Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisa Part 5

He kept that promise. On a night after Barbara had wowed them yet again at the Lion and agreed to defend her t.i.tle once more the following Tuesday, Barre took out a canister of marijuana, rolled a couple of joints, and taught Barbara how to smoke. Soon they were both high, and naked, and making love. Nothing the matter with the animal now.

Barre believed that he was Barbara's first lover. She told him he was, and that she was giving herself to him. Holding her in his arms, he felt her tremulous vulnerability. During daylight hours she might believe fervently that she could do anything and be anyone. But at night-naked in Barre's arms-the little voice that insisted she wasn't good enough, or beautiful enough, was as real as anything else. In these more vulnerable moments, Barbara needed rea.s.surance, and Barre did his best to give it to her. Lying there with Barbara in his arms, he felt the enormous weight of the trust she had placed in him, and he hoped he would never hurt her.

Of course, she wasn't entirely vulnerable. With sensuous strokes of her long fingernails, Barbara caressed Barre's back, a sensation both relaxing and arousing, but occasionally painful, too. Barre realized that Barbara's nails-by now three inches long, forcing her to use a pencil eraser to dial a phone-would forever "prohibit a certain degree of intimacy" between them, or between Barbara and anyone else. Never could she fully touch another human being with her hands. And if her nails symbolized her own reluctance to get too familiar, they were also ever-present reminders that if anyone trespa.s.sed too closely, she could, and would, fight back.

7.

Burke McHugh ran the Lion like his own little Vegas showplace. It didn't matter that the club was just a cubbyhole in a brownstone on West Ninth Street near Sixth Avenue, the kind of place that never saw its shows listed in the calendar section of the Times. McHugh still populated his stage with people he considered stars, such as Dawn Hampton, whose hot jazz regularly burned up the back room. The Streisand kid-the one who'd been winning his contests for the last few weeks-also had potential. She was back again tonight, handing her music to pianist Pat McElligott, telling him that she'd added a couple of new numbers. If she won again tonight, McHugh had decided, he'd have to retire her from the contest so somebody else could have a chance. He regretted having to put an end to Barbara's run, however, since the little waif had been good for business. Word had gotten around that she was special. "Talented in a way n.o.body else is," patrons were saying. And what showman didn't love discovering someone like that?

She was a sharp cookie, that Streisand. After winning her second contest, she'd told McHugh that she wanted three pictures of herself, not just one, on the sign promoting the Sat.u.r.day night show. She wasn't beautiful, but she had a look, McHugh thought. He would know. With his cla.s.sic all-American handsomeness, he'd been one of the nation's top male models. For several years he'd been the man shaving his face in the Gillette razor television commercials. He'd also managed his own modeling agency, where he'd learned that beautiful people weren't always the best salespeople. "Perfect" models didn't have the same appeal, McHugh believed, as those who looked "real," who were "believable," and thus "saleable."

Barbara was as real as they got, and the Lion's regulars had taken to her. She'd been hired to work the coat-check room during the week. The offbeat characters who patronized the club all adored her. Barbara had quickly figured out that the clientele was largely gay, but had nonetheless been surprised to learn just how gay. That first Sat.u.r.day she'd performed, Cis had come to cheer her on, and Barbara had pointed out that they were the only women in the house, as if Cis couldn't have seen that herself.

For tonight's compet.i.tion, Barbara was adding "Why Try to Change Me Now?" and "Long Ago (and Far Away)," both Sinatra standards, to her set. She and Barre had been practicing them all week, giving the songs as many unusual touches as possible. It was Barbara's offbeat personality as much as her gorgeous voice that drew other performers to the Lion to check her out. Popular stage and television actor Orson Bean was brought by some friends one night, and he'd thought she was "simply fabulous." Paul Dooley, who'd recently made a splash in Fallout, a revue at the Renata Theater on Bleecker Street, was another who'd heard about this "crazy girl with the beautiful voice" and came by the Lion to see for himself. Dooley was struck by the fact that Barbara "had the poise of a forty-year-old saloon singer" when she was only eighteen years old. Of her audience she seemed to demand, "Look at me!"-and, indeed, Dooley found that he couldn't look away. "Young people don't usually have that kind of confidence," he said. "They don't usually trust their talent."

Yet Barbara was so unusual that not everyone responded to her in the same way. While Bean and Dooley saw her as fabulous and confident, Walter Clemons, who played piano for Mabel Mercer and, like the others, had slipped in to see what all the fuss was about, perceived her as "terribly nervous." In Clemons's view, Barbara was "hostile" to her audience, with none of Mercer's legendary generosity. Her eccentric syntax seemed to him "convoluted and interior," leaving him confused as to what she was talking about. All he could feel coming from her was the "terrible resentment of an ugly girl."

But Clemons was in the minority. That night Barbara won the contest once again, and Burke McHugh made much hoopla over the fact that he was retiring her as the Lion's "undefeated champion," which, of course, only prompted more hoots and hollers and whistles from the crowd. Barbara would perform one more week as the winner, then it had to be someone else's turn.

Standing off to the side, Barre noticed the look in Barbara's eyes. He'd seen it every time she'd been declared the winner, the champion, the best. Her face would come alive as if she'd been "plugged into the wall," an "electric" look generated by the power of the applause. Barbara had been so hungry for attention, so desperate for praise and affirmation, Barre thought-and "now she was getting it." And the look in her eyes told him that she believed "she could go on getting it for the rest of her life."

8.

In the cab on the way over to one of her final performances at the Lion, Barbara told Terry Leong that she was changing her name. He was surprised. He didn't think she'd ever do such a thing.

Not her last name, Barbara told him. Her first.

Terry had always known his friend wanted to be unique. But he also knew that she didn't want some made-up stage name such as Joanie Sands, which some people had been suggesting, "because that was too false." The name Barbara had never thrilled her-in fact, she said that she "hated" it -but ditching it entirely seemed too drastic, an indication that she was "losing touch with reality." So she told Terry that she had come up with a different idea.

When they got to the club, she strode over to Burke McHugh and instructed him to change the spelling of her name on her posters. "I wanna take an 'a' out of Barbara," she said. An "a," he repeated, not understanding. "Yeah," she said. "The second one." From now on, she insisted, her name would be spelled B-A-R-B-R-A.

There were millions of Barbaras out there, she reasoned. But by dropping one little vowel, she would become "the only Barbra in the world."

CHAPTER THREE

Summer 1960

1.

It was time to get serious again. That's what Barbra was telling her new friend Bob Schulenberg as they strolled through Times Square. She was pointing up at the marquees-Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker at the Playhouse Theatre and Chita Rivera and d.i.c.k Van d.y.k.e in Bye Bye Birdie at the Martin Beck-and wishing her name was up in those lights. This was where she wanted to be, not in some little club on the first floor of a brownstone in the Village.

Bob seemed to understand her like no one else did. He was so different from Barre, who in his push for Barbra to sing seemed to have forgotten that what she really wanted to do was act. In fact, Barre had seemed to forget her entirely of late. He'd been spending most of his time up in Central Park, where Henry V had opened on June 29. Barbra felt his absence keenly, especially since most nights she had to trek back to Brooklyn and stay with her mother if she wanted a roof over her head. She had never been very good at playing second fiddle, even to William Shakespeare.

That summer day, she was lonely and feeling not a little bit insecure, her friends believed. Here she had given herself to a man she thought truly loved her, and now suddenly he was gone for long stretches at a time. Her fears weren't difficult to understand. The knowledge of Barre's bis.e.xuality "was always there in the back of her mind," said one friend. When he wasn't with her, Barbra wondered, where was he?

One friend also believed that a certain amount of professional jealousy had bubbled to the surface. When the Times review came out the day after Henry V opened, Barre had been ecstatic to see he'd gotten a mention. Critic Arthur Gelb had felt that Barre's scene was "as funny as Shakespeare intended." Getting his name in the New York Times was thrilling-and even the omission of the accent aigu hadn't dampened his excitement. Of course Barbra was happy for him. But it wasn't long after this that she resolved "to once again get serious about her own acting career," her friend observed.

And no one seemed to encourage her as much as Bob did. He was an old friend of Barre's whom Barbra had met late one night just after he'd arrived in New York from Los Angeles. Bob was staying with Barre until he could find a place of his own. He was a good-looking young man who, when Barbra first met him, was wearing a conservative suit and gla.s.ses. But when he'd looked at Barbra's outfit, he'd revealed a rather eclectic interest in fashion. "Are those authentic T-strap shoes?" he had asked with excitement.

Barbra had smiled and told him that they were indeed. Bob adored the shoes, as well as Barbra's knee-length velvet skirt of mulberry violet and her pink nylons. "Who knew there were pink nylons!" Bob exclaimed. Heading over to the Pam Pam, an all-night diner on Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, the three of them had talked until nearly dawn about clothes, theater, and ambition. Bob was an artist; his tattered sketchbook was rarely out of his hands. He'd come to New York to be an ill.u.s.trator, though in the interim he was paying his bills by working for the advertising agency Ellington & Co. at their Fifth Avenue offices. Like Terry, Bob was an artist stuck, for the moment anyway, in a nine-to-five job.

Yet it was precisely that nine-to-five schedule that allowed Bob to spend more time with Barbra lately than Barre was. And now that Bob had found his own apartment on Gay Street, Barbra found it easier to store her clothes at his place than at Barre's, since she never knew when Barre would be home. The sequined skirts sparkling next to Bob's tweed jackets had led more than one of his friends to inquire jokingly if he'd become a transvest.i.te since moving to New York. "No, just the friend of a girl who's going to be a big star," he would reply. Barbra, of course, was enchanted.

2.

A measure of relief washed over Barbra. She'd been asked by Curt Conway to take over the part of Hortense the French maid in The Boy Friend, slated for the following month at the Cecilwood Playhouse, the Theatre Studio's summer theater in Fishkill, New York. To be chosen to perform at the Cecilwood was quite an honor. Although all Theatre Studio members were eligible, no student was "promised partic.i.p.ation as a condition of his training." Barbra was ecstatic that her teachers seemed finally to be recognizing her talent and hard work.

But before she did anything else, she had to see Barre in Henry V. For weeks she'd been saying that she would and now it was Sat.u.r.day, July 16, closing night. Although Shakespeare Festival productions were free, Barre had arranged for Barbra and Bob to be given special house seats up close to the stage. He desperately wanted Barbra to see his "first real moment of triumph on stage." Scoping out the sight lines, Barre had a.s.sured himself that his ladylove would be able to view him perfectly.

For the occasion, Bob was giving Barbra a whole new look. At her temporary house-sitting digs on West Fifty-fourth Street, Bob painstakingly glued false eyelashes to Barbra's lids, extending them around to the sides of her face the way Claudette Colbert and Katharine Hepburn had popularized in the 1930s. From studying photographs of movie stars, Bob knew it wasn't the length of a woman's eyelashes that made them beautiful, but the thickness. So he cut a second pair of lashes very short and glued them just above the first pair, providing the fullness Barbra's eyes needed to really pop out.

This wasn't the first time Bob had experimented with different looks for Barbra. When they went out on the town, he sometimes glued sequins to her eyelids, a trick he'd learned designing Ice Capades shows at UCLA. Another time, while having herring for dinner, they'd both admired the fluorescent skin of the fish and wondered if it might work better than the sequins. So they tried cutting it up with the idea of gluing it to Barbra's eyes, but the skin stunk so much that they soaked it in perfume overnight. In the morning all the color was gone. They stuck with the sequins.

Another night, on a whim, Bob had told Barbra to pick out everything she had in red. Out came a knit dress, a belt, shoes, and a cloche hat. Sitting Barbra down in front of a mirror, Bob applied her makeup in similar shades of red. Not just her lips and cheeks, but also her eyelids, which "made it seem as if red was her natural color," Bob said. The whole look was finished off with a cla.s.sic black trench coat.

Of course, such glamour needed to be shared, Bob declared. Even though it was close to midnight, they ambled over to the all-night Bra.s.serie in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue. Along the way, people stopped and stared at the woman in red with the gorgeous legs, long neck, and tiny waist. At the brightly lit Bra.s.serie, the usual clientele of artists and sophisticates cast their eyes in Barbra's direction as she sauntered in, dramatically flung her coat over a chair, and ordered choucroute garnie-sauerkraut with sausages and potatoes. A man came by the table and told her he'd loved her at the Lion. He asked her to sign his napkin. Barbra was thrilled. Bob, she felt, was turning her into a star.

At long last people were seeing her as she'd always believed she should be seen. Bob was bringing out an inner beauty that even Barbra hadn't suspected was there. When Bob had first turned her around in her chair to face the mirror, she'd found herself liking what she saw reflected there. No Method acting was required, no exercise in self-persuasion. She honestly saw how beautiful she could be, and the sensation was intoxicating.

In the last couple of weeks, Barbra and Bob had grown very close. Barbra sensed her new friend had something more in common with Barre than just their years together at UCLA. Bob eventually admitted that he, too, was gay to Barbra, though, like Barre, he wasn't fully open about it yet; telling friends back in L.A. that he lived on Gay Street in Greenwich Village was never easy for him. As she did with Barre, Barbra accepted the information placidly, though she rarely brought it up.

Bob found that, free of the kind of s.e.xual tension that existed between Barbra and Barre, he could take real pleasure in shaping his protegee, who was making remarkable progress. Not so long ago, he wouldn't have risked taking Barbra to the Bra.s.serie. When he'd first met her, she didn't have what he called "restaurant smarts." The napkin never went into her lap, for example; instead, Barbra would clumsily set her plate on top of it. If a vegetable was unrecognizable, she'd pick it up and dangle it across the table between her long fingernails to ask Bob what it was. Horrified, Bob realized that Barbra's mother had never taught her the fine points of etiquette that had been so meticulously imparted to him. But instead of embarra.s.sing Barbra by alerting her to her mistakes, he just made sure that she saw everything he did, from putting his napkin in his lap to keeping his elbows off the table. It was difficult, Barbra admitted, training herself "to keep one hand" in her lap. But eventually, to Bob's great admiration, she caught on.

This night their outing was supposed to be very simple. No restaurants, no nightclubs, no particular etiquette. Just a trip to Central Park to see Barre's show. Still, Bob wanted Barbra to look striking. He dressed her in a black turtleneck and black Danskin tights under a black cardigan. He applied her makeup in shades of ash and gray. It took time to get her look just right. Bob would step back and look at his creation, who would sometimes turn to catch glimpses of herself in the mirror. "Patience," he'd tell her, and Barbra would giggle in antic.i.p.ation. She was never happier than when a man was fussing over her. A little more blush, Bob decided, then another layer of mascara.

Meanwhile, the hands on the clock behind them continued to turn. Neither of them noticed the time, or at least neither of them commented on it.