Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  She hadn’t quite lost it yet, but things didn’t look good. Just a couple of weeks ago, the part of Fanny Brice had seemed within her grasp. Earl Wilson had reported, “David Merrick may hold up his Fanny Brice musical while it’s tailored to young Barbra Streisand.” Louella Parsons had confirmed the report, sourcing Jule Styne and announcing that Anne Bancroft was now “completely out of the Fanny Brice story.” In no uncertain terms, Styne had told Parsons, “When we make it, Barbra Streisand . . . will play Fanny.” It would require “a whole rewrite job,” Styne explained, as the “story had been written with Anne Bancroft in mind.” Barbra, it seemed, had the job.

  Then, out of the blue, the entire Brice project stalled. No one was returning Marty’s calls. How much Barbra knew about Fran Stark’s opposition to her is unknown, but in fact it was much more than just that putting on the brakes. Surely Barbra had heard rumors by now of what was afoot and what had really caused all the preparations for The Funny Girl to come to a grinding halt.

  In late September, Jerry Robbins had quit. “Although Jerry has been working on the Fanny Brice musical for many months,” his lawyer had written to Stark’s lawyer, “it is now obvious to everyone that it is not ready for rehearsals. If it is rewritten and becomes ready for production (a hope he cherishes) he will be glad to consider directing and choreographing it.” But for now, he was through.

  Robbins’s letter of resignation had come after a series of “ghastly sessions” (so called by Isobel Lennart) with Ray Stark. The long-simmering tensions between director and producer had finally boiled over. Robbins had bluntly told Stark the book was “not ready yet, despite everyone’s work and creative contributions.” Moreover, he resented being coerced into moving ahead on the project, especially because it meant postponing Mother Courage, which was ready to go.

  What really ticked Robbins off, however, was a letter Stark then wrote to his attorneys, pointing out that he, Stark, was an investor in Mother Courage and so had some say over Robbins’s decisions. “I think there can be no question of the fact,” Stark wrote, “that never has a director received so many benefits as Jerry is now receiving.” Enraged and offended, Robbins called Stark’s assertions “slanderous, ” and then added pointedly, “As for delivering stage successes on Broadway, I’m a veteran compared to you, this being your first time up at bat.”

  From there, it could only go downhill. In his resignation letter, Robbins stressed that if he did not do the play, he would “not want any of his ideas or material used.” It was that clause, even more than Robbins’s departure, that had halted the project. Robbins’s contributions were woven all through the book, and no one knew this better than Lennart. She’d have to scrap everything and start over, writing an entirely new script, while Stark and Merrick began searching around for a new director. This was the real reason the book needed to be rewritten; it wasn’t to accommodate Barbra, as Styne had told Parsons, but rather to accommodate Jerry Robbins.

  But, in public, Barbra was being used as the reason for the show’s delay—even though she hadn’t even been signed yet and, given Fran Stark’s opposition, might never be. If the producers had really been delaying the show so they could “tailor” it to Barbra, they would have already signed her. But as it was, there was no show to sign her for, and if there ever was again, they might still go with someone else. Given how smart both Barbra and Marty were, they surely knew exactly how they were being used by Stark and Merrick. It couldn’t have been a pleasant predicament. They couldn’t complain or object too loudly, as Barbra was still being touted as the “leading” candidate. But they also had no bargaining power in this game of wait and see.

  It didn’t take Marty long to realize that they might have a way to influence the situation after all. Soon he was making a few calls to the columnists on his own, and within days Earl Wilson was reporting, “Barbra Streisand, who’s been practically set for the delayed Fanny Brice musical (but never signed for it), is reading for the new show The Student Gypsy.” This was a musical written by Rick Besoyan, the author of the long-running off-Broadway satire Little Mary Sunshine. The message to Stark and Merrick was plain: If they wanted Barbra, they’d better act fast in putting their show back together.

  But the producers were stuck. Without a script, without a director, they could go no further. Lennart had already been floundering; how could she possibly write an entirely new book devoid of Robbins’s contributions? Would they need to hire another librettist? In such chaos, The Funny Girl might easily wither away, as so many failed concepts had done before it. And with it, so too would wither away Barbra’s best chance to reach the top. When would another musical come along that needed a funny Jewish girl with a big nose as its star?

  So, with undoubtedly a heavy heart, Barbra resumed learning her new marks for Wholesale. She also went back on The Tonight Show, where the new host, Johnny Carson, mispronounced her last name just like everybody else did. And she signed a contract for yet another gig at the Bon Soir. Same as it ever was.

  5.

  Peter Daniels looked through his thick glasses at the young woman perusing the sheet music in front of him. Usually it was just the two of them, or the two of them plus a trio. But now thirty or more musicians surrounded Barbra and Peter, all tuning their instruments, a cacophony of notes sounding in that magnificent space, with its hundred-foot ceilings matched by a hundred feet of floor space. Above them dangled mikes and long copper wires leading to the recording equipment. From the small glass booth on the second floor, a gaggle of solemn men in suits looked down at everything they did. Peter took his seat at the piano, playing a few keys to familiarize himself. Barbra continued looking over the music, psyching herself up to record her first disks under her contract.

  Early this morning, Tuesday, October 16, a warm, overcast day, Peter had trekked down to Columbia’s Studio C at 207 East Thirtieth with Barbra and Marty. It was an old Presbyterian Church, and it offered some of the best acoustics of any recording studio in the city. Miles Davis would record nowhere else. When Barbra looked down from the control room at all the musicians, Mike Berniker thought she was trembling. He took her by the hand and led her to the floor.

  At the moment, unbeknownst to anyone, the Kennedy administration was facing down the Soviet Union in what came to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although tension was everywhere, Barbra had no idea just how close the country was to nuclear war as she tested the mikes in the studio that morning.

  Peter found he could work well with the orchestra, conducted by George Williams, a true master, who’d arranged for Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Lionel Hampton. Together they had reworked “Happy Days” yet again, finding a synthesis of the various renditions Barbra had performed so far. With the goal of producing two records that day, with two sides each, Peter had also rearranged “Right as the Rain,” “When the Sun Comes Out,” and “Lover, Come Back to Me.” He’d been with Barbra long enough now to know exactly what worked, what didn’t, what they’d tried before, and what they still might play around with.

  Barbra had come a long way since Peter had first laid eyes on the pimply-faced kid with enormous chutzpah auditioning for The Sound of Music. He’d been there for the first Bon Soir show, for the Blue Angel gigs, and for so many other performances. Many times Barbra had slept on the floor of Peter’s studio after a long practice session. In the last several months, Peter had been spending far more time with Barbra than he had with his wife, Anita, causing not a few problems at home. But Peter, a brilliant, offbeat, march-to-his-own-drummer kind of guy, had left England at a young age and come to America with a single goal in mind: to become a famous musician. Peter wanted to be a star—to be recognized—almost as much as Barbra did, and he knew attaching himself to her would pay off. In fact, it already had. His steady gigs at both the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel were in part because of his connection to her. While this time he might have been at Columbia to make Barbra’s first records, next time, he hoped, he could be making his.
r />   Nearly all of the songs Barbra had used to establish herself had been arranged by Peter; his influence could be heard every time she opened her mouth to sing. It was Peter who had thought to have her hold the notes as long as she did in “Right as the Rain”; it was he who’d had the idea to sex up “When the Sun Comes Out.” Occasionally he’d suggest something that didn’t work, but usually Barbra was able to accomplish whatever Peter had in mind, continually surprising him with her ability to take one of his ideas and elaborate on it. Theirs was an easy partnership, though not without quarrels. Barbra was demanding, and while Peter could usually roll with her tetchiness, sometimes he had to get up off his stool and take a walk around the block.

  Of the songs Barbra was to record that day, “Lover, Come Back to Me” dated back the furthest, all the way to her first Bon Soir appearance more than two years ago. It had been Barry who’d helped her arrange that song, playing the record over and over for her in his apartment. Back then, Barbra had had trouble with one line, never seeming to get through it without tripping over the words, but now the song flowed easily and smoothly, like the old friend it was. Peter had kept the fast, almost freight-train tempo that Barry had devised, but he had given the song an extra bounciness that brought out its soul. Barbra might have been singing about missing a lover, but she did so gaily, almost giddily. Hearing her sing the song, there was no question that her lover was coming back.

  But nowhere was Peter’s talent expressed better than in the new arrangement he’d come up with, in partnership with George Williams, for “Happy Days Are Here Again.” As Barbra sang that signature number into the microphone hanging in front of her, there was a sense in the room of something wonderful coming together. For this rendition, Barbra was able to perfectly balance the song’s original jubilation with the sense of melancholy she’d brought to it. What they brought forth that day was a haunting, complex number, celebratory and cautionary at the same time, a call of joy as well as a cry of sadness. It was, in the end, whatever the listener believed it to be, which, of course, is the mark of transcendence. Barbra’s voice, a gorgeous instrument on its own, never sounded better than here, surrounded by that thirty-piece orchestra in that exquisitely acoustic room. When they were finished, and Williams lowered his conductor’s baton, Peter knew in his heart they had just wrought a masterpiece.

  6.

  Hoping to change his wife’s mind about Barbra, Ray Stark had brought Fran to the Bon Soir. Seeing Barbra in the more relaxed setting of a nightclub, he anticipated, might soften Fran’s vehement opposition. The show was tentatively back on track, now being called The Luckiest People, after a line in the Styne-Merrill song “People.” They would tiptoe their way around the legal issues with Robbins the best they could. But recent press reports were stating that Kaye Ballard was now being considered for the lead. On The Perry Como Show, where she was a regular, Ballard was doing some superb impressions of Brice. The New York Times’s Sam Zolotow, who knew about such things, had called Ballard a contender for the part. But that was hype. Ray Stark hadn’t lost his faith in Barbra.

  Fran, however, was another story. That was why Barbra, waiting in that cramped little dressing room that had become something of a second home, had to go out on the stage one more time to try to win her over. It seemed she was forever auditioning.

  She should have been riding high, especially with the release earlier that month of the “Happy Days” single. Yet despite its brilliance, the disk had gone precisely nowhere. That was because, as Marty discovered, the head of the sales department, a conservative fellow by the name of Bill Gallagher, had doubted the commercial viability of “Happy Days.” Just to be safe, he’d pressed only five hundred disks and distributed them only in New York. Enraged, Marty had demanded that Columbia release the second single as soon as possible and get one hundred percent behind promoting it this time.

  In response, Lieberson had suggested a live album. Indeed, an album was what Marty had been angling for all along. So, just a few days before the Starks’ appearance at the Bon Soir, Columbia had sent in a team to the club to record Barbra live. Lieberson had introduced Barbra to the audience himself, calling her “a singular artist” who couldn’t be categorized. With beauty and grace she rendered “My Name Is Barbara” and the crowd was on their feet applauding. But then a microphone fuse blew. “You’re kidding me!” Barbra wailed. That was just the beginning. When she restarted her set, the Columbia photographer, hoping for a jacket cover, kept snapping pictures and distracting her. Finally Barbra had to ask him to stop. These were hardly the conditions under which she wanted to record an album. She needed the kind of control she’d had at the Thirtieth Street studio, without worries of extraneous noise or echoes. If this was what making albums was like, then she wanted no part of it.

  Faced with the vacuum left by the collapse of the Brice musical, Barbra had taken Marty’s advice and signed with new publicists. Richard Falk had already left her, reportedly because Marty “was doing everything” himself. But it was Barbra who’d made the break with the Softness brothers. Quite simply, she felt she had outgrown them. She’d offered Don Softness, with whom she had the closer relationship, a chance to stay on, providing he got rid of all of his other clients to focus only on her. The offer was “tempting,” Softness said, but ultimately he turned Barbra down. He “had a company to run,” he said, and besides, a future of “being the tail that wagged the dog” was not something he looked forward to. Barbra may have been hurt, since rejection of any kind was never easy for her, which might explain why she had no further contact with Softness, not even to pay the last of the expenses he’d incurred in promoting her.

  Her new publicist, Lee Solters, had far more connections than the Softness Group. And, like Marty, he was willing to come on board without any binding contract, assured only by an absolute belief in Barbra’s greatness and ultimate destiny. At least, that was the word that Solters let get around once he was in the job; it certainly fit the narrative Marty had already established. Solters, born Nathan Cohen in Brooklyn and always called “Nussy,” was a bald-headed, raspy-voiced character who’d been working as a press agent for David Merrick for more than a decade. It was Solters who’d been the architect of the ingenious “Mr. Clutterbuck” ploy. Grabbing publicity came naturally to him, one observer said, “like putting on a pair of shoes.”

  While promoting Wholesale, Solters had encountered Barbra and quickly became impressed with her moxie and determination to get her name out there. It became clear to Barbra that Solters, far more than Softness or even Falk, had the clout to make her a household name. In addition to Merrick’s shows, Solters had also flacked for Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, My Fair Lady, The King and I, and Camelot. Just recently, he’d picked up none other than Frank Sinatra as a client. Solters knew everybody.

  And while he hoped to raise Barbra’s publicity to new heights, Solters chose to continue, even intensify, the meme originated by Softness of Barbra as “kook.” Not only was it ideal positioning for the Fanny Brice musical, but even if that show never came to fruition, Barbra’s “kookiness” ensured that the press kept coming back for more. Who wouldn’t want great copy like Earl Wilson had been getting, or the fabulous stream of consciousness that had made the New Yorker piece required reading among the theater crowd? Barbra’s kookiness had certainly entranced Johnny Carson when she’d appeared with him on The Tonight Show. When the host had asked her if she thought of herself as a kook, Barbra had replied, “I don’t understand it really. I’ll tell you this, it’s very interesting because when I decided, well, not decided, I always knew I wanted to be in the theater, but I never made rounds or anything like that, it was very depressing. But I did for two days. It was during the winter. It was very cold and I wore a big coat and a big hat because I can’t stand the cold. So I walked into offices and they really thought I was nuts. Like one woman said to me, ‘When you go make rounds and you meet people, you should wear stockings and high heels’ and so forth. I said, ‘It’s f
reezing out, lady. It’s so cold, what difference does it make if I’m an actress, if I am talented or not talented, what difference does it make if I wear tights or not?’ So kooky people said I was kooky.”

  Of course, that was classic Barbra—she meant every word of it, even if she was likely conflating episodes (was the hat and coat a reference to her Wholesale audition?) and ignoring actual chronology, as was her custom. All that mattered was that she told an entertaining story in an entertaining way. That had been Softness’s instruction, and now it was Solters’s as well. Barbra shouldn’t hold back, her publicists told her; she should say whatever came into her head—and the quirkier the better. So, after telling Carson she didn’t understand being called a kook, she gave evidence to demonstrate that she was, in fact, exactly what they called her. Carson, his amiable expressions showing an earnest, if exaggerated, attempt to follow her logic, clearly enjoyed her. As she had on PM East, Barbra could pull viewers in with her far-out style. Since that first appearance, Carson, looking to boost his ratings, had already had her back on the show once—a gig for which Marty also managed to get the Clancy Brothers included—and had slated her for still another appearance in early January.

  That fall, Barbra stood over Solters’s shoulder, as Arthur Laurents understood, admonishing him to “get her something new.” Accordingly, Solters was busy preparing a multimedia promotional campaign for her: print, television, radio. He succeeded in getting Ed Sullivan, the king of variety television, to come down to the Bon Soir to catch Barbra’s performance. Sullivan hired her on the spot for his television show and, having enjoyed the evening so much, also hired Barbra’s warm-up act, comedian Sammy Shore, to appear with her. The date was set for early in December.