Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  Meanwhile, Barbra was all confidence. Sitting at a Covent Garden café sipping Earl Grey tea with her fellow New Yorkers, Barbra told them that Funny Girl was finally moving again. By the time she got back to the States, Marty expected to have a contract waiting for her to sign.

  Such an outcome would mean, of course, that she’d be starring on Broadway while Elliott was headlining in the West End, separated by more than three thousand miles of ocean for who knew how long. But this trip, for all its difficulties, had reestablished the connection between them. They’d find a way to make things work.

  4.

  On a cool evening in the middle part of May, Kaye Ballard arrived at Basin Street East with composer Arthur Siegel. They were there to see Barbra Streisand’s new show. The “little girl with the big voice,” as Ballard called her, had just become the top solo female recording artist in America. The Barbra Streisand Album had reached number 15 on the Billboard chart, passing Joan Baez, who’d fallen to number 19.

  Ballard was set to headline at Basin Street East when Barbra’s run ended, and Siegel had known the young star for years, supplying her with sheet music at a time when she was too poor to afford it. Both assumed Barbra would be pleased if they popped backstage before the show to congratulate her on her recent successes. With the assent of the house manager, they knocked on Barbra’s dressing room.

  The door opened slightly. The face of a “flack,” as Ballard described him, peered out at them. They asked if they might see Barbra. No, they were told sharply. Miss Streisand wasn’t seeing anyone. She was “much too busy.” The flack closed the door in their faces.

  It was standard practice for other “names” to stop by the dressing rooms of performers either before or after a show. To snub someone in this way was a major breach of protocol. Barbra, however, as always, didn’t make time for niceties, least of all when she was getting ready to go on stage. She was more concerned with quieting her own nerves than bruising other people’s feelings. She may also have felt awkward having a conversation with Ballard, since the older actress was still being mentioned occasionally for Funny Girl—and Barbra now knew the show was almost hers.

  Any nerves about that evening’s performance were understandable, however, since her gig at Basin Street East was her highest-profile one yet. The club itself wasn’t all that special: a red-plush room on the ground floor of the Shelton Towers Hotel at Forty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue. But it had showcased some impressive performers over the years: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald. Originally called La Vie en Rose, the club had introduced Eartha Kitt to the world. More recently, it was one of Peggy Lee’s most frequent engagements.

  Four hundred and fifty people could be seated for a show—the biggest room Barbra had ever played—and since the start of her run on May 13, she’d been selling out the house. On opening night, she’d actually had an overflow audience, filled with celebrities and “the town’s top agents, bookers, record people and scribes.” Up near the front had sat Truman Capote, Cecil Beaton, the singer Connie Francis, the producer George Abbott, and Georgia Brown, Barbra’s erstwhile rival for Fanny Brice. One of the songs Barbra sang that night was “Who Will Buy?” from Brown’s show Oliver!—and Brown led the cheers. Backstage, Barbra received congratulatory telegrams from Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

  Opening night had been a triumph. Columnist Louis Sobol, also in that first-night crowd, had noted how Capote and Beaton kept “shouting their enthusiasm” every time Barbra finished a number. “She’s fabulous,” Capote gushed in his high-pitched voice to the columnist after the show. George Abbott had made a beeline backstage—Barbra didn’t turn him away—and told her she’d be perfect for his upcoming show Love Is Just Around the Corner. That little tidbit made its way to both Earl Wilson and Dorothy Kilgallen, courtesy of Lee Solters, who hoped Ray Stark would read it.

  Most important, the critics had loved her. “A potent belter with a load of style,” Variety had declared. Billboard opined that few entertainers had come along in the past decade “with the talent and ability of Barbra Streisand,” and echoed Solters’s talking point of comparing her comedy style to Beatrice Lillie. “Barbra,” the obviously smitten reviewer had concluded, “you’re quite a girl and all performer.”

  This was what the audience had been coming back for every night. As Ballard and Siegel took their seats—miffed but not so much that they’d miss the show—there was a definite energy in the air, an expectation of big things. With the newspaper strike over, New Yorkers were once again reading about Barbra in their local papers, and they had turned out in droves to Basin Street East.

  As Barbra stepped out on stage, there was a huge roar of applause. Barbra looked terrific in the new do she’d gotten in London. One reviewer called it a “Kenneth coif,” assuming that she, like so many fashion-conscious celebrities, had made a visit to Kenneth Battelle, Jacqueline Kennedy’s hairstylist, who was bestowing a similar, Sassoon-inspired look on his clients. But Barbra was a trendsetter, never a follower. She had made her dress herself out of pink-and-white checked gingham: V-necked, sleeveless, Empire-waisted, and darted at the bust. Around the bottom she’d sewn some frill. She was terribly proud that she’d designed the dress herself, even if the same reviewer who’d approved of her new hairdo thought that her penchant for Empire waists didn’t “suit her frame.”

  Still, her look set her apart. In a widely syndicated article for the UPI, writer Rick DuBrow had called Barbra “a different kind of mama”—and some commentators were still resistant to that difference. Harriet Van Horne, for example, writing for the Scripps-Howard news service, wished Barbra would “attempt one of the great old show tunes,” something by Rodgers and Hart. But such old-guard lamentations were mostly drowned out by the groundswell of enthusiasm for this different kind of mama. The night Kaye Ballard was in the audience, the crowd at Basin Street East shouted themselves hoarse each time Barbra finished a number.

  Not everyone had come to hear Barbra, however. The actual headliner was legendary jazzman Benny Goodman. In Barbra’s contract, it was plainly stated that her billing would be only seventy-five percent of Goodman’s. The contract had been signed in March before her album had taken off; if it had been signed now, Barbra’s agents probably could have gotten equal billing and more than her $2,500 salary for the three-week run. With Barbra’s sudden elevation to the big leagues, there was some assumption that she and Goodman were “costars,” which is the way a few newspapers billed them even if it wasn’t true.

  There was a bit of resentment between the two camps, especially when some of Barbra’s audiences left after she was finished. Barbra had to be careful because she was using Goodman’s sextet as her backup musicians. At one point, she “playfully mocked” upstaging the jazzman with his own band, which Goodman trombonist Tyree Glenn did not find amusing in the slightest.

  This pairing of Benny Goodman and Barbra Streisand was bound to produce a clash of generations. The “juxtaposition of the music/record biz’s old . . . and the new” might be “a happy event for the Basin Street buffs,” as Variety claimed, guaranteeing “plenty of action at the ropes.” But comparisons were still going to be drawn, even if they were between apples and oranges. Barbra “was an exciting young performer” whose “showbiz potential in all media” was “immense,” while Goodman, Billboard complained, was “turning himself into a period piece” with a repertoire that seemed “to date from the 1930s.” And while Barbra also had some old-time numbers in her act, she had shaken them up and brought a very modern sensibility to her interpretations.

  Her set ran about thirty-five minutes. With the exception of “Big Bad Wolf,” she gave the Basin Street audience mostly ballads. There was also another long “involved story,” a variant of her African folktale, this one set up as a lead-in to an old Estonian folk song “which she never sang,” according to Billboard. It was a shtick that people seemed to like but that Barbra seemed to like even more, since she insisted
there be one such monologue for every half hour of singing. (In other shows it might be “an Armenian folk song about an ill-starred butcher named Arnie.”) Clearly, Barbra still didn’t like singing one song after another.

  After the monologue, Peter Daniels played the first few bars of “Cry Me a River,” and the audience, recognizing what had become another of their heroine’s signature songs, erupted into applause. Kaye Ballard might have been feeling hurt by Barbra’s snub earlier in the evening, but she couldn’t deny how gorgeously Barbra put the number across. Thankfully, it was toned down from the version she’d given on Dinah Shore’s show—which had finally aired just a few nights earlier. Now, in direct contrast to the elegant way she sang it at the Basin Street East, the entire country had gotten to see Barbra’s over-the-top television rendition.

  And Fran Stark wasn’t the only one who’d recoiled from it. “The last act of Tosca couldn’t impose more strain on artist and audience than Miss S crying us a river,” Harriet Van Horne wrote after seeing the Shore show. “In truth, the number would be more effective were Miss S to cry us a mere gushing rill.” Columnist Alan Gill was even harsher, calling Barbra “a Flatbush gamine with the tonsils of a fish peddler.” He thought that maybe her left foot had been “caught in a badger trap.” But in the eyes of the diehards, Barbra could do no wrong. For Rick DuBrow, Barbra’s “Cry Me a River” on Dinah Shore was a cathartic experience. He felt like “crawling under a table for fear that she would hiss forth a forked and poisonous tongue at two-timing men everywhere.” (He meant this as a compliment.) DuBrow went on to hit every public-relations bullet point as if Lee Solters himself wrote the review. Barbra was “quickly becoming known as a torch singer who acts within her songs more extraordinarily since Lena Horne came up.” She was “a little bit of Fanny Brice and Alice Ghostley and Carol Burnett, with a dash of Mort Sahl.”

  Even if Barbra’s performance had polarized viewers, the Shore show kept them talking about her—and buying her album. Television, Marty understood, was key to his client’s success, so he continued booking her on various programs to keep the exposure going. Barbra had just taped an appearance on the summer-replacement show for Garry Moore, a variety hour hosted by Keefe Brasselle, a frenetic song-and-dance man best known for playing the title role in The Eddie Cantor Story. There was also another Ed Sullivan to look forward to, and when the new season began in the fall, Marty expected there to be other shows as well.

  But the biggest news was that Barbra was going to sing for the president. Marty had gotten a call from Murray Schwartz, Merv Griffin’s agent, after Griffin had been selected by Kennedy to host that year’s White House press correspondents dinner. As host, Griffin was also responsible for lining up the entertainment. Would Barbra join them in Washington on May 23? It didn’t take long for Marty to answer yes.

  As the crowd at Basin Street East rose to its feet, cheering Barbra’s final number, they were saluting a star whose time had arrived, in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Kaye Ballard left Basin Street East that night in a state of astonishment. “This little girl,” she said, “who seemed to come from nowhere, who seemed to know no one, suddenly had the world at her fingertips.”

  5.

  Barbra bid the last of her entourage good night and headed home. It had been a good show. She couldn’t help but be pleased with the way things were going. But after all the words of praise were over, Barbra returned to that little railroad flat over Oscar’s Salt of the Sea all alone.

  Even with so much acclaim, Barbra still lived in that airless apartment. She could have afforded better. Friends and associates were urging her to find a place that suited her increasing stature. But she didn’t want to move quite yet. She didn’t want to “live in-between,” she explained to one interviewer, in some way station between poverty and wealth. She declared that she would “live in this rat hole” until she “could afford a duplex penthouse.”

  Besides, this was the home she shared with Elliott. How could she abandon it when he wasn’t there? This apartment was the only tangible connection she had at the moment to the man she loved. His clothes, his things, his tchotchkes were here. This was their tree house, after all, where they’d cooked and played and made love. No, she couldn’t just box everything up and move someplace else.

  On the Town was set to open on May 30, a little more than a week away. The show could be a big hit, keeping Elliott in London for months, maybe even a year.

  Or it could flop.

  Elliott would either be gone for a very long time, or he would soon be right back here with her.

  Either way, for the time being, Barbra, the toast of the town, was alone as she slipped into her little twin bed and turned off the light—except for maybe Oscar the rat scuttling under the kitchen stove.

  6.

  As a kid, Barbra had dreamed of seeing places beyond the grimy tenements of Brooklyn. In the last couple of years, she had fulfilled that dream. In the last few months alone, she had been to Miami, San Francisco, and London. Now it was Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. On a brief drive through the city, she and Peter Daniels gazed out at the gleaming white marble of the Washington Monument and the shining dome of the Capitol.

  Their destination, however, was a bit removed from downtown. They were heading to the fir-and-oak-shaded Woodley Park neighborhood in the northwest part of the city, where the stately Sheraton Park Hotel rose above the trees. Here was where Barbra would sing for the president of the United States.

  Before she’d left New York, she’d called her mother to tell her where she was going. These days, such calls were rare. Diana told friends that she didn’t often hear from her daughter because she was “very busy with her singing career.” She no longer pestered Barbra about getting out of showbiz and finding a steady job. But Barbra knew better than to ask her mother’s opinion on any performances. To her friends, Diana might express a degree of pride, however reserved (“she didn’t want to appear to be bragging,” said one), but she still seemed to hold firm to that old belief that too much praise would go to Barbra’s head. Her mother’s lack of enthusiasm was never going to change, Barbra knew. So they kept a certain, safe distance. It was better for everyone that way.

  But when she was invited to sing for the president, Barbra couldn’t hold back. She’d picked up the phone and called her mother. She knew how much Diana loved the young, handsome, energetic president. To Barbra’s great surprise, her mother had, for the first time, bubbled over with excitement about something Barbra was involved in. Of course, there were no “congratulations,” no “you deserve this, Barbra.” That would be too much to hope for. But the enthusiasm was there nonetheless, and Barbra was happy for that.

  Stepping out of the car, she headed into the horseshoe-shaped hotel. After rehearsals, Barbra hurried upstairs to change into her dress—short-sleeved white satin, scoop-necked, with buttons down the front—then grabbed her boa and made her way to the ballroom. There she took her seat with the other entertainers. Edie Adams had flown in from Los Angeles, and cabaret impresario Julius Monk had winged in from Chicago. Basin Street East had agreed to give Barbra the night off, but only if she dug “down in her own purse to pay for her one-night replacement.” Shrewd enough not to replace herself with another singer, Barbra had chosen comedian Jack E. Leonard instead.

  The president, in a well-fitting tuxedo, sat at the head table. Barbra could hardly take her eyes off him. Celebrities didn’t impress her, but John F. Kennedy did. Merriman Smith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, presented the commander in chief with an electric bread slicer, a wry comment on the fact that Kennedy had recently shown up at a press conference with a bandaged finger, a wound he blamed on slicing bread. Then master of ceremonies Merv Griffin took the podium. Speaking about the new home being built by President and Mrs. Kennedy near Rattlesnake Mountain, Virginia, a place that would be leased out for the summer, Griffin said, “I wouldn’t want the president of the United States to be my landl
ord. I’d be a little reluctant in the middle of the night to call the White House to complain that there’s no hot water.”

  Laughter followed each speaker’s remarks, but when Barbra came on stage, she played it mostly straight. Peter Daniels took his seat at the piano as Barbra stood at the mike. If she was nervous—and with her history of opening-night jitters, she probably was—it wasn’t detectable. She sang five numbers, but it was the last one that carried the most relevance. “Happy Days Are Here Again” had been used in Franklin Roosevelt’s successful 1932 presidential campaign, and since then it had become an unofficial anthem of the Democratic Party. Singing the song for Kennedy wasn’t just entertainment; it was Barbra’s way of saying she was on board with his leadership of America. When she was done, Kennedy applauded heartily. Barbra dropped a curtsy, exposing a flash of cleavage.

  Afterward, the entertainers stood in line waiting to meet the president. The protocol had been explained to them: Kennedy was not to be detained. He’d shake hands and exchange a few pleasantries, but that was all. Barbra, of course, never cared much for protocol, so when the president reached her, she told him that her mother was a great fan of his and asked him to sign her program. He smiled and complied.