Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (43 page)

Barbra had come a long way since Peter had first laid eyes on the pimply-faced kid with enormous chutzpah auditioning for
The Sound of Music.
He’d been there for the first Bon Soir show, for the Blue Angel gigs, and for so many other performances. Many times Barbra had slept on the floor of Peter’s studio after a long practice session. In the last several months, Peter had been spending far more time with Barbra than he had with his wife, Anita, causing not a few problems at home. But Peter, a brilliant, offbeat, march-to-his-own-drummer kind of guy, had left England at a young age and come to America with a single goal in mind: to become a famous musician. Peter wanted to be a star—to be recognized—almost as much as Barbra did, and he knew attaching himself to her would pay off. In fact, it already had. His steady gigs at both the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel were in part because of his connection to her. While this time he might have been at Columbia to make Barbra’s first records, next time, he hoped, he could be making his.

Nearly all of the songs Barbra had used to establish herself had been arranged by Peter; his influence could be heard every time she opened her mouth to sing. It was Peter who had thought to have her hold the notes as long as she did in “Right as the Rain”; it was he who’d had the idea to sex up “When the Sun Comes Out.” Occasionally he’d suggest something that didn’t work, but usually Barbra was able to accomplish whatever Peter had in mind, continually surprising him with her ability to take one of his ideas and elaborate on it. Theirs was an easy partnership, though not without quarrels. Barbra was demanding, and while Peter could usually roll with her tetchiness, sometimes he had to get up off his stool and take a walk around the block.

Of the songs Barbra was to record that day, “Lover, Come Back to Me” dated back the furthest, all the way to her first Bon Soir appearance more than two years ago. It had been Barry who’d helped her arrange that song, playing the record over and over for her in his apartment. Back then, Barbra had had trouble with one line, never seeming to get through it without tripping over the words, but now the song flowed easily and smoothly, like the old friend it was. Peter had kept the fast, almost freight-train tempo that Barry had devised, but he had given the song an extra bounciness that brought out its soul. Barbra might have been singing about missing a lover, but she did so gaily, almost giddily. Hearing her sing the song, there was no question that her lover was coming back.

But nowhere was Peter’s talent expressed better than in the new arrangement he’d come up with, in partnership with George Williams, for “Happy Days Are Here Again.” As Barbra sang that signature number into the microphone hanging in front of her, there was a sense in the room of something wonderful coming together. For this rendition, Barbra was able to perfectly balance the song’s original jubilation with the sense of melancholy she’d brought to it. What they brought forth that day was a haunting, complex number, celebratory and cautionary at the same time, a call of joy as well as a cry of sadness. It was, in the end, whatever the listener believed it to be, which, of course, is the mark of transcendence. Barbra’s voice, a gorgeous instrument on its own, never sounded better than here, surrounded by that thirty-piece orchestra in that exquisitely acoustic room. When they were finished, and Williams lowered his conductor’s baton, Peter knew in his heart they had just wrought a masterpiece.

Hoping to change his wife’s mind about Barbra, Ray Stark had brought Fran to the Bon Soir. Seeing Barbra in the more relaxed setting of a nightclub, he anticipated, might soften Fran’s vehement opposition. The show was tentatively back on track, now being called
The Luckiest People,
after a line in the Styne-Merrill song “People.” They would tiptoe their way around the legal issues with Robbins the best they could. But recent press reports were stating that Kaye Ballard
was now being considered for the lead. On
The Perry Como Show,
where she was a regular, Ballard was doing some superb impressions of Brice. The
New York Times
’s Sam Zolotow, who knew about such things, had called Ballard a contender for the part. But that was hype. Ray Stark hadn’t lost his faith in Barbra.

Fran, however, was another story. That was why Barbra, waiting in that cramped little dressing room that had become something of a second home, had to go out on the stage one more time to try to win her over. It seemed she was forever auditioning.

She should have been riding high, especially with the release earlier that month of the “Happy Days” single. Yet despite its brilliance, the disk had gone precisely nowhere. That was because, as Marty discovered, the head of the sales department, a conservative fellow by the name of Bill Gallagher, had doubted the commercial viability of “Happy Days.” Just to be safe, he’d pressed only five hundred disks and distributed them only in New York. Enraged, Marty had demanded that Columbia release the second single as soon as possible and get one hundred percent behind promoting it this time.

In response, Lieberson had suggested a live album. Indeed, an album was what Marty had been angling for all along. So, just a few days before the Starks’ appearance at the Bon Soir, Columbia had sent in a team to the club to record Barbra live. Lieberson had introduced Barbra to the audience himself, calling her “a singular artist” who couldn’t be categorized. With beauty and grace she rendered “My Name Is Barbara” and the crowd was on their feet applauding. But then a microphone fuse blew. “You’re kidding me!” Barbra wailed. That was just the beginning. When she restarted her set, the Columbia photographer, hoping for a jacket cover, kept snapping pictures and distracting her. Finally Barbra had to ask him to stop. These were hardly the conditions under which she wanted to record an album. She needed the kind of control she’d had at the Thirtieth Street studio, without worries of extraneous noise or echoes. If this was what making albums was like, then she wanted no part of it.

Faced with the vacuum left by the collapse of the Brice musical, Barbra had taken Marty’s advice and signed with new publicists. Richard Falk had already left her, reportedly because Marty “was doing everything”
himself. But it was Barbra who’d made the break with the Softness brothers. Quite simply, she felt she had outgrown them. She’d offered Don Softness, with whom she had the closer relationship, a chance to stay on, providing he got rid of all of his other clients to focus only on her. The offer was “tempting,” Softness said, but ultimately he turned Barbra down. He “had a company to run,” he said, and besides, a future of “being the tail that wagged the dog” was not something he looked forward to. Barbra may have been hurt, since rejection of any kind was never easy for her, which might explain why she had no further contact with Softness, not even to pay the last of the expenses he’d incurred in promoting her.

Her new publicist, Lee Solters, had far more connections than the Softness Group. And, like Marty, he was willing to come on board without any binding contract, assured only by an absolute belief in Barbra’s greatness and ultimate destiny. At least, that was the word that Solters let get around once he was in the job; it certainly fit the narrative Marty had already established. Solters, born Nathan Cohen in Brooklyn and always called “Nussy,” was a bald-headed, raspy-voiced character who’d been working as a press agent for David Merrick for more than a decade. It was Solters who’d been the architect of the ingenious “Mr. Clutterbuck” ploy. Grabbing publicity came naturally to him, one observer said, “like putting on
a pair of shoes.”

While promoting
Wholesale,
Solters had encountered Barbra and quickly became impressed with her moxie and determination to get her name out there. It became clear to Barbra that Solters, far more than Softness or even Falk, had the clout to make her a household name. In addition to Merrick’s shows, Solters had also flacked for
Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, My Fair Lady, The King and I,
and
Camelot.
Just recently, he’d picked up none other than Frank Sinatra as a client. Solters knew everybody.

And while he hoped to raise Barbra’s publicity to new heights, Solters chose to continue, even intensify, the meme originated by Softness of Barbra as “kook.” Not only was it ideal positioning for the Fanny Brice musical, but even if that show never came to fruition, Barbra’s “kookiness” ensured that the press kept coming back for more. Who wouldn’t want great copy like Earl Wilson had been getting, or the fabulous stream of consciousness that had made the
New Yorker
piece required reading among the theater crowd? Barbra’s kookiness had certainly entranced Johnny Carson when she’d appeared with him on
The Tonight Show.
When the host had asked her if she thought of herself as a kook, Barbra had replied, “I don’t understand it really. I’ll tell you this, it’s very interesting because when I decided, well, not decided, I always knew I wanted to be in the theater, but I never made rounds or anything like that, it was very depressing. But I did for two days. It was during the winter. It was very cold and I wore a big coat and a big hat because I can’t stand the cold. So I walked into offices and they really thought I was nuts. Like one woman said to me, ‘When you go make rounds and you meet people, you should wear stockings and high heels’ and so forth. I said, ‘It’s freezing out, lady. It’s so cold, what difference does it make if I’m an actress, if I am talented or not talented, what difference does it make if I wear tights or not?’ So kooky people said I was kooky.”

Of course, that was classic Barbra—she meant every word of it, even if she was likely conflating episodes (was the hat and coat a reference to her
Wholesale
audition?) and ignoring actual chronology, as was her custom. All that mattered was that she told an entertaining story in an entertaining way. That had been Softness’s instruction, and now it was Solters’s as well. Barbra shouldn’t hold back, her publicists told her; she should say whatever came into her head—and the quirkier the better. So, after telling Carson she didn’t understand being called a kook, she gave evidence to demonstrate that she was, in fact, exactly what they called her. Carson, his amiable expressions showing an earnest, if exaggerated, attempt to follow her logic, clearly enjoyed her. As she had on
PM East,
Barbra could pull viewers in with her far-out style. Since that first appearance, Carson, looking to boost his ratings, had already had her back on the show once—a gig for which Marty also managed to get the Clancy Brothers included—and had slated her for still another appearance in early January.

That fall, Barbra stood over Solters’s shoulder, as Arthur Laurents understood, admonishing him to “get her something new.” Accordingly, Solters was busy preparing a multimedia promotional campaign for her: print, television, radio. He succeeded in getting Ed Sullivan, the king of variety television, to come down to the Bon Soir to catch Barbra’s performance. Sullivan hired her on the spot for his television show and, having enjoyed the evening so much, also hired Barbra’s warm-up act, comedian Sammy Shore, to appear with her. The date was set for early in December.

For Barbra, finally landing a spot on the top variety show was no doubt satisfying, though, in its own way, probably a little unsettling as well. Everything she did seemed to be an audition for something else, for something bigger.

Just as it was tonight with Fran Stark.

Taking one last look in the mirror, Barbra headed out onto the stage. If she was hoping for a decision, some sign that she’d cinched the deal, she was disappointed. Everyone was cordial at the end of the night, but whether she’d changed Fran’s mind, Barbra had no idea. Mrs. Stark was playing it all very cool.

The news had come with just a couple of days’ notice. A letter from Merrick posted backstage thanked them all for their work and dedication, then dropped the bomb:
Wholesale
would be closing on Saturday, December 8. After a strong start, the show had faltered in recent months, and even various special half-price ticket deals that were promoted to boost attendance hadn’t made a difference. The great hope that the show’s low production budget, coupled with strong early box office, would mean profits for everyone hadn’t materialized; by the start of December,
Wholesale
was $140,000
in the hole and sinking further. Even all the publicity about the girl who “stopped the show cold” every night had failed to keep up the momentum.

There were tears all around, but not from Barbra. Now, on the show’s last night, when the final curtain dropped, she bounded backstage chortling, “I’m free! I’m free!”
Wiping off her makeup and discarding Miss Marmelstein’s frumpy dress for the last time, Barbra, with Elliott at her side, practically danced out into the cold dark night, the air swirling with snow flurries. They might have, as so many theater people did on finding themselves suddenly out of work, enjoyed a bit of a holiday, gotten away from showbiz for a while, taken a much-needed breather. But Barbra had no time for such luxuries. She had to get the tracks laid down for her album, which Columbia had agreed to produce in the studio next month after the results of their live recording effort at the Bon Soir had proven unsatisfactory to everyone. She also had to rehearse for the Sullivan show, which was coming up in just a few days. No, there was no time for any holiday.

Elliott, on the other hand, had all the time in the world. On Monday, as Barbra headed over to Peter Daniels’s studio to practice, Elliott slunk down to the labor offices on Fifty-eighth Street and applied for fifty dollars a week in unemployment benefits.

Barbra had had it. All during rehearsals Ed Sullivan had been saying, “Now let’s hear it from
the Columbia recording star Barbra Streis-land.” No matter how many times she tried to correct him, he still got her name wrong, and few things irritated her more. Now, during the live broadcast, furious with fear that he’d do it again, Barbra positioned herself right behind the curtain, waiting to pounce as soon as the commercial break was over and it was her turn to be introduced.