Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (51 page)

After the bigness of Basin Street East, Mister Kelly’s offered Barbra a return to the intimate feel of her earlier clubs. About four tables deep and twenty tables wide, the club was like playing in “somebody’s living room,”
thought the comedian Bob Newhart. Named after its first manager, Pat Kelly, the venue was run by the brothers Oscar and George Marienthal, who’d practically cornered the market on Chicago entertainment. In addition to Mister Kelly’s, they also ran the London House, a jazz joint on North Michigan, and the Happy Medium, a showplace at Rush and Delaware. But it was Mister Kelly’s that was, according to one observer, “the place to see and be seen on Chicago’s hippest strip.”

The one being seen now was Barbra—and Chicagoans seemed to like what they saw. “A cross between a sweet-voiced
canary and a whooping crane, but she’s sparkling and fresh,” columnist Sam Lesner quipped in the
Chicago Daily News.
Before Barbra had arrived, Will Leonard in the
Chicago Tribune
had been leery of the advance praise from the likes of Truman Capote and David Merrick in her publicity material: “That’s almost enough
to unsell a man who likes to wait and see,” Leonard wrote. But in the end, he agreed they were right. Charlie Dawn in
Chicago’s American
answered all of Barbra’s critics by saying her unorthodox versions of songs like “Happy Days” and “Cry Me a River” had made them “alive and thrilling
all over again.” Plus—and this was a milestone—he’d actually called her “comely.” It wasn’t a typo for “homely.” A major critic had just called Barbra “comely”—as in attractive. Pretty, even.

Silencing that heckler showed that Barbra was in top form. She was confident, even a little cocky. Good news kept flowing in every week regarding her album. She’d held on to the title of best-selling female solo artist for three weeks.
The Barbra Streisand Album
had reached number 14 on
Billboard
’s chart on June 1. When, the following week, the album’s sales suddenly plummeted to number 31, allowing Joan Baez to retake the title, Columbia had responded by taking out a full-page ad in
Billboard
with a photo of Barbra’s album and the tagline: A fantastic first!
They needn’t have worried. Barbra’s appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
had ensured that her drop would be no free fall, and by June 15, she was back to number 17 on the chart. As icing on the cake, the stereo version of her album, which had just been released, quickly made
Billboard
’s “breakout” column.

To a record company once dubious of her widespread commercial appeal, Barbra had proven herself. She’d done so by trekking around the country, by showing up on practically every television show and singing her heart out. So successfully had she proven herself that Columbia had given the green light for a second album to be released later that year. Before she’d left New York, Barbra had recorded more than a dozen tracks, including, for the first time, a new song written just for her by Peter Matz, “Gotta Move.” He’d composed the jazzy number with her speech patterns—and some autobiography—in mind: “Gotta move! Gotta get out! Gotta leave this place! Gotta find some place . . . where each face I see won’t be staring back at me, telling me what to be and how to be it.” It was the most modern song Barbra had sung yet.

Also recorded were some other favorites from the nightclub act that hadn’t made the first cut: “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home,” “Right as the Rain,” “I Stayed Too Long at the Fair.” This time, barging into Studio A, Barbra had been much more aggressive, sticking her fingers into every aspect of the session. Having soaked up the process the first time, she now acted as if she were an expert, suggesting that engineer Frank Laico “do this [and] do that.”
It was her record, after all.

Surprised by her change in manner, Laico had leveled with her: “You didn’t know anything with that first album, and look how successful it’s become . . . I have the same ears. I’m not going to let you down.” But Barbra couldn’t be put off her ideas. Not only had she decided what to sing, but she would decide how to sing it, where to sing it, and how to record it. Laico and the others thought her ego had gotten puffed up by her success, but Barbra didn’t buy that argument. “If I have ideas about sets
and the orchestrations and production, is that ego?” she asked. No, it was the pursuit of excellence. Barbra insisted that the “range of [her] talent” extended into all areas of record production. “To have ego means to believe in your own strengths,” she insisted.

But that didn’t make it any easier on the engineers. At one point, both Barbra and Marty latched on to Laico in the control booth, one talking into his left ear, the other into his right. The engineer threatened to quit, though he stuck around, and somehow—no doubt because of the calm precision and artistry of Peter Matz, again serving as arranger—the album got finished.

The success of Barbra’s first disk had empowered her to behave in such a way. Once reluctant to sign her, now Columbia was desperate not to lose her. When Laico had taken his complaints about Barbra’s controlling behavior to Mike Berniker, the album producer had told him to be careful. “We don’t want to upset
them,” he said, meaning Barbra and Marty. There were other record labels that would be very happy to sign Barbra if she tried backing out of her contract, and Columbia knew this.

The success of
The Barbra Streisand Album
was a turning point in Barbra’s career. Marty felt it had given her “a national reputation.”
It was a turning point for Marty as well. In the spring of 1963, it was clear that Barbra really
was
going to be as big as his publicity about her had always predicted. So that meant some changes were in order. Whether Barbra had given him an ultimatum like the one she’d given Ted Rozar or whether Marty had reached the decision on his own, he dropped the Clancy Brothers as clients so he could focus all his attention on Barbra. He broke the news to the brothers as they were riding in a car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The story making the rounds had the Clancys pulling over, telling Marty to get out of the car, and then leaving him stranded somewhere outside Pittsburgh.

If the story was true, the hike home was undoubtedly worth it. Marty could see the future. The strategy for building Barbra up had worked like a charm so far. There was every reason to think it would continue working, all the way to the very top—wherever and whatever that might be.

So that spring the media machine kicked into high gear. Lee Solters had been handed a PR bonanza with Barbra’s singing for the president. Suddenly Earl Wilson, bombarded with memos from the publicist, was writing that Kennedy had “demanded” a copy
of “Happy Days Are Here Again” after Barbra had sung it to him. Another baloney story being spread by Wilson had Barbra—as ever in these tales, the unpredictable kook—taking one look at Kennedy when he started in “with the Bostonese”
and saying, “Come on now, you can talk natural with me.” Column inch by column inch, a legend was taking shape.

Yet if she had asked to see something at the sales counter at Bergdorf Goodman—her acid test for fame—would the clerk have known who she was? Barbra had reason to doubt it. Just a few weeks before, when she’d shown up for
The Ed Sullivan Show,
the security guard at the Studio 50
theater hadn’t recognized her. He’d refused to let her in until he checked with his bosses. Barbra was no doubt abashed.

The only answer was to get a show of her own. Notices in gossip columns, appearances on variety shows, even record albums could only do so much. More than ever, she needed
Funny Girl.
Barbra had started taking ballet lessons to learn poise and coordination in anticipation of the dancing she would need to do as the star of a show. She was so close to grabbing it she could practically smell the greasepaint, but the part remained just out of reach. Jule Styne told
Billboard
that he was still working on the Fanny Brice story—“which may star Barbra
Streisand.”
May
star.
May
wasn’t good enough. Barbra wanted an answer.

And she wanted it even more now given that Elliott’s success seemed assured.
On the Town
had opened on May 30 to an “ovation,”
according to the headline in the
New York Times.
Although reviews were mixed, even the negative ones were predicting long-lasting box-office success. The
Daily Telegraph
declared that the show’s “mad speed, noise and violence” would keep patrons coming back “for months and months.” Even though it would prolong the separation between them, Barbra wanted a show for herself with at least as much success as Elliott’s.

The sun was just beginning to rise over the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, sending ripples of pink and gold across the calm surface of the water. Barbra came skipping barefoot through the sand of Oak Street Beach, the morning sun reflecting off the majestic skyscrapers of downtown Chicago. She’d been up all night, having finished her last show at Mister Kelly’s in the wee hours of the morning and then kicked back at an all-night eatery with some pals, including the one she was with now, the photographer Don Bronstein, who had his camera in tow.

They’d come to the beach to take photos—maybe for Barbra’s album, maybe for something else. Bronstein just wanted to photograph her, which was quite the compliment. After all, he’d been the first staff photographer for
Playboy
magazine, and had snapped some of the world’s most beautiful women for covers and centerfolds over the last decade. Bronstein didn’t expect that Barbra would disrobe the way those models had done, but he did plan on getting some shots that revealed a very different side of the singer. He had a way of getting women to relax and open up to the camera—a prerequisite for photographing models who took off their clothes. But as Bronstein encouraged Barbra to scamper out into the surf, it was clear he could elicit a similar au naturel quality from his subjects even when they kept their clothes on.

Barbra was glowing. Marty had at last received confirmation from Stark that she would star in
Funny Girl.
True, it wasn’t absolutely official—no announcement had yet been made by Stark or Merrick—but Earl Wilson reported she was “practically at the contract-signing
stage,” and he would have definitely confirmed that kind of information before going to the printer with it. Mike Connolly also seemed to know the inside scoop. He was a bit premature in saying that Barbra had already been
signed, but he was clearly writing with Stark’s approval. Clearly, sometime in early June, a final decision had been made, and Barbra learned of it shortly thereafter. She would play Fanny Brice. She would get that show of her own.

Running through the surf and sand, Barbra smiled and tossed her hair while Bronstein kept snapping away with his camera. As the sun rose higher in the sky, Barbra tied the ends of her red-and-white-checked shirt together, exposing a hint of skin. She was as free and natural with the camera as if she’d been modeling all her life—and in some ways, she had been, starting back in the days when she’d try out different poses in the photo booths of the penny arcades of Brooklyn. Now she turned and faced Bronstein’s camera, her arms behind her head. She showed off her shapely legs in tight Capri pants. She turned and faced away from the camera, looking at the water. At one point she slipped a muumuu over herself and lifted her right leg behind her.

She was flirting with the camera, flirting with Bronstein. If he had a way with women, Barbra also had a way with men. At Mister Kelly’s, one fan thought she was “a saucy little coquette” after her shows, batting her eyelashes at the men, young and old, who came up to her. Now prancing across the sand, she threw her head back and placed a hand on her hip, pouting sexily. She was clearly having a ball.

Part of her good mood may also have come from some other recent news. On the phone with Elliott, she had learned that
On the Town
wasn’t doing as well as that piece in the
Times
had led many Americans to believe. They were playing to whole sections of empty seats every night. That didn’t bode well for a long run. So maybe Elliott would be coming home soon. Barbra probably didn’t suggest such a thing, since Elliott was clearly upset about the show’s prospects. But maybe things were working out just as she’d hoped. She’d gotten the show. Maybe now she’d get her boyfriend back, too.

It seemed like a good time to start looking for that penthouse.

Liberace—that flashy, flamboyant pianist, the idol of millions of blue-haired old ladies and the highest paid entertainer in the world—stood on the stage in his red-sequined tuxedo with a smile as wide as the silver candelabrum on his grand piano. He was getting ready to introduce Barbra, as he’d done nearly every night since they’d started their run together at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He thought Barbra was marvelous, and he intended for his audiences to think so, too. Barbra might be his opening act, but Liberace wanted his fans
to know he considered her far more special than that.

The glitzy musician had been an admirer of Barbra’s since seeing her at the Bon Soir; more recently, he’d appeared with her on
Ed Sullivan.
He’d been ecstatic to sign her for his Vegas show, but very quickly he discovered that his fans weren’t necessarily hers. The first couple of nights, the audience of ladies with too much costume jewelry and reluctant husbands sitting beside them hadn’t applauded Barbra quite as loudly as she was used to. Nor had they seemed to get her jokes. Barbra’s long, rambling African or Estonian or Armenian folktales probably fell horrendously flat in Vegas; even sophisticated hipsters in New York and San Francisco didn’t always know what to make of them. Peter Daniels, cringing at the piano, thought those first two nights were “disastrous.”
So Liberace had decided to come out at the top of the show and do a bit of an opening number, then introduce Barbra as his “discovery.” He’d give it, he promised, “the old schmaltz.”

Opening his glittering arms as if to embrace the crowd packed into the gaudy Versailles Room, Liberace told them they were in for a real treat. This young lady, Barbra Streisand, had wowed them in New York and had a huge career ahead of her. With such a benediction from the master, Barbra could have then come out and read from
Robert’s Rules of Order
and Liberace’s audience would still have loved her. The pianist’s sway over his following was tremendous. He claimed more than two hundred official fan clubs with a combined membership of a quarter of a million. At the Riviera, he was a king, making a triumphant return after a five-year absence. The hotel promoted its headliners by printing thirty thousand souvenir postcards
to sell in their gift shops. For Debbie Reynolds and Vince Edwards, that was plenty to last throughout their runs. But for Liberace, thirty thousand disappeared in three days.