In her teens, Fran became an accomplished horsewoman, winning awards at the National Horse Show. When her mother moved to Hollywood, Fran was introduced around as one of the more eligible young ladies in town, but her heart was won by the up-and-coming Ray Stark. Their marriage was one of the social events of the season for the movie colony. The newlyweds filled their home on South Peck Drive with modern art, starting with a single Chagall, then adding a Rouault, which they placed over the mantel. Now Fran was one of the great ladies of Hollywood, a perennial on best-dressed lists, ranking alongside Jackie Kennedy and Babe Paley.
It was, no doubt, with a raised eyebrow or two that she regarded Barbra’s more bohemian wardrobe. Both of the Starks could be snobbish. They were particular about their images and their hard-won place in society. Their children were Peter, eighteen when Barbra met him, and Wendy, sixteen. Even their names suggested the magical world to which their parents aspired. Peter and Wendy grew up among the other offspring of the rich and famous. Wendy played with Candice Bergen, went to school with Liza Minnelli, and shopped Rodeo Drive with Yasmin Khan. In that elite Hollywood social circle, parents competed against one another to throw the most spectacular birthday parties for their children. The Starks often won. On one birthday, Wendy was startled when her father shouted “Surprise!” and pulled back the curtain to reveal two elephants, one big and one small, grazing in her backyard.
The Starks threw some of the biggest, most elaborate parties in Los Angeles, with large tents and usually a theme. It took Fran at least a month to plan her gatherings. There had to be two bands: one for traditional dancing music during the dinner, and then a dance band for afterward—to play the bossa nova or the twist. A Stark soiree two years ago was still being called “the outstanding Hollywood party of the season.” A tent had been erected in the backyard large enough to accommodate a small circus. Under this big top sat 280 guests at twenty-eight tables. Thrown for investors in the film version of The World of Suzie Wong, the goal of the bash was to “launch” (Hollywood jargon for “introduce”) Nancy Kwan, who was taking over the lead in the film. The usual mix of Los Angeles society—Rosalind Russell and Freddie Brisson, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Betsy and Alfred Bloomingdale, William Haines and Jimmie Shields—had sipped champagne and air-kissed each other. At the end of the night, Fran was just pleased that no one “had fallen into the swimming pool”—it had happened before—and that all of the jewelry that had been lost had been reclaimed. Except for one topaz ring. “I suppose,” Fran confided to a reporter, “since it is not a diamond no one will admit wearing it.”
No such extravaganza, however, was thrown in Barbra’s honor; she wasn’t, after all, signed yet. The first meeting between Barbra and Fran Stark most likely was just a small affair, cocktails or maybe a light dinner. Yet no doubt it was enough for Barbra to get a glimpse of a very alien world. From Barry and Bob, she had heard a little about life among Southern California’s upper class, but seeing it firsthand—the swimming pools and housekeepers and long winding driveways and Aston Martins and Bentleys—was something else entirely. Although Barbra told one friend she found Fran Stark “pretentious,” she was also intrigued by the world in which she and Ray lived. When Fran shook Barbra’s hand for the first time, her wrists sparkled with platinum-and-emerald bracelets and her ears dripped with diamonds. Upstairs there was a treasure chest of gems worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Standing under the chandelier in the Starks’ home, surrounded by Picassos and Calders, Barbra had entered a world far, far away from her mother’s apartment in Brooklyn, where everything reeked of kale, and where tattered cookbooks and cracked china were piled on the dining-room table.
Heading into the studio to tape the Shore show, Barbra knew that Fran Stark sat out in the audience waiting to judge her. Rehearsals, sans audience, had gone well, and there was every reason to think that this final taping would proceed just as smoothly. But given Barbra’s tendency for first-night jitters, there was, almost certainly, more than a little anxiety as she slipped into her dress for the evening. A thumbs-down from Fran could kill the whole deal, no matter how much Ray and Jule might plead her case. To lose The Funny Girl now was unthinkable. Barbra had sought out her old teacher Allan Miller for some private coaching so she’d get better and better at each reading. But none of that would matter if the elegantly dressed woman sitting out in the audience tonight didn’t like what she saw and heard.
So it was with considerable determination that Barbra steadied her nerves and headed out in front of the cameras.
Dinah Shore was a television mainstay, having hosted various shows for a decade. This current series aired once a month, in color, on Sunday nights after Bonanza—a terrific ratings lead-in. Tonight’s episode, which would be taped for a later airdate, was to be pitched as “a group of vocal performers” who, in Shore’s opinion, would be the “important entertainers of tomorrow.” In addition to Barbra, the guests were Georgia Brown, who’d briefly also been in the running to play Fanny Brice; pop singer Sam Fletcher; and the Chad Mitchell Trio, who were folk singers.
Shore, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, had grown up in Tennessee; with her lilting accent, she cultivated the image of a Southern belle. She swept out onto the stage this night in a long gown and glittering top, her earrings sparkling as the orchestra played a soulful introduction. She read from a script prepared by the show’s writers, with input from Marty, that was intended to keep the momentum going for Barbra. But right off the bat, Shore got it wrong.
“Barbra Streisand,” she said, placing the accent only on the first syllable of “Streisand” and practically swallowing the second. To Barbra, such pronunciation was like fingernails on a blackboard. Someone, evidently, had failed to school Shore the way they’d schooled Garry Moore. Shore, unaware, went on in her flowery drawl. She called her next guest “a girl barely out of her teens,” who was “wistful, funny, appealing, and enormously talented.” Then came the obligatory key point, made every time Barbra appeared on television but which tonight was especially important since Fran Stark was sitting in the audience. “She’s basically a comedienne,” Shore said of Barbra, “but she’s a fine dramatic actress, too, as you’ll see when she sings her torch song.”
The giant TK-41 color television camera then dollied across the stark, expressionist set to find Barbra standing at the foot of an open staircase. She seemed somewhat ill at ease. The added pressure of the night couldn’t have helped, but Barbra’s nerves could also have sprung from the proximity of that monstrous mechanical beast. The camera had to be rolled in practically to her toes whenever a close shot was needed, as it contained no zoom lens. Yet Barbra looked fabulous, taking full advantage of the color broadcast by wearing a bright orange, floor-length, Grecian-style dress secured by a brooch at the waist—a perfect representation of Bob’s “white goddess.”
But when she opened her mouth to sing, a rather strange thing occurred. Usually this was the moment when people described the hair standing up on the backs of their necks, or tingles suddenly vibrating down their spines, or some other physical manifestation of their reaction to Barbra’s voice. But something was off tonight. To at least one reviewer, who saw the show when it was broadcast, Barbra seemed “anxious.” Whether it was Fran Stark, the metal leviathan at her shoulder, or Shore mispronouncing her name, Barbra was off her game. She launched into a shrill, stylized rendition of “Cry Me a River,” a song that usually blew people away in nightclubs, but which here seemed overdone, overwrought, almost a parody of a “serious actress” trying to express herself in a song. Barbra’s eyes seemed to keep crossing as she snapped out the lyrics, staccato-style, and at times she was all mouth, summoning very little of the pathos she’d brought to the song in the days when the pain of losing Barry had been so recent.
Then, after the audience’s applause, she dramatically flung her filmy tangerine cape over her shoulder and ascended the stairs to emerge into another modernistic set, where she sang “Happy Days Are Here Again.�
�� The song had become Barbra’s signature very quickly during her nightclub appearances. For some loyal fans, however, who’d heard Barbra sing it dozens of times at the Bon Soir or the Blue Angel, it was impossible not to think she was performing it this night as if she were Fanny Brice keening “My Man.” She seemed to be summoning the same heartache that Brice had brought to her own signature song, the same defiant strength in the face of adversity. But did it feel real? That much her fans were divided on. Once again, she was all mouth and teeth as she threw back her head. “Happy days are . . . here . . . a . . . gain!”
Later in the show, there was a little more lightheartedness, as Barbra joined Shore and the rest of the cast for an upbeat rendition of “Brotherhood of Man,” from Wholesale’s chief Broadway rival, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Perhaps it might have been smarter to pair “Happy Days” with something more rousing like this, because Barbra’s two solo numbers hadn’t allowed for any of her quirky humor. Styne, of course, had previously advised her to play that down, and she seemed to be heeding his words again this night. Whether that was a mistake was unknown, as the critics wouldn’t get a crack at the show until it was aired a few months down the road.
But one critic had already seen all she needed to see. Whether it was the lack of humor and warmth, the stylized singing, the odd facial expressions, or something else entirely, Fran Stark had not been won over by Barbra’s performance. Privately, she would declare that if it were up to her, Barbra Streisand would never play her mother.
3.
Sitting at a desk, wearing a dark dress and a long strand of pearls, Barbra raised her eyes to the photographer who was recording the moment for posterity—and for distribution in Columbia press kits. Standing beside her was Goddard Lieberson, smartly dressed in a well-cut suit and a French-cuffed, tab-collared shirt. As Barbra looked on beaming, God leaned down and signed the contract that had been placed in front of her on the desk. That day, October 1, Barbra officially became a Columbia recording artist.
Soon after her return from Los Angeles, she’d learned from Marty that, after weeks of negotiations, her contract was ready to be signed. Dorothy Kilgallen had reported, without hiding her scorn, that Marty had been seeking $100,000 as an advance for his client—which, Kilgallen sniped, was “a lot of loot for a new name, especially a singer who hasn’t hit it big by herself in the record market.” At such a figure Columbia had indeed balked, but Marty had just moved on to what he had really wanted for Barbra all along: complete “creative control, no coupling, and the right to choose her own material.” (Coupling meant being paired with another artist.) This was granted. After all, David Kapralik reasoned, Barbra had built a successful nightclub career on her own. Why mess with a proven formula? Plus, Marty had secured a clause that allowed her, should she get cast in another Broadway show after Wholesale, to participate in a show-tune album with another record label. As always, Marty thought ahead.
The rest of the contract was pretty standard. A small advance— twenty grand—with a five percent royalty against ninety-eight percent of records sold. The deal between them was for five years—which actually meant one year, after which Columbia had the option for the next four years to keep Barbra or let her go. But these ordinary clauses weren’t what most observers noticed. Instead, they saw a twenty-year-old kid waltzing into Columbia and demanding—and getting—full creative control from a man as legendarily omnipotent as Lieberson. It left some industry stalwarts flabbergasted. And what was more, the $100,000 figure floated by Kilgallen was never retracted. Whether that was an oversight or whether Marty deliberately chose not to correct the columnist is unknown. But it would certainly fit his strategy of positioning Barbra as an extraordinary artist being extended extraordinary privileges by the powers that be.
For many people, that was precisely the image they came away with, and their beliefs seemed to be confirmed by Kilgallen’s follow-up column. “After months of negotiations,” she reported, “Barbra Streisand is signing with Columbia Records this week, and will cut her first solo discs for the company within a few days. They’ll go all out to promote her, of course—at those staggering rates.” For Kilgallen’s readers, who included nearly everybody in showbiz, the impression was that Barbra had actually gotten that hundred grand. It wasn’t surprising that many of them felt angry or jealous.
In the fall of 1962, the ranks of that small but vocal minority of Streisand detractors were beginning to swell. Not only was Barbra catching breaks that other performers believed were being denied to them, but she remained, to their view, ungrateful for all that she was getting. On a recent radio program, Barbra had been asked by interviewer Lee Jordan how her success felt. “It doesn’t feel like anything,” she’d replied cavalierly. She went on to reiterate her resentment at not being able to do what she wanted at night because she had to be at the theater. “Already she’s complaining,” Jordan commented, and many listeners shared the surprise and disdain that was apparent in his voice.
It was the Columbia contract that really seemed to tip the scales for a lot of people. “What I would have given for a contract like that, guaranteeing me complete creative control,” groused one singer, who’d been around a lot longer than Barbra. Grasping around for an explanation, some of them latched on to the idea of a network of “Jewish helping hands,” an informal but deliberate collusion among Jewish power brokers to promote one of their own. “They wanted to have their say about what was beautiful, what was talented,” said another performer, who was not Jewish. “For so long they had been self-conscious about being Jewish themselves, always having to promote these pretty blonde Gentile girls with perky little noses, and then along came Barbra and they suddenly had a chance to build up a real obvious Jewish girl.”
Was there some merit to the theory? As far back as Eddie Blum, there had been men in positions of power, Jewish men, who had taken more kindly to Barbra because of her ethnicity. More recently, Arthur Laurents had gone to bat for her with Goddard Lieberson, urging the record producer to help out this talented kalleh moid. Indeed, most of those who had opened doors for Barbra—hiring her for shows or clubs, extending her runs, writing material for her, promoting her to the press, giving her contracts—had been Jewish. In addition to Laurents and Lieberson, there had been Jerome Weidman, Harold Rome, David Kapralik, Max Gordon, and, although reluctantly, David Merrick. Currently, Ray Stark and Jule Styne were attempting to open yet more doors for her. Barbra was also benefiting from the support of an important new fan and booster, the composer Harold Arlen, who was known to rave at influential cocktail parties about how wonderfully she sang his songs—“A Sleepin’ Bee,” “Right as the Rain,” “When the Sun Comes Out,” among others. And it was perhaps noteworthy that the one least enthusiastic about her—Merrick—was also the one most uncomfortable with his own Jewishness. Merrick, according to witnesses, would “bristle” when he heard Barbra speaking in her pronounced Jewish Brooklynese. Was Merrick the exception among Barbra’s Jewish godfathers who proved the rule?
But not all the helping hands had been Jewish. The very first people to give Barbra a leg up the ladder had been Gentiles: Burke McHugh, Ernie Sgroi, Sam and Les Gruber. And Barbra’s Jewishness had been as much a handicap at times as it had been an asset: How many of the snide reviews, especially those commenting on her looks, had been stoked by anti-Semitism? The truth was, for all the belief in some great Jewish conspiracy to elevate Barbra Streisand, if there had not been two Broadway shows—Wholesale and now The Funny Girl—that required eccentric Jewish characters, none of Barbra’s benefactors, even if they’d wanted to, could have helped her much beyond nightclubs and records. As it was, Barbra had come along at just the right moment for both these shows—and, consequently, for her own success.
There was also a change in the air, a “democratization” as Bob called it, inspired by the Kennedys in the White House and the civil rights movement taking place across the country, a sense that “fashion and beauty and talent
were for everybody,” not just those who looked like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. That year, Diahann Carroll had won the Tony as Best Actress for Richard Rodgers’s No Strings—a first for an African American and a feat unthinkable even a few years earlier. Johnny Mathis was selling records and making teenaged girls swoon in the way Pat Boone and other white singers had done before him. Nightclubs and theaters were filling up with faces and voices that unambiguously reflected the experience of ethnicities rarely encountered by white-bread America until now: Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Dustin Hoffman, Joan Rivers, Chita Rivera, Bill Cosby, and Totie Fields, to name just a few. Even Barbra realized the shift that was taking place. People, she said, “were ready” for her.
It was clear that Columbia Records was ready for her. Shaking hands with Lieberson and posing for the last of the publicity photos, Barbra was done with pleasantries—which she never tolerated for too long—and eager to get busy. Mike Berniker, a young up-and-comer from A&R (the artists and repertoire division), was assigned as her producer. Berniker had just produced a Tammy Grimes album and sent it over to Barbra so she could get a sense of his work. After having a listen, Barbra called him and said, “Yeah, let’s go.” They set the date of October 16 for Barbra to record her first disks. But, as Berniker and everyone else at Columbia would discover, Barbra would turn out to be a very different artist from Tammy Grimes—from everyone else, in fact, on their label.
4.
Barbra and her castmates were practicing their new marks, entrances, and exits now that Wholesale had moved over to the Broadway Theatre, on Broadway near Fifty-third Street. Changing theaters midrun was never easy for a company that had been doing the same exact things, in the same exact places, for seven months. Alone among them, Barbra was probably glad for the change in scenery; any shake-up to her Wholesale routine was welcome to her. But the move to a new theater was hardly consolation for losing The Funny Girl.
Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand Page 31