Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 4

Barre countered that singing was really just another form of acting. An Edith Piaf record was playing on the stereo, and Barre told Barbara to listen carefully to the way Piaf told a story with her songs. This particular song was about a depressed man who turned on the gas before he got into bed. From the record player, Piaf hissed like an open gas jet: "You were so sure, so sure, sooo ssssssure ..." Barbara leaned forward, "sitting stone still," Barre observed, listening. When the record was done, she said it was "really something."

They sat there on the couch, quiet for a moment, still shoulder to shoulder. Every time they'd been in each other's company, the buzz between them had grown stronger, though neither of them had spoken of it or made a move. Barbara was unlike any girl Barre had ever known. Not that there had been all that many-in fact, he'd only slept with two girls in his life. But one of them, about a year ago, on a night of a power outage, had gotten pregnant. Somewhere out there Barre had a three-month-old son he'd never seen. So he was understandably cautious about moving too fast. He didn't want a repeat of what had happened on the night of the blackout.

But, if he was honest with himself-which, these days, he was struggling more and more to be-he knew that his careful approach with Barbara was even more complicated than that. The girls he'd been with-slept with or simply dated-had all been diversions from the real feelings he'd always done his best to hide. The club he told Barbara about, the Lion, was a gay club, and Barre didn't patronize it just for the talent contests. He went because he felt he belonged there. Not that there had been all that many men in his life either. But Barre was a percipient young man. He was twenty-two. He'd had these feelings since adolescence. He knew they weren't going away.

But he might be able to contain them. And Barbara excited him like no girl had ever done. He found her "adorable, sweet, funny, tender." She had beautiful eyes and a beautiful body, though her skin troubled him a bit because the smell of Clearasil repelled him when he got too close. But she was neat and clean, almost compulsively so-surprising for a girl who practically lived out of a shopping bag. If an article of clothing came back from the dry cleaners not cleaned to her specifications, Barbara would be irate. She made sure she always looked put together, from her hat down to her shoes, even if, to some, her wardrobe seemed eccentric. But Barbara had her own particular style, a trait Barre very much admired.

As he'd learned these past few weeks, she was a girl of very definite likes and dislikes. She loved gardenias, she told him. They had a smell that no perfumer could ever replicate, which made her like them even more. She loved c.o.kes, and ice-cream cones, and French fries that tasted of bacon. She also adored chantilly lace, avocados, gingerbread, and lavender roses, as well as "the feel of fur blankets and the smell of Italian cooking." But while she loved "the color of wine," she didn't care for "the taste of it," she said, and among her greatest dislikes were eggs, arriving early to appointments, crowded streets, dirty ashtrays, and "opportunistic people." That last one would make Barre laugh when he heard it because he felt she-he-all of them-were just waiting to pounce on the very first opportunity that came their way.

He was impressed by how much Barbara knew about literature. She could speak at length about Chekhov and Shakespeare and Euripides, thanks to her time with the Cormans and the Millers. But about music she was largely ignorant, except for some cla.s.sical works and pop singer Joni James. She knew nothing of the great vocalists-Piaf, Holiday, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee. Still, she'd learned quickly after Barre started playing their records. Barbara admired Piaf, but it was Holiday she loved, sinking down into the cus.h.i.+ons of Barre's couch, closing her eyes as she soaked up Billie's blues. She had a similar response in museums, Barre noticed. Barbara might know little about art, but she was drawn instinctively to the very best as they walked past-Monets at the Met, Pica.s.sos at MoMA.

But for all her flair, Barbara could be terribly shy, too, especially in gatherings of Barre's UCLA friends. When these slightly older college graduates came by, Barbara seemed to shut down, to become physically smaller than she was. Carole Gister, one of Barre's closest friends, had perceived the slender girl sitting off to the side as "a perfectly nice quiet child who'd seemed to have run away from home with a mattress on her head." Barbara would explain that her shyness was "unconventional." She might be strong and a.s.sertive in most areas of her life, but upon first meeting people, she didn't always "like them straight away." She was "a little more wary," she said. Barre's friends would have agreed with her a.s.sessment.

Once, trying to engage Barbara, some of those friends had begun asking about her acting ambitions. Someone came up with the idea that she could work as a hand model, and everyone enthusiastically agreed since Barbara had "these fabulous hands with long, delicate fingers," Gister observed. But Barbara, not surprisingly, wasn't interested. She would have had to cut her nails, for one thing.

Sitting next to her on the couch now, Barre suddenly reached over and kissed her. At least that would be how he remembered that day, insisting that, in addition to kissing her, he played records for her all afternoon: Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," Ruth Etting's "Ten Cents a Dance," Lee Wiley's "Baby's Awake Now," and comedy vocals from Bea Lillie and Mae Barnes. Whether every single one of those records spun on his turntable that day or not, they certainly did so in the days that followed. There was also some Helen Morgan, Ethel Waters, Libby Holman, and Marion Harris. And also more kisses. Eventually Barre took a cloth and tenderly wiped the Clearasil from Barbara's face.

But one thing was certain about that day Barbara recorded her tape for Eddie Blum in Barre's apartment. When she left, she still had not asked anything about Barre's part in Henry V. He wasn't offended. He understood how "desperate she was to make it," how "hungry she was for attention and success." Barbara's ambition, Barre felt, "had become a kind of living, breathing ache inside her that blotted out everything else."

4.

Cis and Harvey Corman were eating dinner when Barbara wandered in. They weren't expecting her. They looked up with some surprise as she approached the table.

"Ya know," she said. "I'm going to enter a contest for singing."

"Why would you do that?" Cis asked. "You don't know how to sing."

"Yeah, I do."

This they didn't know. "Well, sing for us," Cis said.

"I'm too embarra.s.sed," Barbara replied.

They encouraged her, saying that she had no reason to be embarra.s.sed around them. So Barbara decided she'd sit on the table and face the wall. Setting down their forks, Cis and Harvey gave her their full attention. Barbara began to sing.

"When a bee lies sleepin' in the palm of your hand ..."

It was the Harold Arlen song "A Sleepin' Bee," originated by Diahann Carroll in the musical House of Flowers. Truman Capote had contributed to the lyrics, and June Christy had covered it a couple of years earlier. Barre had taught it to Barbara over several painstaking days in his apartment. The Cormans listened raptly.

Barbara finished with "A sleepin' bee done told me I will walk with my feet off the ground when my one true love I has found."

Slowly she turned around, anxious to see how her friends had responded. Cis and Harvey were "drenched in tears," as Cis would admit. None of them would ever forget the moment.

5.

The King Arthur Room was a small, intimate s.p.a.ce tucked within the s.p.a.cious if low-ceilinged Roundtable on East Fiftieth Street. Formerly the Versailles, the venue was the New York home of the Dukes of Dixieland, and it was here that Barre brought Barbara on this special night. With his father's Diners Club card, he'd splurged on a dinner of steak and mashed potatoes. Yet no matter how tasty the London broil, it was for what came after dinner that Barre had brought Barbara to the Roundtable.

That tonight was a celebration at all was a relief. Barbara had won the contest at the Lion! Barre had been worried that the two numbers she'd felt comfortable enough singing-"A Sleepin' Bee" and "When Sunny Gets Blue"-were both ballads, and he knew the crowd at the Lion tended to go for more up-tempo show tunes. But there'd been no time to practice anything new, so they'd gone with what they had. Terry had dressed Barbara in a feathered boudoir jacket and layered skirt, all in shades of lavender-appropriate, given the venue. But then, on the way to the club, she'd gotten the jitters, and Barre had had to talk her through them by reminding her that a good actress could play any part, even a nightclub singer.

The place had been packed. The talent shows, held Tuesdays at eleven pm, were very popular. Given that Barbara's compet.i.tors that night were a couple of typical comics, Barre figured she had the thing aced-until he'd looked up to see a striking young woman stride into the club, all legs and self-confidence. She was Dawn Hampton, a jazz singer and dancer who was tight with Burke McHugh, the club's manager. She was also part of a family of musicians well-known in the world of jazz, and she had performed at the Apollo Theater and Carnegie Hall. McHugh thought Hampton "sang like there was no tomorrow." With her expressive eyes, spirited laugh, and gorgeous legs, Dawn Hampton was everything Barbara was not: experienced, polished, and lovely. Plus she had connections. Barre's heart had sunk.

Hampton had indeed been spectacular when she got up on stage, bringing down the house with her hot jazz. But Barre had noticed a very different alchemy when Barbara took the microphone. Maybe the gay men in attendance had been rooting for the homely girl over the pretty one, the underdog over the luminary. Whatever their motivation, the audience had responded to her intimately. Their usual raucous bar behavior had been stilled. There'd been something about the simplicity of it all, this small girl in purple feathers, standing beside a piano, singing an uncomplicated song about a sleeping bee. Dawn Hampton was a polished pro. Barbara was a tenderfoot, though she made it all seem so terribly easy. The lyrics that came from her lips were "liquid and languorous," Barre thought, and even when she'd decided to improvise a bit, taking the mike and walking among the tables-plunging herself into darkness when the spotlight couldn't find her-she hadn't lost the audience. She'd kept right on singing. Even tripping over a patron's chair on her way back to the stage hadn't stopped her from ending with the big finish she'd practiced in Barre's apartment. The room had exploded into cheers for her, and she won the contest.

Cheers meant something for a girl like Barbara. Dawn Hampton had heard them many times before-at Carnegie Hall, no less. The comics and pianists at the Lion had also basked regularly in the hoots and whistles of the crowd. But for Barbara, this was something very new. She'd taken her bows for Picnic and Driftwood and The Insect Comedy-but she'd been part of ensembles then, and the audiences had been cheering for everyone, not just her. That night at the Lion, however, the cheers had been solely for her, and they went on and on. Suddenly the invisible girl from Brooklyn was being seen by everyone in the room. What's more, they liked what they saw.

The Lion expected her to appear again, on Sat.u.r.day night, and sing on a bill with three other acts. Barbara was leery about being roped into a gig that might keep her from auditioning for roles in the theater. She told friends that she only agreed to the Lion's request because they promised dinner-a line that quickly became a running joke among Barre's friends, that Barbara could be had for a baked potato. But Barre had convinced her that a gig at the Lion would be great exposure for her, as both a singer and an actress. And he pointed out that they had nearly a week this time to prepare a really strong repertoire.

That was why they'd come to the Roundtable. In between rehearsals for Henry V in Central Park, Barre had been playing his records nearly nonstop for Barbara, seeing if anything from Ethel Waters or Ruth Etting might tickle her fancy. He instructed her to listen to the way they all told stories with their songs. As an actress, she could do that, too. "A Sleepin' Bee" could be a three-act play, Barre suggested, told first by a young girl, then by a grown woman, then finally by an old lady looking back. Barbara responded well to the technique. But she insisted she couldn't "learn from a record," and Barre agreed. So he'd brought her here to the Roundtable so she could watch and listen to someone on whom she might model her act.

By this point, Mabel Mercer was an old crust of a chanteuse, sitting like a dowager queen on a throne before her audience, her voice croaky and tattered from decades of singing in smoky rooms like this one. Barbara watched closely as Mercer came out onto the stage wearing a brocade gown. A soft pink light picked her out in the dark mahogany room. At sixty, she looked much older. Her cinnamon skin had turned to leather. With perfect posture Mercer sat down in her chair, barely moving at all as she started to sing. The most she did was occasionally lift a shaky hand toward the audience.

Mercer began her first song, and Barbara wasn't impressed. "She can't sing," she whispered to Barre.

Barre understood that Mercer was "an acquired taste, like certain ripe cheeses." So he tried explaining to Barbara that the old pro was a "song stylist" and that she should concentrate on her phrasing, not her voice.

Barbara complied. She listened to Mercer rasp her way through a couple of ballads, a storyteller as much as a singer. "I can do this," she whispered to Barre at last. It was the same conviction that made her sure that she could play Liesl or Hamlet or Juliet-the belief that she could do anything if just given the chance.

Mercer ended with Bart Howard's "Would You Believe It?" Looking out over the audience with half-lidded eyes, she suddenly snapped her fingers, just once, as she was finis.h.i.+ng the song. Barre had never seen Mabel Mercer snap her fingers before, and he was overjoyed, leading the applause with enthusiasm.

Barbara was less enthusiastic. But Barre had seen how she'd observed the old pro, taking note of the way Mercer had turned her head, the way she'd sung her songs with beginnings, middles, and ends. It was exactly the way Barre had been coaching Barbara to do. He hoped she'd picked up enough bits and pieces to make into her own.

Barbara, however, when she was asked, insisted that watching other performers taught her absolutely nothing-except "what not to do."

6.

The first time they'd tried to make love Barre had stopped midway through because he didn't have protection. He'd made that mistake before, and he told Barbara they should plan their first time carefully. They should pick a night, he said, and he'd buy some rubbers, and she'd bring some baby oil. Barbara complained that this didn't feel very spontaneous, but she went out and bought the baby oil.

Now, watching Barre lather his face in the bathroom mirror, wrapped only in a towel, she told him she'd never seen a man shave before. Sheldon had been out of the house by the time she was paying attention, and she'd certainly never looked at Lou Kind for any longer than she absolutely had to. That Barre's beard was so heavy intrigued her. Barbara found it "very masculine," she said, so much so that she couldn't resist lifting a corner of Barre's towel and purring like Mae West, "Whaddya got under there, big boy?"

Barre had told her that he was bis.e.xual. While other girls might have been taken aback by such an admission from a boyfriend, Barbara had seemed to view it as a challenge. In the last few weeks she'd become increasingly s.e.xually aggressive, quite a step for a girl whose mother had done her best to instill in her a fear of s.e.x. "You don't screw anybody until you get married," Barbara remembered her mother saying, or words to that effect. And Barbara was hearing such admonitions from her mother more frequently these days. Her lack of funds had forced her into the once-unimaginable scenario of retreating back to Brooklyn several nights a week.

Making love to Barre was the logical next step, and a little bis.e.xuality shouldn't prove to be an obstacle. They were always flirting, throwing around Mae West double entendres that they had picked up from late-night movie viewings. And so Barbara kissed the back of Barre's neck and played with the towel around his waist. "What's the matter with your animal?" she cooed, using their favorite West line. But Barre once again begged off, arguing he'd be late for rehearsals. Barbara wanted to know when they'd finally make love. He promised her soon.