Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (67 page)

These sessions with Barbra showed just how completely the two personas, Barbra’s and Fanny’s, had merged. Robbins explained to her that Nick needed Fanny so he could “feel needed and strong,” while Fanny needed Nick “to feel worthy and feminine.” One couldn’t get much closer to a description of Barbra and Elliott, but there was still more to come. Robbins put together a list of Fanny’s beliefs about herself: “I’m a dog. I get reaction through making people react to me. I can make them laugh or cry. I
get even
this way [Robbins’s emphasis]. I
win
their love. I must feel wanted. There is a large sensitive hole that needs filling up.” That last one, in particular, must have resonated with Barbra, echoing the line from Medea that she’d carried around with her for so long.

Whether Robbins knew how closely he was delineating Barbra’s own life isn’t clear. But the best directors, and that would certainly describe Robbins, always knew their actors inside and out. With so much focus over the last six months on conflating star and subject, Robbins must have been aware that he was asking Barbra not so much to create a character but to play herself—or at least to play the self that had seeped into the public consciousness by now. Yet Robbins’s descriptions went to the core of who Barbra was, to parts of herself that she kept hidden from her public and even from her friends. “Fanny has made out well with all the boys,” Robbins told Barbra, after believing for so long that she could never accomplish such a feat. She has even won “the best-looking” of them. But “then, having had them, finding she could get them, she threw them over with contempt because she thought them fools for wanting her.”

Was that what Barbra was doing with Elliott? Was it what Robbins
thought
she was doing with him? Certainly the dynamic was there in the show, layered into the character of Fanny, and it didn’t take long to find other comparisons. Nick, like Elliott, had “the seeds of self-destruction in him.” His attraction to Fanny “will either cure him or kill him.” At its core, Robbins argued, this was the “story of a strong woman who, to feel like a woman, picks an elegant, loving but weak man—and her own strength corrupts and kills his love and manliness.” That seemed to be precisely what was happening with Elliott. And with Sydney, too, as his selfish, masculine pride was wounded by the greater acclaim given to Barbra.

That dynamic between the lovers wasn’t helped by what Robbins did next. Despite the decent reviews Sydney had gotten in Philadelphia, it was clear that Lennart had never solved the essential problem of Nick’s character. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? Was he noble or weak? He may have been all of those, but there simply wasn’t enough material in the book to show him in any complexity. Since it was too late to rewrite very much, the answer was simply to cut. Sydney had a major number in the second act, “Sleep Now, Baby Bunting,” in which he sang a lullaby to his newborn daughter, bitterly calling himself “Mr. Fanny Brice.” The number was key to his character, explaining his resentment at being married to a woman who was more successful than he was. But Robbins cut it. His decision may have saved Elliott from squirming in his seat when he saw the show, but it also left Sydney with just two songs, both of which were duets with Barbra. He was not pleased.

But Ray Stark was. Back in New York, at a cost of ten thousand dollars, he’d erected an enormous, block-long sign announcing
Funny Girl
over the Winter Garden Theatre, giving it “several extra coats of paint,”
Dorothy Kilgallen reported, “because he’s confident of a long, long run.” He was telling Robbins he was a genius and that “for the first time since
the show started, he was able to have two dinners and go to the movies over the weekend.” He couldn’t believe what Robbins had done “for the morale of the company.” Stark had to put all of this in letters to Robbins’s secretary and ask that it be conveyed to him, however, because Robbins made it a point to spend as little time with Stark as possible.

But the combative producer could afford to be generous in his praise for his old adversary. Advance ticket sales for
Funny Girl
were averaging twenty thousand dollars a day. That was a very good thing, too, as the newspapers pointed out: given how much Stark had had to pay Merrick, plus “the top figure deal with
the high-priced Jerome Robbins,” plus whatever deal had been worked out with Kanin, plus all the delays,
Funny Girl
was likely to arrive on Broadway as “the highest budgeted musical on record.” Some were estimating Stark’s costs to be in excess of half a million dollars.

And to think it all depended on one small, now slightly chubby, twenty-one-year-old kid.

In her dressing room at the Erlanger, Barbra took the call from Earl Wilson
herself. No, she told him firmly, denying yet again the story that she was pregnant. This was getting tedious. Wilson promised he’d print her denial.

Barbra’s new album had just been released, but all these newspapermen wanted to talk about was whether or not she was expecting a baby. Even the record columns weren’t giving her much ink, at least not compared to the last time she’d released a record. Maybe that was because her third album was fated to go head-to-head with the Beatles, which were all anybody seemed to want to talk about. But Barbra knew the album was good, maybe her best yet. Among the tracks she’d chosen this time were more traditional standards, giving in to those who complained her “standards” were usually too offbeat. So she sang “My Melancholy Baby,” “As Time Goes By,” “It Had to Be You,” and, of course, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.” She worked with Peter Matz again, and her voice was pristine and supremely confident. It was the work of an artist who had found her groove and enjoyed an easy, smooth mastery over her many gifts. The songs together took the listener on a journey from longing to joy, from grief to hope. The gift for conveying a depth of emotion far greater than her years, displayed early on in Barbra’s career, had clearly never left her and, in fact, had deepened.

She called it, naturally,
The Third Album.
Kilgallen had reported that someone from Barbra’s team, maybe Solters or Marty, had told her they were planning on calling it
The Fourth Barbra Streisand Album.
That way, the fans would be “dashing into the record stores
asking for the third Barbra Streisand album, which doesn’t exist,” Kilgallen said, calling it a “great gimmick.” But if anyone ever really considered such an idea, sanity prevailed. It was a class act all the way. Barbra even gave Peter Daniels credit on “Bewitched.” Roddy McDowall’s adorable shot of Barbra in her midshipman’s blouse from the Garland show was used as the cover. Sammy Cahn, following in the tradition of Arlen and Styne, wrote the liner notes.

Once again, Barbra had insisted on complete control of the production, getting her fingers into everything from “the arrangements, the cover,
the copy, the editing.” This time, there were fewer complaints about her involvement. The early reviews, once again, seemed to justify all her efforts. “Every moment in the album
is an exciting musical experience,”
Billboard
wrote. Syndicated record reviewer Al Price, in his “Platter Chatter” column, thought it possessed a “spellbinding effect
. . . that is hard to describe.”
The Third Album
had landed on the charts at number 110, but by the next week, it was at 53. Maybe not Beatles-style velocity, but it was still quite respectable.

Barbra knew she had a good product, especially when she compared it to her first album, which now embarrassed her, she said. For all its freshness and youthful vitality, the first album was not as polished or as emotionally deep as her second and third outings. Barbra cringed remembering how she’d ended “Happy Days” on that first disk, wailing “oooooo, aaaaaay,”
and her voice cracking. She’d been “yearning for just so much” back then, she said, that she could hear it in her voice, “very young, very high, very thin, like a bird.”

Of course, she’d never felt much a part of the music industry and that was even more the case now, competing with the likes of the Beatles, and Joan Baez, and even fourteen-year-old Stevie Wonder, who all wrote their own music or played their own instruments. Barbra admitted to feeling a little bit “inadequate [about] singing
other people’s songs.” There was also the generational conflict. The teenagers who were buying millions of copies of
Meet the Beatles!
weren’t also buying
The Third Album.
That was left up to a rather eclectic group of housewives, gay men, theater aficionados, and artistic types, of which only a small percentage were likely teenagers. And yet Barbra was the same age as Paul McCartney, and two years
younger
than John Lennon and Ringo Starr. She might indeed be “a mixture of old and new,”
as she called herself in one interview, but her newness didn’t seem to have the same impact on the youth market as Baez or the Beatles did.

That was significant because the success of those acts had demonstrated there was a huge, untapped slice of the market out there. Teenagers had always been a subset of the record-buying audience, driving the sales of Elvis Presley and other rock-and-rollers. But they had not been the major force of sales. Now, as the “baby boomers”—those born in the decade after the end of World War II—reached their teens, it was becoming increasingly clear that the future of the music industry lay with young people. Barbra’s age and her iconoclasm should have made her a natural favorite for this group. But her music—chosen for her by her theater and nightclub handlers—was their parents’ music.

A poll taken of teenagers
at the end of the previous year—before the Beatles’ breakout—showed that their favorite female singers were Connie Francis, Joan Baez, Brenda Lee, Connie Stevens, and Lesley Gore. Only Lee and Gore were younger than Barbra. And only when teenagers were asked about stars of the future did Barbra turn up at all: the kids predicted Gore, Peggy March, and Barbra, in that order. Folk music was their favorite genre, beating out rock and pop. If taken in March 1964, the poll likely would have showed a different result, given the unprecedented success of the Beatles. But the point remained: Barbra was no folk singer, and she was even less a rock-and-roller. Exactly where and how could she compete in an industry dominated by teenagers? As her third album made its way up the charts, only time would tell.

Such speculation, however, was better left to her managers and publicists. For Barbra, one goal predominated: getting
Funny Girl
to Broadway in one piece. As she headed out of her dressing room, she may have run into Sydney, as she often did, on her way to the stage. He still liked to tell her that she was brilliant and gorgeous. He may have whispered it again in her ear. But the truth was, with all the glowing reviews, she didn’t really need to hear it anymore. Her confidence didn’t need that extra boost. And Sydney realized that. It made him feel “less necessary, less important,” Orson Bean understood. It was a feeling Elliott Gould could have empathized with.

To Bean, Sydney would share his suspicions on why his amorous relationship with Barbra had suddenly cooled in those last few days in Philadelphia. “Once his numbers were cut and the show didn’t need him as much,” Bean said, “Sydney felt Barbra wasn’t in love with him anymore.”

He may have been right. Besides, they were going back to New York. And Barbra had a husband waiting for her there.

The block-long sign announcing
Funny Girl
above the Winter Garden on Broadway had been weathering in the rain, snow, sun, and city soot for the past several weeks as the premiere was delayed yet again, from March 24 to March 26. The show still wasn’t ready. At least the company was now back in New York under the Winter Garden’s roof, and curious theatergoers were flocking to the previews in order to get a peek at the show in development before Jerry Robbins froze it on opening night.

Backstage, Barbra greeted the well-wishers who thronged the hallway and pushed their way into her dressing room, many bearing flowers. No one seemed to be waiting for the official premiere. Already there was buzz that Barbra was a hit. Word was spreading about the elaborate way she took her curtain calls, “like rituals performed
in a Buddhist temple,” Dorothy Kilgallen said. Most of the columnists had come to see the show; it seemed there wasn’t anyone of any standing or influence in the theatrical community who hadn’t been by. “The craze to get in ahead
of time” made fashion columnist Eugenia Sheppard nostalgic for “the old days when any kind of opening was a big thrill.” Now, she said, the official opening night was “for squares.”

Of course, no newspaper would publish a review quite yet, but they did send reporters to check things out. On this night, Joanne Stang of the
New York Times
observed the procession of people trooping into Barbra’s dressing room to tell her how magnificent she’d been out on the stage. Shouldering his way through them came Jule Styne, who told Barbra he was concerned that the show still ran too long. In his opinion, they “should cut at least twenty-eight
minutes.” While all this was going on, Barbra was being fussed over by “a press agent, a personal manager, a photographer, a maid, a dressmaker, and two costume assistants waving swatches of fabrics.” Each one received her attention in turn, and she dealt with each issue they raised in a quiet manner. Then the new script for the next day was delivered to her, with requests from Robbins and Lennart that she “go over the new changes right away.”

As the crowd dispersed from the room, Stang watched as Barbra stretched out on an army cot covered in pink sheets in the corner of the room. She began flipping through the script. “We had three new scenes in the second act tonight,” she told Stang, “so I’m a little tired.” But she was loving it. She loved getting new scripts with different things to say and do and sing every night. Robbins was still scribbling notes during each and every performance and going over them with the cast and crew the next day. Sometimes the changes were big—a whole new scene—and sometimes they were small—a rewrite of a line. But Barbra loved the challenge of something new every night.