Free Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William J. Mann

pianists at the Lion had also basked regularly in the hoots and whistles of the crowd. But for Barbara, this was something very new. She’d taken her bows for
Picnic
and
Driftwood
and
The Insect Comedy
—but she’d been part of ensembles then, and the audiences had been cheering for everyone, not just her. That night at the Lion, however, the cheers had been solely for her, and they went on and on. Suddenly the invisible girl from Brooklyn was being seen by everyone in the room. What’s more, they liked what they saw.
    The Lion expected her to appear again, on Saturday night, and sing on a bill with three other acts. Barbara was leery about being roped into a gig that might keep her from auditioning for roles in the theater. She told friends that she only agreed to the Lion’s request because they promised dinner—a line that quickly became a running joke among Barré’s friends, that Barbara could be had for a baked potato. But Barré had convinced her that a gig at the Lion would be great exposure for her, as both a singer and an actress. And he pointed out that they had nearly a week this time to prepare a really strong repertoire.
    That was why they’d come to the Roundtable. In between rehearsals for
Henry V
in Central Park, Barré had been playing his records nearly nonstop for Barbara, seeing if anything from Ethel Waters or Ruth Etting might tickle her fancy. He instructed her to listen to the way they all told stories with their songs. As an actress, she could do that, too. “A Sleepin’ Bee” could be a three-act play, Barré suggested, told first by a young girl, then by a grown woman, then finally by an old lady looking back. Barbara responded well to the technique. But she insisted she couldn’t “learn from a record,”and Barré agreed. So he’d brought her here to the Roundtable so she could watch and listen to someone on whom she might model her act.
    By this point, Mabel Mercer was an old crustof a chanteuse, sitting like a dowager queen on a throne before her audience, her voice croaky and tattered from decades of singing in smoky rooms like this one. Barbara watched closely as Mercer came out onto the stage wearing a brocade gown. A soft pink light picked her out in the dark mahogany room. At sixty, she looked much older. Her cinnamon skin had turned to leather. With perfect posture Mercer sat down in her chair, barely moving at all as she started to sing. The most she did was occasionally lift a shaky hand toward the audience.
    Mercer began her first song, and Barbara wasn’t impressed. “She can’t sing,” she whispered to Barré.
    Barré understood that Mercer was “an acquired taste, like certain ripe cheeses.” So he tried explaining to Barbara that the old pro was a “song stylist” and that she should concentrate on her phrasing, not her voice.
    Barbara complied. She listened to Mercer rasp her way through a couple of ballads, a storyteller as much as a singer. “I can do this,” she whispered to Barré at last. It was the same conviction that made her sure that she could play Liesl or Hamlet or Juliet—the belief that she could do anything if just given the chance.
    Mercer ended with Bart Howard’s “Would You Believe It?” Looking out over the audience with half-lidded eyes, she suddenly snapped her fingers, just once, as she was finishing the song. Barré had never seen Mabel Mercer snap her fingers before, and he was overjoyed, leading the applause with enthusiasm.
    Barbara was less enthusiastic. But Barré had seen how she’d observed the old pro, taking note of the way Mercer had turned her head, the way she’d sung her songs with beginnings, middles, and ends. It was exactly the way Barré had been coaching Barbara to do. He hoped she’d picked up enough bits and pieces to make into her own.
    Barbara, however, when she was asked, insisted that watching other performers taught her absolutely nothing—except “what not to do.”

6.
    The first time they’d tried