Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 3

CHAPTER TWO

Spring 1960

1.

For Barbara, telling a director he was wrong was a radical new idea and possibly a dangerous one at that. But that's exactly what Barre was doing, and it was with wide eyes and open mouth that she stood behind him watching.

From the auditorium Vasek Simek was shouting, "Did you never see moths?" His arms were flailing and his bushy eyebrows were moving across his forehead like caterpillars. "Flap, flap, flap! They keep moving!" Except, in his Czech accent, it came out, "Dey keep movink!" It was all Barbara could do to keep from laughing.

But Barre wasn't amused. "The girls can burst into little flurries of flap-flap-flaps," he argued. "But we have to figure out exactly when. It can't be all the time."

For Barbara, Barre Dennen was a revelation. He had joined the cast late. He was a friend of Carl Esser's from UCLA, where he'd known Simek on campus. And unlike the rest of the cast, Barre wasn't intimidated by their director's temper tantrums. Since rehearsals had begun in April, Vasek had used his a.s.sociation with the Actors Studio to lord over his cast, parading around the Jan Hus Playhouse like some cut-rate Stanislavski. But when finally confronted by Barre Dennen, he spilled his coffee all over himself, swore, and stalked off in a huff. That was probably the last they'd see of him for the day.

Barbara tapped Barre on the shoulder. She wanted to know if he really thought what he'd just done was a good idea. Did he want to keep them there all night? She explained that when Vasek got upset, it often took him hours to get over it. The Insect Comedy was opening in less than a week. Getting Vasek riled up was not helpful.

Barre just shrugged. Taking advantage of their volatile director's absence, he sat on the edge of the stage and motioned for Barbara to sit beside him. She complied. He lit up a cigarette and asked if she wanted one. She demurred; she'd given up smoking for the time being. The late-afternoon sun was filling up the hall. From the open windows came the heavily accented voices of Czech women on the street below. Barre looked over at Barbara with dark, soulful eyes. Yes, he told her, he did think confronting Vasek was a good idea. It was never worth staying quiet if it meant the difference between being mediocre and being good. And was he wrong to feel she wanted to be good?

"More than good," she replied quickly.

He smiled. The discussion was over.

Barbara liked this guy. They'd been hanging out a lot together since he'd joined the cast. Something very different was crackling between her and Barre than what she felt for Terry. With Terry, Barbara whispered and giggled; with Barre, she found herself holding eye contact for a few seconds longer than necessary, which made her cheeks flush as she finally looked away. The attraction between them was obvious to Terry, and to anyone else who saw them together. A few inches taller than Barbara, Barre had jet-black hair and a smile that was both sweet and sly. He could be flip and funny, smart and ironic, but he could also be sensitive.

He was a rich kid-a "Beverly Hills brat," in his own words. A theatrical life had been foretold when his mother had bestowed upon him at birth an accent aigu even though his name was p.r.o.nounced "Barry." His father had come to Southern California as if he were the hero in a Horatio Alger tale, fleeing a hardscrabble life in Chicago to make a fortune selling venetian blinds in the land of sunshine and palm trees. Barre grew up in a luxurious modern gla.s.s house in Coldwater Canyon, with a pool and a yard and housekeepers and gardeners. When Barre announced he wanted to be an actor, his father hadn't tried to talk him out of it, but happily enrolled him in UCLA's theater department. After graduation, he had generously paid for Barre's move to New York. Since that time, Barre had understudied the role of Bub in the revival of Leave It to Jane at the Sheridan Square Playhouse and landed a rather exquisite apartment in a brand-new building on Ninth Street in Greenwich Village, all paid for by Dad. Friends predicted that golden boy Barre Dennen was on his way to big things.

He was twenty-two. Barbara had just turned eighteen. Their first time out together, sharing a baked potato with sour cream and chives at a midtown diner, she'd drilled him like an investigative journalist. What was it like to have a live-in maid? What did his pool look like? What kinds of cars did his parents drive? What kinds of furs did his mother own? Barre found her questions captivating. There'd been no one like her in California.

As the rest of their cla.s.s chattered about Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot who had crash-landed in Russia and was being called a spy, Barbara and Barre spent the time talking about acting. The sun was setting; the rehearsal was done. Given Vasek's intransigence, it was only at times like these, after they had disbanded for the night, that Barbara could get any real advice about her craft.

The auditorium was emptying as Barbara stood facing Barre, arms akimbo. She wanted the truth. He was a theater-school graduate, after all, so his opinion mattered. She wanted to know if she'd gotten to the heart of her character-a s.e.xy little b.u.t.terfly who makes violent love, desperate to stay alive. "Be honest," she insisted.

Barre smiled. He asked her if she'd ever seen Mae West. Barbara didn't understand why he was asking the question, but she told him she thought she had, in some old movie, late at night. Barre suggested that maybe her b.u.t.terfly was a little too esoteric, that it might benefit from "a little Mae West." Barbara was surprised. That was his suggestion? Mae West? Nothing about going deep down inside and feeling what a b.u.t.terfly might feel when it's winter and she knows she's got to mate because she's about to die? Barre nodded. "Try a little Mae West," he said. "Can you do Mae West?"

Barbara tried, but couldn't quite get the right Westian inflection, so Barre demonstrated for her. "Oh, you," he intoned, one hand on his hip, the other pushing at an imaginary bouffant. "You shameless creature, you."

Good mimic that she was, Barbara quickly got the hang of it. "Oh," she purred. "You great, strong, handsome thing."

"That's it," he told her. "Play it like that!"

They both dissolved in laughter.

Method acting indeed.

2.

The Insect Comedy came and went, three performances, May 8, 9, and 10, with barely a notice from anyone. So much for Vasek's eminent reputation. So much for Barbara's going straight to the top. One German-language newspaper had, however, called her "ausgezeichnet"-excellent-so Barbara hung on to that, thankful she'd come up with that Mae West business to set herself apart. That had been clever on her part. But now she needed a job. She had rent to pay.

The ushering at the Lunt-Fontanne had ended when she'd signed up for The Insect Comedy. For Barbara, jobs never seemed to last longer than a few months. Her first job in Manhattan had been as a clerk at a business firm. There she'd driven her bosses crazy by stumbling in late nearly every morning, groggy from late-night, after-cla.s.s critiques she and the others held over pancakes and syrup at some Times Square eatery. Yet what really grated on her employers' nerves was Barbara's tendency to hum as she sashayed around the office filing papers and answering telephones. "Stop humming around here!" one of them barked at her. "What do you think you're in, a show?"

She wasn't in a show then, but she was hoping she would be now. The Sound of Music was preparing for a fall tour. Florence Henderson, a perky chanteuse who'd made a splash on Broadway in producer David Merrick's f.a.n.n.y a few years back, was likely to take over Mary Martin's part. The other roles hadn't yet been cast, so Barbara had set her sights on Liesl, the pretty eldest daughter who sings "Sixteen Going on Seventeen." She had no worries about her singing voice. When she was a kid trilling on the stoops of her neighborhood, she knew the reason people didn't chase her away was because they liked her voice. At Erasmus Hall, she'd sung in the Chorale Club, even if she was frustrated that she never got a solo-strictly ensemble work was never for Barbara since it precluded a chance for her to shine on her own. But anyone who'd ever heard her recording of "You'll Never Know" agreed that she could sing.

Still, trying out for The Sound of Music was a lark. Liesl wasn't Juliet or Medea. The show was hardly Barbara's idea of great theater. This time there were no grand hopes tucked between the pages of her audition script. Heading into the audition, she knew this was just about getting a job. But warbling "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" would be better than filing papers in an office.

Greeting her at the audition was Eddie Blum, a bluff, hearty fellow who'd been casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein for the last couple of years, overseeing Flower Drum Song before taking on The Sound of Music. At the piano was Peter Daniels, an Englishman with piercing blue eyes that looked out from behind a pair of thick gla.s.ses. No doubt both were surprised by the young gamine who'd wandered into the studio to sing for them. Barbara stood there chewing gum, as obviously Jewish as a girl could be, trying out for the part of Liesl von Trapp, that flower of young Aryan maidenhood. Blum was amused-and impressed-by Barbara's chutzpah in thinking she could convincingly play the stepdaughter of Florence Henderson.

She asked Daniels if he could accompany her on "Allegheny Moon," Patti Page's. .h.i.t from a few years back. Daniels began tickling the ivories. "Allegheny moon," Barbara sang. "Your silver beams can lead the way to golden dreams ... So shine, shine, shine ..."

Blum was transfixed.

"What Eddie Blum saw," said one friend, "was this brave little meydele with a big schnozzle and acne on her face singing her heart out for the part and not seeing any reason why she shouldn't. She was a teenage girl. Liesl was a teenage girl. Why shouldn't a Jewish girl come in and try out for Liesl? And that's what charmed Eddie Blum."

3.

Barre was pleasantly surprised. The kid could really sing.

They were at his apartment at 69 West Ninth Street. The windows were closed tightly to seal off noise from the traffic below. Carl Esser was tuning his guitar and Barbara was practicing a few bars of the song she was about to sing. Barre listened approvingly as he screwed microphones onto stands and plugged cables into the jacks of his Ampex stereo tape recorder. No longer would Barbara have to wait weeks or pay big bucks to have a record made of her singing. Barre possessed the latest technology right here in his apartment to give her a tape this very afternoon.

She had called, asking for a favor. Eddie Blum had thought she was terrific, and although he didn't give her the job on the spot, he'd asked for a tape of her singing, presumably so he could convince some higher-ups-maybe Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves-that she was perfect for Liesl.

Listening as she practiced Sammy Cahn's "Day by Day," Barre was impressed not only with the quality of Barbara's voice but with the determination and focus she brought to the job at hand. She was "on fire with commitment to get it right," he thought. Should she sit or stand? Where should she position herself so the tape recorder could best pick up her voice? Was Carl's guitar tuned correctly?

Barre supposed it was Barbara's preoccupation with making the tape that led her to barely react when he shared his own big news. Just days before, he'd been signed by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival, which put on free plays during the summer at the Belvedere Lake Theatre in Central Park. First up was Henry V, and Barre had landed the small but potentially scene-grabbing part of a French soldier. He'd told Barbara all about it when she and Carl first arrived, and her response was to say "great" and then ask whether she should use the microphone or not when making her tape.

She had arrived, as usual, lugging her crumpled paper shopping bags. Feathers and sequined clothes tumbled over the top of one bag; another seemed ready to burst from her collection of b.u.t.tons and sc.r.a.ps of cloth. A third bag held costume jewelry and shoes. Barbara told anyone who asked that she never knew when she might be called upon to whip up a costume. But a fourth bag was a relatively new addition to Barbara's luggage. Barre noticed that she was now toting around crackers, fruit, and bottles of juice. He was aware she was leading a rather nomadic existence at the moment, having been forced to give up her apartment due to a lack of funds. She was staying at various places, including her brother's office on West Forty-fifth Street, and sometimes housesitting for friends Barre had never met who lived on West Fifty-fourth Street. He knew better than to offer any sympathy or express any concern about her living situation. Barbara would have just brushed him off by insisting she was fine.

She was looking at Barre now, waiting for his signal to start. Checking the connections on the tape recorder one more time, he nodded.

Carl played a few chords on his guitar, then Barbara began to sing. "Day by day, I'm falling more in love with you, and day by day, my love seems to grow ..."

Barre watched and listened. She was good. No doubt about that. Very good. He wondered why Barbara had never told him that she could sing. Certainly she knew about his love of music. Visits to his apartment meant listening to Edith Piaf or Shirley Horn or Billie Holiday on Barre's record player. But never had Barbara told Barre that she could sing herself. He found it very odd. Certainly Barbara was never shy when it came to announcing or demonstrating her talents.

When she was done singing, Barre switched off the tape recorder. He told her he'd make a copy since he was certain she'd never get the tape back after she gave it to Blum. Barbara thanked him. He added that she had a beautiful voice. Again, she thanked him, and their eyes, as usual, held a little longer than absolutely necessary.

Barre wasn't surprised that Barbara hung around after Carl packed up his guitar and left. She sat beside Barre on the couch, their shoulders touching. Barre told her she needed to do something with her voice. It was a gift he hadn't known about. Her ability to sing opened up a whole new range of options for her. But beyond trying out for the part of Liesl, Barbara seemed ambivalent about the idea. Barre kept on pressing her. Down the block, he said, there was a nightclub called the Lion. He went there sometimes. The Lion held talent contests on Tuesday nights. She should enter. She could win fifty bucks. She could certainly use some cash at the moment, couldn't she?

Barbara said she'd consider it. But nothing, she said, could get in the way of her becoming an actress.