Streisand: Her Life by James Spada
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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shooting Chuck, and ominous whispers about the Chief, said to be the mastermind behind the hijackings.
Driftwood , as Maurice Tei Dunn freely admits, won’t stand among the great plays, but it must have been fun to watch Barbara Streisand, at sixteen, play a character like Lorna. She had only one short scene in the first act, none in the second, and she didn’t reappear until the last ten minutes of the play. But during those ten minutes the audience learns that Lorna is the key to everything when she reveals that she is not only the W oman in Black but also the Chief!
“Yer forgettin’ yer in a tough spot,” Lorna hisses at Gregg. “I wouldn’t give a nickel for yer chances if they was to pick you up now and take you back to the Pen.” A few moments later, speaking of Diana, she says, “You and I were pretty thick until she came along. You pulled a boner in that Chuck business. You shoulda used yer head and not let your feelings get mixed up in it.... I’m gettin’ fed up with yer takin’ her part. I’m the one that got you outta jail. She’d let you rot there.... Such dam’ fools—if you’da listened to me you wouldn’t have been sent up at all. You and yer moon-struck Diana.”
Dunn didn’t consider it at all inappropriate to cast the teenage Barbara Streisand as Lorna. “There was something, shall we say, sinister about Barbara, mysterious. Even at that age she seemed a lot older than she was. She seemed to have a history, a past.” He felt that Barbara’s performances were “credible and occasionally remarkable. She was acting. Joan was effective, although she really was just being herself. Barbara was more professional than Joan, and she was only a schoolgirl! I saw Barbara and Joan work on scenes together and they looked like friends, but I wonder if Barbara didn’t think Joan was a nuisance.”
What Dunn called the Garret Theater was in fact the rickety unheated attic of his fifth-floor walk-up railroad flat on Forty-ninth Street in the shadow of the Third Avenue El. According to him, when rehearsals began on January 2, Barbara “confiscated the star dressing room,” a closet with a sink and a large mirror, by always arriving before everyone else. “She doted on herself in there and mouthed out her lines. Sometimes she stood in the doorway and shouted her lines out to me or someone else, and they’d answer. She carried her own makeup kit around with her, and always came in carrying a big bag of books because she was studying for her finals.”
Directed by a seventeen-year-old, Jim McDowall, Driftwood opened on Thursday, January 15, on a one-step-up platform stage that faced forty seats, most of which Dunn had purchased from a defunct shoe store. Admission was $1. 50, but the box-office receipts barely covered expenses and didn’t allow for pay to the actors. Nor was there a crew, paid or unpaid. Barbara offered to work the curtain during her extended periods offstage, but Dunn did that himsel f and told her, “An actress is an actress, and you don’t have to do anything here except worry about what you’re doing onstage.”
Although the play didn’t garner a single review, it remained open for six weeks, primarily on the strength of ticket sales to the cast’s family and friends. Barbara’s mother attended one performance, but her reaction remains unrecorded. Dunn’s main reason for closing the show was that his attic became a fire hazard when audience members started putting their cigarettes out in the cracks in the wooden floor. “When I shut down the show it was a terrible blow to the cast. Barbara just packed her stuff and walked away and never came back. She took it hard.”
D URING THE RUN of Driftwood , Barbara graduated from Erasmus Hall, receiving her diploma along with 136 others in a ceremony on January 26, 1959. She was three months shy of her seventeenth birthday. She was the fourth best student in the graduating class, with a final
Driftwood , as Maurice Tei Dunn freely admits, won’t stand among the great plays, but it must have been fun to watch Barbara Streisand, at sixteen, play a character like Lorna. She had only one short scene in the first act, none in the second, and she didn’t reappear until the last ten minutes of the play. But during those ten minutes the audience learns that Lorna is the key to everything when she reveals that she is not only the W oman in Black but also the Chief!
“Yer forgettin’ yer in a tough spot,” Lorna hisses at Gregg. “I wouldn’t give a nickel for yer chances if they was to pick you up now and take you back to the Pen.” A few moments later, speaking of Diana, she says, “You and I were pretty thick until she came along. You pulled a boner in that Chuck business. You shoulda used yer head and not let your feelings get mixed up in it.... I’m gettin’ fed up with yer takin’ her part. I’m the one that got you outta jail. She’d let you rot there.... Such dam’ fools—if you’da listened to me you wouldn’t have been sent up at all. You and yer moon-struck Diana.”
Dunn didn’t consider it at all inappropriate to cast the teenage Barbara Streisand as Lorna. “There was something, shall we say, sinister about Barbara, mysterious. Even at that age she seemed a lot older than she was. She seemed to have a history, a past.” He felt that Barbara’s performances were “credible and occasionally remarkable. She was acting. Joan was effective, although she really was just being herself. Barbara was more professional than Joan, and she was only a schoolgirl! I saw Barbara and Joan work on scenes together and they looked like friends, but I wonder if Barbara didn’t think Joan was a nuisance.”
What Dunn called the Garret Theater was in fact the rickety unheated attic of his fifth-floor walk-up railroad flat on Forty-ninth Street in the shadow of the Third Avenue El. According to him, when rehearsals began on January 2, Barbara “confiscated the star dressing room,” a closet with a sink and a large mirror, by always arriving before everyone else. “She doted on herself in there and mouthed out her lines. Sometimes she stood in the doorway and shouted her lines out to me or someone else, and they’d answer. She carried her own makeup kit around with her, and always came in carrying a big bag of books because she was studying for her finals.”
Directed by a seventeen-year-old, Jim McDowall, Driftwood opened on Thursday, January 15, on a one-step-up platform stage that faced forty seats, most of which Dunn had purchased from a defunct shoe store. Admission was $1. 50, but the box-office receipts barely covered expenses and didn’t allow for pay to the actors. Nor was there a crew, paid or unpaid. Barbara offered to work the curtain during her extended periods offstage, but Dunn did that himsel f and told her, “An actress is an actress, and you don’t have to do anything here except worry about what you’re doing onstage.”
Although the play didn’t garner a single review, it remained open for six weeks, primarily on the strength of ticket sales to the cast’s family and friends. Barbara’s mother attended one performance, but her reaction remains unrecorded. Dunn’s main reason for closing the show was that his attic became a fire hazard when audience members started putting their cigarettes out in the cracks in the wooden floor. “When I shut down the show it was a terrible blow to the cast. Barbara just packed her stuff and walked away and never came back. She took it hard.”
D URING THE RUN of Driftwood , Barbara graduated from Erasmus Hall, receiving her diploma along with 136 others in a ceremony on January 26, 1959. She was three months shy of her seventeenth birthday. She was the fourth best student in the graduating class, with a final
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