Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand (76 page)

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Carl Esser had just opened: program bio,
Whisper to Me,
November 21, 1960, NYPL;
Bridgeport Post,
July 17, 1960.
Roy Scott, was currently in rehearsals: NYT, January 9, 1961;
Montserrat
program, NYPL.

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Outside, it was snowing: NYT, December 20–24, 1960.

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And Barbra was having her revenge: I’ve based my description on the strife between the two of them on personal interviews with Dennen and Schulenberg, as well as Dennen,
My Life with Barbra.

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a club called the Townhouse: Spada,
Streisand: Her Life.
She walked in to find: My description of this fateful New Year’s Eve is based on Dennen’s
My Life with Barbra
as well as, more important, a personal interview, in which he described Streisand, years later, confronting him about that night. Dennen said he had “blocked out” the details of the incident, claiming he did not recall having sex with a light-skinned black man, but he did not dispute Streisand’s account of it. “I don’t want to remember it, but it’s perfectly possible it happened,” he admitted. According to Dennen, Streisand told him there were “moments in life one never forgets,” and for her, catching him with a man that New Year’s Eve was one of them.
“A lot, yeah”:
Playboy,
October 1977. Asked if it was anything like she expected it to be, she replied: “Yes and no.”

5. Winter–Spring 1961

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“all the cold-shouldering”: Personal interview with Barry Dennen.
London Chop House: In 1961, chef and food critic James Beard named the Chopper as one of the ten best restaurants nationwide, the same year it won a Dartnell Survey award as one of America’s Favorites. Various newspapers, digitized collections.

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Les Gruber had looked at:
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.
“weird” was the only way:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.
“a hippie”:
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.
“a big stack of dog-eared music”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.
“I’m a fast learner”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966. The legend that Streisand learned ten songs that very first night, in just the few hours before her first show, originates here, with Chapman’s rather fanciful account, told when Streisand was a big star. Those who had worked with her in Detroit were looking back from the vantage point of 1966 with romantic nostalgia. Streisand was indeed a fast learner, but working out all that new material in such a short time defies credibility. In fact, much later, a less starry-eyed Matt Michaels told an interviewer that on her first night, Barbra sang the five (not four) songs she already knew. (
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.) This shouldn’t detract from Streisand’s achievement, however. In a week’s time she was singing at least four new numbers and being hailed for them. That’s impressive enough without needing to embellish.

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“All she needed”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.
“tough lady”:
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.
“shut up,” “ to be a star,” “in front of a mirror,” “belligerence”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.

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“could do a squib”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.
“came from Brooklyn”: Streisand made this statement on
PM East
on July 12, 1961.

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By day Fred Tew:
Wall Street Journal,
January 3, 1968;
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966; archives of
Detroit Free Press,
for which Tew wrote for many years before moving to Chrysler; interview with Mike Walter,
Detroit News
, August 26, 2000.
Her little press junket:
Detroit News,
March 4, 1961;
Windsor Star,
March 6, 1961.

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“I’m comin’ in to play”: Spada,
Streisand: Her Life.

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“striking rather than beautiful”:
Variety,
March 8, 1961.

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“sociable downtown gang”:
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.
“bachelors about town”:
Detroit News,
October 18, 2000.
“critiques,” “Do you know”:
Detroit News,
August 26, 2000.

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“You’re great”:
Detroit Magazine,
March 27, 1966.
Barbra a new contract: Agreement between London Chop House and “Barbara Striechsand,” dated March 1, 1961.
www.barbra-archives.com
.
“turn off people”:
Playboy,
October 1977.

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It had all happened rather suddenly: Anne Edwards, in
Streisand: A Biography,
quotes Bob Shanks, talent coordinator for the Paar show, as saying Streisand herself kept calling to try to book herself on the show. “I said no to Barbra Streisand,” Shanks told Edwards. This, however, was simply not how booking was done. Both Orson Bean and Ted Rozar were clear that they got Streisand the gig together. The story Shanks told of Streisand asking for his advice may have happened later, but not before she had been a guest. The image of a completely unknown Streisand calling and cajoling the Paar show on her own, making up outlandish stories to get a job, seems part of the later legend that insisted she was single-handedly responsible for her own fame.

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Madame Daunou’s salon: NYT, February 17, 1950; April 16, 1950; April 4, 1966. Also a detailed interview with Bob Schulenberg.

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“Barbara Strysand”:
Hartford Courant,
others, April 5, 1961; NYT, April 5, 1961. As to whether Dennen watched the show, he said he did not recall.

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“This girl was a young girl”: Fortunately many of Streisand’s early television appearances have been uploaded to YouTube. This first Paar show is included on the DVD
Just for the Record,
planned as a companion to the CD set of Streisand’s music in 1991 but never released. Thankfully, a bootleg version has circulated among fans for years, and it has allowed me to be precise in describing Streisand’s radio and television appearances.

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“could be accused”:
Variety,
December 27, 2004.
“hep audience”:
Variety,
August 2, 1961.
“as relaxed as an old shoe”:
Variety,
May 3, 1961.
“to showcase rising new talent”:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
April 14, 1961.

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“a zippy revue”:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
April 21, 1961.
“their sort of patter”: Spada,
Streisand: Her Life.
Bob Schulenberg also shared stories of how the humorous patter in between Streisand’s songs originated.

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“inimitable, sultry way”:
Variety,
May 3, 1961.
less than forty-eight hours: It’s often been stated that Streisand ended her run in St. Louis on May 8 and started up at the Bon Soir the very next night. But notices and advertisements in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reveal that her last show at the Crystal Palace was on Saturday, May 6. Her contract with the Bon Soir indicates she began there on Tuesday, May 9. So most likely she would have flown out of St. Louis on Sunday, May 7.

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salary raised to $175: Contract dated April 17, 1961, reproduced on Barbra Archives,
www.barbra-archives.com
.
“wrong,” “a floozy job”: Interview on
Late Night Line-Up,
BBC2, 1966. This attitude was also confirmed by Bob Schulenberg and Don Softness.
magnanimous of her to lend: Both Randall Riese and James Spada report versions of this story in their respective biographies. According to Pim Allen, a regular patron of the Bon Soir who was there for much of Streisand’s run, this occurred only on opening night.
“only intermittent nutritional value”:
Variety,
May 17, 1961.

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“bastardizing her art”:
Late Night Line-Up,
BBC2, 1966.

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“chills through all of them”:
Vanity Fair,
September 1991.
“industry people,” “a lot to learn”: Spada,
Streisand: Her Life.
It is not recorded what five songs Streisand sang at this second engagement at the Bon Soir. It’s possible that the ballad she opened with was “A Sleepin’ Bee,” but that’s just speculation.
born in Brooklyn: Most accounts say Erlichman was born in the Bronx, but the 1930 census shows him, at age seven months, living with his parents on Quentin Road in Brooklyn.

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“Jazz on the Hudson”: NYT, May 24, 1959.
Marty certainly wouldn’t have pegged Barbra: Erlichman, of course, insisted he knew right away that she was going to be huge, that he saw Oscar and Emmy and Grammy in her future, and wanted to be her manager even if she didn’t pay him right away. This sounds much like the same way Ted Rozar described his own first experience with Streisand and is, in fact, typical hyperbole from a personal manager. At the time,
Variety
was saying of Streisand’s second Bon Soir engagement that she had not “developed much box office” (May 17, 1961). Various observers from the period, such as Bob Schulenberg, Don Softness, Phyllis Diller, and others believed Erlichman’s later insistence that he knew right from the start that Barbra would be a giant superstar was simply a personal manager saying the right thing about a client.
“what Chaplin had”:
Saturday Evening Post,
September 27, 1963.
Without any niceties: My description of the first meeting between Streisand and Erlichman comes after critical reconsideration of what both have said about it and how others remember it. As noted earlier, Erlichman described their initial encounter with all sorts of hyperbole, as a shrewd manager should. He reported telling Streisand that very first night that she’d win all the awards and that she would be “the biggest movie star of them all.” This he told to the press long after Streisand had actually become a big movie star, and it suited the legend they had shaped: that she was a born star and those with keen eyes had seen the truth of that from the start. Bob Schulenberg, however, remembered the first meeting between Streisand and Erlichman much less dramatically. It was brief and pleasant. Each left an impression, but neither was making grandiose predictions about the other. However, it does seem likely that Erlichman
did
tell Streisand, as he’s always claimed, that she shouldn’t change a thing about herself. Schulenberg remembered asking Streisand soon after she met Erlichman if he wanted her to change her nose or her name, and she replied that he did not.

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Diana Kind was hopping mad: I have based my account of Diana’s reaction to Paar’s insult of her daughter on anecdotes shared with me by three of her friends, two of whom asked for anonymity. The third was Stuart Lippner, who heard the story from both Diana and Roslyn Kind.
Barbra on the Paar show: This appearance is not always listed among Streisand’s credits, but television listings reveal she appeared on the Paar show for a second time on May 22, 1961, again billed as “Barbara Strysand.” As she wasn’t using “Strysand” in her concurrent appearances at the Bon Soir, I suspect this was an error on the press release sent out by NBC to the newspapers, which seems to have been using the same spelling Streisand had given them a month earlier.

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Did Barbra ever know: It’s possible she did find out later, or that there was a similar incident when Diana defended her daughter to a critic. In the May 1965 issue of
Cosmopolitan,
Streisand told an anecdote about her mother writing a letter objecting to some reporter who’d said the young singer had “Fu Manchu nails.” According to Streisand, Diana signed the letter “Barbra’s mother.”

6. Summer 1961

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the studio technicians to stop: Interview with Don Softness.

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A week or so before Barbra: The Clancy Brothers appeared on the June 22 show; Streisand first appeared on July 12.
its debut on June 12: Background on
PM East
comes from various newspaper coverage, particularly the NYT, June 3, June 11, June 13, and June 22, 1961.
Parading into the studio: I have based my description of Streisand’s first appearance on
PM East
on interviews with Don Softness, Bob Schulenberg, and Ted Rozar, as well as Mike Wallace’s memoir,
Between You and Me
(New York: Hyperion, 2005).
Mike Wallace was aggressive: For background on Wallace, see
Between You and Me.

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“self-absorption”: Wallace admitted during his 1991
60 Minutes
interview with Streisand that he “really didn’t like her” during their time on
PM East
and that he found her “totally self-absorbed.”
“the demeanor of a diva”: Wallace,
Between You and Me.
“New York is just full of unusual”:
Just for the Record
DVD.
“more like the studio mail girl”:
Hartford Courant,
June 24, 1962.

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old friend from acting school: Rick Edelstein was interviewed on WNYC radio, September 30, 2009, and recounted the story of sneaking Barbra into the Vanguard and serving her a ginger ale because she didn’t drink.

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“an eye for promising”: Gavin,
Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret
.
When Edelstein suggested: The story of Streisand’s tryout at the Village Vanguard has been extremely difficult to pin down. Much misinformation has been written about it, turning the tryout into the stuff of myth and legend, especially in light of Streisand’s much-heralded “return” to the club in 2009. Max Gordon, in his memoir,
Live at the Village Vanguard,
remembered that she sang three numbers at the club during a Sunday matinee that Miles Davis headlined. Gordon’s wife, Lorraine, in her own memoir,
Alive at the Village Vanguard,
recalled that when Streisand tried out there she had been “singing off and on” at the Bon Soir. This dates Streisand’s appearance at the Vanguard to 1961. That year, Davis performed at the club in February, July, September, and December. In February, Streisand was in Detroit, and by September she had already gotten the job at Gordon’s other club, the Blue Angel, which had been an indirect result of her tryout at the Vanguard. So that dates her one-time appearance at the Village Vanguard to July 1961, and almost certainly to July 2, since she was in Winnipeg from July 3 to July 15. (By the time she got back to New York, Davis was gone from the Vanguard.) Along with the Gordons’ recollections, I have used Edelstein’s interview on WNYC to reconstruct this rather mythic performance. Bob Schulenberg also contributed to my understanding of the experience.
His name was Stanley Beck: My account of the Stanley Beck romance comes from Spada,
Streisand: Her Life,
as well as from the recollections of various friends.