow orders. So instead he brought out stacks of magazines, pointing to celebrities and models whose looks seemed right for Barbra. She studied them carefully, especially Audrey Hepburn in costume for the soon-to-be-released Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Bob said this was the kind of “severity” and “extreme chic” he thought she should go for. Barbra nodded, warming to the idea. Who would have thought that she’d ever be like Audrey Hepburn?

  He hauled out a book that had made a great impression on him. It was The White Goddess by Robert Graves, which posited the concept of a female deity at the center of much of Western culture. From Graves’s essay, Bob took the idea that men had a primal need to worship women, dating back to pre-Christian goddess religions. The “remnant of the divine goddess,” Bob believed, could still be found in certain cultural prototypes: Garbo, Dietrich, Monroe, even the new First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. He explained to Barbra that the public’s veneration of these women was “tapping into something very subconscious, very deep.” He wanted the same for Barbra. He saw her potential to be as irresistible, as spellbinding, as divine as any of those other legendary ladies.

  If they could cultivate that, Bob told Barbra, if—through the combination of talent, clothes, hairstyle, makeup, and attitude—they could bring out the “white goddess” within, then there would be no stopping her.

  Barbra told him to get to work.

  9.

  Diana Kind was hopping mad. How dare that man say such a thing about a daughter of hers?

  Only a short time ago, on May 22, she’d watched Barbra on the Paar show. It had been Barbra’s second appearance on national television, and Diana had allowed ten-year-old Rozzie to stay up to watch. How excited Rozzie had been to see her sister on TV. Diana had found it amusing how the little girl was so interested in and impressed with Barbra’s career.

  Diana had to admit that Barbra looked good. A little classier and more stylish than in the past. Somebody must be helping her pick out nicer clothes, Diana thought. She was pleased about that, though, of course, she wouldn’t tell Barbra she was pleased; if she did, that stubborn kid would probably decide she was doing something wrong if her mother liked what she was wearing and go back to her old ways.

  Diana thought Barbra had sounded good, too, when she’d sung a couple of songs on the show. Of course, Diana wouldn’t tell her that either, because to do so would just encourage her in this crazy show-business dream she had, and Diana would never, ever do that. But she’d told her friends that Barbra “sang very well on the Paar show.” And she’d enjoyed watching her kid make conversation with Orson Bean and the other guests, Henny Youngman and that funny “Professor,” Irwin Corey.

  But tonight the Paar show hadn’t been nearly as enjoyable. There, on the same set where Barbra had sat not so long ago, Barbra was derided, not applauded, and Diana was furious.

  Jack Paar was back in the host’s chair, and he must have seen the show while he was on vacation, because he mentioned “that Barbra Streisand” who’d been a guest and made a joke at her expense. A joke that implied Barbra was ugly. That was how Diana described it to friends, and she was “so angry she could have spit.”

  It was true that Diana rarely complimented her daughter. But, as one friend understood it, “she thought Barbra had her own beauty, her own style, and that she was certainly not ugly.” And here Barbra was, looking better than ever, Diana thought, and that boor, Jack Paar, was making a joke at her expense. And on national television where all Diana’s friends could hear it!

  Diana snapped off the set. Taking a piece of paper from her desk, she began to write. “Dear Mr. Paar, I am Barbra Streisand’s mother,” she scrawled—or words to that effect. “How would you feel if I said something unkind about your daughter on national television?” She called him “incredibly rude.” Then she put the letter in an envelope and mailed it off to NBC.

  Typically, she had couched her letter from her own perspective: She hadn’t asked how Paar’s daughter would have felt, after all. But that didn’t mean her own embarrassment had obliterated any concern for Barbra’s feelings. She told her friends that she wouldn’t tell her daughter about any of this. If Barbra hadn’t heard what Paar had said about her, then it was best to keep it that way, Diana believed.

  As far as her friends knew, Diana never got a response from Paar. Nor, they thought, did Barbra ever know how her mother had tried, in her own small, imperfect way, to do right by her.

  Barbara Joan Streisand, age three and age seven. By the time she was seven, she already possessed what she called "an uncontrollable itch" to make it out of Brooklyn and into the big world beyond. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  Barbara with friends outside their Brooklyn tenements. Unlike her playmates, Barbara was never called in for regular meals. She lived, she insisted, like a "wild child." Collection of Stuart Lippner

  Barbara with her sister, Rosalind, known as Rozzie. The younger girl was the apple of their mother's eye, leaving Barbara often feeling left out. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  The teenaged Barbara was self-conscious about her looks, but others pointed out that her curves were in all the right places. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  The seventeen-year-old acting student, ambitious and sometimes overly serious. Despite shyness and self-doubt, she was averse to taking no for an answer. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  Barbara fell hard for the charismatic Barré Dennen, who shaped her early performances and style, and started her off on the road to fame. He also broke her heart. Courtesy of Bob Stone

  Artist Bob Schulenberg helped design Barbra's look—clothes, makeup, hair—and his sketchbook was perennially in hand as he sat in the audience during her performances. He also sketched a self-portrait of himself around the time of Another Evening with Harry Stoones. Courtesy of Bob Schulenberg

  In 1962, on an interview with a journalist set up by her enterprising publicist, Don Softness, Barbra is in full kook mode. New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images

  Barbra was a smash hit as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which opened on March 22, 1962. The critics didn't like the show as much as they liked her, however. © George Silk / Getty Images

  Barbra and her Wholesale costar Elliott Gould on the way to the Tonys, April 29, 1962. She didn't get the award, but she did get Gould. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  Herbert Jacoby and Max Gordon audition a hopeful at the Blue Angel on the same stage where Barbra would perform. Note the quilted walls. New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images

  At first, radio and television microphones unnerved her, but eventually Barbra faced them with confidence. Collection of Stuart Lippner

  Columbia chief Goddard Lieberson at first thought Barbra "too special for records." But he was surprised and pleased to see how, after a slow start, The Barbra Streisand Album shot up the charts. Barbra chose the name herself, after rejecting the company's suggestion: Sweet and Saucy Streisand. © Getty Images

  Three of the men responsible for launching Barbra Streisand into superstardom. David Merrick (left) did so reluctantly, but even he admitted that her talent was remarkable. Jerome Robbins (below) initially wanted to hold out for Anne Bancroft for the part of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, but he eventually became one of Barbra's biggest boosters. But more important to Barbra's success was Ray Stark (right, with John Huston), who believed from the beginning that nobody but Barbra should play Fanny Brice. Even as he conferred with Huston in Mexico over The Night of the Iguana, his mind was on Funny Girl back in New York.

  Merrick: © Arnold Newman / Getty Images; Robbins:

  © Bettmann / CORBIS; Stark and Huston: © Gjon Mill / Getty Images

  Barbra famously broke protocol to ask for President Kennedy's signature after singing for him at the White House Correspondents' dinner on May 24, 1963. She's flanked here by two of the most influential men to gu
ide her career: her indefatigable manager Marty Erlichman and arranger-accompanist Peter Daniels. National Archives / Newsmakers / Getty Images

  "If I'd known the place was going to be so crowded, I'd have had my nose fixed," Barbra said on opening night at Hollywood's Cocoanut Grove, August 21, 1963, instantly winning over the jaded movie-star crowd. Afterward, Natalie Wood, barely glimpsed here, told Barbra she was gorgeous. Barbra designed both of the outfits she wore at the Cocoanut Grove.

  Barbra on stage: © 1978 Chester Maydole / mptvimages.com; close-up of Barbra: © Nat Dallinger / Globe Photos / ZUMA

  After pretending to be married for six months, Barbra and Elliott finally tied the knot in Carson City, Nevada, on September 13, 1963. Their honeymoon was spent at the Beverly Hills Hotel, though Barbra was also working on various television shows. Photographer Bob Willoughby told the newlyweds to get in the pool and have fun.

  Both images: © 1978 Bob Willoughby / mptvimages.com

  An iconic collaboration: Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, and "surprise" guest Ethel Merman. Barbra and Judy: © Nat Dallinger / Globe Photos / ZUMA; Barbra, Ethel, and Judy: Estate of Roddy McDowall

  By the time Funny Girl opened on Broadway on March 26, 1964, it was less about Fanny Brice than it was about Barbra Streisand. Sydney Chaplin and Kay Medford watch as Barbra is lift ed to superstardom. Photofest

  CHAPTER SIX

  Summer 1961

  1.

  That early summer day, trooping up to the WNEW television studios in the former DuMont Tele-Centre on East Sixty-seventh Street, Barbra looked like a goddess, just as Bob had intended.

  She was a young woman transformed. Her eyes appeared Egyptian—making her look like Isis, perhaps, or at least like the photos of Elizabeth Taylor coming off the set of Cleopatra. Her hair was styled in a long, fashionable inverted bob; no more ponytails, Bob had decreed. On her forefinger she wore a silver ring—all the rage at the time, not to mention a symbol of Jewish marriage—and for a blouse she’d chosen a ruffled middy, the kind Jackie Kennedy had popularized when she was pregnant. Some people thought Barbra looked a little pregnant herself with all those ruffles at her waist. But those were people who simply didn’t understand style.

  It was the eyes, however, that really got her noticed, that caused the studio technicians to stop what they were doing and look twice at her. Bob had always emphasized Barbra’s eyes when doing her makeup, but now he’d come up with something entirely new. With a tiny watercolor brush, he had extended the shape of her eyes outward with a long stripe of black eyeliner. Then, before applying her false eyelashes, he drew a thin, almost imperceptible white highlight along the rim of her eyelid to lighten the heaviness of the dark lashes. To teach her how to do it herself, Bob made up one side of Barbra’s face and then had her do the other. But without Bob’s help, she could never seem to glue the eyelashes on herself. Too often her fingers got stuck to the lid of one eye, leaving Barbra screaming, “I’m going blind!”

  So when she didn’t have Bob to help her, she would forego the false eyelashes and go out with only the white lines above her eyelids and the long black lines extending around to the sides of her face. In so doing, Bob thought, Barbra had inadvertently created “a stylistic signature” for herself. Had she been able to apply the eyelashes on her own, the result would have seemed more natural; but without the lashes, the lines around her eyes became more apparent—and, by default, a statement. If Barbra and Bob had been going for the exotic—the “white goddess” look—they had succeeded in ways they hadn’t even imagined.

  As it turned out, their timing was perfect. The television show Barbra was taping, PM East, was a new talkfest produced by WBC Productions, a subsidiary of Westinghouse, and syndicated to various stations throughout the country. Paired with a second half, PM West, taped in San Francisco, the show was intended to give Jack Paar a run for his money. The New York hosts were Mike Wallace, the hard-driving interviewer from the old Night Beat series, and Joyce Davidson, formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and the theme for the segment Barbra was taping today was “glamour.” Among the other guests were model Suzy Parker, Life magazine photographer Milton Greene, and agent Candy Jones, herself frequently on the annual best-dressed lists. Barbra might have been hired to sing a couple of songs, but if the conversation was going to be about glamour, there was no way she was going to be left out. She made sure she showed up ready to take on the best of them.

  Yet just how she had nailed this particular job, she wasn’t telling. When Ted Rozar found out she’d been booked on the show, he was mystified. He hadn’t had anything to do with it. Apparently, a PM East staffer had heard Barbra sing at the Bon Soir and had arranged for an audition. But, Rozar wondered, who had arranged her contract? It wasn’t Irvin Arthur; Associated Booking only handled club dates. So who was it? Rozar had his suspicions. A week or so before Barbra turned up at the station, Marty Erlichman’s clients, the Clancy Brothers, had also taped an appearance on PM East. Had Erlichman, already working with the show’s staff, made a call, talked to some people, helped Barbra out? Was this a way of wooing her? Barbra didn’t say.

  But no doubt she was happy to take the job. Since its debut on June 12, PM East had lured a diverse roster of guests up to Sixty-seventh Street. Retired Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, war correspondent William Shirer, film director Otto Preminger, and comedian Jonathan Winters had all appeared during the show’s kickoff week. An episode focusing on rock and roll with Paul Anka was in the can. Another show looked at the issue of violence, featuring pacifist Jim Peck and psychiatrist Fredric Wertham.

  Parading into the studio Barbra wore her ambition like a debutante might flaunt a mink stole. And for the first time in her career, she ran headfirst into another personality with an ego as big as her own. Mike Wallace was aggressive, grouchy, suspicious by nature, and eager to prove himself with PM East after a series of ratings disappointments. Paul Dooley, who’d been a guest on the show, thought the host “didn’t know anything about variety or singing,” so he came across as tough when, in fact, he was just defensive. Wallace was determined, against all odds, to vanquish Jack Paar and claim late-night supremacy.

  Dooley thought Wallace had “a certain kind of ego that bumps into other performers’ egos”—a perfect description for what happened with Barbra. When the young singer with the extravagant eye makeup walked in, Wallace took one look at her and decided he didn’t like her. True, during her audition, the host had thought her voice was “magnificent,” and he’d agreed with his producers that the kid could be a real asset to the show. But Wallace had also homed right in on what he called Barbra’s “self-absorption.” Of course he did. Narcissists tend to recognize each other. Wallace thought Barbra had “the demeanor of a diva,” and expected the “world [to] revolve around her”—even though, in his opinion, she’d yet to prove she deserved such treatment.

  It’s not surprising, then, that he tried to pull Barbra down a peg. When the cameras began to roll, Wallace began his introduction. “New York is just full of unusual and interesting girls who are starting out in show business, but few of them have the style as early as this young lady.” He was reading a prepared script, of course; Barbra’s “style” was not something Wallace admired. Unimpressed with Bob’s “white goddess” attempts, the newsman thought Barbra looked “more like the studio mail girl than a singer.” Suddenly going off script, he asked for a close-up of Barbra’s hand. It was a show about glamour, after all, and Barbra seemed to be trying to make a statement. “Isn’t this really an affectation?” Wallace asked. “Come on now, this ring on the forefinger? And these nails that are a little bit short of two inches long each? What’s that all about?”

  Barbra, probably prepped by the producers, didn’t let Wallace knock her off stride. “Well, see, I was very poor,” she said, “so I wanted to grow them really long so I could get ten dollars a nail from Revlon.” She laughed, barely concealing her annoyance at Wallace’s question. “I happen to like long nails!
”

  “And the ring on the forefinger?” Wallace pressed.

  “Well, I could tell you the ring . . . would be too big, which it is for this finger,” Barbra said, indicating the traditional ring finger. “But I like it on this finger! So did King Louis XIV!”

  According to the show’s publicist, Don Softness, Barbra had displayed a similar sassiness during her audition, and the producers, delighted, had told her to “play up the kookiness” on the air. Barbra didn’t disappoint. When Wallace asked what she was going to sing first, she replied, “The Kinsey Report,” which got a big laugh from the technicians in the studio. (She actually sang “A Sleepin’ Bee.”) When he asked what she wanted to be “when she grew up,” Barbra quipped, “A fireman,” before adding, grandly, that what she really wanted to do was “direct opera.”

  “Do you know anything about directing operas?” Wallace asked.

  “I don’t know anything about opera really,” Barbra replied, “except that it’s a magnificent medium to express things theatrically and vocally, if you have the vocal equipment. It could be a very exciting theatrical experience. The kind of plots you could—”

  “They’re telling us from the control room—” Wallace interrupted.

  “That’s awful,” Barbra said, peeved at being cut off.