Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (42 page)

The rest of the contract was pretty standard. A small advance— twenty grand—with a five percent royalty against ninety-eight percent of records sold. The deal between them was for five years—which actually meant one year, after which Columbia had the option for the next four years to keep Barbra or let her go. But these ordinary clauses weren’t what most observers noticed. Instead, they saw a twenty-year-old kid waltzing into Columbia and demanding—and getting—full creative control from a man as legendarily omnipotent as Lieberson. It left some industry stalwarts flabbergasted. And what was more, the $100,000 figure floated by Kilgallen was never retracted. Whether that was an oversight or whether Marty deliberately chose not to correct the columnist is unknown. But it would certainly fit his strategy of positioning Barbra as an extraordinary artist being extended extraordinary privileges by the powers that be.

For many people, that was precisely the image they came away with, and their beliefs seemed to be confirmed by Kilgallen’s follow-up column. “After months of negotiations,”
she reported, “Barbra Streisand is signing with Columbia Records this week, and will cut her first solo discs for the company within a few days. They’ll go all out to promote her, of course—at those staggering rates.” For Kilgallen’s readers, who included nearly everybody in showbiz, the impression was that Barbra had actually gotten that hundred grand. It wasn’t surprising that many of them felt angry or jealous.

In the fall of 1962, the ranks of that small but vocal minority of Streisand detractors were beginning to swell. Not only was Barbra catching breaks that other performers believed were being denied to them, but she remained, to their view, ungrateful for all that she was getting. On a recent radio program, Barbra had been asked by interviewer Lee Jordan how her success felt. “It doesn’t feel like
anything,” she’d replied cavalierly. She went on to reiterate her resentment at not being able to do what she wanted at night because she had to be at the theater. “Already she’s complaining,” Jordan commented, and many listeners shared the surprise and disdain that was apparent in his voice.

It was the Columbia contract that really seemed to tip the scales for a lot of people. “What I would have given for a contract like that, guaranteeing me complete creative control,” groused one singer, who’d been around a lot longer than Barbra. Grasping around for an explanation, some of them latched on to the idea of a network of “Jewish helping hands,” an informal but deliberate collusion among Jewish power brokers to promote one of their own. “They wanted to have their say about what was beautiful, what was talented,” said another performer, who was not Jewish. “For so long they had been self-conscious about being Jewish themselves, always having to promote these pretty blonde Gentile girls with perky little noses, and then along came Barbra and they suddenly had a chance to build up a real obvious Jewish girl.”

Was there some merit to the theory? As far back as Eddie Blum, there had been men in positions of power, Jewish men, who had taken more kindly to Barbra because of her ethnicity. More recently, Arthur Laurents had gone to bat for her with Goddard Lieberson, urging the record producer to help out this talented
kalleh moid.
Indeed, most of those who had opened doors for Barbra—hiring her for shows or clubs, extending her runs, writing material for her, promoting her to the press, giving her contracts—had been Jewish. In addition to Laurents and Lieberson, there had been Jerome Weidman, Harold Rome, David Kapralik, Max Gordon, and, although reluctantly, David Merrick. Currently, Ray Stark and Jule Styne were attempting to open yet more doors for her. Barbra was also benefiting from the support of an important new fan and booster, the composer Harold Arlen, who was known to rave at influential cocktail parties about how wonderfully she sang his songs—“A Sleepin’ Bee,” “Right as the Rain,” “When the Sun Comes Out,” among others. And it was perhaps noteworthy that the one least enthusiastic about her—Merrick—was also the one most uncomfortable with his own Jewishness. Merrick, according to witnesses, would “bristle”
when he heard Barbra speaking in her pronounced Jewish Brooklynese. Was Merrick the exception among Barbra’s Jewish godfathers who proved the rule?

But not all the helping hands had been Jewish. The very first people to give Barbra a leg up the ladder had been Gentiles: Burke McHugh, Ernie Sgroi, Sam and Les Gruber. And Barbra’s Jewishness had been as much a handicap at times as it had been an asset: How many of the snide reviews, especially those commenting on her looks, had been stoked by anti-Semitism? The truth was, for all the belief in some great Jewish conspiracy to elevate Barbra Streisand, if there had not been two Broadway shows—
Wholesale
and now
The Funny Girl
—that required eccentric Jewish characters, none of Barbra’s benefactors, even if they’d wanted to, could have helped her much beyond nightclubs and records. As it was, Barbra had come along at just the right moment for both these shows—and, consequently, for her own success.

There was also a change in the air, a “democratization” as Bob called it, inspired by the Kennedys in the White House and the civil rights movement taking place across the country, a sense that “fashion and beauty and talent were for everybody,” not just those who looked like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. That year, Diahann Carroll had won the Tony as Best Actress for Richard Rodgers’s
No Strings
—a first for an African American and a feat unthinkable even a few years earlier. Johnny Mathis was selling records and making teenaged girls swoon in the way Pat Boone and other white singers had done before him. Nightclubs and theaters were filling up with faces and voices that unambiguously reflected the experience of ethnicities rarely encountered by white-bread America until now: Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Dustin Hoffman, Joan Rivers, Chita Rivera, Bill Cosby, and Totie Fields, to name just a few. Even Barbra realized the shift that was taking place. People, she said, “were ready” for her.

It was clear that Columbia Records was ready for her. Shaking hands with Lieberson and posing for the last of the publicity photos, Barbra was done with pleasantries—which she never tolerated for too long—and eager to get busy. Mike Berniker, a young up-and-comer from A&R (the artists and repertoire division), was assigned as her producer. Berniker had just produced a Tammy Grimes album and sent it over to Barbra so she could get a sense of his work. After having a listen, Barbra called him and said, “Yeah, let’s go.”
They set the date of October 16 for Barbra to record her first disks. But, as Berniker and everyone else at Columbia would discover, Barbra would turn out to be a very different artist from Tammy Grimes—from everyone else, in fact, on their label.

Barbra and her castmates were practicing their new marks, entrances, and exits now that
Wholesale
had moved over to the Broadway Theatre, on Broadway near Fifty-third Street. Changing theaters midrun was never easy for a company that had been doing the same exact things, in the same exact places, for seven months. Alone among them, Barbra was probably glad for the change in scenery; any shake-up to her
Wholesale
routine was welcome to her. But the move to a new theater was hardly consolation for losing
The Funny Girl.

She hadn’t quite lost it yet, but things didn’t look good. Just a couple of weeks ago, the part of Fanny Brice had seemed within her grasp. Earl Wilson had reported, “David Merrick may hold
up his Fanny Brice musical while it’s tailored to young Barbra Streisand.” Louella Parsons had confirmed the report, sourcing Jule Styne and announcing that Anne Bancroft was now “completely out of
the Fanny Brice story.” In no uncertain terms, Styne had told Parsons, “When we make it, Barbra Streisand . . . will play Fanny.” It would require “a whole rewrite job,” Styne explained, as the “story had been written with Anne Bancroft in mind.” Barbra, it seemed, had the job.

Then, out of the blue, the entire Brice project stalled. No one was returning Marty’s calls. How much Barbra knew about Fran Stark’s opposition to her is unknown, but in fact it was much more than just that putting on the brakes. Surely Barbra had heard rumors by now of what was afoot and what had really caused all the preparations for
The Funny Girl
to come to a grinding halt.

In late September, Jerry Robbins had quit. “Although Jerry has been
working on the Fanny Brice musical for many months,” his lawyer had written to Stark’s lawyer, “it is now obvious to everyone that it is not ready for rehearsals. If it is rewritten and becomes ready for production (a hope he cherishes) he will be glad to consider directing and choreographing it.” But for now, he was through.

Robbins’s letter of resignation had come after a series of “ghastly sessions”
(so called by Isobel Lennart) with Ray Stark. The long-simmering tensions between director and producer had finally boiled over. Robbins had bluntly told Stark the book was “not ready yet,
despite everyone’s work and creative contributions.” Moreover, he resented being coerced into moving ahead on the project, especially because it meant postponing
Mother Courage,
which was ready to go.

What really ticked Robbins off, however, was a letter Stark then wrote to his attorneys, pointing out that he, Stark, was an investor in
Mother Courage
and so had some say over Robbins’s decisions. “I think there can be
no question of the fact,” Stark wrote, “that never has a director received so many benefits as Jerry is now receiving.” Enraged and offended, Robbins called Stark’s assertions “slanderous, ” and then added pointedly, “As for delivering
stage successes on Broadway, I’m a veteran compared to you, this being your first time up at bat.”

From there, it could only go downhill. In his resignation letter, Robbins stressed that if he did not do the play, he would “not want any
of his ideas or material used.” It was that clause, even more than Robbins’s departure, that had halted the project. Robbins’s contributions were woven all through the book, and no one knew this better than Lennart. She’d have to scrap everything and start over, writing an entirely new script, while Stark and Merrick began searching around for a new director. This was the real reason the book needed to be rewritten; it wasn’t to accommodate Barbra, as Styne had told Parsons, but rather to accommodate Jerry Robbins.

But, in public, Barbra was being used as the reason for the show’s delay—even though she hadn’t even been signed yet and, given Fran Stark’s opposition, might never be. If the producers had really been delaying the show so they could “tailor” it to Barbra, they would have already signed her. But as it was, there was no show to sign her for, and if there ever was again, they might still go with someone else. Given how smart both Barbra and Marty were, they surely knew exactly how they were being used by Stark and Merrick. It couldn’t have been a pleasant predicament. They couldn’t complain or object too loudly, as Barbra was still being touted as the “leading” candidate. But they also had no bargaining power in this game of wait and see.

It didn’t take Marty long to realize that they might have a way to influence the situation after all. Soon he was making a few calls to the columnists on his own, and within days Earl Wilson was reporting, “Barbra Streisand, who’s been practically
set for the delayed Fanny Brice musical (but never signed for it), is reading for the new show
The Student Gypsy.
” This was a musical written by Rick Besoyan, the author of the long-running off-Broadway satire
Little Mary Sunshine.
The message to Stark and Merrick was plain: If they wanted Barbra, they’d better act fast in putting their show back together.

But the producers were stuck. Without a script, without a director, they could go no further. Lennart had already been floundering; how could she possibly write an entirely new book devoid of Robbins’s contributions? Would they need to hire another librettist? In such chaos,
The Funny Girl
might easily wither away, as so many failed concepts had done before it. And with it, so too would wither away Barbra’s best chance to reach the top. When would another musical come along that needed a funny Jewish girl with a big nose as its star?

So, with undoubtedly a heavy heart, Barbra resumed learning her new marks for
Wholesale.
She also went back on
The Tonight Show,
where the new host, Johnny Carson, mispronounced her last name just like everybody else did. And she signed a contract for yet another gig at the Bon Soir. Same as it ever was.

Peter Daniels looked through his thick glasses at the young woman perusing the sheet music in front of him. Usually it was just the two of them, or the two of them plus a trio. But now thirty or more musicians surrounded Barbra and Peter, all tuning their instruments, a cacophony of notes sounding in that magnificent space, with its hundred-foot ceilings matched by a hundred feet of floor space. Above them dangled mikes and long copper wires leading to the recording equipment. From the small glass booth on the second floor, a gaggle of solemn men in suits looked down at everything they did. Peter took his seat at the piano, playing a few keys to familiarize himself. Barbra continued looking over the music, psyching herself up to record her first disks under her contract.

Early this morning, Tuesday, October 16, a warm, overcast day, Peter had trekked down to Columbia’s Studio C at 207 East Thirtieth with Barbra and Marty. It was an old Presbyterian Church, and it offered some of the best acoustics of any recording studio in the city. Miles Davis would record nowhere else. When Barbra looked down from the control room at all the musicians, Mike Berniker thought she was trembling. He took her by the hand and led her to the floor.

At the moment, unbeknownst to anyone, the Kennedy administration was facing down the Soviet Union in what came to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although tension was everywhere, Barbra had no idea just how close the country was to nuclear war as she tested the mikes in the studio that morning.

Peter found he could work
well with the orchestra, conducted by George Williams, a true master, who’d arranged for Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Lionel Hampton. Together they had reworked “Happy Days” yet again, finding a synthesis of the various renditions Barbra had performed so far. With the goal of producing two records that day, with two sides each, Peter had also rearranged “Right as the Rain,” “When the Sun Comes Out,” and “Lover, Come Back to Me.” He’d been with Barbra long enough now to know exactly what worked, what didn’t, what they’d tried before, and what they still might play around with.