Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (38 page)

When
Mothra
was over, the oversized caterpillar having hatched into a giant imago and flown back to its island home, Barbra and Elliott walked hand in hand outside into Times Square. They enjoyed the fact that they could be stars on Broadway but still be largely anonymous on the streets of New York. That night, or one very much like it, they wandered the city, no one stopping them, no one telling them to look this way or sing that song. They played Pokerino in penny arcades. They bought glassware for the apartment. They ate vegetable fried rice in a greasy Chinese restaurant.

Such anonymity was important to Barbra. The fierce ambition the Softness brothers witnessed every time she barged into their offices, or the uncanny knack she had for drawing attention to herself, was not in the service of notoriety. It was part of her pursuit of excellence and achievement. But when she left the theater or the studio or the nightclub, Barbra wanted her life back. She wanted to wander through the streets of New York with her boyfriend unaccosted by people. So far, she still had that luxury. No matter how big a role she might someday land, she hoped that this much would never change.

Yet a future of anonymity seemed unlikely. Earl Wilson had just revealed the “hot romance backstage”
between Barbra and Elliott, and was readying another column in which he would report the belief among cast members that the couple had secretly married.
Such gossip was an inevitable byproduct of courting the columnists for other, more sought-after kinds of publicity, such as the items about the Brice show. Yet Barbra was unwilling to accept gossip about her personal life as an unavoidable component of her fame, and she had started speaking out against the practice. “They print such rotten
things,” she complained to one interviewer. “Like they wrote that I was smooching at the Harwyn Club.” But then, impishly, she added, “It was 21”—showing that while she might detest such intrusive publicity, she knew how to make the best of it.

Barry was right: Barbra had indeed become very good at merchandizing herself. She told the press that it was she, with little to no help from Arthur Laurents, who had made Miss Marmelstein what she was. Barbra explained that she’d needed to “talk back to the director”
in order to “work into the character” her own way. And if Laurents had persisted in obstructing her, she said, she would have walked out. “I just didn’t care what happened,” Barbra claimed. “I could go out and work in a nightclub again.” Laurents scoffed at the contention that Barbra would have willingly walked away from a part in a Broadway show to return to singing in nightclubs.

But in selling Barbra Streisand to the public, it was important that the product be marketed as uniquely self-made. The narrative that Marty had been building over the last year—Barbra as the once-in-a-generation talent discovered like a glittering pearl in the brackish oyster beds of Brooklyn—could not accommodate stories of “helpers” or “boosters.” She had to be given to the world fully formed, with no whiff of public-relations chicanery. If the contributions of a maestro such as Arthur Laurents had to be airbrushed out of her biography, then those less well-known people who had helped shape the creature being marketed as Barbra Streisand could certainly never expect to receive any kind of public acknowledgment.

It was, perhaps, easier to sell this rewritten history because so many associates from Barbra’s early days were no longer around. Terry Leong had headed for Europe without ever getting the chance to reconnect with the old friend whose style he had heavily influenced. Bob, too, had just sailed for Paris for an indefinite stay. And while there’d been a rapprochement with Barry, there’d been no attempt to stay in touch; in fact, he continued to feel that he was being deliberately kept away. Given how he’d broken her heart, it was easy for some friends to sympathize with Barbra on that point. But keeping Barry at a distance also meant that the enormous contributions he’d made to her career—from suggesting she enter the contest at the Lion in the first place to teaching her so much about music and performance—would be given no public forum.

Some old friends, such as Elaine Sobel, resented being held at arm’s length. Now waiting tables at the Russian Tea Room, Elaine felt she’d been “brushed out”
of Barbra’s life just as her former roommate hit the big time on Broadway. Barbra, Elaine said, had taken advantage of her at a time when she, Barbra, needed help, but hadn’t offered any reciprocation now that she was in a position to give it. That, perhaps, was key to understanding who survived in Barbra’s orbit and who didn’t. Those who could still help her—such as Marty, Peter Daniels, and Don Softness—remained. Those who might want something from her now that she’d achieved a degree of fame and clout—such as Terry, Elaine, Barry, and possibly even Bob—did not. It was a common experience for many celebrities, and while unfortunate, not really all that difficult to understand.

And then there was Cis, who wanted absolutely nothing from Barbra except friendship. Cis remained Barbra’s rock, the one person with whom she could be herself completely, without any pretense, performance, or marketing. By the summer of 1962, Barbra’s three closest—and likely
only
—intimates were Cis, Marty, and Elliott.

But for a young woman in love, it was probably enough. Walking through the city with Elliott, her hand in his, her head resting occasionally on his shoulder, Barbra was content. Elliott understood her. They’d both grown up with mother issues; they’d both felt cheated out of real childhoods. Barbra could vent all her frustrations to Elliott, and he never pushed her away. He was “the stable one”
in the relationship, she thought. When they’d occasionally argue, Barbra sometimes felt like stalking off, but Elliott always stopped her and got her to talk about what was really bothering her. She appreciated his “very clear mind.” Elliott, Barbra said, “knows what he wants.” And what was so thrilling, so wonderful, was that he wanted her.

A pall hung over the crowd at the Blue Angel. People were still grieving Marilyn Monroe, who’d been found dead a week earlier at her home in Brentwood, either from an accidental overdose or suicide. One man who frequented the cabaret thought a sense of finality thrummed in the air that week, an awareness of an era coming to a close. Elizabeth Taylor still generated headlines, but few, if any, of the new generation of stars seemed to inspire the fascination and devotion that their predecessors did. That kind of stardom, many thought, was hopelessly moribund.

And yet, there was an undercurrent of excitement in the air as well. The young woman who was performing at the Angel for one final night seemed to trigger something in people. Grown men would sometimes act like teenaged girls when she sang. The young man who frequented the cabaret did so not because he particularly liked the Blue Angel’s upholstered interior—he didn’t—but because Barbra Streisand, the headliner, made him cry every time she sang. And laugh, and smile, and “feel all the things a really great singer can make a person feel,” he said.

David Kapralik, a young executive at Columbia, could no doubt relate. He was there that night at the Blue Angel, just as he had been there the night before and the night before that. It was Barbra’s last performance; he wouldn’t have missed it. His admiration for her
had started when he’d heard her sing “Happy Days” on
The Garry Moore Show.
He had realized that she was the kid Marty Erlichman had been pushing Columbia so hard about. Impressed with her voice, Kapralik had made it a point to see Barbra at the Angel. In no time at all, he had morphed, in his own words, into a “groupie.”

Kapralik was just one of the growing number of young men and women Dorothy Kilgallen observed “packing into the clubs
to see Barbra Streisand and her magnetic nonsense.” If she and other pundits had taken a closer look at the phenomenon, they would have been disabused of any fears that old-time stardom, the kind manifested by Marilyn, was on its way out. Barbra’s “groupies” adored her with all the same fervor that an earlier generation had brought to Frank Sinatra or Judy Garland. They were artsy, bohemian types who bucked trends: at the moment, the trend was toward folk singers like Peter, Paul, and Mary, though the rock-pop of Neil Sedaka and Dion still dominated the charts. Barbra didn’t fit either category, which her fans seemed to appreciate. And, like all true devotees, they recruited others into the faith. This night, Kapralik had brought his boss, Goddard Lieberson, nattily dressed as always.

Marty, of course, was thrilled that Lieberson had finally shown up. Marty believed that only by hearing Barbra sing in front of an audience, especially
her
audience, could the record exec really comprehend the effect she had on people. Lieberson had been softening. No doubt it was more than just Kapralik’s enthusiasm that had finally moved him to come hear Barbra sing. The glowing reviews she’d gotten for the
Wholesale
and
Pins and Needles
disks couldn’t have escaped his notice. Even God may have begun to doubt himself, to wonder whether he’d been wrong not to sign her.

Like her Bon Soir homecoming, Barbra’s return to the Blue Angel had been marked by a welcome change in status. Last time she’d played second fiddle to Pat Harrington; now she was front and center, heading a bill that also included comic Bob Lewis and the Phoenix Singers, a folk trio who often sang with Harry Belafonte. A few weeks earlier, Max Gordon had bought out Herbert Jacoby’s share in the club; Barbra was the first headliner under his solo management. She joked to Earl Wilson that she’d “hit the big time”
since she was finally being paid as much as Peter Daniels, her accompanist. Obviously Gordon had as much faith in Barbra as she had in herself.

No doubt Lieberson had also seen the reviews for the show, which was wrapping up after five sold-out weeks. “Miss Streisand is a delightful
and mercurial sprite,”
Variety
had observed, keying in on the unpredictability that so enchanted her fans. “She is amply appreciated,” the review concluded—an understatement.

And yet, at the Angel, sometimes appreciation was hard to discern. Performers had to “crack through the reserve,” Dick Gautier found. At the posh club—peopled with blue bloods and celebrities who were often as famous, or more so, than those on the stage—it was “gauche to laugh too much, or applaud too much,” Gautier said.

So it was saying a great deal that the applause following Barbra’s “oddball” (
Variety
’s word) rendition of “Much More” from
The Fantasticks
was loud and enthusiastic. On that little stage she stood, looking out into that long, narrow, coffinlike room suffused with the subtle fragrance of gladiolas, singing her heart out, knowing that Lieberson sat only a few feet away from her. It was not unlike the way she’d “auditioned” for Ray Stark at the Bon Soir. In both cases, she was hoping to provide for herself an escape hatch, a jailbreak from the stultifying routine of
Wholesale.
Not long before, she’d done what had once been unthinkable to her: She’d turned over the part of Miss Marmelstein to Louise Lasser, her understudy, for several days and taken a much-needed holiday.

Not that she’d rested. There never seemed to be time for that. The weekend of July 14 she, Elliott, Marty, Diana, and little Rosalind had driven up to Bill Hahn’s Hotel in Westbrook, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound, about two and a half hours from New York. The big, gregarious proprietor was hosting a birthday party for his swanky hotel with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society. He’d roped in Art Carney, who lived nearby, for the top of the bill, backed up by Barbra, Henny Youngman, jazz singer Johnny Hartman, and pop singer Tommy Sands, who introduced his wife, Nancy Sinatra, from the audience. The party was “strictly private for hotel guests,”
who tended to be affluent New York Jews. The thing Barbra probably enjoyed best was Hahn’s giant birthday cake, which was sliced up and passed around during intermission, though the pay—likely approaching four figures—was nice, too. But simply spending a few nights in the sea air, far away from
Wholesale,
would alone have made it all worthwhile.

Her publicists, in fact, had started a rumor that she might be ditching Broadway for good. Several columns that summer carried stories that Barbra was applying to Dartmouth
College, which was discussing opening its doors to women for the first time. According to these reports, Barbra wanted to major in economics and languages: Italian, Japanese, and Greek. That was the giveaway that it was all just hype, a way to keep Barbra’s name in the papers: Greek was the language she and Elliott imagined speaking among themselves, and Barbra’s nightclub act often had her pretending to speak in various tongues. No doubt Don Softness or Richard Falk had read about Dartmouth going co-ed and thought of an angle for Barbra, who was of college age and known as a bit of a rebel. It might also have served as a nudge to Stark and Merrick—they’d better hurry up and sign her before she went off to school.

But higher education was hardly Barbra’s goal. Out there in the audience, Lieberson was close to making up his mind. He’d said no so many times before, but he’d come to hear her tonight. That was a very good sign. Making an album might not have been Barbra’s big dream, but it could help ease her out of
Wholesale
—not to mention make her a good deal of money. So she put everything she had into her time on the Blue Angel stage. This night, there was no phoning it in.

“Right as the Rain” was solid ground for her; she knew it like she knew her own name, and once again Barbra nailed it. But she was also singing a newer, riskier addition to her repertoire. Peter had reworked “Happy Days Are Here Again” for her, slowing it down even more than was done for
The Garry Moore Show,
making it almost unbearably poignant. As Barbra launched into the song, a hush came over the club. It was, as the frequent Blue Angel patron put it, “truly an electric moment between Barbra and her audience.” The emotion, he said, “quite literally crackled between her and us.” The hairs on his arm stood up. Without even knowing it, he began to cry.