Barbra was just as good on “Down with Love,” but in a whole different way. Striding toward the camera, her shapely leg making an appearance from her black slit skirt, she was sexy and aggressive and like nothing that had ever appeared on a television variety show before. She turned the tune into a jazzy, stylized repudiation of romance: “Down with eyes, romantic and stupid, down with sighs and down with Cupid—Brother, let’s stuff that dove, down with love!” She was completely and utterly in control, especially when the pace picked up and she sang faster and faster, every word perfectly articulated as it rolled off her lips, every note hit expertly.
Yet as good as her solo numbers were, it was the duets with Garland that everyone was waiting for. Once Barbra had finished “Down with Love,” she walked over to join the hostess, who was clapping enthusiastically for her. “We’ve got all your albums at home,” Judy gushed, whereupon they were forced to endure more of the hackneyed banter the writers kept imposing on them, some nonsense about who hated the other more for being so talented. “Don’t stop hatin’ me,” Barbra said. “I need the confidence”—probably the most ironic line of the night for those who knew the real dynamics backstage. Giving each other a little air kiss, they sat down to sing.
The familiar piano introduction for “Happy Days” began. “Happy days are here again,” Barbra sang, as Judy matched her with “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.” The older woman seemed to be holding on to the younger one for dear life; Barbra felt, once again, the trembling of Garland’s body. During rehearsals, the two had developed a tender chemistry that emerged now in front of the cameras, real and vivid and palpable. It may have been borne of sympathy on Barbra’s part and competition on Judy’s, but it was genuine, and it made for fascinating television. Masterfully arranged, the counterpoint of “Happy Days” and “Get Happy” riveted the audience, including those hard-to-please network execs.
But in some ways, as transcendent as the counterpoint had been, it was their next duet that showed them to best advantage. The “Howdy, Neighbor” production number kicked off in silliness, offering another chance for some inside commentary on the state of affairs at the Garland show. Judy came out singing with a bunch of dancers, only to be thwarted by Jerry Van Dyke, who rushed out and shooed the dancers offstage, complaining of costs. As the props were taken away, Van Dyke placed two stools on the stage and barked, “There’s your set!” Garland then brought Barbra out to sing with her. As they took their seats, Garland declared, “There’s one thing they can’t cut out of the budget and that’s our voices.” Barbra laughed in agreement.
What followed was pure magic. Dressed in matching red-checkered shirts and white slacks, the two singers ran through a medley of various songs including “How About You?,” “After You’ve Gone,” “Hooray for Love,” and “Lover, Come Back to Me.” Garland started out a bit slow, her voice a little crackly with air pockets. But then she got it together, turned on the sass, and showed the kid she still had what it took. On “How About You?,” she started to sing the line, “I love a Gershwin tune,” but then switched midway to “an Arlen tune”—a tribute to one of Barbra’s biggest boosters and the composer of Judy’s signature song, “Over the Rainbow.” By now any feelings of fear, pity, or rivalry seemed to have dissipated: Barbra and Judy were just two pros at the very top of their games, singing their hearts out. “We have found when we’re singing together,” they trilled, “the state of the weather turns from gray to blue.” They demonstrated the sheer mastery of their craft at the very end of the number, when each took the medley in completely different places, cross-singing and hitting incongruous notes, but without ever losing the elegance of the duet or their connection with each other. With astonishing precision, they ended triumphantly, then fell into each other’s arms, smiling and laughing.
At the top half of the second half hour, there had been another bit with Barbra, a regular feature of the show called “Tea Time,” in which Garland supposedly enjoyed some informal chitchat with her guest in front of a tea table. Thankfully, what could have been another badly scripted tête-à-tête—or an opportunity for Barbra to ramble on like a kook the way she did on talk shows—was planned as something very different. Barbra was now dressed in a burgundy version of the midshipman’s blouse, and Garland was asking her how long she’d been singing. They were clearly waiting for something to happen. And happen it did. All at once their conversation was interrupted by a voice from the audience singing a couple of lines from “You’re Just in Love.” And not just any voice: It was the voice of Ethel Merman, who’d originated the song in Call Me Madam. “You don’t need analyzin’,” Merman sang. “It’s not so surprisin’.”
The premise was that Merman had been down the hall in another studio shooting The Red Skelton Show when she’d heard all the “beltin’” coming from the Garland stage, and naturally she just had to see what all the fuss was about. The awkwardness of the premise meant that the ladies were awkward presenting it as well; at one point, Garland almost tripped backward over the set, prompting Merman to bellow, “Watch the tea!” Barbra, wisely, remained quiet through most of the ad-libbed dialogue. “Isn’t this great?” Merman said, looking at the youngster. “The new belter.” She was delighted to hear that Jule Styne and David Merrick were the composer and producer of Funny Girl (as if she didn’t know). “You’re in good hands,” she told Barbra.
She sure was. Barbra had been a national celebrity for less than a year, and here she was, on the same stage with Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. The message to the world was clear: She was in their league. Barbra, however, seemed to take it all in stride. She gave the impression of finding it all just a trifle silly, which it was. When Garland asked Merman if she’d “belt” with them, the Merm countered that she wasn’t “beltin’” unless the two of them belted with her. So they all burst out with “There’s No Business like Show Business,” Merman drowning out the others by sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Looking uncomfortable in their three-woman conga line, Barbra made crazy eyes. She had to do something if no one could hear her voice.
The entire experience left her more bemused than impressed. Garland noticed Barbra’s rather entitled attitude, telling friends, “The kid felt it was her due.” Not that she begrudged Barbra’s confidence. The younger woman remained amiable enough that Garland—and Merman, too—seemed absolutely delighted to give her this initiation.
Once the cameras had stopped rolling, and the cast was all hugging one another good-bye, the Smiling Cobra made a beeline over to Bill Hobin. Aubrey told the director that the show he’d just seen was so good that it should replace the one they had in the can waiting for the next broadcast. Aubrey decreed that the show should be edited over the weekend and gotten on the air by Monday night.
Barbra Streisand had just scored some points in Judy Garland’s favor with the network brass.
4.
On a crisp early November day, Barbra spent the morning buying furniture for her new home, paying cash for an antique captain’s desk and a set of Portuguese chairs. It was good to be back in New York, even if Elliott had remained in Los Angeles to try to find a job. It was even better to be able to buy things without worrying about what they cost—except that, after she bought them, Barbra did worry. To one friend she wondered if she’d “ever get used to having money” or ever stop fearing she’d “be poor again.”
Barbra had left the Coast on October 5, right after her concert at the Hollywood Bowl. That night had seemed to be a pinnacle for her, a benchmark of her success. Sharing the bill with Sammy Davis, Jr., and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, she’d looked out at the eighteen thousand people filling the amphitheater. Brubeck had observed her “trembling like a leaf” before she went on. In front of the television cameras, it had been Judy Garland who had trembled while Barbra had remained cool and collected. But at the Bowl Barbra’s sense of calm had evaporated, at least temporarily. She’d had first-night jitters before, but this was different. So many people were ou
t there, more than ever before, and all of them expected her to be as great as Harold Arlen and Sammy Cahn said she was. Swallowing her nerves, Barbra had taken the stage and “killed that crowd,” Brubeck noted with awe. She sang eleven songs, all the usual suspects, ending with “Bewitched” and “Happy Days.” “Dynamic, sensitive,” the Los Angeles Times had judged her performance, “transcending the category of a mere vocalist.” No doubt gratifying words to read, but the experience had left Barbra unsure if her stage fright had been merely an aberration.
The next day, the Garland show had aired to great acclaim. Barbra’s old adversary Dorothy Kilgallen was now squarely in her corner: “Barbra Streisand came on like gangbusters,” the columnist wrote. There was more good news as well. At the beginning of October, Barbra’s second album had overtaken the first and was now at number 2 on the Billboard chart. In fact, both albums were in the Top Ten at the moment, with Barbra holding steady as the nation’s top female recording artist. “The hottest of the past year’s newcomers,” one record reviewer declared, “and fast solidifying herself in the top bracket of entertainers.” Yet while Barbra might be the queen of the charts, she really wanted that number one position. Just one little burst of sales could nudge The Second Barbra Streisand Album into the top spot. It seemed there was always something more to strive for.
Since returning to New York, she’d given one small concert at the private Harmonie Club on East Sixtieth Street, at a tribute to Leonard Goldenson, president of the ABC television network and the Paramount theater chain, and she still had a few big playdates—including a return to Washington to sing at the White House at the president’s invitation—scheduled for the rest of the fall. But Barbra was increasingly turning her attention to Funny Girl.
No matter the game of musical chairs being played by his directors, Ray Stark wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way of realizing his long-held dream. With Fosse allowing the use of his working scripts in exchange for not being sued, Stark grudgingly accepted the idea of paying Robbins royalties, if necessary, and so the show was back on track. As Funny Girl’s third director in a year, Garson Kanin had come on board in early October. “Gar,” as he was known, was a successful playwright (Born Yesterday) and director (he’d helmed The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway, which Barbra had seen as a teenager). But he was probably best known as the screenwriter of the Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy films Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike, credits he shared with his wife, the actress Ruth Gordon.
With a director in place, Funny Girl could at last set an opening date of February 27, 1964, at the Winter Garden Theatre, with previews (in Boston and Philadelphia) starting on January 13. Since this was practically around the corner, the rest of the company was quickly assembled. Song-and-dance man Danny Meehan was chosen as the love-struck stage manager who enables Fanny’s first break, called “Dave” in early scripts but now renamed Eddie Ryan. Kay Medford, the original “Mama” in Bye Bye Birdie, would play Fanny’s mother. For the small part of Vera, a showgirl, Stark had cast the voluptuous Lainie Kazan, who, as Lainie Levine, had graduated from Erasmus Hall High School just a few years before Barbra, though their paths never crossed.
Finally there was Allyn Ann McLerie for the part of Nora, the glamorous showgirl who’s particularly close to Ziegfeld. In the production notes, Nora was described as “quite beautiful [with] the quality of a lady,” to make her the opposite of Fanny. McLerie’s contract guaranteed billing as the first featured performer just below Barbra and her leading man. It was a showy part. Nora got to call Fanny out on her narcissism at the end of Act One and again in Act Two, the second time while drunk. McLerie was ideal for Nora. A classy, consummate theater professional, she’d danced for Agnes de Mille, taken direction from Moss Hart, sung the music of Irving Berlin, and won the Theatre World Award for Where’s Charley? in 1948, later re-creating her part in the film version. When her career started to fade, McLerie managed a brilliant comeback as Anita in the 1960 revival of West Side Story. She might have been as “Latin as Yorkshire pudding,” one critic wrote, but she proved “stunning” in the part, her “mop of red hair like an oil burner being turned on.” At thirty-six years old, McLerie still cut a trim and sexy figure. She would make an exquisite Ziegfeld Girl and, according to Garson Kanin, brought a certain balance to the book, which was otherwise dominated by the character of Fanny.
Indeed, Fanny—Barbra—was now set to sing nine solos. “That doesn’t happen very often on the Main Stem,” Kilgallen wrote, “until a girl is in the Merman-Mary Martin class.” Plus there were at least three more numbers where Barbra would sing with other members of the cast. Clearly everyone was now depending on the sheer force of Barbra’s voice and personality to make up for the defects of the book. The conflation of Barbra and Fanny had continued. After reading Isobel Lennart’s latest script, Barbra had told one reporter approvingly, “Everything seems like me.” That was, she said, “except the second act.” Unlike Fanny, Barbra didn’t have two children. Apparently a few concessions to historical reality were necessary.
But on nearly every other score, there was a deliberate attempt that fall to meld the two women—and not just in the script. A major new publicity blitz showed this stratagem quite clearly. During this November, three magazines had hit the stands with profiles of Barbra: the digest-sized Pageant, the men’s magazine (and Playboy competitor) Rogue, and the travel journal Holiday. And while in other interviews Barbra was trying to tamp down the kookiness, in these pieces she came across full of Fanny-like eccentricities. The Pageant reporter described Barbra at one hotel, declaring she needed to go on a diet. So she phoned room service to ask them about their “physical fitness special” meal. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she said, listening over the phone, mugging for the reporter’s benefit. “Well, send me instead a stack of pancakes, half a dozen strips of crisp bacon, and lots of butter, syrup and milk.” It was a line that could have easily been slipped into the script for Funny Girl. For that matter, so could Barbra’s plucky defense of her looks in the Pageant article: “I know I’m not beautiful, but many people in the art world think I have marvelous features.” It was easy to imagine Fanny Brice saying the same thing.
Over at Rogue, the writer went a step further. In rehashing the tale of Barbra confronting Enrico Banducci about hiring her for the hungry i, he was drawing a direct parallel with Fanny’s own experiences. Barbra was quoted as telling Banducci: “You’re going to be down on your scabby knees begging me for a contract before the year is out!” That was awfully close to an early scene in the book for Funny Girl, where Fanny confronts theater manager Spiegel for refusing her a job. When the stage manager says he’s sorry, Fanny replies: “So am I. And so’s Spiegel going to be. Any minute now . . . it’ll be my turn!”
In some ways it was chickens and eggs: Which came first? The Banducci anecdote had clearly happened; the club owner had spoken of it himself during Barbra’s appearance in San Francisco. And the Fanny-Spiegel scene had existed in the script, in various permutations, even before Barbra had been cast. But the fact that Banducci was brought up again now suggested that life and art were influencing each other. Was the Rogue writer responding to publicity given to him by Barbra’s team—a press release that may have included the Banducci anecdote? Or did the reporter dig up the story on his own, having read about Banducci in a San Francisco paper, and in so doing, provide one more gem for the writer and producer of Funny Girl to use in furthering their goal of turning Barbra into Fanny and vice versa?
Jerry Weidman, who unlike his partner, Harold Rome, had retained some affection for Barbra, authored the third big magazine piece that November. For Holiday, Weidman wrote about Barbra’s audition for her first Broadway show in such a way that it was impossible not to think of Fanny in her early audition scenes. Even if Weidman hadn’t seen a copy of Lennart’s book, he knew the general story. A piece like the one he wrote for Holiday would have been received as a great big present by Merrick and Stark—at a time, not incidentally
, when Weidman was between projects and currying favor with Broadway power brokers was a smart thing to do. In fact, might Merrick or one of the show’s publicists specifically have asked Weidman to write something about Barbra and send it out?
In his piece, Weidman wrote about an unattractive, misfit girl who talked back to, even insulted, the director and producers—something Arthur Laurents would never have tolerated and insisted never happened. But it sure fit the character of Fanny Brice. Part of Weidman’s Barbra was authentic—the self-confidence and determination—but the impertinence, though certainly part of Barbra’s DNA, was mostly invention, the work of a talented playwright to make the piece as entertaining as possible. And, almost certainly, to promote Barbra as Fanny and Fanny as Barbra.
With such an oversized star, it was vitally important that Barbra’s leading man have enough charisma and stage presence to hold his own. That month, a decision was finally made. After some prolonged consideration of Tommy Leonetti, the American pop singer who’d made it big in Australia, Stark and Merrick had settled on Sydney Chaplin, the flamboyantly handsome actor who’d won a Tony for Bells Are Ringing and starred in Merrick’s Subways Are for Sleeping.
Clearly the producers had gone with charisma—so important to staying visible beside a performer like Barbra—over acting ability. “Sydney was a man of inordinate charm,” said his best friend, Orson Bean, “and very limited abilities as an actor. He was so funny at parties that directors would always say that if they could only bring out those qualities on stage, he could be a great star.” But they never seemed to make that happen. Bean believed that Sydney’s Tony had come because his leading lady, Judy Holliday, had been such a fine actress that, by looking at Sydney “with such great love in her eyes,” she had convinced everybody he was brilliant. All of Sydney’s leading ladies, Bean said, fell head over heels in love with him.
Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand Page 44