CHAPTER NINE
1.
Laden down with trinkets and tchotchkes, Barbra and Cis climbed the stairs to the little railroad flat above Oscar’s Salt of the Sea restaurant at 1155 Third Avenue, just down from Sixty-seventh Street. The rank odor of greasy fried fish that filled up the narrow, windowless stairwell could turn back even strong men, but Barbra charged ahead with gusto, anxious to finish decorating the very first apartment she could call her own.
With Wholesale still enjoying good box office, Barbra’s $150-a-week salary seemed stable. So Don Softness had finally said to her, “Barbra, you’re the toast of Broadway. Isn’t it time to move into a place of your own?” She agreed, and found the nineteenth-century tenement with four rooms, each about eight feet by five feet, one right after another in a line. Rent was sixty dollars a month. Given her salary, Barbra could have afforded more; she could have taken a larger—and less smelly—place. But she was being frugal; she’d been living hand-to-mouth not so long ago. Wholesale would eventually end, and who was to say she wouldn’t find herself bereft again? Better to take a cheaper place where she could save a bit of what she made. Besides, the apartment was right around the block from the DuMont Tele-Centre and PM East, and more than luxury, Barbra liked convenience.
Her landlord, Oscar Karp, who ran the eponymous seafood restaurant beneath her, was a disagreeable man who dressed entirely in black and insulted his customers. His restaurant was popular, however, and there was often a long wait for tables. Lines regularly snaked out the door onto Third Avenue.
With Cis following behind, Barbra hurried into her apartment, anxious to arrange the latest adornments she’d purchased for the place. To be sure, it needed some help. An ancient claw-foot bathtub sat in the kitchen because there wasn’t room in the bathroom. Barbra used the tub to both bathe and wash dishes, since there was no sink. A window looked out on a stark black brick wall, but at least it let in some air—though given the restaurant below, that wasn’t always a good thing. At the far end of the flat was the tiny bedroom, where a broken dumbwaiter from the last century went absolutely nowhere.
Hardly the place one would imagine a Tony nominee calling home. That spring, all sorts of miraculous things were happening to her. When the Tony nominations were announced on April 3, there among them was the name Barbra Streisand—“the kid from nowhere who knew nobody,” she called herself to a friend—nominated along with Elizabeth Allan for The Gay Life, Barbara Harris for From the Second City, and Phyllis Newman, for David Merrick’s other show that season, Subways Are for Sleeping. The morning after the nominees were announced, a slightly dazed Barbra had risen well before dawn to appear on the Today Show, where she sang “Right as the Rain” and was quizzed by host John Chancellor about whether she was made of songs. No, she told him, wincing. “Flesh and bones.”
It was certainly a busy period. With the rest of the Wholesale company, she’d trooped up to the Columbia Records studio on Seventh Avenue to record the cast album. Spotting Goddard Lieberson in the corridor, she’d called him by his first name. If some found her approach brazen, the record exec didn’t seem disturbed by it. In fact, Lieberson had developed some affection for the nonconformist teenager since her last visit to the studio and was seen giving her some special coaching while she recorded “Miss Marmelstein.” Not long after this, she ran into Lieberson again at the DuMont Tele-Centre, when they both appeared on PM East. Another guest that night was Sammy Cahn, composer of “Day by Day,” one of the first songs Barbra ever sang in public—and the one she and Carl Esser had recorded in Barré’s apartment seemingly a lifetime ago.
Barbra was soon back at Columbia cutting a second album, this one a twenty-five-year-anniversary tribute to another of Harold Rome’s scores, Pins and Needles. Despite Rome’s animosity toward Barbra, the composer had insisted she be a part of the project, no doubt because he knew the buzz surrounding her performance in Wholesale would guarantee some extra record sales. Barbra sang four numbers; the best, some reviewers thought, was “Doing the Reactionary.” But the most image-building in terms of the way the public saw her was “Nobody Makes a Pass at Me,” yet another homely-girl-looking-for-love lament that could have been the flipside of “Miss Marmelstein.” For help in practicing it, Barbra had actually rung Barré, who’d changed the spelling of his name to the more prosaic “Barry” after one too many casting directors had expressed confusion over his gender while perusing his résumé. The practice session had gone well, and Barbra had thanked her ex warmly. Barry hoped they could see each other more often, and Barbra was open to the idea. The relationship with Elliott seemed to have finally healed that old wound.
With all that rehearsing and recording, it was no small wonder that Barbra was exhausted. That didn’t mean she sat around being lazy, however. Far from it. With Cis, Barbra had embarked upon several buying sprees, scouring the thrift shops and antique stores along Third Avenue to finish transforming her new place into a home she could call her own. Watching Barbra defy the flat’s limitations had left Cis amazed. Barbra’s mother had visited and recoiled from the place, telling her daughter she should move back to Brooklyn immediately. But Cis, as always, stepped in when Diana disappointed. When Barbra hung an empty gilt picture frame on the wall and arranged old beaded bags around it, Cis declared the composition “beautiful.” When Barbra discovered an antique desk and lugged it upstairs as a centerpiece for the living room, Cis marveled at her friend’s unerring eye. “Who knew what antiques meant [at such a young age]?” Cis asked. Barbra’s decorating skills left her in awe.
Barbra had managed to make the cramped, awkward apartment eminently livable, at least according to her standards. She hung screens, arranged lacquered chests, and filled a rusted old dentist’s cabinet with antique shoe buckles. Those four tiny rooms proved Barry’s influence still hovered: Tiffany lamps stood on tables; and feather boas, old fedoras, and movie posters adorned the walls. There was even what looked like a World War II oxygen mask, likely picked up at an Army Navy store.
What made the experience so satisfying for Barbra was that she had paid for all of it herself. No friend, no manager, no publicist had helped her out financially. Shopping with Cis, Barbra had eagerly snapped up “things [she] could never afford before,” even if she could have afforded quite a bit more—more, at least, than trinkets and empty picture frames. But she’d quickly learned “the more money you make, the more money you spend,” so she’d reeled in her impulse to buy up the store. Her frugality hadn’t disappeared just because her paychecks had gotten larger. All that mattered was that her place had style, and that every last scrap, every single idea, had come from her. With deep contentment, Barbra flopped into a chair to survey her domain.
That was when Cis announced she was heading home. It had been a long day, and she was tired. It was time to unwind with Harvey and her family, maybe watch some television, or read a book, or have a glass of wine.
Barbra looked at her friend. The reality of how different their lives had become suddenly hit her. “What is this?” she thought. “There’s something very strange here.”
At the end of a long day, there was no rest for Barbra, no relaxed evening with family or friends, no glass of wine. Instead, she had to traipse across town to the theater, slather on all that makeup, wriggle into that outrageous costume, and play Miss Marmelstein for what was now going on the sixtieth time. Every night the same lines. Every night the same movements. And there was no end in sight. She often showed up at the theater at the very last possible moment, right before the curtain, infuriating the stage manager and her fellow players.
To those hordes of actors who would have severed a limb for a part in a successful Broadway show, Barbra’s attitude must have seemed the height of ingratitude. But she’d discovered that with a certain measure of success comes a corresponding loss of more simple pleasures, like the leisure to sit around her new apartment with friends. Barbra would claim that what really made her happy wasn’t the show, but enjoying a good malted or getting flowers from Elliott. Indeed, part of her did love such simple things just as much as she loved success and affirmation. And when the success that she had achieved wasn’t quite what she had imagined it would be, the conflict became even more apparent.
It was her old repugnance for doing the same thing twice. To combat mental fatigue, she tried playing her part a little differently each night, which, of course, threw her fellow cast members off when she wasn’t in her assigned position on stage or when she altered a line, even subtly. “What does it matter if I don’t stand in exactly the same spot?” Barbra bellyached. Scolded for being undisciplined, she called such criticism nonsense. “It’s just that I believe in being a person,” she told one reporter, defending her oscillating style.
Consequently, some nights she was better than others, and she knew it—though her audiences never seemed to discern the difference. Every night, on cue, they erupted for Miss Marmelstein when she came rolling out on her casters. They’d been waiting for the moment; they’d been told by the critics that the kid playing the secretary was a big deal, and so no matter how Barbra performed, they screamed and applauded just the same. Walter Winchell, the doyen of Broadway columnists, had raved about Barbra’s “jolly-dollying,” calling her the “brightest femmtertainer in years.”
That was all well and good, terrific publicity for the show, of course. But for Barbra, it was excellence that ultimately mattered, and if she was going to get applause, she wanted it to be because she really deserved it. And she was beginning to feel excellence was something she’d never really attain playing this stock character in a musical that really wasn’t, despite Arthur Laurents’s best efforts, all that great.
What irked her most, however, was the claim made by some reporters that she had “hit the big time.” Yes, she had been nominated for a Tony, but as far as Barbra was concerned, Miss Marmelstein was miles away from the big time. Certainly she wanted to win the award—very much—but she was never going to be satisfied with “featured performer” status; she wanted the “best actress” prize, the possibility of which was still too far in the future for her liking. So when columnists claimed she had received “lots of offers” for more work, Barbra slammed the stories as “a big lie.” True, her new agent at Associated Booking, Joe Sully, who also handled Louis Armstrong, had gotten her a new gig at the Bon Soir, and there was talk about appearing on some television shows. But those kinds of things didn’t count. When someone asked her to play Medea, then they could talk about hitting the big time.
To one reporter, Barbra carefully explained that she wasn’t yet a success because she wasn’t really famous. Just the other day, she had gone shopping at Bergdorf Goodman and couldn’t get anyone to wait on her. “If I was famous,” she said, “they would have waited on me. But I looked too young, I guess, and too—I don’t know, like I couldn’t afford to shop there.” Then she laid down the parameters for success as she saw it. “I’ll be a success when I’m famous enough to get waited on at Bergdorf Goodman.”
2.
At long last, Barbra was no longer a teenager. On April 24, Barbra’s twentieth birthday, the producers of PM East presented her with a cake during the taping of the show, which was scheduled to air later that night. Diana and eleven-year-old Rosalind had come in from Brooklyn for a cute, on-air birthday celebration. Even Mike Wallace joined in as the cast and crew sang “Happy Birthday” to Barbra.
But there was more important business to attend to on this particular show, and Don Softness kept his fingers crossed that it would all work out. Marty had asked him to come up with a “gimmick” to get Barbra noticed by the producers—David Merrick included—who were planning the Fanny Brice musical. So Softness had rung his old pal George Q. Lewis, the legendary comedy writer and workshop teacher who’d helped Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Jack Benny, and others polish their gags. Lewis had established a mostly phony organization called the National Association of Gag Writers that could be used for promotional purposes—which was just what Softness had in mind. He asked Lewis if the association would give Barbra their annual “Fanny Brice Award.”
“But we don’t have a Fanny Brice Award,” Lewis replied.
“You do now,” Softness told him.
So, on the air that night, Barbra was presented with more than a birthday cake. Out came a fancy framed certificate from the National Association of Gag Writers, signed by Lewis. Mike Wallace read from the statement prepared by Softness, telling the audience that the “annual award” was being presented to Miss Streisand because “the pathos of her comedy epitomizes the devotion to her art reminiscent of the late, great Fanny Brice.” Barbra acted suitably surprised and impressed as she accepted the certificate. Everyone involved knew it was both the first and the last annual Fanny Brice Award.
In the meantime, Softness had reached out to another colleague, Richard Falk, a fast-talking, stunt-loving publicity man who’d started out as an assistant to Claude Greneker, the press agent for the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1930s. Falk was known as “the Mayor of Forty-second Street” for all his connections up and down the Great White Way, as well as for such PR gambits as checking a trained flea into the Waldorf-Astoria. If anyone could get Barbra noticed, Softness reasoned that it was Falk.
One of the first things Falk suggested was to ratchet up the kook business. If landing the part of Fanny Brice was the goal, kookiness was definitely the way to go, as Brice was known for her quirks and whims. Keep playing up the thrift shops and vintage clothes, Falk advised. Barbra had been making references to “Second Hand Rose,” one of Brice’s best-known songs, at least as far back as her Detroit days, so they were on the right track. Meanwhile, the new publicist began issuing regular bulletins to all the columnists, most of whom he knew personally. Within days, Leonard Lyons was reporting that showman Billy Rose, Brice’s third husband, had been “reading all the casting reports on the musical about the late Fanny Brice,” and “of all the comediennes he’s seen, the one whose comic qualities most closely approach Miss Brice’s is Barbra Streisand of I Can Get It for You Wholesale.” Rose, of course, was one of Falk’s cronies. It was all part of the plan.
But the Brice show was just one of many possible targets. The best way to secure the parts Barbra wanted, Falk understood, was to get enough people interested in her and talking about her that offers would start flowing in. To that end, he arranged some appearances for her on the Joe Franklin Show, a morning New York television talk show on WABC, and set up some interviews for her with a handful of his reporter pals. The result was a flurry of syndicated articles that spring about “the twenty-year-old comedienne sensation.” One was by Dick Kleiner, a popular Broadway writer whose profiles and reviews were syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association, which meant he was read in hundreds of papers across the country. In Kleiner’s piece, Barbra the Kook came through loud and clear. He called her a “character,” and to illustrate that, he had her tell the story of dyeing her hair in school and wearing “strange color lipstick and eye-shadow.”
More of the same followed. Some reporters clued in to the fact that Barbra wasn’t playing entirely straight with them, that she had a mission, and that no matter what the journalist asked, she wasn’t going to stray from the grand design that she and her publicists had laid out. “Instead of giving me an honest answer to my questions,” Edward Robb Ellis, a reporter for the New York World-Telegram, recorded in his diary after meeting her, “she lied to me, toyed with me, tried to manipulate me.” Since Barbra told him nothing authentic about herself, Ellis decided to focus his entire piece on the character of Miss Marmelstein. She was as real, it seemed, as the woman he’d just interviewed.
In a major coup, Barbra’s publicity team secured a brief profile in The New Yorker, and more than anything else, this piece established the tone of the budding star’s subsequent coverage. The unnamed “Talk of the Town” writer, clearly playing up Barbra’s kooky reputation, chose to string everything she said closely together, as if she never paused for breath and spoke in one long stream of consciousness: “I used to baby-sit for a Chinese couple in Brooklyn; they had a restaurant and taught me to enjoy Chinese dishes. I often go to Chinatown to eat late at night. You get wonderful white hot breads with the center filled with shrimp at the little coffee shops there. Only ten cents! I love food. I look forward to it all day. My body responds to it. Everything else seems so nebulous.”
Of course, Barbra did talk fast and furious, but this was way, way over the top. “I was bald until I was two,” Barbra rambled on. “I think I’m some sort of Martian. I exist on my will power, being Taurus. I hate the name Barbara; I dropped the second ‘a,’ and I think I’ll gradually cut the whole thing down to B. That will save exertion in handwriting. I sometimes call myself Angelina Scarangella, which won’t.” There was much more in a similar vein. At the close of the piece, Barbra said, “I like interviews—they’re still a novelty—but by the time they appear they look funny to me, because my attitude changes from week to week.” Which attitudes, she was asked. “Oh, toward smoked foods, say,” she replied—a reference to PM East, where the whole kook image had been born. The New Yorker piece was a wonderfully entertaining article; no wonder the writer ended by saying he “rushed to the phone” to file his copy.
Another profile, this one for United Press International, revealed how Barbra wore nightgowns as dresses. By turning the nightgown backward, Barbra explained, she could achieve an Empire bustline—“You know, like in Napoleon’s time.” No doubt she really did buy that nightgown, though whether she’d really worn it “the other day,” as the piece claimed, no one was sure. Nor did anyone really care. Barbra had been told to “play up the kook” by her publicists, so she did—and not all journalists were as resistant to following her lead as Ellis. Most of them quickly learned this Streisand kid was very good copy. Marvelously creative pieces could be structured around her persona.
Richard Falk was continually surprised that Barbra understood his directions. When he spoke with her, it seemed as if she wasn’t even listening, “not there at all . . . a little off-center.” Softness, however, knew that Barbra heard everything that was said to her. She just processed it all very quickly, he said, then “moved on to the next thing.” Barbra took to the merchandizing of her image like a duck to water.
Of course, if the product they were trying to sell wasn’t any good, no one would have bought it, and people were definitely buying Barbra. The fact that she was extravagantly talented made her publicists’ jobs a lot easier. The week before her Fanny Brice Award, Barbra had won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for her part in Wholesale. She’d been given the honor at a cocktail party at the Algonquin Hotel, hobnobbing with critics like Howard Taubman, Walter Kerr, and John Chapman, all of whom had sung her praises. (The rest of Wholesale was ignored, however; the choice for best musical was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, with which Barbra’s show had so often been unfavorably compared.) While Barbra’s fortune might have been her voice, her fate was assured by the team that made sure that voice got heard.
And now, in large part because of their efforts, she really did have a shot at the big time. The Critics’ Circle Award meant Barbra had the blessing of the city’s most important star-makers. But she already knew that the critics loved her. What Barbra really wanted was the Tony—the affirmation of her peers.
3.
Stan Berman was a Brooklyn cabbie who called himself the “world’s greatest gate-crasher.” Earlier that month, he’d crashed the Academy Awards in Santa Monica, California, presenting host Bob Hope with a two-dollar replica of an Oscar. Now, on April 29, as Broadway’s glitterati gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria for the sixteenth annual Tony Awards, Berman once again walked through the front door looking “very official” without anyone stopping him to ask for credentials. He was carrying orchids, which he hoped to present to the winners.
Another Brooklynite at the Waldorf that night might have been feeling a bit like a gate-crasher herself, as she sat among such people as Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, Jason Robards, Olivia de Havilland, and Robert Goulet. But Barbra Streisand was getting used to being in the presence of celebrities. Three nights before, she’d been one of a select group of New Yorkers invited to watch Judy Garland record a new album at the Manhattan Center. Unpublicized, the concert had started at midnight, and a dazzling mix of celebrities, socialites, and other A-listers had filed into the hall. But as Barbra took her seat with a few others from the Wholesale company, she couldn’t quite comprehend what all the excitement was about. Despite Garland’s recent triumph at Carnegie Hall and her three decades in the limelight, Barbra insisted that she had “never heard of her.”Some friends thought she was playing the diva, but maybe she really hadn’t heard about Carnegie Hall, or seen The Wizard of Oz, or made the connection when she’d sung Garland’s part in her duet with Mickey Rooney. Maybe she had forgotten the Garland records Barré had played for her. To friends, all of that seemed extremely unlikely, but then again, Barbra had never been one for idols.
When Garland came out on stage, without any introduction, just strolling in from behind the curtain in a simple dress and high heels, Barbra probably wasn’t all that impressed. The thirty-nine-year-old singer had just gotten out of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where she’d been hospitalized for exhaustion, and was in the midst of a bitter fight with her estranged husband, Sid Luft, over their children. The strain showed. She also had laryngitis, which left her croaking through her songs. Ultimately she was just too hoarse and had to end the concert early. If this was truly Barbra’s first exposure to the woman many were already calling a legend, then she might have been forgiven for wondering what the fuss was all about.
No doubt there was a similar detachment at the Waldorf on Tony night. Barbra was there for one purpose only: to win the award. Stargazing had never held much interest for her. Stan Berman the Brooklyn cabbie might be hiding backstage, eager to snatch a glimpse of the winners, but Barbra the Brooklyn chanteuse hardly strayed from her table, too busy putting away her London broil and baked potato to do much mingling. The Tony dinner-dance, despite its star wattage, was a rather homey affair, far less showy than the Oscar gala. Although New Yorkers could watch the ceremony on their local NBC affiliate, the rest of the country barely knew it was taking place, as the Tonys weren’t broadcast nationally like the Oscars were. Consequently, there was far less playing to the camera. Barbra’s only chance to make an impression, then, would come when she strode up to the lectern to collect her award.
And everyone was certain she would win. None of the other nominees had generated as much publicity as Barbra had these last two months. Even David Merrick, who still didn’t like her, predicted she’d take home the prize. He’d chosen to sit with the company from his other show, Subways Are for Sleeping; after all, Subways had racked up three nominations to Wholesale’s one. But when it came time for the Best Featured Actress Award, Merrick callously turned to Phyllis Newman, Barbra’s competition, and told her, “Streisand’s going to win. I voted for her.” So confident of Barbra’s victory was the egotistical producer that he wanted it known before the fact that he was on her side. Merrick could never allow himself to be associated with losers.
So when it was Phyllis Newman’s name that was called out as the winner, Merrick switched allegiances in that very instant, jumping up and congratulating her as if he’d been rooting for her the whole time. It was a surprise win, but explainable. The critics might not have cared how often Barbra had been late to the theater, so long as the final performance was excellent. But word of her occasional lack of professionalism had gotten around, and her peers, apparently, didn’t approve. Better to honor Newman, who’d been paying her dues on Broadway since 1953.
After she collected her Tony, Newman headed backstage, where Stan Berman bounded out from the shadows to present her with an orchid. Meanwhile, Barbra gathered her things and slipped out the back door. She’d finished her meal. There was no reason to stick around and watch other people win awards.
4.
On a piece of cardboard, Jerome Robbins scrawled the names of the actresses who had been mentioned as possibly playing the part of Fanny Brice in the play he was going to direct for David Merrick and Ray Stark. At the top was Chita Rivera (an interesting choice). Then came Tammy Grimes. Judy Holliday. Paula Prentiss. Susan Pleshette. (Robbins meant Suzanne.) Mimi Hines. Kaye Stevens. Eydie Gormé. And then a woman whom Robbins clearly had little knowledge of. “Barbara Streisman.”
All the famed choreographer of Gypsy, West Side Story, and the New York City Ballet probably knew of the “Streisman” girl at that point was that she was appearing in another of Merrick’s productions. If Robbins had seen Wholesale, he didn’t mention it in correspondence with friends.
Instead, his passion was reserved for someone who wasn’t even on that list. Anne Bancroft, who’d won the Tony for Best Actress for The Miracle Worker two years ago and for Best Featured Actress for Two for the Seesaw three years ago, was Robbins’s first choice. Indeed, they’d been talking with Bancroft about the role for some time now. The chance to work with “Annie,” as Robbins called her, was a large part of the reason he’d signed on to the project in the first place.
But Ray Stark, Merrick’s coproducer and the one really in the driver’s seat for this show, had his reservations about Bancroft. Stark was married to Fanny Brice’s daughter, and he had a personal investment in the casting—literally: He’d had to make deals with his wife, his brother-in-law, and even his own children since they were all part of Brice’s estate. He’d had to buy the rights to the story of his father-in-law, Nick Arnstein, Brice’s second husband, who was still living. So with all that riding on the project, Stark was going to be very particular about their leading lady. Very quickly, he—or maybe it was Mrs. Stark, no one knew for sure—had soured on Bancroft. She didn’t want to play Fanny Brice, Stark insisted; she wanted to play a “new character based on” the legendary comedienne. If they did it Bancroft’s way, Stark wrote to Robbins and composer Jule Styne, they’d be left with nothing of Brice: “The personality of Anne Bancroft, not only through characterization but also through the style of singing and dancing, will be the only personality to emerge.”
Still, Robbins preferred Bancroft over everyone else Stark kept suggesting as alternatives. Last fall, the producer had been set on Kaye Stevens, whom he called “the most exciting girl” and the “answer to our quest.” Stevens was a bubbly singer and comedienne who, with her carrot-red hair and slender body, resembled “a Spanish exclamation point,” as one scribe thought. Stevens was attractive enough, but no great beauty by any means. The real Fanny Brice had also been far from pretty and was known for her large nose. But there were some who thought Frances Stark only wanted an attractive, ladylike actress to play her mother. (Her original choice for the part had been Mary Martin.) Enthused by Kaye Stevens—perhaps hoping she’d be the perfect compromise between the reality of the part and his wife’s unrealistic expectations—Stark had pleaded with Robbins to fly out to the Coast to meet her. But the director, busy fixing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for George Abbott and Hal Prince, had declined, which infuriated the producer.
They were very different personalities, Stark and Robbins. The former was soft-spoken and winsome—one account called him “pixieish”— where the latter could be surly, bombastic, and overwrought. Robbins’s ferocious temper was legendary. It usually erupted during times of self-doubt, which for Robbins was pretty much all of the time. Even after so much success, he still struggled with a deep sense of not being good enough. After the triumphant premiere of his show Fancy Free in 1944, for example, his first thought had been that he now had enough money for analysis. Robbins’s fears and self-doubts could be traced directly to deep-seated conflicts over both his Jewishness and his homosexuality: Most of the time, Robbins wished he were neither. When, in 1953, he named six of his colleagues as Communists to the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, he sidestepped the blacklist, but gave himself yet another layer of shame to live under for the rest of his life.
Ray Stark, on the other hand, was utterly without shame. Soft-spoken and winsome he might be, but that pixieish grin was cover for a shrewd, often cutthroat mind. Like David Merrick, Stark thought nothing of playing collaborators against each other, rationalizing that if it was good for the project, the ends justified the means. Director John Huston thought Stark’s penchant for starting rows among his company emerged from a belief “that out of the fires of dissension flows molten excellence.” But Stark’s devilry was always conducted with a smile. With Jerry Robbins, people tended to know where they stood: He was either screaming at them or lauding them with praise. But Stark left them guessing. He could tell an actor he was brilliant in the morning but fire him by lunchtime.
The kind of doubts and anxieties that plagued Robbins had no place in Stark’s life. Self-reflection was a waste of time, and Ray Stark had no time to waste. Among his favorite expressions was one word: “Commit.” From everyone he worked with Stark expected complete commitment because he himself gave two hundred percent. He was always on the lookout for what was next, whether it be the next film for his production company, Seven Arts, or a follow-up to his first stage success, The World of Suzie Wong. To all of them he brought the same level of unflagging commitment. No other producer, said Arthur Laurents, had “more infectious enthusiasm” than Ray Stark.
And nowhere was that enthusiasm more obvious, Laurents added, than when Stark was “casting young actresses.” Ray’s eye for the ladies was notorious. He was known to walk actresses he found attractive through his sculpture garden back in Beverly Hills and compare their buttocks to those on the nude statues. It was one final detail that set Stark apart from Robbins, and it suggests that it wasn’t only Mrs. Stark who was rooting for a pretty candidate to play Fanny Brice.
Whatever the reasons, it seemed Stark and Robbins simply could not see eye to eye on who should play Fanny. In November, Stark was pushing the attractive Georgia Brown, known best for playing Nancy in the West End production of Oliver! But Robbins argued if they weren’t going with Anne Bancroft, then they should go with Carol Burnett, the wacky sidekick from The Garry Moore Show who’d proven her Broadway power—and vocal chops—for more than a year in Once Upon a Mattress. Advance word on Burnett’s television special with Julie Andrews, written by Mike Nichols and to be called Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, was outstanding. With her offbeat looks, comedic timing, star presence, and big Broadway voice, Burnett seemed to Robbins the perfect choice to play Fanny Brice. On the surface, Stark was open to Burnett, insisting he wanted “to see her in person because television doesn’t necessarily do her justice.” But at the same time, he was offering actress Paula Prentiss—who was far more conventionally attractive—as an alternative.
That was where they stood now. The list Robbins had scrawled on that piece of cardboard was a mix of his ideas and Stark’s, though “Barbara Streisman” was probably neither’s. She’d made the list, most likely, because—thanks to Richard Falk and the Softness brothers—people kept bringing up her name: columnists, stage managers, TV commentators. Whether Robbins had seen or heard a mention of “Barbara Streisman” is unknown. But clearly someone had, with the result that Barbra’s name, however misspelled, was added to Jerry Robbins’s list.
5.
When Bob, with Barry Dennen in tow, showed up at the Lichee Tree restaurant at 65 East Eighth Street, just before midnight on May 10, the place was mobbed with several hundred people. The night was a bit chilly, but partygoers were spilling out onto the sidewalk since the restaurant was packed to the walls inside. Photographers were snapping away as Mike Wallace, Abe Burrows, Phyllis Diller, and others arrived bearing gifts. The reason for all the fuss? The official celebration of Barbra’s twentieth birthday.
Bob was carrying a framed drawing he’d done of Barbra. But once he and Barry worked their way inside, there seemed to be no place to leave it for her. Every available table was crowded with huge floral tributes from David Merrick, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers, and others. “Many more, sweetheart,” Mike Nichols had written on a card attached to a bouquet. Another card read: “With love from Ethel Merman.” Bob looked over at Barry and cracked, “Gee, what do you think the pope sent?”
“Matzo balls,” Barry deadpanned.
Glancing around the crowded room, they couldn’t see Barbra, but they could sure smell the feast that was being laid out. Sizzling Go Ba combined chunks of lobster and crab with snow peas, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms. Filet mignon was flavored with the sweet berries of the lichee tree and served on a bed of bean sprouts and rice noodles. Irene Yuan Kuo, who ran the restaurant with her husband, prepared the menus and planned the parties. She had taken a liking to Barbra, who was a frequent patron, and so when Don Softness approached her about hosting the party, she’d happily agreed. In China, Kuo told Softness, it was traditional to “welcome a girl into the realm of womanhood when she attains the age of twenty.” The Kuos had agreed to foot the bill because they believed—or were convinced—that the publicity would be good for their two-year-old eatery. When Barry learned that salient little fact, he marveled over the “genius for self-promotion” his former girlfriend had developed since the days when they were putting up posters for her weekly appearances at the Lion.
Since she hadn’t won the Tony, Barbra needed some other kind of exposure to keep her name in the news—and in the running for the Fanny Brice show. Howard Taubman had just included her in a list of the top ten newcomers on Broadway for a photo spread in the New York Times, even using her publicists’ talking points: “a natural comedienne who has been likened to Fanny Brice.” But more was still needed. Weaving in and out of the crowd at the Lichee Tree was Don Softness, working the room for his client. His focus was the gaggle of newspaper columnists who always showed up whenever free food was offered. Already he’d lassoed Leonard Lyons for their cause; now Earl Wilson was being wined and dined. The party was as much for the press, Softness admitted, as it was for Barbra’s friends and coworkers.
The birthday girl herself finally emerged, wearing a long wool dress that she’d bought at Filene’s Basement while the show had been in previews in Boston. Softness made sure to tell everyone that she’d paid $12.50 for it—marked down from $100. That was what the press had come to expect from Barbra’s wardrobe. Thrifty. Quirky. Kooky.
Elliott was at her side. For her actual birthday he’d given her a rose, which had made her happy, though she’d told her mother that he’d given her cash. At least that’s what she told the press that she’d told her mother. It was getting hard to know what Barbra really said versus what she said that she said—or what her publicists said that she said.
At her party, Barbra didn’t approach anyone; people came to her. Marty ran interference, keeping all but a few from getting in too close. Terry Leong never even got a chance to say hello to his old friend, even though he was planning to move to Europe soon to study fashion. Barry, pleased and surprised to have received an invitation, nevertheless was kept at arm’s length by Marty every time he tried to start a conversation with Barbra. Barry felt that the obstruction was “deliberate.” He believed that Barbra had given instructions to Marty beforehand “to keep her old friends at a distance.”
Bob, however, was more sympathetic as always. He pointed out that with such a large crowd, intimacy was impossible. If anything, Bob blamed Elliott for the distance they felt from Barbra. From the start, Elliott had been uncomfortable around Barbra’s old friends, perhaps because they knew a part of her that he didn’t. Largely because of the “vulnerability” he perceived in Elliott, Bob had withdrawn, no longer asking Barbra to join him at some of their favorite old haunts. Their long telephone conversations and late-night makeup sessions were now things of the past. Barbra hadn’t shared much with Bob about her relationship with Elliott, but Bob thought he could figure it out. Elliott was very much in love with Barbra, which no doubt must have been exhilarating for her, given what she’d been through with Barry. And with Elliott “really lusting after Barbra,” she had “total control over him,” Bob observed. What more could Barbra want?
As they stood off to the side, catching glimpses of Barbra through the crowd, Bob and Barry both had a sense that their old friend had left them for good. “I always thought you would be the legend,” Bob told Barry in a moment of reflection.
“I don’t want to be a legend,” Barry insisted. “I just want to be a working actor.”
Behind them, flashcubes were popping and people were applauding. Barbra was slicing her birthday cake.
6.
Her hair done up in a bun, Barbra rode onto the stage in a motorized cart with Robert Goulet, the star of Camelot, at the wheel. The announcer introduced them, but they seemed not to hear very well, since Barbra waved to the audience when Goulet’s name was mentioned and he waved when hers was. It was all part of a silly opening number on the May 29 episode of The Garry Moore Show, in which pairs of performers tramped across the stage in three-legged pants singing about teamwork. Barbra and Goulet were spared that indignity, though they struggled to sing along, mostly succumbing to giggles instead.
Sharing the stage was Barbra’s rival for the Fanny Brice show, Carol Burnett, who most observers figured had better odds at landing the part since she was better known and already an Emmy-winning star comedienne. Perhaps for that reason the writers of the Moore show had given them no scenes together—a pity, because their humor might have worked well in tandem. Instead, Barbra was largely on her own. Moore introduced her after delivering his pitch for the show’s sponsor, Winston cigarettes. “One of the biggest thrills for a guy who’s been around this business as long as I have is the advent of a bright new young star.” The teleprompter speech he was reading from had been prepared from materials submitted by Barbra’s publicists, and they’d made sure to indicate exactly how to say Barbra’s name. With clear, specific emphasis, Moore enunciated “Streisand” as if he’d been practicing it or if he were reading from a pronunciation guide. The mispronunciation of her name during introductions was one of Barbra’s pet peeves, and she’d insisted to her publicists that it must not happen here.
Moore went on, using the line about Wholesale that Softness had practically patented by now (“she stopped the show cold”) and then summed up with “I was delighted to learn during rehearsals this week that she is equally effective in straight numbers as she is when she’s being zany.” Moore was setting up a bit of business for later in the show, but Barbra usually seemed to find a way to have that point made in her television appearances.
The camera moved over to a set designed to look like a tenement balcony. Barbra opened the doors and came walking out, all slinky, nothing like the giggly child glimpsed in the opening act. Her hair was long and loose around her shoulders, and she wore a dark, formfitting dress with straps that crossed over her chest. She sang “When the Sun Comes Out,” never stepping from her spot as she used her arms to make a grand, sensual sweep, bouncing ever so slightly as the lyrics heated up: “And the rain stops beating on my windowpane . . .” It was a startlingly sexy performance. As the camera moved in for a close-up, Barbra looked gorgeous, full-figured and full of passion. In that moment, it was easy to understand why Elliott was so turned on by her.
Barbra was always at her sexiest and most attractive when she was feeling confident, and on the Moore show she was brimming over with belief in herself. When she finished the number and the host joined her onstage, their banter, though rehearsed, flowed easily, as if it were completely extemporaneous. “Barbra, I saw you in I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” Moore said, “and while you do have a comedy role, I also suspect that you are a very fine dramatic actress.”
“Yes, you’re right, Garry,” Barbra agreed, delivering the line exactly right, disguising the arrogance with humor, placing her hand on Moore’s shoulder and hanging her head for an instant, laughing at herself as the audience laughed with her.
Moore asked if she could prove her claim of being a great actress, and Barbra replied that she had a speech prepared. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she suddenly shouted, gripping the balcony railing as if she were a South American dictator addressing her people. Laughing for a moment, she quickly recovered her mock serious tone. “I ask you . . . to stay with us!” Gesturing dramatically, her voice grew louder and more Shakespearean. “We! Shall return! Immediately! After a word from our sponsor!” Moore mimed wiping a tear from his eye as they cut to a commercial. Barbra had been absolutely endearing, confident enough to have a little fun with herself and her own ambition.
But it was in her next number that she proved transcendent. If anyone doubted that underneath her kooky, musical comedy exterior beat the heart of a woman who still wanted to play Juliet, all they had to do was watch her perform “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It was part of a regular segment on the Moore show called “That Wonderful Year,” in which the songs and events of various years were remembered. Tonight, the year was 1929. “Let’s be honest, 1929 was not a wonderful year,” Moore said, referring to the stock market crash. “On that Black Tuesday in October, there were many expensively dressed people without a penny to their name.” Cue the piano introduction to “Happy Days” as the camera switched over to the set of a darkened bar with a waiter wiping down tables. In walked Barbra, swathed in mink, diamonds dripping from her ears.
One of the show’s composers, Ken Welch, who’d helped with arrangements on Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, had come up with the idea to use the song as an ironic commentary instead of the usual upbeat rallying cry. Barbra had jumped at the opportunity to prove—all kidding aside—that she really could act. No doubt it was the rehearsals for “Happy Days” that Moore had alluded to when he’d said he’d learned that Barbra was “equally effective” in straight as well as zany numbers.
She was more than effective, actually. She was a revelation. In the three-and-a-half-minute number, Barbra created a fully realized, fully human characterization. Before she sat down at the table, she ran a finger along the seat of the chair, withering the waiter with a disapproving look because of the dust. It was clear that this was a woman used to the finer things in life. But, like most people in 1929, she was broke. “Will a four-carat earring buy a glass of champagne?” she sang, removing the bauble from her ear, in lyrics specially written for this little introduction. The waiter, played by Bob Harris , a former chorus member on The Fred Waring Show, nodded and took the earring, heading off to fetch some bubbly. In song, Barbra went on to muse that she needed to celebrate, since her last million dollars had just gone down the drain.
She was positively giddy in her denial of what awaited her. She was broke, she was poor, she was right back where she started from. The waiter brought the champagne and she downed the glass, immediately declaring she’d have another. The waiter pointed to her remaining earring. With a smile, she handed it over, then launched into the song. “Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again . . .”
She sang louder and more boldly than most singers did on television, perhaps out of habit from singing every night on the Broadway stage. And though she kept a smile on her face, it was clear through the ironic words of the song that Barbra was feeling the pain and terror and desperation of her character. Snapping her fingers, she brought the waiter back for a third glass, this time giving him a ring in return. She seemed like a woman on the verge of tears—or madness. A bracelet was exchanged for a fourth glass of champagne, and when she sang about her cares and troubles being gone, the heartbreak was palpable. She ended the number shedding her mink and sensually caressing the champagne bottle. The applause went on for twenty seconds, longer than usual. Moore blew her a kiss and murmured under his breath, “Powerful.”
The host was clearly impressed. So were the millions watching at home. Peter Daniels was in the wings, and in that moment he knew “Happy Days” had to go into Barbra’s act. It had the potential to be a signature song, as quirky and as unexpected as “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” but far more profound and poetic. In such roughs as TV variety shows, Daniels realized, were the occasional diamonds found.
7.
It seemed as if Ray Stark was always in the air. He lived in Beverly Hills, but every ten days he flew to New York, where he had a suite at the Hotel Navarro on Central Park South, and once a month he continued on across the pond to Europe, usually to Paris or London, but sometimes other cities as well. Stark logged about half a million miles in the air a year.
But somehow this never slowed him down. For a man such as Stark, there was no time for jet lag. So, after his latest trip to Europe, he’d accepted Jule Styne’s invitation to see David Merrick’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale before he headed back to the Coast. There was a girl in the show, Styne told him, who’d make a perfect Fanny Brice. Since he was at an impasse with Robbins over the casting and eager to find someone to knock Anne Bancroft out of the running, Stark was very glad to consider any and all suggestions. The girl’s name, Styne said, was Barbra Streisand.
After seeing the show, Stark had agreed that the Streisand kid was good. But her Miss Marmelstein was far from the vision he had for Fanny. The part needed pathos and intelligence and anger and sacrifice, not just broad comedy and a big voice. Styne agreed. That was why he insisted that Stark accompany him next to the Bon Soir. Barbra had started another run at the nightclub, and after seeing her once, Styne had been back every single night, so mesmerized had he become by her voice and personality. One regular patron thought that the composer seemed “smitten like a schoolboy.”
And so, on a night in late May, Ray Stark carefully navigated his way down those dark, steep steps. Finding a table with Styne, he settled in to wait for Barbra Streisand. In that tiny room, on that tiny stage, she’d be so close he’d be able to see her sweat.
The fact that Styne was so enthusiastic about the kid carried considerable weight with Stark. Jule Styne, who’d composed the music for High Button Shoes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, My Sister Eileen, Gypsy, and other shows, as well as many popular songs—including the Oscar-winning “Three Coins in the Fountain”—was already a Broadway and Hollywood legend. That was precisely why Stark had hired him to compose the music for the Fanny Brice show: He wanted only the best for a show about his mother-in-law.
Stark had been trying to get the project off the ground for more than a decade. Shortly before her death in 1951, Brice had been writing a memoir, sitting down with a tape recorder and a good friend—none other than Goddard Lieberson. After Brice’s death, Stark had taken these reminiscences and, with the help of a paid writer, assembled them into a book. But the final product so displeased the family that Stark had paid the publisher $50,000 to get the plates back, which kept the book from ever being published. Instead, Stark decided to turn Brice’s tape-recorded notes into a film, commissioning first Ben Hecht (His Girl Friday, Notorious) and later Isobel Lennart (Anchors Aweigh, It Happened in Brooklyn) to write the screenplay. When the film idea failed to attract interest, Stark turned his eyes to the stage, asking Lennart to adapt her screenplay into a book for a musical. Like Robbins, Lennart had saved her career during the inquisitions of the 1950s by naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was, perhaps, an unspoken bond between her and Robbins, as the two had grown extremely close.
Stark, however, wasn’t as enamored of Lennart as his director was. She had assured him that she could easily adapt her screenplay even though she’d never written for the theater before. To the producer’s mounting dismay, Lennart had yet to make good on her promise. Jule Styne and his partner, Bob Merrill (who’d come in when Stephen Sondheim bowed out), had written some extraordinary music. A ballad called “People” was especially good, and so was the rousing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” But the book was still lacking—a fact that even so ardent a supporter of Lennart’s as Robbins couldn’t deny.
That night, as Stark waited in the dark for the show to begin at the Bon Soir, he was probably more worried about getting the book right than he was about finding the right actress to play Fanny. The book was the project’s Achilles heel, and he knew it. If there was one thing Ray Stark had learned, right at the beginning of his career, it was the importance of story. He’d started out as a literary agent, representing Ben Hecht and Raymond Chandler, among others. He’d learned that “the story” was the “essential foundation” for any project. No amount of great directing, great music, or great acting could make up for the lack of good story.
Stark saw the Brice project not as “a literal biography,” but as “an affectionate one,” which meant the writer was free to take liberties in telling Brice’s story. Neither Stark nor his wife cared much about the parts of Brice’s life that the public most remembered—her zaniness, her crazy faces, her Baby Snooks radio character. Instead, they wanted to tell the tragic love story between Brice and her second husband, the gambler Nick Arnstein, and to do so, Brice needed to be elevated to a dignified, even aristocratic, status. In private life, the offbeat comedienne was noted for her style and class; in her later years, she worked as an interior decorator, hailed for her restrained, elegant taste. This was the Brice the Starks wanted to memorialize, not the nonsense-jabbering Snooks, even if it was a bit of a distortion. Kaye Ballard had recorded an album of Brice’s songs with an eye toward playing the comedienne herself. But Fran Stark quickly nixed the idea. “Fran Stark had this fantasy that her mother was this beautiful, delicate creature,” Ballard complained. “Fanny was beautiful,” she said, “after you got to know her, but not beautiful in the way [the Starks] wanted to portray her.”
To those who knew them, it wasn’t surprising that the Starks wanted to portray Fanny Brice as cultured and refined. It was the image they had cultivated for themselves as well, hosting swanky parties at their Beverly Hills home, assembling an impressive collection of art, and sending their children to prestigious private schools. Ray Stark projected an air of affluence, as if he’d been to the manor born. But, like so many other power brokers in show business, he hadn’t always been so prosperous; he’d done his share of hustling to get where he was.
Stark’s grandfather had emigrated from Silesia, now part of Poland, and worked as a piano tuner, eking out a living for his family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century. His son, Max, had set his sights higher, working as a clerk in the office of the Manhattan borough president. He also married a young woman of some means, Sadie Vera Gotlieb, whose father was a florist and the owner of a large piece of property at 32 East Fifty-eighth Street, at Madison Avenue, worth about $50,000 in 1930. The florist shop was on the ground floor of the brownstone building; the family apartments were above. It was here that in 1915 Raymond Stark was born.
Although he shared with Barbra Streisand a third-generation Jewish immigrant identity, Ray Stark enjoyed a childhood far more comfortable than the one endured by the singer he was waiting to hear. For one thing, the Starks employed a live-in Irish maid, something Barbra would have found completely unimaginable. But she would have recognized Ray’s drive. As a boy, he had helped out in his uncle’s florist shop, but he made it clear that his ambition extended beyond roses and peonies. At fourteen—sometimes he’d add “and a half”—he was accepted into Rutgers University, though he was cagey about whether he ever actually graduated. Only rarely did Stark admit the truth: that he was thrown out of college, more than once, for “inattention to his studies.”
The problem was that Stark’s ambition seemed always to get ahead of itself. After working as a cub reporter on several New York papers, Stark turned his eyes west, driving across the country with a sixty-seven-year-old neighbor to share expenses. In Hollywood, he took a job making floral wreaths at Forest Lawn cemetery, grateful, at least temporarily, for his experience in his uncle’s shop. But when he landed a position in the publicity department at Warner Bros., Stark found his life’s passion. Showbiz. And that became even more apparent to him when, not long after, he met Frances Arnstein and her famous mother.
“There’s something about having your girlfriend say, ‘Come on, let’s stop a minute and see Snooks,’” Stark remembered, “that keeps you from thinking in dignified terms like ‘mother-in-law.’” When he visited Fran at home, Fanny could usually be found listening to the Tijuana races on the radio and “making book” with a visiting Katharine Hepburn or Orry-Kelly. Fanny didn’t always remember Stark’s name, calling him “Franny’s boy,” but he liked her anyway. When Ray and Fran married in 1940, Fanny threw a big gala at her house in Holmby Hills.
From Warners, Stark moved on to Fawcett Publications, where he was the West Coast entertainment editor for Family Circle, Motion Picture, Screen Secrets, and other magazines. During World War II, he served in the navy. Both his father and uncle died while Stark was in the service; his mother passed away soon after he returned home. The resulting sale of the family properties gave Stark a much-needed financial boost as he attempted to restart his career in Tinseltown. The literary agent job led to Charles Feldman’s Famous Artists Agency, where Stark repped Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, William Holden, Kirk Douglas, and Ronald Reagan. But after a few years, he wanted out. As an agent, Stark made only ten percent on every deal he negotiated. He “decided to make a stab” for the remaining “ninety percent” and became a producer on his own.
With a partner, Eliot Hyman, Stark founded Seven Arts Productions in 1957, a company Variety quickly nicknamed “Hollywood’s eighth major” after the seven top studios. Seven Arts had a string of successes producing films that were distributed by others: Thunder in the Sun for Paramount, The Misfits for United Artists, Lolita for MGM. Stark and Hyman tended to invest their own money in projects—a credo that violated the usual Hollywood production pattern—but that way they had the ability to make quick decisions. Stark and Hyman owned the largest block of stock in Seven Arts, and they wanted to keep it that way. Movies, theater, television—all fell under the Seven Arts banner. The company had purchased the rights to The World of Suzie Wong, a novel by Richard Mason, while the book was still in galleys, and raised the money for the successful Broadway production. A year later, they had a terrific hit with the film, which Stark personally produced. It was that same formula he had in mind for the Brice project.
But he needed two things first. One, a better script. Suzie Wong had had a tight-as-a-drum book by Paul Osborn. It had also had the charming France Nuyen in the lead, who turned out to be a sensation. That, of course, was the second thing Stark needed. Someone who’d make the critics take notice, who’d surprise them, intrigue them, dazzle them. So, as a spotlight suddenly appeared on the tiny stage at the Bon Soir, Stark sat back in his chair and kept his eyes peeled for Barbra Streisand.
8.
Backstage, Barbra was very aware of who was in the audience that night. Jule Styne, who’d showed up in her dressing room after a performance of Wholesale not long before and basically declared himself her servant for life, had informed her that he’d brought Ray Stark, Fanny Brice’s son-in-law and David Merrick’s coproducer. And in no uncertain terms, Styne advised her that for tonight she should dispense with the usual eccentric banter and concentrate on singing. Barbra agreed to take his advice.
The last time she’d played here, Barbra had been the warm-up act; now she was the headliner. The contract her new agent, Joe Sully, had banged out guaranteed her “100 percent sole star billing,” and he’d also arranged for the club to pay Peter Daniels as Barbra’s accompanist. Plus there was a car to whisk her from the theater to the Village every night. Quite the difference from the days when Barbra had first stumbled through the darkness, having no say in how things were done. Everything was different this time around. The club had a new owner, Nat Sackin, a handsome, somewhat mysterious character, and the flamboyant Jimmie Daniels had been replaced as emcee by Barbra’s old friend and booster, Burke McHugh. At least one reviewer missed Daniels’s “terse, mocking intros,” especially given how “sincere, sentimental and very long” McHugh’s monologues tended to be.
But the biggest difference between now and the last time Barbra had appeared at the Bon Soir was how much more they were paying her. A year ago, she’d collected $175 a week. Now, a Broadway show, a Tony nomination, and a Drama Critics’ Circle Award later, she pulled in seven times that—$1,250. Once upon a time, it had been Barbra who hoped her association with the Bon Soir would raise her profile. Now it was the club that wanted her name to help sell itself as hip, timely, and relevant.
With Barbra backstage, as usual, was Elliott. Since the start of her run at the Bon Soir, he could usually be spotted “hanging around” the club somewhere, as noticed by Dick Gautier, the opening act. Elliott’s ubiquitous presence meant that others were prevented from spending too much one-on-one time with Barbra. One regular Bon Soir patron thought that Elliott acted as a kind of shield for her. According to this patron, Barbra seemed to have grown “a little wary of mingling too much with her fan base,” since she no longer came out and sat at the tables between shows. But it wasn’t just she who had changed; her fan base had, too. Once a friendly group of Villagers, many of whom knew Barry or Bob or Terry, now it had grown into an authentic phenomenon, a pack of mostly gay men whom Barbra had never met and who showed up every night to see her.
Gautier had no illusions that the standing-room-only crowds every night had much to do with him. On opening night, when he looked out into the room and saw Helen Hayes and other Broadway bigwigs, he knew they hadn’t come for his jokes, but to hear the girl who “stopped the show” every night over at the Shubert Theatre. But to Barbra’s credit, she never engaged in any one-upmanship, even though she enjoyed, as per her contract, “100 percent sole star billing.” She shared with Gautier, the original Conrad Birdie in the Broadway smash Bye Bye Birdie, a “mutual respect” that befitted two Tony-nominated Broadway performers.
Certainly Barbra was grateful that Gautier always handed over an upbeat audience to her. This night was no exception. The crowd was applauding in anticipation even before Burke McHugh had finished his introduction. Given his history with Barbra, and the very real credit McHugh could take for launching her career, his intro may have been one of the long and sentimental ones he was known for. But no matter what words he used or how long it took him to say them, the audience erupted into applause when the spotlight picked Barbra out, standing by Peter Daniels’s piano on the dark stage.
“Twenty-year-old Barbra Streisand returns to Gotham’s intime [intimate] nitery circuit with the assurance of a performer who knows that the road ahead is strictly upward,” Variety had observed after opening night. “She knows what she’s about and makes the tablers aware that there’s something special happening on stage.”
Reviews rarely came much better than that. Barbra’s triumphant return to the Bon Soir meant that she was no fluke, no passing trend, and that she was so much more than Miss Marmelstein. One night, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, a songwriting couple who’d written the title track to Dean Martin’s Sleep Warm album, came backstage and asked her, “Do you know how wonderful you are?” Barbra didn’t answer, but the Bergmans thought she did know. “You can’t be that wonderful and not know,” they mused.
It was clear that Barbra did know she was pretty wonderful, though as Variety observed, she didn’t come across “arrogant or smart-alecky.” She was simply suffused with confidence. When she sang Leonard Bernstein’s “My Name Is Barbara,” from his I Hate Music: A Cycle of Five Kids’ Songs for Soprano and Piano, she made it utterly her own, no matter its operatic style and that pesky extra “a.” “Value,” from Harry Stoones, once again proved a crowd-pleaser, as was Harold Arlen’s “I Had Myself a True Love.” But it was Barbra’s daring cover of “Lover Man,” so indelibly associated with Billie Holiday, that really impressed the crowd. Barbra might have been blissfully in love with a man who loved her back, but she was still able to put over the heartache of a lonely woman. As her voice trailed off on the last line—“Lover man, oh where can you be?”—the audience was jumping to its feet and banging the tables in appreciation.
This night, she obeyed Styne’s decree to tone down the banter, but her personality no doubt still came through, if only in the way she smiled or shrugged. So ingrained into her act was Barbra’s shtick by now that it had become impossible to completely eliminate. Variety had recognized that her “infectious juve [juvenile] giggle,” her “grimace,” her “wispy mood,” and her “straightforward belt” were all “calculated for maximum impact.” But such calculation didn’t make her act any less “winning,” the trade paper declared. “It works and that’s what counts.”
What remained to be seen was whether Ray Stark agreed with that assessment. When he came backstage to meet Barbra after the show, he said very little to her, although he did ask her to come in to his office the next week and give a reading from Lennart’s script. That was promising, but what he actually thought of Barbra as a performer he did not reveal. Ray Stark was known to be a secretive man. In Hollywood, where everyone had “a masseur, an analyst and a wife” who could potentially blab details before a deal was inked, Stark had developed a real fetish for secrecy. He’d insist on absolute oaths of privacy when making a deal, ending his negotiations with “Swearsies?” The hard-driving dealmaker retained that childlike enjoyment of the high-stakes game he was so good at playing.
So when Stark left the club that night, Barbra—and Marty and Elliott and anyone else who had been watching his reactions carefully—would have had little clue as to what the producer was actually thinking. But Jule Styne surely knew. After the show, Stark told his collaborator what he had realized as he watched the kid perform. Barbra was Fanny Brice. And from that point on, Ray Stark could never think “of anyone else in the part.”