Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (58 page)

By the fall of 1963, the patronage Barbra enjoyed from that “musical-theater establishment” made her a force to be reckoned with. Where she’d once been a popular, even best-selling recording artist and nightclub chanteuse, her casting in
Funny Girl
had turned her into a powerhouse. Wags had started referring to the “cult of Barbra Streisand,” which referenced the cabal of influential tastemakers who had decided that Barbra was “it” and who were determined to use their leverage to carry her to the top. Columnist Jack Gaver may have been the first to use the term: “A sort of Streisand cult,”
he wrote, “has been mushrooming to the point where non-cultists soon might find themselves in danger of being picketed by the pros.” Then had come Lloyd Shearer’s article in
Parade,
which had bannered
THE CULT OF BARBRA STREISAND
in big black letters on its first page. That was what millions of Americans had seen on their Sunday kitchen tables, right beside their cups of coffee and bacon and eggs.

“In today’s show business
world,” Shearer wrote, “thousands of girl singers are offered at eight cents a dozen. In the face of such tremendous imbalance, what is the magic ingredient that jets one girl to the top while others fall by the wayside?” Although he’d credited Barbra’s talent—“born of nature and practically no training”—Shearer had ascribed the lion’s share of her success to the influence of “a growing army of followers who insist that Barbra is in the great tradition of Helen Morgan, Judy Garland, Lena Horne.”
Pageant
magazine had gone a step
further, naming names in that army: Arlen, of course, and Truman Capote and George Abbott. This kind of talk was what made some of Barbra’s contemporaries so envious.

No wonder Judy Garland’s hands were shaking as she headed down the Yellow Brick Road to meet Barbra Streisand, who was waiting for her on the soundstage.

By rights, it should have been the other way around.

It should have been the twenty-one-year-old kid, the neophyte singer who’d been performing for barely three years, who was trembling to meet Judy Garland. But Barbra’s nerves were steady, her manner calm, as the cameras began rolling on Friday, October 4, for the final taping of the show. They’d had two days of run-throughs, plus a final dress rehearsal from five thirty to seven o’clock; now, at nine, Barbra felt confident she knew all her marks and dialogue. If the presence in the audience that night of the Smiling Cobra and other CBS brass unsettled Garland, it seemed to have no discernible effect on her young guest star.

Garland emerged to the applause of the audience wearing a light-colored, sparkly gown. “We have a very exciting show for”—her voice caught, and for a split second she lost her way, but she made a quick recovery—“planned for you tonight. We’ve got marvelous people.” This was part of her standard opening segment, called “Be My Guest,” in which Garland talked-sang the introductions. Her voice lifting uneasily, her nerves impossible to fully disguise, she trilled, “We’ve got Barbra Streisand—I think she’s nice and she has such poise and she’s got such elegance—It’s a joy to have her on my show—Darling!” As Garland beamed and reached out her arm, Barbra joined her on the stage. They kissed as the audience applauded.

The two made a striking contrast. Barbra stood a head taller than her hostess, and her dark velvet suit offset Garland’s lighter hues. As they’d practiced, they kept up the musical introduction sketch, Judy frequently reaching over to grab Barbra’s arm, as if to steady herself.

“Judy,” Barbra trilled, “it’s great to be with you . . .”

“Be my guest, be my guest . . .”

“You know I’ve been a fan of yours since I was two,” Barbra continued. It was a dig Garland’s writers had thrown in to exploit the age difference. But the bigger irony was the fact that Barbra hadn’t been a fan since she was two. She’d barely been a fan for a year, and even then, “fan” might have been pushing it since Barbra wasn’t a fan of many people, no matter how good they were, and she’d claimed not to have even
heard
of Garland not so long ago. Still, she understood that it was politic to give the impression that she’d been one of the millions who’d loved Judy all these years.

Yet if she had once been indifferent toward the lady, the last couple of days had changed Barbra’s take on Judy Garland. She had walked onto that soundstage feeling very “secure,”
she admitted, unafraid “of failure or anything.” And then she met her hostess. The veteran star kept taking Barbra’s hands, touching her, putting her arm around her. She was trembling. Barbra was flabbergasted. Garland was older, successful, venerated. Why should she be shaking when meeting a girl who was just starting out? Barbra didn’t get it.

Her heart went out to Garland. An “instant soul connection” was how Barbra described her encounter with the older woman. She probably didn’t know the full story of what was going on behind the scenes, or the sense of trepidation that Garland lived with nearly every moment on the show. If the fragile star made one false step, she feared that they’d give her the ax. Aubrey was pursuing a strategy of “deglamorizing” Garland, bringing her down to the level of mortals. He thought it was the only way for the show to succeed. So the show’s writers were always poking fun at Judy. Digs about her weight issues, her tardiness, her nerves, her age—all were fair game according to CBS. So scripting a line for Barbra to say in that opening number—“Can I replace you?”—was par for the course, and no doubt it sent shivers down Judy’s spine.

But Judy didn’t give them the satisfaction of any oversized mugging. Whether it was her choice to do so or the advice of director Bill Hobin, Garland deflected the jab and moved without comment to introduce her next guests, the Smothers Brothers. Barbra smiled as her one-time lover walked out onto the stage, looking spiffy in a tuxedo. If the banter with Barbra had been banal, the lines between Judy and Tommy and Dick were even worse. The writers were scraping the barrel.

Then Garland turned back to Barbra and asked her what she wanted to do on the show that night. Barbra launched into their rehearsed skit. “I tawt I’d like ta do a lil numbah, ya know whud I mean?” she said in a bad imitation of old James Cagney gangster movies. Garland replied in kind, then Barbra switched to a slightly more successful English accent, saying she’d like “veddy much to do the ‘Song of India.’” Here the script called for
a bit of business with Barbra insisting on having the actual Taj Mahal used for her number, but either the dialogue was scratched at the last minute or Garland got confused, because she turned back at that point to the Smothers Brothers. Certainly her halting manner suggested that she might have been confused or nervous or both. At times Barbra looked over at Garland in the midst of their scripted dialogue, and the sympathy in her eyes was impossible to miss.

As they were taping, Roddy McDowall, child star turned character actor and photographer to the stars, was running around the set, snapping pictures. A huge fan and friend of Garland’s, McDowall had become an ardent admirer of Barbra’s as well after seeing her at the Cocoanut Grove. McDowall had been snapping away throughout the dress rehearsal, documenting what he felt certain was someday going to be considered a “historic meeting of two
great icons.” He was also aware of the special surprise the show had planned for the audience later on, and he’d be on hand to capture that moment as well.

Barbra sang two solo numbers that night. On “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” having changed into her white satin sailor’s blouse from the Grove, she was sublime. Shot in medium close-up, she looked absolutely stunning, and her confident, assured articulation of the lyrics displayed an exquisite rhythm and pacing of the song that was all her own (and Peter Matz’s). When she held the notes, the sheer power of her voice inspired shivers, her lower lip quivering every now and again with the intensity of her performance. It was a beautifully measured interpretation.

Barbra was just as good on “Down with Love,” but in a whole different way. Striding toward the camera, her shapely leg making an appearance from her black slit skirt, she was sexy and aggressive and like nothing that had ever appeared on a television variety show before. She turned the tune into a jazzy, stylized repudiation of romance: “Down with eyes, romantic and stupid, down with sighs and down with Cupid—Brother, let’s stuff that dove, down with love!” She was completely and utterly in control, especially when the pace picked up and she sang faster and faster, every word perfectly articulated as it rolled off her lips, every note hit expertly.

Yet as good as her solo numbers were, it was the duets with Garland that everyone was waiting for. Once Barbra had finished “Down with Love,” she walked over to join the hostess, who was clapping enthusiastically for her. “We’ve got all your albums at home,” Judy gushed, whereupon they were forced to endure more of the hackneyed banter the writers kept imposing on them, some nonsense about who hated the other more for being so talented. “Don’t stop hatin’ me,” Barbra said. “I need the confidence”—probably the most ironic line of the night for those who knew the real dynamics backstage. Giving each other a little air kiss, they sat down to sing.

The familiar piano introduction for “Happy Days” began. “Happy days are here again,” Barbra sang, as Judy matched her with “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.” The older woman seemed to be holding on to the younger one for dear life; Barbra felt, once again, the trembling of Garland’s body. During rehearsals, the two had developed a tender chemistry that emerged now in front of the cameras, real and vivid and palpable. It may have been borne of sympathy on Barbra’s part and competition on Judy’s, but it was genuine, and it made for fascinating television. Masterfully arranged, the counterpoint of “Happy Days” and “Get Happy” riveted the audience, including those hard-to-please network execs.

But in some ways, as transcendent as the counterpoint had been, it was their next duet that showed them to best advantage. The “Howdy, Neighbor” production number kicked off in silliness, offering another chance for some inside commentary on the state of affairs at the Garland show. Judy came out singing with a bunch of dancers, only to be thwarted by Jerry Van Dyke, who rushed out and shooed the dancers offstage, complaining of costs. As the props were taken away, Van Dyke placed two stools on the stage and barked, “There’s your set!” Garland then brought Barbra out to sing with her. As they took their seats, Garland declared, “There’s one thing they can’t cut out of the budget and that’s our voices.” Barbra laughed in agreement.

What followed was pure magic. Dressed in matching red-checkered shirts and white slacks, the two singers ran through a medley of various songs including “How About You?,” “After You’ve Gone,” “Hooray for Love,” and “Lover, Come Back to Me.” Garland started out a bit
slow, her voice a little crackly with air pockets. But then she got it together, turned on the sass, and showed the kid she still had what it took. On “How About You?,” she started to sing the line, “I love a Gershwin tune,” but then switched midway to “an Arlen tune”—a tribute to one of Barbra’s biggest boosters and the composer of Judy’s signature song, “Over the Rainbow.” By now any feelings of fear, pity, or rivalry seemed to have dissipated: Barbra and Judy were just two pros at the very top of their games, singing their hearts out. “We have found when we’re singing together,” they trilled, “the state of the weather turns from gray to blue.” They demonstrated the sheer mastery of their craft at the very end of the number, when each took the medley in completely different places, cross-singing and hitting incongruous notes, but without ever losing the elegance of the duet or their connection with each other. With astonishing precision, they ended triumphantly, then fell into each other’s arms, smiling and laughing.

At the top half of the second half hour, there had been another bit with Barbra, a regular feature of the show called “Tea Time,” in which Garland supposedly enjoyed some informal chitchat with her guest in front of a tea table. Thankfully, what could have been another badly scripted tête-à-tête—or an opportunity for Barbra to ramble on like a kook the way she did on talk shows—was planned as something very different. Barbra was now dressed in a burgundy version of the midshipman’s blouse, and Garland was asking her how long she’d been singing. They were clearly waiting for something to happen. And happen it did. All at once their conversation was interrupted by a voice from the audience singing a couple of lines from “You’re Just in Love.” And not just any voice: It was the voice of Ethel Merman, who’d originated the song in
Call Me Madam.
“You don’t need analyzin’,” Merman sang. “It’s not so surprisin’.”

The premise was that Merman had been down the hall in another studio shooting
The Red Skelton Show
when she’d heard all the “beltin’” coming from the Garland stage, and naturally she just had to see what all the fuss was about. The awkwardness of the premise meant that the ladies were awkward presenting it as well; at one point, Garland almost tripped backward over the set, prompting Merman to bellow, “Watch the tea!” Barbra, wisely, remained quiet through most of the ad-libbed dialogue. “Isn’t this great?” Merman said, looking at the youngster. “The new belter.” She was delighted to hear that Jule Styne and David Merrick were the composer and producer of
Funny Girl
(as if she didn’t know). “You’re in good hands,” she told Barbra.

She sure was. Barbra had been a national celebrity for less than a year, and here she was, on the same stage with Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. The message to the world was clear: She was in their league. Barbra, however, seemed to take it all in stride. She gave the impression of finding it all just a trifle silly, which it was. When Garland asked Merman if she’d “belt” with them, the Merm countered that she wasn’t “beltin’” unless the two of them belted with her. So they all burst out with “There’s No Business like Show Business,” Merman drowning out the others by sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Looking uncomfortable in their three-woman conga line, Barbra made crazy eyes. She had to do something if no one could hear her voice.