Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 19

And so she performed a brilliant routine of what Laurents immediately recognized as "calculated spontaneity." First came the "elaborate shedding" of the coat, revealing her "gawky, disorganized body." Then there was a complicated bit with the sheet music, produced from a red briefcase and held comically to her waist. Extravagant whispers to the accompanist followed. Then the kid asked a stagehand for a chair. She was nervous, she claimed, and wanted to sit, but Laurents thought her nerves, while possibly real "somewhere deep down," were part of her routine. As the chair was wheeled over to the center of the stage, Barbra marched to meet it-while her sheet music, taped together, suddenly accordioned after her. Laurents shook his head in bemus.e.m.e.nt. "Funny, attention-getting, a good trick," he thought, especially since it was punctuated by a "trilling giggle of feigned surprise."

Sitting back in his seat, the director thought this Streisand kid was maybe "too much," maybe "trying too hard." She was entertaining, but he was on to her tricks. Everything she did, Laurents observed, was staged. When she sat down in the chair, she didn't just sit-"she sprawled in it, flung her legs out, took them back, wrapped her arms around them, under them, across them," all the while "elaborately chewing gum." When it came time for her to sing, she took the gum out of her mouth and-using a bit of business as old as her act itself-proceeded to stick it under the chair. (Or at least she seemed to. When Laurents checked later, there was no gum.) Laurents just rolled his eyes. "She'd better have a voice," he thought to himself.

From farther back in the theater, another set of eyes watched her, eyes belonging to a young man who could barely believe he was there at all. Six foot three, two hundred pounds, Elliott Gould had leaped from the chorus line of Irma la Douce right into the starring role of this production, pus.h.i.+ng aside such established names as Tony Franciosa and Laurence Harvey, both of whom had been considered. Gould's casting had surprised him as much as it did Broadway insiders. The twenty-three-year-old was almost a complete unknown, and it was on his untried shoulders, broad as they might be, that the entire weight of a David Merrick vehicle was now being placed. So it was with considerable fascination that Gould watched this "fantastic freak" -his words-cavort up on the stage. This Barbra Streisand might be "the weirdo of all times" -his own words again-but she seemed to have reservoirs of confidence that he envied, with none of the self-doubts that kept him awake at night.

Barbra had plenty of her own self-doubts, of course, but she kept them well hidden. What people saw was that old ferocious belief that she had to make it to the top or go nowhere at all. At this particular moment, that belief was being fueled by the adrenaline produced by the reviews for Another Evening with Harry Stoones. True enough that the show had closed after only one official performance, and true, too, that the stodgy Lewis Funke hadn't even mentioned Barbra in his scathing critique in the New York Times. "None too stimulating," he'd concluded about the show, an opinion shared by reviewers for the New York Post and Herald Tribune. But others, a little more in tune with Harry Stoones's offbeat sensibility, had responded very differently, both to the show and to Barbra. Edith Oliver in The New Yorker had thought Stoones was "quick, flippant [and] sometimes bright and original," and she "particularly admired" Barbra. Martin Gottfried in Women's Wear Daily, who'd been one of those hooting and whistling for Barbra right from the start at the Bon Soir, had proclaimed Harry Stoones "gleeful" and "riotous," and observed, "Barbra Streisand has been a fine singer for some time and continues to be one." Michael Smith in the Village Voice had gone so far as to declare that no one in the cast, not even Sands or DeLuise, had been "quite strong enough" to play opposite Barbra. But such raves appeared days after the show had closed, too late to do any good.

Too late for the show, perhaps, but not for Barbra. By the time she strode into the St. James Theatre, it was with an air of supreme confidence. It hadn't been just her voice the critics had applauded, but her acting: Variety thought Barbra had shown "excellent flair for dropping a dour blackout gag." Now, with that same sort of flair, she sauntered up onto the St. James stage, playing the part of the eccentric kid, a role that had worked so well for her on PM East, a persona Don Softness, her shrewd new publicist, had encouraged. It was shtick that bordered on being disrespectful-the well-executed slip of her music, for example, or her demand for a chair-but it never quite crossed that line. Instead, it was funny. Different. It got the men in power to sit up and pay attention. Now all that was left for Barbra to do was sing. And that, of course, was the easy part.

The timing couldn't have been better. Barbra was set to open at the Blue Angel that night, so her voice was in top form. She was also fortunate that Peter Daniels had moved over to the Angel from the Bon Soir; he'd helped Barbra expand her repertoire. So she could have chosen to sing any number of songs for her audition. She went with the broadly comic "Value," which had been such a success for her in Harry Stoones. "Call me a schlemiel, call me a brain with a missing wheel ..." Both Laurents and Weidman found the song delightful, and burst into applause when Barbra was done. When Laurents asked if she had a ballad, Barbra briskly replied that she'd sing "Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?"-which they all knew and approved of. Halfway through the song, as they all sat silently listening, Harold Rome leaned over his seat and whispered to Laurents, "Geez, she's really something, isn't she?"

She was. Laurents agreed Barbra was something special, but Miss Marmelstein was supposed to be fifty years old, and this kid would barely be twenty by the time the show opened. Still, she was good-very good-with exactly the kind of "Jewish sensibility" the show needed-which, no doubt, Barbra had been counting on. What's in It for Me? was a show where her Jewishness would be an a.s.set, not a liability. Without that cultural flavor, the show lost everything, a fact Laurents understood very well. Back in 1951, Twentieth Century-Fox had turned Weidman's novel into a movie, keeping the original t.i.tle, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, but practically nothing else. Harry Bogen was turned into Harriet Boyd in a star vehicle for the t.i.tian-haired, Irish-Swedish Susan Hayward. The film was a flop. This new version, Laurents knew, had to retain its gritty, urban, ethnic ident.i.ty, and for this, Barbra Streisand fit perfectly.

Still, he also knew that she wasn't what Merrick had in mind for the part, so for the moment he just thanked her and said they might call her back. That was enough for Barbra. She hadn't been rejected out of hand; she still had a chance. She left the stage in a bubbly, effusive mood, inviting everyone to come see her at the Blue Angel. And call her, yes, please, call her! She finally had a phone number all her own, she told everyone, and she sang it out with exuberance.

Everyone laughed. It was the perfect shtick with which to end her audition. Laurents made sure to write her number down, while several rows behind him in the theater, someone else did so as well.

5.

Later that evening, leaving her sublet on West Eighteenth Street to head uptown to the Blue Angel, Barbra heard her telephone ring.

She picked up and heard a male voice.

"You said you wanted to get calls, so I called," the man said. "You were brilliant."

It was Elliott Gould. The big, gangly lead from What's in It for Me? Barbra thanked him, and that was the extent of their conversation. She hung up the phone and told Terry Leong what had just happened. Gould was the star of the show; maybe he made such courtesy calls to everyone who auditioned. But Terry told her that wasn't likely. The guy would be on the phone all night if that were the case.

At the audition, Barbra had barely noticed Gould. There'd been no real feeling about him one way or the other. Gould wasn't really Barbra's type, which tended toward more handsome, polished men. Gould was, instead, long-limbed and lantern-jawed, with a nose that some likened to a large dill pickle. But he had called her. He had called her and told her that she was brilliant. It left an impression. How could it not? It made her, friends said, curious, at the very least, to see Gould again.

6.

The Blue Angel, with its long, rectangular shape and oddly quilted walls, left more than one performer struck by its resemblance to a coffin-an ironic a.n.a.logy for a place known for giving birth to cabaret stars. From the Angel's tiny stage the likes of Felicia Sanders, Harry Belafonte, Eartha Kitt, and Dorothy Loudon had dazzled audiences for nearly two decades. Now in the second week of her run, Barbra stepped into the spotlight dressed in a pink gingham sleeveless dress with a sequined jumper-style bodice-hardly the image of a traditional nightclub singer, but very much the mod, stylish icon Bob had been endeavoring so hard to create-and smiled at the faces in the crowd, many of whom were familiar to her this night.

For one, there was Lorraine Gordon, whose husband, Max, had helped Barbra land the gig. Lorraine had also involved Barbra in her political cause, the antinuclear group Women Strike for Peace. Mostly oblivious to politics until this point, Barbra had been suddenly inspired by Lorraine's pa.s.sion, and she had accompanied her to rallies and helped her pa.s.s out leaflets on the street condemning the U.S.-Soviet arms race.

But her primary focus, at least for the moment, remained her own career. And so it was to another table that Barbra made sure she was directing her performance that night. The team from What's in It for Me? had come to see her: Arthur Laurents, Jerry Weidman, and Harold Rome. The fact that Barbra was performing at the Blue Angel was a definite point in her favor for these theatrical power brokers. The creme de la creme of New York society regularly showed up at the Angel. It was, by far, Barbra's most prestigious booking yet.

Barbra was third on a bill topped by comedian Pat Harrington, Jr., best known for the comic Italian-immigrant stereotype named Guido Panzini that he played on Jack Paar's show. Also on the bill were another comedian, Barbara h.e.l.ler, and the Canadian folksingers Sylvia Fricker and Ian Tyson. After the opening, Variety had declared Barbra the best of the bunch. In the trade paper's recent review, Harrington had been called "undisciplined" and h.e.l.ler "another disappointment." But Barbra had known "her way with a song." Her routine with Peter Daniels was by now seamless. No doubt Variety's endors.e.m.e.nt had pleased Barbra very much, especially as the trade paper was required reading for Laurents and his compadres.

Yet there was something else in the review that had left her steaming. "She's very youthful," the Variety critic observed, "and if intent about her professional ambitions, perhaps a little corrective schnoz bob might be an element to be considered." The reviewer opined that comics such as f.a.n.n.y Brice, Jimmy Durante, and Danny Thomas were one thing, but "ingenues, of good figure and advanced vocal interpretation, with many years before them," const.i.tuted something else entirely. In other words, Barbra would have to choose: Keep the nose and settle for being a comic or whittle the nose down and all those other "professional ambitions" might come true.

It was the first time any critic had so baldly disparaged her looks. Here was Variety, the s...o...b..z bible, insisting that if she was truly "intent" on being successful, then she should plane down her schnoz. The review left Barbra "overcome with a new burst of insecurities," one friend discerned.

Yet for the three men sitting in her audience that night, any suggestion to change that big, glorious Jewish nose was absurd. It was Barbra's nose-along with her voice, manner, and style-that made her so right for the show. No doubt Barbra understood this, but that didn't make getting up there on that stage any less difficult, the words "corrective schnoz bob" fresh in her mind. Still, she belted her heart out on song after song, projecting as much confidence as ever. She'd learned how to do that long ago.

Barbra's performance this night was, in effect, another audition, despite the fact that she'd already traipsed back to the St. James Theatre more than once to sing, hoping something, anything, might finally convince David Merrick to give her the part of Miss Marmelstein. It was Merrick who would make the final decision, Barbra knew, but the "abominable showman," as he was called around Broadway, hadn't come to the Angel to hear her this night. Barbra could only hope that if she could fire up those who had come, then maybe they could persuade Merrick for her.

She had, in fact, already sold herself to Laurents, Weidman, and Rome, though she didn't know that for sure. Laurents had already concluded that Barbra "had to be in the show," and Weidman had determined she had "the X quality" that made a star. To confirm their opinions, they'd brought lyricist Stephen Sondheim, Laurents's collaborator on Gypsy and West Side Story. As Barbra sang, they all sat back and listened, soaking up the strains of "A Sleepin' Bee," "Cry Me a River," "Right as the Rain," and even "Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking."

After the show was over, Sondheim didn't quite share his colleagues' appreciation of the young singer. "Too pinched and nasal," he said of Barbra's voice. But that didn't deter Laurents, who made a beeline to see Barbra backstage and offered some tips on lighting. "Don't look down," he told her. The Blue Angel's single unmoving spotlight cast unflattering shadows, he explained. He was already thinking of how she'd look on the Broadway stage. Now if only David Merrick would see things his way.

7.

As Bob tiptoed into his kitchen, the rain was coming down outside in heavy sheets, splas.h.i.+ng against the tall windows that overlooked the park. It was early on the morning after Thanksgiving, and Barbra was sound asleep on his couch. Quietly, Bob opened his refrigerator and began making turkey sandwiches from the leftovers he'd saved from the feast the day before. Wrapping one sandwich in wax paper, he slipped it into a paper bag, scrawling Barbra's lunch on the side.

He knew she had a big day ahead of her. And she'd had a long night, too, so he was letting her sleep for a while longer. Barbra had missed Thanksgiving dinner because she'd been performing at the Blue Angel, and it wasn't until well after midnight that she had arrived at Bob's, long after everyone else had left. He'd kept a plate aside for her, and Barbra had wolfed down the turkey, stuffing, and gravy as they gabbed into the wee hours. She'd been invigorated by her performance, but also anxious about the next day because she was scheduled to meet with Merrick at the St. James Theatre. She was hoping that he'd give her the news she'd been waiting for. It had been more than a week since she'd first auditioned for What's in It for Me?, and the not knowing was killing her. If she couldn't get into a show by and about Jews, she feared, then she'd never get into anything.

As audition time neared, Bob gently woke his friend. Barbra showered and washed her hair, but the only clothes she had with her were those she'd worn at the Blue Angel the night before. Still, her rather "severe" black silk dress, black nylons, and black shoes made for a good look, Bob thought, especially topped with the caracul coat. Bob handed her the lunch bag, then walked her outside and helped her hail a cab in the rain.

The show was coming together, according to press reports. Instead of Sylvia Sidney, the part of Mrs. Bogen had gone to Lillian Roth, another old-time star. Roth hadn't been on Broadway since the early 1930s, when she'd been one of the sensations in the Earl Carroll Vanities. A brief stint in movies had followed until alcoholism cut short her career. Her candid autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow, chronicled her addictions, brought her back to public notice, and was made into a film with Susan Hayward. Now sober, Roth made many television appearances after that, usually closing with her theme song, "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along." David Merrick, recognizing that he needed a name above the t.i.tle, made Roth the ostensible star of the show.

Everyone in the cast had impressive resumes. Harold Lang, Bambi Linn, and Jack Kruschen were all veterans. Even the show's love interest, Marilyn Cooper, had played small parts in Gypsy and West Side Story, so she already had a working relations.h.i.+p with Laurents. Everyone was a lot more "in" than Barbra-except, she realized, the star of the show himself, that big, lumbering Elliott Gould, the guy who had called her on the phone. He was almost as green as Barbra was.

Clearly, Gould had been chosen not because of any name recognition with the ticket-buying public, but because he was right for the role of the enterprising, crafty-and very Jewish-Harry Bogen. Would Merrick use the same logic in selecting Barbra? Laurents had already declared that Miss Marmelstein didn't have to be a fiftyish spinster; a twentyish wallflower could serve the same purpose. But would Merrick agree?

David Merrick was one of those larger-than-life showmen, like Barnum and Belasco, who were geniuses not only at picking box-office hits but also at promoting their own legends. In his finely tailored suits, cheap toupee, and silent-movie-villain mustache, Merrick cut an easily recognizable-and just as easily parodied-figure on the Great White Way. He lived, breathed, ate, drank, and slept theater. He liked to say that he was born the night his first big show, f.a.n.n.y, starring Florence Henderson and Ezio Pinza, opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway-which effectively obliterated his hardscrabble early life in St. Louis as the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant tailor. Like the girl he was considering hiring, Merrick had been an ambitious soul fleeing less-than-glamorous origins. Whenever he flew across country, he wouldn't permit his private plane to fly over St. Louis, unwilling to risk an emergency landing in his hated hometown.

At least that was the story. And there were lots of stories about Merrick. Some of them were even true. He gained his reputation as a master promoter in 1949 when his show Clutterbuck was struggling to find an audience. To generate publicity, Merrick's savvy publicist, Lee Solters, began phoning restaurants throughout the city and asking them to page a nonexistent "Mr. Clutterbuck." That made the columns and guaranteed the show a reprieve of a few weeks. Merrick was known for big, glossy productions: The Matchmaker, Gypsy, Irma la Douce, Do Re Mi. But he had also distinguished himself with some notable succes d'estime, such as Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer, both by John Osborne, the latter of which marked one of Laurence Olivier's most acclaimed roles. At times, close to a quarter of the entire Broadway workforce was employed by Merrick.

Arthur Laurents, for his part, was quite pleased to finally be working with Merrick on What's in It for Me?, even if they had immediately clashed on how the sets should look. Laurents wanted subtle Brechtian blacks, whites, and grays; Merrick, not surprisingly, wanted lots of bright reds. Only after much back and forth did Laurents prevail. The director tolerated the belligerence because he believed Merrick had a "genuine ... love and respect for the theater." Still, the producer could be Machiavellian in getting what he wanted, pitting collaborators against each other, saying one thing when he wanted another, and humiliating actors, whom he despised. To Merrick, actors were merely puppets to be used in the best interests of the production. And he liked pretty puppets. That was why he was being so pigheaded about Miss Marmelstein.

As Barbra stumbled out of the rain into the theater, she kept her coat wrapped around her, not wanting to step out onto the stage in her black silk evening dress. That would have been a bit much, even for her; it wasn't even noon yet, after all. From the a.s.semblage of princ.i.p.als seated in the audience-Laurents, Weidman, Rome, Herbert Ross, and Merrick himself-it seemed obvious that a decision had been made. Barbra braced herself for what she was about to hear.

Laurents had finally been able to pin Merrick down on his choice only a few hours earlier. The producer had tried arguing that Barbra was simply "too ugly," that if they were making Miss Marmelstein younger, then why not go with some "cute girl," a suggestion Laurents argued, quite rationally, went completely against the character. But actors were "window dressing," Merrick told him. They had to be appealing enough to draw in customers. They were already saddled with an unattractive lead in Elliott Gould, he argued. Did they really want another homely face up on the stage?

Laurents said yes, in fact, they did. And so, with a long sigh, Merrick gave in. It was a small, insignificant part anyway. They had the winsome long-legged Bambi Linn and the pretty brown-eyed Marilyn Cooper to take up the slack.

As Barbra stood on the stage, Laurents gave her the news. The part, he said, was hers. She responded calmly, with a dignified equanimity, thanking them all and promising to make them proud of her. She was invited back to Merrick's office to work out the details of her contract, which Marty stepped forward to handle. She would be making only $150 a week, Barbra learned, far less than she made in clubs, but the expectation was that What's in It for Me? would run for months, maybe even years, so financially, Barbra would be more secure than she'd ever been in her life. If the show was a hit, that is. And after Harry Stoones, Barbra knew better than to count her chickens too soon.

Still, she couldn't help being elated as she stepped off the stage, still wrapped in her wet caracul coat. This was it. The dream. She was going to Broadway.