by William Mann
Fifty years ago tonight, a unusual-looking, unknown kid rolled out
onto a Broadway stage on the casters of her secretary's chair and sailed
straight into pop-culture immortality. The show was I Can Get It for You Wholesale,
and the kid was Barbra Streisand. Most in the audience that night
assumed her name to be misspelled in their Playbills. That her name was
there at all was only because director Arthur Laurents was taking a
chance that the largely inexperienced 19-year-old, in a showy supporting
part, might make up for a flawed book with her big voice and even
bigger stage presence.
Two years earlier, Streisand had arrived in Manhattan penniless and
without connections. But she'd known exactly how to get what she wanted.
The Legend, as it's come down to us over the past half a century, has
always insisted that Streisand's triumphs were fated and unrehearsed.
But from the moment he first saw her at auditions, Laurents pegged what
he called Streisand's "calculated spontaneity." She knew exactly what
she was doing. She threw off a glamorous old fur coat to reveal a plain
wool dress underneath, hardly the high couture most aspiring actresses
chose for auditions. Her hair wasn't coiffed either, but instead knotted
in an old-maidish bun. "Spinster Incarnate," Laurents thought, which
was precisely what he needed for the role of the harried secretary, Miss
Marmelstein.
Even more shtick was to come: Streisand's sheet music, taped together
and held comically to her waist, suddenly accordioned after her as she
bolted onto stage. "A good trick," Laurents admitted, especially since
it was punctuated by a "trilling giggle of feigned surprise." But he
felt she was "trying too hard." Indeed, when it came time for her to
sing, Streisand conspicuously plucked the chewing gum out of her mouth
and, using a bit of business she'd perfected in her nightclub act,
impudently stuck it under the chair. Laurents rolled his eyes. "She'd
better have a voice," he thought to himself.
She did.
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Thursday, March 22, 2012
(MY view) Barbra Streisand: An Icon's 50th Anniversary in Showbiz!
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