Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 34

Of course, at the moment, she had no one to come home to. She remained despondent without Elliott. But despondent did not mean desperate. What Hamel's recording had doc.u.mented for posterity was that, by the end of her run at the hungry i, Barbra had found herself again. Thanks to the solicitude of Judy Davis, the guardians.h.i.+p of Enrico Banducci, and the nightly outpouring of affection from San Franciscans, Barbra would leave that city on a wave of acclaim. She might not have a play, or a best-selling alb.u.m, but the young woman on Hamel's tape recording believed in herself again, and that was enough for now.

As Barbra and Chaplin pose for their Playbill photo, their body language provides evidence that their affair, once pa.s.sionate, was over. Bettmann / CORBIS

A rare glimpse of the Funny Girl company before their Boston preview, December 1963. Danny Meehan, Allyn Ann McLerie, Sydney Chaplin, and Barbra listen to director Garson Kanin. Within the month, Meehan's part would be marginalized and McLerie's would be cut entirely. Kanin would be fired after the show premiered in Boston. Photofest

Barbra with the men who wrote the songs that would provide the soundtrack to her legend: Jule Styne (at piano) and Bob Merrill. Styne was infatuated with her; Merrill was more wary. Bettmann / CORBIS

The famous pregnant bride scene from Funny Girl. Barbra had proven that she was as much a "kook" as f.a.n.n.y Brice ever was; by now, the two had been conflated into one image. Photofest

Fran Stark-Ray's wife and f.a.n.n.y Brice's daughter-had been less enthusiastic about Barbra's casting, but by the time of the premiere, she was all smiles. Here she is presenting the star to her brother, William Brice. mptvimages.com

With their marriage back on track (for the moment), Elliott kisses Barbra at the opening night party after the Funny Girl premiere. He knew how uncomfortable she was and wanted to protect her. Bettmann / CORBIS

The man who'd guided Barbra's rise to the top, her manager, Marty Erlichman, continued to keep a close eye on his charge even as she tries to escape the theater in disguise. Barbra had come to fear the crush of fans every night outside the stage door. Collection of Matt Howe

For all her acclaim, Barbra still found it difficult to win praise from her mother, Diana Kind, who joined her backstage (top) with an uncle and aunt, and who insisted Barbra and Elliott be present for sister Rozzie's sweet-sixteen birthday party. The stress of performing every night was getting to Barbra, and if the photo (bottom) is any evidence, she had started smoking again. Collection of Stuart Lippner

In just five years, a redefinition of beauty, talent, and success. 1978 Bob Willoughby / mptvimages.com

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Spring 1963

1.

After almost a year, Barbra and Bob were enjoying a happy reunion. This afternoon they were hunched down in a movie theater, popping handfuls of Raisinets, watching Dolores Hart jet around the world as a stewardess in Come Fly with Me. As Frankie Avalon crooned the t.i.tle tune, panoramic shots of London, Paris, and the Mediterranean filled the screen, and Barbra let out a sigh. "Wouldn't it be great to go there someday?" she mused.

"But, Barbra," Bob said, "we're already here."

That was the odd thing. They were in Oxford, England, watching the film, not New York. A couple of weeks earlier, Bob, whose extended Paris vacation had turned into a residency when he started contributing to magazines there, had gotten a wire from Barbra. She was flying to London to see Elliott. But since Elliott had rehearsals during the day, could Bob pop over from Paris to keep her company? Barbra's old pal had happily obliged, but now that he was there, he could barely get her out of her hotel room. Barbra preferred staying put, "steaming her clothes, folding and organizing them, then folding and organizing them again," Bob observed. The movie theater was the farthest she'd strayed so far.

But Barbra hadn't come to England for sightseeing. She'd come with one purpose and one purpose only: to reconnect with Elliott. The separation had been weighing heavily on her. If she hadn't come now, she wouldn't have had another chance to see him until maybe next fall, since she was booked solid through the summer. At the moment, she had a bit of a break before her next obligation, a two-week engagement at the New York nightclub Basin Street East that started on May 13. And besides, hadn't she and Elliott made a vow to always be together on their birthdays? So, very soon after leaving San Francisco, Barbra, her new pa.s.sport in hand, had boarded a flight for her first transcontinental trip. On April 24, she had turned twenty-one in England, Elliott at her side. Which was the way it was supposed to be.

Not that it had been all honey pie and happiness between them. Barbra found that Elliott had been gambling quite a bit, and he seemed to want to believe that she'd been cheating on him in New York or San Francisco. He was also consumed with rehearsals most of the time, which were being held at a small theater in the town of Oxford. The cast was lodged at a local hotel, where Barbra had settled in as well. As much as Oxford might be, in the words of the poet Matthew Arnold, the "sweet city with her dreaming spires," and home to a magnificent medieval university, it was hardly swinging London. Barbra quickly grew bored with Elliott gone all day and often into the evenings. She'd been thrilled when Bob had showed up-though she still wouldn't risk venturing too far afield with him just in case Elliott got out of rehearsals early.

Wandering the streets of Oxford with Bob, daffodils growing everywhere, Barbra wore a heavy fur coat, bell-bottomed jeans, and tennis shoes. In the United States, thanks to all her TV appearances, she was beginning to be recognized as she strolled through New York or other cities. But here she was still anonymous. She and Bob often ate at a Chinese restaurant near the hotel, where Barbra enjoyed paying with the colorful British money. In her head, however, she was always converting pounds into dollars, keeping track of how much she was spending on this trip.

Despite her frugality, money was no longer really an issue for her. Not only were there the increased revenues from nightclubs, but at last report, Barbra's alb.u.m was finally on the move. On April 18, the disk had made it on to Billboard's chart of the Top 150 Alb.u.ms (at number 118). This reflected sales from the week before, and Barbra could thank San Francisco record buyers for much of her surge, as well as her March 24 appearance on Ed Sullivan, on which she'd sung "Cry Me a River." The following week the alb.u.m had raced up the chart to number 83 and won Billboard's coveted red star that indicated an alb.u.m markedly on the rise. By the following week, April 27, The Barbra Streisand Alb.u.m had reached number 41. The momentum was clear.

Barbra's impressive rise on the charts was also fueled by a sudden explosion of reviews, which Solters had finally managed to secure a month and a half after the alb.u.m's release. No doubt he'd been working the phones and calling in as many favors as he could. Record critic d.i.c.k Van Patten admitted that he'd overlooked the alb.u.m the previous month, rectifying the situation by calling Barbra "a potentially great new stylist [who] sounds like a veteran already." d.i.c.k Kleiner, who'd already been an advocate for Barbra, now listed her ahead of Judy Garland in his syndicated roundup of the best new alb.u.ms for the Newspaper Enterprise a.s.sociation, saying that with this disk, Barbra "shows herself to be one of the greatest." Walter Winch.e.l.l also weighed in, raving about the alb.u.m and especially the way Barbra put "the silk in 'Happy Days Are Here Again.'" The columnist added that she reminded him of "Judy, Lena, and Peggy."

After they left the movie theater, or on a night very similar, Barbra brought Bob to dinner with Elliott and Elspeth March, who was playing Madam Dilly, the music teacher, in On the Town. March, once married to the movie actor Stewart Granger, had made a number of films in the past year-Playboy of the Western World and Dr. Crippen, among others-and was about to go into production on The Three Lives of Thomasina, in which she would provide the voice of the cat. Barbra peppered the older actress with questions about moviemaking. She seemed to like how March had been able to play so many different characters in the course of a year.

To the distinguished British actress, Barbra must have seemed like a wide-eyed young novice. Not to March was Barbra anything noteworthy. She didn't know about the nightclub appearances, or the kooky guest spots with Carson and Sullivan, or the alb.u.m that was climbing the charts. Elliott may have tried telling his castmates about Barbra, but since they were so far away from it all, none of it would have really sunk in. Here, in Oxford, Barbra was just the girlfriend of the star of the show. For the moment, the situation between her and Elliott had reverted to what it had been back in the very beginning. He was the star; she was his girlfriend. But they both must have known, deep down, that the moment was fleeting. Elliott, raising his pint of ale in a toast to the success of On the Town, made sure to enjoy it while he could.

2.

That spring, Ray Stark was a busy man. He'd had to fly to Dublin, where problems had arisen on the set of Seven Arts's remake of Of Human Bondage. Kim Novak was having trouble with the part of the c.o.c.kney waitress, Mildred, and the situation wasn't helped when kidnap threats were made against her and costar Laurence Harvey. After dealing with all of that, Stark had needed to swoop down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to scout locations for Seven Arts's upcoming production of The Night of the Iguana. Then it was back across the Atlantic to London, where he'd courted Elizabeth Taylor as a possible replacement for Novak in Bondage.

Now Stark was back in California, but his social calendar for May was already very full. All of this left precious little opportunity for him to get anything done on Funny Girl-which is what they were now calling the musical about his mother-in-law-but for a workaholic such as Stark, there was always time to be found. He was still burned up over Jerry Robbins and the monkey wrench he'd thrown into the project, but he was determined to get things moving again. And he'd found the ideal man to make that happen: Bob Fosse, the young, celebrated ch.o.r.eographer of The Pajama Game and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying who'd recently started directing as well (Redhead and Little Me). Sam Zolotow in the New York Times said Funny Girl was "almost definite" on Fosse's agenda.