Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (26 page)

As Bob tiptoed into his kitchen, the rain was coming down outside in heavy sheets, splashing 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 title, made Roth the ostensible star of the show.

Everyone in the cast had impressive résumés. 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 relationship 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,
Fanny,
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 succès 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 assemblage of principals 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.

The
Variety
review still bugged her. But Barbra found a way to defuse it.

On the November 27
PM East,
she sat alongside fellow guest Mickey Rooney, the legendary child star of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer now grown into a puckish character actor. “I can’t get in the movies,” she lamented.

“Why not?” Rooney asked.

“My nose.”

Rather than shrink from the insult or pretend it had never happened, Barbra had decided to put it right out there on national television, ensuring that her nose would become even more discussed. The only way to make the criticism go away, she seemed to believe, was to confront it head on, bring it up to bring it down.

“What’s wrong with your nose?” Rooney asked.

“It’s different.”

“It’s a lovely nose.”

Barbra giggled. That was what she was hoping he’d say. And the gallant Rooney kept the compliments coming.

“It’s an adorable nose,” he insisted.

“Most people don’t like it,” Barbra said. “It’s a different commercial market.”

“That’s all in your mind,” Rooney told her.

Barbra looked over at him. “How did you ever work—?” She indicated Rooney’s own nose, a little bulbous and splotchy from years of heavy drinking.

To his credit, Rooney didn’t take offense and instead seemed to agree with her. “Look at mine!” he said. “Mine is . . . is . . . is . . .”

“It fits,” Barbra said. “W. C. Fields.” And then she laughed.

It was a strange little interaction. Rooney had complimented her, but in response, Barbra had insulted him. No doubt she didn’t mean to be cruel, even if it had come across that way. She appeared to just want to point out that people with oversized noses could be successful.

Of course, she’d also been warned by Don Softness that Rooney was a notorious scenery chewer, so she was making sure to take control. She wasn’t going to let anyone, movie legend or not, hog her spotlight.

Even when Rooney tried to change the subject away from
schnozzolas
, asking his costar if she’d dedicate a song to him, Barbra kept the imperious attitude going. “No,” she replied, and laughed again. Her feistiness may actually have been a prelude to the duet she then sang with Rooney, “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” a humorous riff on lovers’ quarrels. After all, Barbra often got into character for a song. “The sleepless nights, the daily fights,” she and Rooney harmonized, “the quick toboggan when you reach the heights, I miss the kisses and I miss the bites, I wish I were in love again!”

Whatever Barbra’s motivation, the duet was successful, Softness thought. Rooney had sung the number with Judy Garland in the 1948 film
Words and Music,
and Barbra filled Garland’s shoes surprisingly well, bringing exactly the right kind of winking combativeness to her rendition. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing and where she was going. She seemed on top of the world.

Not long afterward, Don Softness took Barbra out to dinner. The publicist knew that his client “didn’t sing unless she was paid
for it,” so he fully expected her to decline when Mimi, the gregarious, florid proprietor of their favorite Italian eatery on East Fifty-third Street, asked if she’d step up to the piano and give them a number. But to Softness’s great surprise, Barbra agreed, accepting the scattering of applause from their fellow diners. From her bag she produced some sheet music and handed it over to the pianist. That was when Softness understood why Barbra had said yes. The song she’d sing for them was “Moon River,” which she was scheduled to perform on an upcoming
PM East.
This impromptu rendition at Mimi’s would give her a chance to practice.

To Softness’s great delight, Barbra was proving to be a natural television performer—galvanized, she said, by the knowledge that thousands of people were viewing her. “You can’t see them,”
she said, “but you know they’re there and watching you.” Such exposure inspired and emboldened her. And in the process Softness witnessed one of the most interesting public personas he’d ever seen take shape.

On the December 8 show, for example, appearing alongside Paul Dooley, singer Lillian Briggs, pianist Lee Evans, and a rising young comedian named Woody Allen, Barbra had gone off on a riff about smoked foods. There was no stopping her—not that anyone wanted to. Smoked foods caused cancer, Barbra insisted, in a voice that got more nasal every time she appeared on the show. People in Iceland got cancer at much higher rates than anyone else, she pontificated, because all they ate in Iceland were smoked foods. “Streisand’s a little sick, folks,” Mike Wallace deadpanned. Barbra’s absurd claims needed no facts to support them, because it wasn’t
what
she said, but
how
she said it. Even the phrase “smoked foods” was funny the way it rolled off her tongue.

Softness had clued into her act very quickly. Barbra was deliberately building an eccentric reputation because she knew it got her attention, and she did so “carefully and assiduously,” he observed. She understood that she had to be “somewhat—but not too—outrageous.” Softness thought Barbra walked that line very well because the
PM East
producers kept rebooking her for more appearances. But the publicist also knew that they could capitalize on the gimmick even further. Together they could build her into a real character, stringing together the many little quirks that already defined her.

Over the last few weeks, given all the time they spent together on publicity, they’d grown quite close. When Barbra was evicted from her apartment on Eighteenth Street—the tenant of record had returned and, appalled at how she’d redecorated the place, insisted that she leave immediately—it had been Softness to whom she’d turned for help. Loading up his car with all of Barbra’s shoes and boas and cloche hats, the publicist told her he’d take her to her mother’s in Brooklyn. “Anywhere but there,” Barbra said. So Softness allowed her to live in his office, just down the block from Mimi’s. Barbra was grateful, but also depressed to find herself a nomad again. Quite the predicament for a young woman who, in a matter of weeks, would begin rehearsals for a Broadway show—now retitled
I Can Get It for You Wholesale,
the name of the original novel.