Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

by William J. Mann

  Barbra and Elliott quickly became aware that while the place stood mostly empty at the moment, it was nonetheless jumping with ghosts. Lights suddenly came on without switches being flipped; the ring of the telephone sometimes caused the television set to turn on. The building had, as they were discovering, a rather storied history. For most of its three decades, the Ardsley had been home to wealthy industrial barons, doctors, and city officials.

  But it was in Barbra’s own apartment where the most famous ghosts still danced. In 1939, lyricist Lorenz Hart had rented these very same rooms, installing his mother downstairs and himself up in the tower. That was the year Hart and his songwriting partner Richard Rodgers had I Married an Angel, The Boys from Syracuse, and Too Many Girls all running on Broadway. Over the next half decade, in the same rooms Barbra and Elliott now occupied, Hart had written the words to such songs as “It Never Entered My Mind” for Higher and Higher and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” for Pal Joey, which was now one of Barbra’s staples. Here, under these same chandeliers, Hart had entertained George Abbott, Ethel Merman, Gene Kelly, George Balanchine, Vera Zorina, Jimmy Durante, Ray Bolger, Josh Logan, June Havoc, and so many other Broadway luminaries of the period. Most likely David Merrick had been inside Barbra’s apartment years before she stepped across the threshold. And then there had been Hart’s more private parties, where the hard-drinking lyricist, known for his revelries, had entertained what one writer called “the homosexual elite” : Cole Porter and George Cukor visiting from Hollywood, or Noël Coward and John Gielgud from London, with all the attendant handsome young men who traveled with them.

  In those few days she had in New York before flying off again, Barbra was anxious to start decorating her new place. She’d had most of her old furniture brought uptown—the dentist’s cabinet and the Victorian piece with the glass shelves—but there were so many more antiques yet to be found. The one piece of furniture she had managed to acquire so far was an Elizabethan four-poster canopy bed, three hundred years old and set up on a tiered marble platform so that it took two steps to get into bed—rather like ascending a dais, some friends joked, or a throne. Gone was that little single bed that had barely provided enough space for Barbra and Elliott to turn over. This new one offered them far more room, if perhaps a little less of the old intimacy.

  But shopping sprees and decorating sessions would have to wait. Barbra’s tour wasn’t quite over yet. She’d closed out Vegas with a flourish. Liberace had left a night early, turning over the stage—and the starring position—to Barbra for her last show on August 4. The comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin had been her opening act. During her run at the Riviera, Barbra had gotten a fifty percent raise from Charles Kahn, and she’d reciprocated with a parting gift to him of a leather jewel box inscribed TO FLO FROM FANNY —appropriate since she’d been announced for Funny Girl while on Kahn’s stage. But Barbra’s real guardian angel during her time in Vegas had been Liberace. The showman had been so good to her that Barbra had agreed to perform with him again the following month at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe.

  From Vegas, Barbra had flown back East and immediately headed out to Long Island to perform for one night at the Lido Club on Long Beach. The next day it was up to Kiamesha Lake in the Catskills for a show at the Concord Hotel. What her tour had done was prove to the doubters—and to Barbra herself—that she could play the big rooms. At the Concord, she’d sung for close to a thousand people in the hotel’s enormous auditorium, and she’d “torn the place apart,” said one man who was there.

  Now there was a bit of a breather, but there still wasn’t much time to shop. Instead, Barbra occupied herself with designing the outfit she would wear at her next engagement. It was a white satin blouse with black piping in the style of a midshipman’s shirt, with a black collar that snapped into the low V-neck. Barbra seemed indifferent to the brickbats that were frequently tossed her way from critics who loved her voice but remained unimpressed with her couturiere skills. In fact, sniping about her clothes had largely replaced slandering her looks. In Vegas, Barney Glazer had recoiled from that infamous Mother Hubbard gingham gown. “My mind reverted to those historic days in Salem, Mass.,” the columnist wrote, “when the public played a game called Heap the Wood High, Strike the Matches Hard, Oh, No, You Didn’t Forget the Kerosene Again?”

  Yet being compared to a witch didn’t seem to faze Barbra because here she was, designing another unique look to wear on stage. No doubt she expected her next destination would be a little looser, a little more sophisticated, a little more willing to try new things. On August 21, she was opening at the legendary Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

  It was time for Barbra Streisand to meet Hollywood.

  5.

  As Barbra prepared to fly to Los Angeles, rehearsing daily with Peter Daniels and making last-minute adjustments to her satin sailor’s blouse with the seamstress, Elliott was undertaking a mission of his own. In a quiet little office somewhere in the city, he sat down opposite a Freudian psychoanalyst, seeking professional help for his rapidly worsening depression.

  Elliott’s state of mind seemed to ratchet lower with every new success enjoyed by his girlfriend-cum-wife. When, in a recent column, Earl Wilson had declared Barbra “suddenly one of the hottest stars in the country,” he’d mentioned the fact that she’d just moved into a duplex penthouse with “her husband, Elliott Gould.” But he hadn’t included anything about Elliott’s current projects. That was because there weren’t any.

  Elliott listened closely as his analyst asked him a question, and he gave it considerable thought before attempting an answer. He was taking his analysis very seriously. He was, he said, determined to restore some harmony in his life. “Without flats,” he’d come to realize, “the sharp notes stick out.” Using another metaphor, he said that he felt as if he were stuck in a leaky boat, constantly bailing to stay afloat. But with analysis, he was temporarily beaching his boat so he could find out where the holes were and then patch them. Elliott knew that taking their boat off the water was scary for some people; they feared they would never get it back out again. But Elliott had no choice. His boat was going down.

  Was Barbra among the “some people” Elliott thought were too afraid to take their boats off the water? Quite possibly—for Barbra had tried analysis herself not long before, very likely at Elliott’s urging. Perhaps she’d even accompanied him to one of his sessions. In any event, she hadn’t liked it. The analyst kept winking at her. She wasn’t sure if he was putting her on or making a pass. So she’d walked out on him. “Maybe he was crazy,” she said—which seemed to be her verdict on the entire mental-health profession. Going to an analyst or a psychiatrist, Barbra said, was a “cop-out, [a] self-indulgence.” And while she indulged herself plenty when it came to her career, sitting around moaning about her problems had never been her style. She believed in getting out there and making things happen; if she griped about something, it was to someone who could do something about it, not to someone who would just sit there and nod his head.

  When Pete Hamill had asked about her career, how she’d gotten to where she was, Barbra had demurred, saying she couldn’t “verbalize about it.” If she did, she feared, she’d “analyze it all out the window.” Clearly, to her, analysis was a fruitless and pointless exercise. “You’re paying to talk about yourself,” she said. “It’s really pampering yourself.” Besides, it “cost too much money.”

  Was she footing the bill for Elliott’s analysis? Or was she resentful that his money was going toward such endeavors when she was paying most of the household bills? If Elliott’s analysis caused tension between them, neither of them said so. But certainly Elliott held a very different view of the process than Barbra did. Analysis wasn’t easy, he believed, but it was worth it. It was opening him up to “self-discovery,” he insisted. Barbra might be on a journey that took her ever farther out into the world, but Elliott hoped to go just as far inward.

  6.

&n
bsp; Barbra’s plane touched down at Los Angeles Airport. In the center stood the newly constructed Theme Building, designed to resemble a flying saucer landing on four spindly legs. New York’s airports sure didn’t look like this.

  Stepping out of the plane, Barbra glanced down at the tarmac and spotted four waiting limousines. Another surprise. They were all for her.

  The limos had been sent by David Begelman and Freddie Fields, two young, hotshot Hollywood agents who’d recently formed a company called Creative Management Associates. Begelman and Fields had been the reason Judy Garland had secured a weekly television program; at the moment, CMA was putting the finishing touches on a deal to bring Phil Silvers back to TV. Not so very long before, Begelman and Fields had turned Barbra down as a client. Now that she’d “hit it big,” as Marty observed with no small amount of satisfaction, they’d “changed their minds.” Begelman and Fields were calling him “two, three times a day” to win her over. The limousines were just the latest salvo in their campaign to woo her.

  Making her way down the steps, Barbra watched as the chauffeur of the lead limo hopped out to open the door for her. Lined up behind, the other limos carried a menagerie of CMA agents, managers, and publicists, “each ready and eager to help her career,” noted columnist Bill Slocum. “Sammy Glicks don’t run anymore,” Slocum added wryly, referencing the ambitious Hollywood con man from What Makes Sammy Run? “They use air-conditioned Cadillacs.”

  Barbra settled into the Cadillac’s leather seat as Marty took one of the limos behind her. A third limo may have been for Barbra’s new business manager—another Marty, this one named Bregman—who’d been hired because Barbra was suddenly making more money than the first Marty could manage on his own. Once everyone was settled into their respective limos, the sleek vehicles started their engines and rolled out across the tarmac. As they pulled onto the street, they resembled a presidential motorcade.

  Quite a ride for a girl who’d grown up taking the subway. On her second trip to Los Angeles, Barbra was treated like visiting royalty, installed in a luxurious suite on the fifth floor of the Ambassador Hotel, located at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard. But she had little time to luxuriate. She had a show to do in a few days, and ahead of that, a good deal of promotion. And so, very soon after her arrival—maybe that afternoon or possibly the next day—she sat down with a public-relations man named Marv Schwartz, who had a few questions he wanted to ask her.

  This was how things worked in the business of public relations: Barbra’s publicists, Solters and Sabinson, arranged for Schwartz, whose own agency, Kaufman Schwartz and Associates, had close connections to Hollywood columnists such as Sidney Skolsky, to interview their client upon her arrival in L.A. Schwartz would then have the interview transcribed, cut, pasted, and rearranged into a form suitable to send out to columnists—in this case, Skolsky, whose “Tintypes” were widely read in Tinseltown. A “Tintype” would be prepared on Barbra that was ready for publication; all Skolsky would have to do is add his byline. This process eliminated the possibility of an independent reporter probing too far or straying off that day’s message.

  It also meant that, in the course of the interview, Barbra could ramble along, stream-of-consciousness style, the way she tended to do, without her publicists feeling the need to constrain her. They’d filter and finesse her comments long before they reached the public. Yet the tape recorder was running as Barbra sat there talking with Schwartz, preserving exactly how she was thinking and feeling on that warm, sunny day of August 14, 1963, a point when it seemed she had just rounded the last hill on her climb to stardom and caught a glimpse of the summit up ahead.

  “What do you really enjoy doing when you’re not singing?” Schwartz asked.

  “I hate to sing,” Barbra replied, “so what do you mean, what do I like doing away from singing?”

  “You hate to sing?”

  “Yeah.”

  Schwartz was clearly incredulous. After all, this was the top female recording star in America. “Why do you hate to sing?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s a big . . .” Barbra’s voice trailed off. “It’s just all that worry that goes into it, you know. You get on stage and they don’t applaud enough, you’re a nervous wreck, you know, and all that stuff.”

  So, Schwartz wondered, would she give up singing for straight dramatic roles? No, Barbra replied, she wouldn’t give up singing entirely. “Why should I?” she asked. But singing remained “too hard . . . to enjoy.”

  She didn’t mean nightclub singing necessarily. A nightclub no longer seemed such an anathema to her. Now that she was heading back to Broadway, Barbra suddenly seemed nostalgic for the world of clubs and cabarets. Despite all the time she’d spent feeling like a “floozy,” she seemed sad that her nightclub career might be ending. After all, “every night was different” in a club, she explained. To lure the audience’s attention away from “the influence of food and liquor,” she had to be spontaneous, varying her act to respond to circumstances. She told Schwartz that performing for people who just sat there “watching you” was “no fun”—a very peculiar sentiment coming from an actress about to open a Broadway show.

  She was tired, she said, of all the “kooky” business. But she realized her public persona had taken on a life of its own. When Johnny Carson had asked her on The Tonight Show if she thought she was kooky, Barbra had heard what the audience was telling her through their laughter and applause. She felt they were saying, “Give us a yes!”—and it made her angry. The public didn’t know her “real” self, she believed, and didn’t “want to know.” That was fine; she wanted her privacy; if she had her druthers, she’d “rather shut up and let ’em guess” anyway. Barbra had come to understand that “the public creates stars” and “they don’t want the illusion to be broken.”

  Still, she wanted to move past the kook. The thrift-shop angle was “a gimmick,” she admitted, that had run its course. She was tired of wearing all those old-time fashions; it was no longer the image she wanted to project. Instead, Barbra wanted to be contemporary. That’s why she’d gotten the new hairstyle—updated and maintained by celebrity stylist Fred Glaser—and why she’d started designing her own clothes. Her favorite fabric was gingham. It cost just sixty-nine cents a yard and was “more elegant” in its own way, she said, than all the shiny fabric and beads other singers wore.

  Schwartz asked her about acting, and without much prompting, Barbra launched into a rather defensive spiel about actors who took themselves too seriously. Was she maybe feeling just a trifle self-conscious about heading into what some might consider a lightweight musical? Certainly the Actors Studio—and its exclusive environment of serious study—remained a sore subject for her, though she brought it up on her own to Schwartz. Barbra made it seem as if she had turned Lee Strasberg down, not the other way around. She insisted that she’d told Strasberg, “I’m not here to study with you. I have a teacher I’m perfectly happy with”—even though her great desire had been to study with Strasberg. But to Schwartz, Barbra implied that she’d just been a curious outsider sitting in on one of Strasberg’s classes. In her telling, there was no audition, no campaign to become one of Strasberg’s disciples. Not to Schwartz did she mention the Actors Studio acceptance letter that she kept as a “prized possession.”

  Barbra seemed to feel the need to dismiss the culture that had so cavalierly dismissed her. “People like that kind of school,” she told Schwartz, “have no sense of what reality is . . . Their life is showing Strasberg they’re good. To me that’s stupid . . . Acting is so simple, you know, it’s really a pity to see people have to study it.” She told Schwartz she found it “a bore watching everybody work and going through these terrible agonies.” Eventually she was “fed up” with the Actors Studio pretension, she said, so she had walked out.

  Even as she stood on the cusp of potentially enormous fame, Barbra remained bitter about having been rejected all those years ago. Her exclusion from the world of serious actors still stung enoug
h that she was attempting to rewrite history in order to erase the hurt and humiliation. But as Schwartz continued to question her about the Actors Studio, the awestruck teenager she’d once been slowly reawakened. Barbra wondered now that she was “sort of” famous, if Strasberg would finally let her into one of his classes. “I wonder if he remembers me,” she mused. When Schwartz suggested she call Strasberg, Barbra admitted she was “afraid” to do so. Despite the fact that she’d just dismissed his whole school, she declared, “He’s the master, you know.” (She would go so far, in another setting, to call him “like a Zen master.” ) And that was why she wanted “to be friends with him,” she said. Barbra told Schwartz that she and Strasberg had a great deal in common, “a certain sensitivity that’s on the same level.” She saw herself as Strasberg’s equal; if only he would see her that way as well!

  It wasn’t all that surprising, then, that when Schwartz asked her if success was what she thought it would be, Barbra said no. She was particularly unprepared for the envy that surrounded her. “People who don’t have success hate success,” she observed. “They hate famous people really.” Who was she talking about? Critics who needled her? Former friends who complained she wasn’t doing enough to help them? Colleagues jealous of her quick rise to the top? Whoever they were, Barbra felt there were lots of people out there waiting for “any opportunity” to take her down, watching for her “to make a mistake.” It was “a very scary position to be in,” she said.

  But the fear she felt as she became more successful also arose from trying to navigate a terrain that remained very alien to her. When people asked for her autograph, Barbra told Schwartz, she often thought they were putting her on, making a joke. When she read stories about herself or saw her name on a club’s marquee, she felt strangely disconnected to it all. Barbra Streisand was “this kid” she remembered “from a long time ago.” So when people said to her that she was going to be “one of the greatest stars . . . in the history of the entertainment business,” even though that had been her life’s goal, she had a hard time reconciling the two visions of herself: ugly, unwanted kid and glamorous, acclaimed star.