Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (49 page)

Now Stark was back in California, but his social calendar for May was already very full. All of this left precious little opportunity for him to get anything done on
Funny Girl
—which is what they were now calling the musical about his mother-in-law—but for a workaholic such as Stark, there was always time to be found. He was still burned up over Jerry Robbins and the monkey wrench he’d thrown into the project, but he was determined to get things moving again. And he’d found the ideal man to make that happen: Bob Fosse, the young, celebrated choreographer of
The
Pajama Game
and
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
who’d recently started directing as well (
Redhead
and
Little Me
). Sam Zolotow in the
New York Times
said
Funny Girl
was “almost definite”
on Fosse’s agenda.

That still left them with the problem of the book, however. Stark had sent Fosse a copy of the last finished script and urged him to consider how they might strip it of Robbins’s imprint without losing the whole storyline.

It was, to say the least, a daunting task—made even more daunting by an ailing Broadway economy. This past season had been the worst in memory. Investors had lost
more than five million dollars, according to an official study conducted by the
New York Times;
other estimates placed the losses at closer to seven million. The reasons were many: a slump on Wall Street the previous spring; the newspaper strike; the increasing popularity of art-house films taking people away from the theater; and an ill-timed increase in ticket prices. This was hardly a good time to try to get a show off the ground.

The only way to do it, Stark understood, was to hire a surefire crowd-pleaser. Kaye Ballard was knocking them dead at the Persian Room in the Plaza Hotel with her uncanny impersonations of Brice. Kaye Stevens was drawing raves after adding “My Man” to her act. But Stark had no doubt noticed that
The Barbra Streisand Album
had just passed Eydie Gormé’s
Blame It on the Bossa Nova
on
Billboard
’s chart. The music industry’s trade journal probably sat right beside Stark’s copies of
Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
on his poolside table. The producer would surely have taken note of the red star next to Barbra’s name, indicating that she was on a fast ride to the top. Stark had been right all along about her potential. None of the others had red stars next to their names.

Barbra was the one with the momentum. Columnists were regularly linking her name with the show anyway; some presumed she’d already been cast. When Barbra had performed in San Francisco, the local press reported she’d “been signed for the role.”
Whether that was a journalist’s error or a strategic exaggeration on the part of Lee Solters, neither Barbra’s camp nor Ray Stark had seen the need to correct the claim.

The producer did act to fix something else, however. No doubt at her husband’s request, Fran Stark had diplomatically withdrawn from any public comment on Barbra. But there was still a lingering perception out there that she disapproved. So Stark placed a call to Mike Connolly at the
Hollywood Reporter.
A conversation with Ray Stark was the only explanation for the interesting little item that Connolly subsequently ran, quoting a reader asking what had happened to the Fanny Brice musical. “They’ve been having a tough
time finding the right girl for this great part,” Connolly replied. “But ever since Mrs. Ray Stark, Fanny’s daughter, saw Barbra Streisand in
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
she’s been insisting on Barbra for it.”

That, of course, was a bit of Orwellian revision, but the spin was necessary if they were going to tamp down the stories of Fran’s disapproval. A few weeks later, Connolly was reporting even more definitively on the matter: “That funny Barbra Streisand
is all set to star in the Broadway-bound
Funny Girl,
formerly
The Fanny Brice Story.
”

That’s what Stark had been communicating privately to Marty Erlichman as well. Now all he needed was Bob Fosse to come through, and they’d have a show.

Barbra sat in what she considered “an ordinary beauty shop”
in London, getting her hair cut, “shorter in back than on the sides,” as she described it. The look was catching on among the swinging chicks in the capital, an asymmetrical bob popularized by celebrity hairstylist Vidal Sassoon that relied on the natural shine and shape of the hair for its effect. That meant no more curlers or hairpieces or lacquers or endless fussing in front of a mirror. With her hair cut this way, Barbra could just wash it, shake it, and
voilà!
She was done. That made her very happy indeed.

What was more, she now looked like a very contemporary, hip young woman, a more grown-up version of the cosmopolite look Bob had styled a couple of years back. Having finally made it out of her hotel room in Oxford to London, Barbra seemed to come alive amid the city’s cultural renaissance. It was an optimistic period that celebrated the new and the modern in fashion, art, and personal expression. Girls sashayed down the street in oversized sunglasses and knee-high vinyl boots; their boyfriends sported double-breasted blazers and patent-leather ankle shoes with zippers. And everywhere Barbra went, she would have heard the music of the Beatles—an exciting new rock-and-roll band consisting of four young men from Liverpool—soaring from radios and record players. The Beatles’ songs “Love Me Do” and “From Me to You,” as well as others from their debut album,
Please Please Me,
provided an exuberant soundtrack to life in London during the spring of 1963. They might not have been songs she’d sing, but Barbra was enchanted. She absolutely loved the city.

The move to London had come as rehearsals for
On the Town
were transferred to the show’s eventual venue, the Prince of Wales Theatre, on the corner of Coventry and Oxendon Street. The theater’s white artificial stone was a landmark on the walk from Piccadilly to Leicester Square. To Barbra, the West End seemed every bit as exciting as Broadway. With Bob, she’d seen
Half a Sixpence
at the Cambridge Theatre, a few blocks away from the Prince of Wales on the corner of Earlham and Mercer streets. The show starred Tommy Steele, one of Britain’s most popular teen idols.

During the day, Barbra wandered the city with Bob, who’d taken off time from his job to be with her, taking in antique shops and outdoor markets. Elliott sometimes accompanied them as well when he wasn’t rehearsing. But when Elliott was with them, there was always a bit of tension. Barbra’s boyfriend rarely spoke directly to her old friend, avoiding eye contact at all times. Such behavior grew out of Elliott’s self-described “insecurities with everyone,” but Bob thought it also had to do with the fact that Elliott was still “uncomfortable with anyone who knew Barbra from the old days.”

After Bob returned to Paris, however, Elliott livened up. Strolling through London with Barbra on his arm wasn’t so different from the days when they used to wander New York in complete anonymity. They’d poke through the shops along Carnaby Street, trying on clothes, eating fish and chips or Indian food, and buying tchotchkes that caught their eyes. Any suspicions or fears that had festered between them during their separation dissolved as they rediscovered the simple joys of being together. Barbra realized, “to her great relief,” one friend noticed, that she was “still in love with Elliott and he with her.” The trip to London had been worth it.

Sometimes on their tours of the city they were also joined by the director of
On the Town,
Joe Layton, a tall, dark man with sharp features, and his wife, the actress Evelyn Russell. Both Laytons possessed keen senses of humor that Barbra enjoyed. Like Peter Matz, Joe Layton had been boosted in his career by Noël Coward, who called him “the most sought-after
and up-and-coming young choreographer on the scene.” Layton had choreographed Coward’s
Sail Away,
for which Matz had done the music arrangements. Now he turned his attentions to
On the Town,
and he had great hopes for the production. Leonard Bernstein had thrown his support behind the revival, and planned to be there on opening night, which was now just a few weeks away. Elliott, as ever, was bedeviled by self-doubt, fearful he wouldn’t be able to hold his own playing a part that had been immortalized by Gene Kelly in the film version. He didn’t voice such fears. But if one looked closely, the terror could be discerned in the way Elliott’s eyes darted from place to place whenever someone asked him about the show.

Meanwhile, Barbra was all confidence. Sitting at a Covent Garden café sipping Earl Grey tea with her fellow New Yorkers, Barbra told them that
Funny Girl
was finally moving again. By the time she got back to the States, Marty expected to have a contract waiting for her to sign.

Such an outcome would mean, of course, that she’d be starring on Broadway while Elliott was headlining in the West End, separated by more than three thousand miles of ocean for who knew how long. But this trip, for all its difficulties, had reestablished the connection between them. They’d find a way to make things work.

On a cool evening in the middle part of May, Kaye Ballard arrived at Basin Street East with composer Arthur Siegel. They were there to see Barbra Streisand’s new show. The “little girl with the big voice,” as Ballard called her, had just become the top solo female recording artist in America.
The Barbra Streisand Album
had reached
number 15 on the
Billboard
chart, passing Joan Baez, who’d fallen to number 19.

Ballard was set to headline at Basin Street East when Barbra’s run ended, and Siegel had known the young star for years, supplying her with sheet music at a time when she was too poor to afford it. Both assumed Barbra would be pleased if they popped backstage before the show to congratulate her on her recent successes. With the assent of the house manager, they knocked on Barbra’s dressing room.

The door opened slightly. The face of a “flack,” as Ballard described him, peered out at them. They asked if they might see Barbra. No, they were told sharply. Miss Streisand wasn’t seeing anyone. She was “much too busy.”
The flack closed the door in their faces.

It was standard practice for other “names” to stop by the dressing rooms of performers either before or after a show. To snub someone in this way was a major breach of protocol. Barbra, however, as always, didn’t make time for niceties, least of all when she was getting ready to go on stage. She was more concerned with quieting her own nerves than bruising other people’s feelings. She may also have felt awkward having a conversation with Ballard, since the older actress was still being mentioned occasionally for
Funny Girl
—and Barbra now knew the show was almost hers.

Any nerves about that evening’s performance were understandable, however, since her gig at Basin Street East was her highest-profile one yet. The club itself wasn’t all that special: a red-plush room on the ground floor of the Shelton Towers Hotel at Forty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue. But it had showcased some impressive performers over the years: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald. Originally called La Vie en Rose,
the club had introduced Eartha Kitt to the world. More recently, it was one of Peggy Lee’s most frequent engagements.

Four hundred and fifty people could be seated for a show—the biggest room Barbra had ever played—and since the start of her run on May 13, she’d been selling out the house. On opening night, she’d actually had an overflow audience, filled with celebrities and “the town’s top agents,
bookers, record people and scribes.” Up near the front had sat Truman Capote, Cecil Beaton, the singer Connie Francis, the producer George Abbott, and Georgia Brown, Barbra’s erstwhile rival for Fanny Brice. One of the songs Barbra sang that night was “Who Will Buy?” from Brown’s show
Oliver!
—and Brown led the cheers. Backstage, Barbra received congratulatory telegrams from Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Opening night had been a triumph. Columnist Louis Sobol, also in that first-night crowd, had noted how Capote and Beaton kept “shouting their enthusiasm”
every time Barbra finished a number. “She’s fabulous,” Capote gushed in his high-pitched voice to the columnist after the show. George Abbott had made a beeline backstage—Barbra didn’t turn
him
away—and told her she’d be perfect for his upcoming show
Love Is Just Around the Corner.
That little tidbit made its way to both Earl Wilson and Dorothy Kilgallen, courtesy of Lee Solters, who hoped Ray Stark would read it.

Most important, the critics had loved her. “A potent belter
with a load of style,”
Variety
had declared.
Billboard
opined that few entertainers had come along in the past decade “with the talent and ability
of Barbra Streisand,” and echoed Solters’s talking point of comparing her comedy style to Beatrice Lillie. “Barbra,” the obviously smitten reviewer had concluded, “you’re quite a girl and all performer.”

This was what the audience had been coming back for every night. As Ballard and Siegel took their seats—miffed but not so much that they’d miss the show—there was a definite energy in the air, an expectation of big things. With the newspaper strike over, New Yorkers were once again reading about Barbra in their local papers, and they had turned out in droves to Basin Street East.

As Barbra stepped out on stage, there was a huge roar of applause. Barbra looked terrific in the new do she’d gotten in London. One reviewer called it a “Kenneth coif,”
assuming that she, like so many fashion-conscious celebrities, had made a visit to Kenneth Battelle, Jacqueline Kennedy’s hairstylist, who was bestowing a similar, Sassoon-inspired look on his clients. But Barbra was a trendsetter, never a follower. She had made her dress herself out of pink-and-white checked gingham: V-necked, sleeveless, Empire-waisted, and darted at the bust. Around the bottom she’d sewn some frill. She was terribly proud that she’d designed the dress herself, even if the same reviewer who’d approved of her new hairdo thought that her penchant for Empire waists didn’t “suit her frame.”