Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (33 page)

To one reporter, Barbra carefully explained that she wasn’t yet a success because she wasn’t really famous. Just the other day, she had gone shopping at Bergdorf Goodman and couldn’t get anyone to wait on her. “If I was famous,” she said, “they would have waited on me. But I looked too young, I guess, and too—I don’t know, like I couldn’t afford to shop there.” Then she laid down the parameters for success as she saw it. “I’ll be a success when I’m famous enough to get waited on at Bergdorf Goodman.”

At long last, Barbra was no longer a teenager. On April 24, Barbra’s twentieth birthday, the producers of
PM East
presented her with a cake during the taping of the show, which was scheduled to air later that night. Diana and eleven-year-old Rosalind had come in from Brooklyn for a cute, on-air birthday celebration. Even Mike Wallace joined in as the cast and crew sang “Happy Birthday” to Barbra.

But there was more important business to attend to on this particular show, and Don Softness kept his fingers crossed that it would all work out. Marty had asked him to come up with a “gimmick” to get Barbra noticed by the producers—David Merrick included—who were planning the Fanny Brice musical. So Softness had rung his old pal George Q. Lewis, the legendary comedy writer and workshop teacher who’d helped Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Jack Benny, and others polish their gags. Lewis had established a mostly phony organization called the National Association of Gag Writers that could be used for promotional purposes—which was just what Softness had in mind. He asked Lewis if the association would give Barbra their annual “Fanny Brice Award.”

“But we don’t have a Fanny Brice Award,” Lewis replied.

“You do now,” Softness told him.

So, on the air that night, Barbra was presented with more than a birthday cake. Out came a fancy framed certificate from the National Association of Gag Writers, signed by Lewis. Mike Wallace read from the statement prepared by Softness, telling the audience that the “annual award” was being presented to Miss Streisand because “the pathos of her comedy epitomizes the devotion to her art reminiscent of the late, great Fanny Brice.” Barbra acted suitably surprised and impressed as she accepted the certificate. Everyone involved knew it was both the first and the last annual Fanny Brice Award.

In the meantime, Softness had reached out to another colleague, Richard Falk, a fast-talking, stunt-loving publicity man who’d started out as an assistant to Claude Greneker, the press agent for the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1930s. Falk was known as “the Mayor of Forty-second Street”
for all his connections up and down the Great White Way, as well as for such PR gambits as checking a trained flea into the Waldorf-Astoria. If anyone could get Barbra noticed, Softness reasoned that it was Falk.

One of the first things Falk suggested was to ratchet up the kook business. If landing the part of Fanny Brice was the goal, kookiness was definitely the way to go, as Brice was known for her quirks and whims. Keep playing up the thrift shops and vintage clothes, Falk advised. Barbra had been making references to “Second Hand Rose,” one of Brice’s best-known songs, at least as far back as her Detroit days, so they were on the right track. Meanwhile, the new publicist began issuing regular bulletins to all the columnists, most of whom he knew personally. Within days, Leonard Lyons was reporting that showman Billy Rose, Brice’s third husband, had been “reading all the casting reports
on the musical about the late Fanny Brice,” and “of all the comediennes he’s seen, the one whose comic qualities most closely approach Miss Brice’s is Barbra Streisand of
I Can Get It for You Wholesale.
” Rose, of course, was one of Falk’s cronies. It was all part of the plan.

But the Brice show was just one of many possible targets. The best way to secure the parts Barbra wanted, Falk understood, was to get enough people interested in her and talking about her that offers would start flowing in. To that end, he arranged some appearances for her on the
Joe Franklin Show,
a morning New York television talk show on WABC, and set up some interviews for her with a handful of his reporter pals. The result was a flurry of syndicated articles that spring about “the twenty-year-old comedienne sensation.” One was by Dick Kleiner, a popular Broadway writer whose profiles and reviews were syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association, which meant he was read in hundreds of papers across the country. In Kleiner’s piece, Barbra the Kook came through loud and clear. He called her a “character,” and to illustrate that, he had her tell the story of dyeing her hair in school and wearing “strange color lipstick
and eye-shadow.”

More of the same followed. Some reporters clued in to the fact that Barbra wasn’t playing entirely straight with them, that she had a mission, and that no matter what the journalist asked, she wasn’t going to stray from the grand design that she and her publicists had laid out. “Instead of giving me
an honest answer to my questions,” Edward Robb Ellis, a reporter for the
New York World-Telegram,
recorded in his diary after meeting her, “she lied to me, toyed with me, tried to manipulate me.” Since Barbra told him nothing authentic about herself, Ellis decided to focus his entire piece on the character of Miss Marmelstein. She was as real, it seemed, as the woman he’d just interviewed.

In a major coup, Barbra’s publicity team secured a brief profile in
The New Yorker,
and more than anything else, this piece established the tone of the budding star’s subsequent coverage. The unnamed “Talk of the Town” writer, clearly playing up Barbra’s kooky reputation, chose to string everything she said closely together, as if she never paused for breath and spoke in one long stream of consciousness: “I used to baby-sit for a
Chinese couple in Brooklyn; they had a restaurant and taught me to enjoy Chinese dishes. I often go to Chinatown to eat late at night. You get wonderful white hot breads with the center filled with shrimp at the little coffee shops there. Only ten cents! I love food. I look forward to it all day. My body responds to it. Everything else seems so nebulous.”

Of course, Barbra did talk fast and furious, but this was way, way over the top. “I was bald until I was two,” Barbra rambled on. “I think I’m some sort of Martian. I exist on my will power, being Taurus. I hate the name Barbara; I dropped the second ‘a,’ and I think I’ll gradually cut the whole thing down to B. That will save exertion in handwriting. I sometimes call myself Angelina Scarangella, which won’t.” There was much more in a similar vein. At the close of the piece, Barbra said, “I like interviews—they’re still a novelty—but by the time they appear they look funny to me, because my attitude changes from week to week.” Which attitudes, she was asked. “Oh, toward smoked foods, say,” she replied—a reference to
PM East,
where the whole kook image had been born. The
New Yorker
piece was a wonderfully entertaining article; no wonder the writer ended by saying he “rushed to the phone” to file his copy.

Another profile, this one for United Press International, revealed how Barbra wore nightgowns as dresses. By turning the nightgown backward, Barbra explained, she could achieve an Empire bustline—“You know, like in
Napoleon’s time.” No doubt she really did buy that nightgown, though whether she’d really worn it “the other day,” as the piece claimed, no one was sure. Nor did anyone really care. Barbra had been told to “play up the kook” by her publicists, so she did—and not all journalists were as resistant to following her lead as Ellis. Most of them quickly learned this Streisand kid was very good copy. Marvelously creative pieces could be structured around her persona.

Richard Falk was continually surprised that Barbra understood his directions. When he spoke with her, it seemed as if she wasn’t even listening, “not there at all
. . . a little off-center.” Softness, however, knew that Barbra heard everything that was said to her. She just processed it all very quickly, he said, then “moved on to the next thing.” Barbra took to the merchandizing of her image like a duck to water.

Of course, if the product they were trying to sell wasn’t any good, no one would have bought it, and people were definitely buying Barbra. The fact that she was extravagantly talented made her publicists’ jobs a lot easier. The week before her Fanny Brice Award, Barbra had won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for her part in
Wholesale.
She’d been given the honor at a cocktail party at the Algonquin Hotel, hobnobbing with critics like Howard Taubman, Walter Kerr, and John Chapman, all of whom had sung her praises. (The rest of
Wholesale
was ignored, however; the choice for best musical was
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,
with which Barbra’s show had so often been unfavorably compared.) While Barbra’s fortune might have been her voice, her fate was assured by the team that made sure that voice got heard.

And now, in large part because of their efforts, she really did have a shot at the big time. The Critics’ Circle Award meant Barbra had the blessing of the city’s most important star-makers. But she already knew that the critics loved her. What Barbra really wanted was the Tony—the affirmation of her peers.

Stan Berman was a Brooklyn cabbie who called himself the “world’s greatest gate-crasher.”
Earlier that month, he’d crashed the Academy Awards in Santa Monica, California, presenting host Bob Hope with a two-dollar replica of an Oscar. Now, on April 29, as Broadway’s glitterati gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria for the sixteenth annual Tony Awards, Berman once again walked through the front door looking “very official” without anyone stopping him to ask for credentials. He was carrying orchids, which he hoped to present to the winners.

Another Brooklynite at the Waldorf that night might have been feeling a bit like a gate-crasher herself, as she sat among such people as Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, Jason Robards, Olivia de Havilland, and Robert Goulet. But Barbra Streisand was getting used to being in the presence of celebrities. Three nights before, she’d been one of a select group of New Yorkers invited to watch Judy Garland record a new album at the Manhattan Center. Unpublicized, the concert had started at midnight, and a dazzling mix of celebrities, socialites, and other A-listers had filed into the hall. But as Barbra took her seat with a few others from the
Wholesale
company, she couldn’t quite comprehend what all the excitement was about. Despite Garland’s recent triumph at Carnegie Hall and her three decades in the limelight, Barbra insisted that she had “never heard of her.”
Some friends thought she was playing the diva, but maybe she really hadn’t heard about Carnegie Hall, or seen
The Wizard of Oz,
or made the connection when she’d sung Garland’s part in her duet with Mickey Rooney. Maybe she had forgotten the Garland records Barré had played for her. To friends, all of that seemed extremely unlikely, but then again, Barbra had never been one for idols.

When Garland came out on stage, without any introduction, just strolling in from behind the curtain in a simple dress and high heels, Barbra probably wasn’t all that impressed. The thirty-nine-year-old singer had just gotten out of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where she’d been hospitalized for exhaustion, and was in the midst of a bitter fight with her estranged husband, Sid Luft, over their children. The strain showed. She also had laryngitis, which left her croaking through her songs. Ultimately she was just too hoarse and had to end the concert early. If this was truly Barbra’s first exposure to the woman many were already calling a legend, then she might have been forgiven for wondering what the fuss was all about.

No doubt there was a similar detachment at the Waldorf on Tony night. Barbra was there for one purpose only: to win the award. Stargazing had never held much interest for her. Stan Berman the Brooklyn cabbie might be hiding backstage, eager to snatch a glimpse of the winners, but Barbra the Brooklyn chanteuse hardly strayed from her table, too busy putting away her London broil and baked potato to do much mingling. The Tony dinner-dance, despite its star wattage, was a rather homey affair, far less showy than the Oscar gala. Although New Yorkers could watch the ceremony on their local NBC affiliate, the rest of the country barely knew it was taking place, as the Tonys weren’t broadcast nationally like the Oscars were. Consequently, there was far less playing to the camera. Barbra’s only chance to make an impression, then, would come when she strode up to the lectern to collect her award.

And everyone was certain she would win. None of the other nominees had generated as much publicity as Barbra had these last two months. Even David Merrick, who still didn’t like her, predicted she’d take home the prize. He’d chosen to sit with the company from his other show,
Subways Are for Sleeping;
after all,
Subways
had racked up three nominations to
Wholesale
’s one. But when it came time for the Best Featured Actress Award, Merrick callously turned to Phyllis Newman, Barbra’s competition, and told her, “Streisand’s going to win.
I voted for her.” So confident of Barbra’s victory was the egotistical producer that he wanted it known before the fact that he was on her side. Merrick could never allow himself to be associated with losers.

So when it was Phyllis Newman’s name that was called out as the winner, Merrick switched allegiances in that very instant, jumping up and congratulating her as if he’d been rooting for her the whole time. It was a surprise win, but explainable. The critics might not have cared how often Barbra had been late to the theater, so long as the final performance was excellent. But word of her occasional lack of professionalism had gotten around, and her peers, apparently, didn’t approve. Better to honor Newman, who’d been paying her dues on Broadway since 1953.

After she collected her Tony, Newman headed backstage, where Stan Berman bounded out from the shadows to present her with an orchid. Meanwhile, Barbra gathered her things and slipped out the back door. She’d finished her meal. There was no reason to stick around and watch other people win awards.