Read Online Streisand: Her Life by James Spada - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Spada
Tags: Another Evening with Harry Stoones, Bon Soir Club, My Passion for Design, Ted Rozar, I Can Get it for You Wholesale and Streisand, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Streisand Spada, Mike Douglas and Streisand, A Star is Born, Stoney End, George Segal and Streisand, Marvin Hamlisch, Dustin Hoffman and Streisand, The Prince of Tides, Barbara Joan Streisand, Evergreen, Bill Clinton Streisand, Ray Stark, Ryan O’Neal, Barwood Films, Diana Streisand Kind, Sinatra and Streisand, Streisand Her Life, Omar Sharif and Streisand, Roslyn Kind, Nuts and Barbra Streisand, Barbara Streisand, Barbra Joan Streisand, Barbra Streisand, Fanny Brice and Steisand, Streisand, Richard Dreyfuss and Streisand, Amy Irving, MGM Grand, Emanuel Streisand, Brooklyn and Streisand, Yentl, Streisand Concert, Miss Marmelstein, Arthur Laurents, Columbia Records, Happening in Central Park, Don Johnson and Streisand, Marty Erlichman, Judy Garland Streisand, Jason Emanuel Gould, by James Spada, One Voice, Barry Dennen, James Brolin and Barbra, Theater Studio of New York
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the stoop and yell at her for not doing things around the house she was supposed to have done, that sort of thing. Barbara and her mother were always fighting with each other.”
For escape now, more and more, Barbara would go to the movies. Next door to Erasmus Hall there was a theater that usually played Italian films. “I’d come out of school and go directly to this theater,” Barbra said. “I never knew much about the films or who made them, and I didn’t understand the language, but Italian films enchanted me. As a matter of fact, one of my most significant experiences was when I saw Eleonora Duse in an Italian film made in 19 1 6. On every level it was extraordinary.”
She liked American movies too. On Saturday she’d attend matinees at the Loews’ Kings Theater on Flatbush Avenue, a cavernous picture palace built in 1928 in a grand melange of Baroque, Art Deco, and Italianate styles dominated by a huge curving stairway with elaborate rococo banisters. “I used to go there because they had the greatest ice cream,” Barbra said. “They had these cones filled with ice cream that was inside the cone—there was nothing sticking out on top. Very unusual, I thought, and great. I didn’t care what the movies were, it’s just the ice cream was sensational.”
But the movies, whatever they were, usually enthralled her. That summer she saw Guys and Dolls and fell in love with Marlon Brando. “I thought, What a gorgeous man!” On film, everything seemed perfect—even Damon Runyan’s world of Broadway low-lifes. The clothes were colorful, the hairdos and makeup flawless, the streets pristine. “Life was so beautiful in the movies,” she recalled. “Handsome men, beautiful women falling in love, and music playing when they’d kiss.” She longed to be Jean Simmons and kiss Marlon Brando.
According to the manager of the theater, whenever Barbara left a movie starring Jerry Lewis, she would hang around the lobby and imitate the goofy, rubber-faced comedian to the delight of the other patrons.
The glittery movie worlds that entranced her so made her own life in that small apartment with no telephone and no room of her own seem all the worse. “My mother used to hate it when I went to the movies, because I was always grouchy for a couple of days afterward. All I remember of those Saturday afternoons was walking out into the grim reality of a hot New York summer and not having enough money to [take the bus] back home.” She would approach a policeman, put on her most forlorn face, and ask, “Could you tell me how I could walk to Nostrand and Newkirk?” The patrolman would invariably tell her to wait rather than embark on such a long trek on foot. When the bus came he would tell the driver to let her on for free and give her a transfer. “It was really great,” Barbra recalled. “I would save the ten cents.”
D URING THE SECOND half of her sophomore year, Barbara learned about the Malden Bridge Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York. Its artistic director, John Hale, was on the lookout for young apprentices to spend the summer toiling in all aspects of the theater. Applicants had to be over seventeen and would be judged on the basis of a letter explaining their desire to be involved in summer stock. Those accepted would be charged $300 the season for room and board.
Lying about her age, Barbara wrote to Hale about her ambition to become an actress, about how much she wanted to learn everything she could about the theater. The letter persuaded Hale to meet with Barbara when he visited New York City. During the interview, her fervor—or perhaps it was her chutzpah—led him to take her on, and he told her to be in Malden Bridge as soon as school let out early in June.
Diana balked. Barbara was too young, she insisted, to go so far away by herself. She’d be gone too long. She’d never fit in with the company, all of whom would be older than she. Barbara, of course,
For escape now, more and more, Barbara would go to the movies. Next door to Erasmus Hall there was a theater that usually played Italian films. “I’d come out of school and go directly to this theater,” Barbra said. “I never knew much about the films or who made them, and I didn’t understand the language, but Italian films enchanted me. As a matter of fact, one of my most significant experiences was when I saw Eleonora Duse in an Italian film made in 19 1 6. On every level it was extraordinary.”
She liked American movies too. On Saturday she’d attend matinees at the Loews’ Kings Theater on Flatbush Avenue, a cavernous picture palace built in 1928 in a grand melange of Baroque, Art Deco, and Italianate styles dominated by a huge curving stairway with elaborate rococo banisters. “I used to go there because they had the greatest ice cream,” Barbra said. “They had these cones filled with ice cream that was inside the cone—there was nothing sticking out on top. Very unusual, I thought, and great. I didn’t care what the movies were, it’s just the ice cream was sensational.”
But the movies, whatever they were, usually enthralled her. That summer she saw Guys and Dolls and fell in love with Marlon Brando. “I thought, What a gorgeous man!” On film, everything seemed perfect—even Damon Runyan’s world of Broadway low-lifes. The clothes were colorful, the hairdos and makeup flawless, the streets pristine. “Life was so beautiful in the movies,” she recalled. “Handsome men, beautiful women falling in love, and music playing when they’d kiss.” She longed to be Jean Simmons and kiss Marlon Brando.
According to the manager of the theater, whenever Barbara left a movie starring Jerry Lewis, she would hang around the lobby and imitate the goofy, rubber-faced comedian to the delight of the other patrons.
The glittery movie worlds that entranced her so made her own life in that small apartment with no telephone and no room of her own seem all the worse. “My mother used to hate it when I went to the movies, because I was always grouchy for a couple of days afterward. All I remember of those Saturday afternoons was walking out into the grim reality of a hot New York summer and not having enough money to [take the bus] back home.” She would approach a policeman, put on her most forlorn face, and ask, “Could you tell me how I could walk to Nostrand and Newkirk?” The patrolman would invariably tell her to wait rather than embark on such a long trek on foot. When the bus came he would tell the driver to let her on for free and give her a transfer. “It was really great,” Barbra recalled. “I would save the ten cents.”
D URING THE SECOND half of her sophomore year, Barbara learned about the Malden Bridge Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York. Its artistic director, John Hale, was on the lookout for young apprentices to spend the summer toiling in all aspects of the theater. Applicants had to be over seventeen and would be judged on the basis of a letter explaining their desire to be involved in summer stock. Those accepted would be charged $300 the season for room and board.
Lying about her age, Barbara wrote to Hale about her ambition to become an actress, about how much she wanted to learn everything she could about the theater. The letter persuaded Hale to meet with Barbara when he visited New York City. During the interview, her fervor—or perhaps it was her chutzpah—led him to take her on, and he told her to be in Malden Bridge as soon as school let out early in June.
Diana balked. Barbara was too young, she insisted, to go so far away by herself. She’d be gone too long. She’d never fit in with the company, all of whom would be older than she. Barbara, of course,
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