Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 21

Elliott Gould caught one glimpse of her and thought she looked like "a young f.a.gin," the vagabond leader of the street urchins from Oliver Twist. Barbra caught his glance and thought the long-limbed, curly-topped Elliott was "funny looking." Then she settled down into the circle, cross-legged, with the rest of the cast.

Walking around them was a very serious taskmaster, the likes of whom Barbra had never known before. Arthur Laurents, with Gypsy and West Side Story under his belt, was a name, a power, a force to be reckoned with. He told his cast he expected them to be "better than excellent." Anyone who wasn't up to the challenge, he said, looking each one of them in the eye, should leave immediately.

The cast went over the script. Miss Marmelstein was one of the first to appear, with a whole stretch of dialogue talking into a phone-never the easiest task for an actor-while also simultaneously carrying on a conversation with her boss, Mr. Pulvermacher. So that first read-through saw Barbra, the youngest and least experienced of them, carrying on not one but two conversations all by herself.

"Maurice Pulvermacher, Eye, En, See," she said, pretending to answer a phone in her best Jewish Brooklynese. "Gowns of distinction, street and formal."

She looked up as if speaking to her boss while the caller droned on in her ear. "What should I tell I. Magnin?"

Then into the phone: "Boston?"

Covering the mouthpiece, speaking again to her boss: "Oh, it must be Filene's."

Back into the phone: "Yes? h.e.l.lo? I'm sorry. We don't know when we can s.h.i.+p your order. This strike-it's the s.h.i.+pping clerks, yes-they've tied up the whole garment center."

Here she was instructed by the stage directions to once again cover the mouthpiece and "hiss" over to Pulvermacher: "You want to talk to them?" She did as directed and then, finally, thankfully, it was someone else's turn to speak.

Laurents was pleased. He liked this kid. He liked her style, her gumption, her ambition. But most of all, he liked her voice. Liked it so much, in fact, that he'd called G.o.ddard Lieberson, an old friend, and asked him to reconsider the record deal he'd been too quick, in Laurents's less-than-humble opinion, to dismiss. On the strength of Laurents's recommendation, Lieberson told Marty Erlichman to bring Barbra into the Columbia studios and record a demo tape. The Columbia chief wanted to hear how she'd sound on a professionally produced alb.u.m.

No such orchestrations, however, had been necessary to convince Laurents of Barbra's talent. On that first day of rehearsals, the director felt nothing but optimism-toward Barbra, the rest of his cast, and the entire show. Their budget might be small, but Laurents believed a show needed imagination more than it needed money. "A limited amount of the latter," the director said, forced "an almost unlimited supply of the former."

And while he knew the book needed work, Laurents was pleased with its "tough, cynical att.i.tude toward society"-precisely the reason he'd accepted the a.s.signment in the first place. Wholesale, he felt, was something new and radically different for Broadway, something that was infused with "a sarcastic energy, a drive, a reality almost exotic for musicals." It was the story of Harry Bogen, a pushy, ambitious, unethical garment-trade worker in Depression-era New York. For Bogen of the Bronx-much like a certain young lady from Brooklyn-it needed to be right to the top or nowhere at all. But unlike Barbra, there was nothing disarming, vulnerable, or redeeming about Bogen's ambition. He embezzles, betrays his friends, and dumps the girl who loves him to take up with a floozy from the Club Rio Rhumba. By the time of the final curtain, he's lost his friends and his job and is facing bankruptcy. Not exactly Curly and Laurey heading off on their honeymoon in that s.h.i.+ny little surrey with the fringe on top.

But Laurents had never been interested in stories that simply upheld the status quo. He'd subverted norms in Rope, upended expectations in Home of the Brave, and challenged the way audiences saw themselves in West Side Story. With Wholesale, there was similar potential, Laurents believed, providing he could overcome the flaws of the script. To do this, he was going to need the help of his actors, who would have to find ways to ground their performances in an "emotional reality"-never easy to do in the surreal world of musicals-but made even more difficult by Weidman's substandard book.

Still, he was confident his actors were up to the task. Laurents had chosen them well, often fighting Merrick and the moneymen for the person he felt was best. Barbra hadn't been his only battle. Laurents had also gone against Merrick's wishes in the casting of Elliott Gould, arguing the young, rangy actor looked more the part than Laurence Harvey, Merrick's original idea, or Steve Lawrence, who'd been championed by "those who threw the best theater parties." The director insisted that "the only chance" the show had "to succeed completely was for it to succeed artistically."

As he looked around at his cast that first day, Laurents felt Wholesale was on track to do just that. He had in his company some "exceptional singers and dancers," and every one of them, including the neophyte who was playing Miss Marmelstein, could act. With these actors, Laurents believed, "the prosaic flatness of [the script] could be given theatrical life." He could "trust his players to make his inventions work."

From the very first moment, it was clear that Laurents was in charge, that he would oversee everything. The director knew not only how they should say their lines, but where they needed to be standing when they said them, and what they should be wearing, and how the light should be hitting their faces. Barbra, whose character was only in a handful of scenes, had plenty of opportunity to sit back and observe the director at work. She understood, right from the first day of rehearsals, that they could either be good or they could be great. Without a strong director, the show might still be a hit. But Laurents wanted more than box-office success. He wanted excellence. That was why he took such authority over every last detail of the show. It was a lesson that Barbra absorbed well.

Already she shared some of Laurents's proprietary att.i.tude. A few days earlier, she'd run into May Muth, Wholesale's stage manager, at the Bra.s.serie. "I hear you're gonna be with my show," she'd said to the Broadway veteran, whose credits dated back to 1929. And when, after the read-through was finished, she met her understudy, a young redhead named Louise La.s.ser, the girlfriend of rising nightclub comic Woody Allen, Barbra felt even more possessive of Miss Marmelstein. Barbra told one friend she would never give La.s.ser the chance to play the part "even if she was as sick as a dog."

Barbra was, at that moment, the very picture of a theater gypsy. Some nights she stayed at Don Softness's office, other nights at Peter Daniels's studio ("very spooky," Barbra called the big dark s.p.a.ce). There were at least four other crash pads, some of which were in "very bad neighborhoods," as she told Mike Wallace on the air. Diana was once again making regular grocery visits: Softness's brother, John, often found "all this great kosher food" in his office refrigerator, like applesauce and Doxsee clam chowder.

For the next several weeks, however, most of Barbra's time would be spent at the Fifty-fourth Street Theatre. Elliott Gould, pa.s.sing out celebratory cigars after their first rehearsal was over, noticed her standing off to the side and thought she seemed like "a loner." With apparently some special earnestness, he approached her with a cigar. At his solicitude, Barbra couldn't help but smile. Elliott handed her the cigar, his big, dopey grin stretching across his long face. Barbra thought he seemed "like a little kid." Although she didn't inhale when he bent down and lit the cigar for her, she was enchanted by his gesture just the same.

2.

That night, Lorraine Gordon turned on the television to watch PM East. The show had been taped a week or so earlier. A friend of Mike Wallace's, Gordon had inveigled her way on the program despite the host's rather chauvinistic disregard for Women Strike for Peace. She brought along Dagmar Wilson, the founder of the group. Barbra was also scheduled to be on the show, so Gordon figured she'd have a good chorus of voices espousing the antinuclear position.

It didn't quite turn out that way. Though the sparring between Barbra and Mike Wallace was entertaining to audiences, the two were growing to dislike each other more and more. The show started out well, however, with Wallace lauding Barbra's recent accomplishments. "You know it's exciting when something starts to happen in front of you," he read from the prepared script. He pointed out that in the few months since Barbra's debut on the show, she'd begun "to get into all kinds of interesting jobs." While he couldn't yet reveal anything about I Can Get It for You Wholesale, as Merrick hadn't officially announced the cast, Wallace did mention the Blue Angel and the fact that Barbra's run there had been extended. "So it's beginning to happen," the host said, looking over at Barbra.

"It's crazy," she replied.

"And she owes it all to Zen Buddhism," the host said with a laugh.

Barbra had known ahead of time that they would talk about Zen. With the show's producers, she'd gone over how she'd describe her meditation. She would explain how it had helped her and, as always, was willing to make her explanation amusing and eccentric. Still, Wallace's condescending tone irked her.

"Do you have to ask me like that?" she responded. "You think you're gonna ask me about Zen Buddhism and you think I'm going to tell you that I'm enlightened and all about Zen Buddhism, but that's all foolishness."

"But you wanted to talk about it," Wallace said. "So go ahead and talk."

Barbra remained silent. Wallace told her she was being impolite.

"Let me tell you something," Barbra finally said, leveling her gaze at the host. "I used to like you."

Nervous laughter in the studio.

"This is the truth," Barbra continued. "I really like what he does. A lot of people don't."

More nervous laughter.

"It's the truth," Wallace admitted.

"I like the fact that you are provoking," Barbra said. "But don't provoke me."

Of course, that only made Wallace want to provoke her more. Soon he was making a joke about the keys on Barbra's keychain. "So you sort of sleep all over town?" he asked. Barbra insisted he make a distinction between "sleeping around" and "sleeping around town." It got a good laugh, but the hostility was now palpable.

So it was perhaps not surprising that by the time Lorraine Gordon and Dagmar Wilson came out to discuss nuclear testing and the folly of building fallout shelters, Barbra seemed exhausted. After her comrades in the peace movement delivered impa.s.sioned calls for disarmament, Barbra was next in line for Wallace's questioning. "You're involved in this, too?" he asked, seeming to imply: Zen Buddhism, thrift shops, long fingernails, a crusade against smoked foods-and now the peace movement?

"Oh, yeah," Barbra said, as Gordon remembered it. "We're like a bunch of lemmings. We all follow each other and jump off the cliff."

She gave Wallace the laugh he wanted instead of taking the opportunity to endorse the politics so fervently expressed by Gordon and Wilson. Gordon was livid at what seemed like a betrayal. She gave Barbra a kick under the table.

Yet few could stay angry with Barbra for long when she started to sing. On that show, she finally had a chance to show off how she'd mastered "Moon River." Once again, the nineteen-year-old girl became ageless. "Moon River, wider than a mile," Barbra sang. When she was finished, Mike Wallace looked into the camera and said, "It's always a pleasure to listen to that girl sing." No matter how much the kid might get under his skin at other times, the admiration in Wallace's voice was real.

3.

The harmony and good feeling of the first day of rehearsal had quickly evaporated at the Fifty-fourth Street Theatre.

"No, that is not the way to do it!" Laurents shouted at Barbra. "Too much, too much!"

She paid him no mind and kept on singing. She was rehearsing her solo number, "Miss Marmelstein," a song that had been written for the show, then taken out, then put back in so Barbra would have more to do. As written, Miss Marmelstein was "just another piece of furniture," Weidman admitted, but Barbra's stage presence, so big, so overpowering, made that unworkable. Therefore, early in the second act, a battalion of garment execs would march across the stage, ordering Miss M to perform various tasks for them. "At the end of her tether"-or so the stage directions described-the harried, homely secretary would look out at the audience and launch into her eponymous number.

"Why is it always Miss Marmelstein?" Barbra wailed as Laurents watched from the sidelines. She lamented how n.o.body ever called her "baby doll, or honey dear, or sweetie pie," like they did other girls. Even her first name would be "preferable," she griped, "though it's terrible, it might be bettah, it's Yetta." The kvetching went on like this, as offstage voices kept up a running chorus of "Miss Marmelstein!" The number was intended to give the script a lift at a particular moment when it could use one. The audience needed a chance to laugh, Laurents realized, as Harry Bogen's odious schemes began to unravel.

The problem was that Barbra had no sense of restraint. She was flailing around the stage, arms flying, eyes bugging out. She used her long fingernails to great effect as she flung her hands around-but it was the mannerism of a diva, Laurents grumbled, not a secretary. "Overkill," Laurents called Barbra's interpretation of the part. "Too many twitches and collapses, giggles and gasps, too many take-ums." He didn't want to lose her uniqueness-he thought her characterization of Miss Marmelstein was "very funny, a bizarre collection of idiosyncrasies which came from instinct and were probably rehea.r.s.ed at home"-but he did want to "edit, to cut out the extraneous contortions." Her performance, he realized, was coming "from the fingernails, not from inside."