Streisand: Her Life by James Spada Page B

the kind of job her mother had always said she should get, and of course Barbara hated every moment of it. Still, her meager salary paid the bills, and Diana would have been proud of her daughter’s responsible attitude toward money. Every payday she would cash her check, put some of the money into her savings account, then divvy up the rest into envelopes marked “phone,” “rent,” “laundry,” “food,” and finally “miscellaneous.”
     
Nonetheless certain that on her own Barbara was headed for disaster, Diana called her every day on her JUdson-6 exchange to “see how you’re doing,” and once or twice a week she’d come by the apartment unannounced, laden with bowls of chicken soup, chopped liver, and matzoh balls. These visits were far too frequent for Barbara’s taste, but her pleas to her mother to leave her alone went unheeded.
     
Barbara’s job at the Michael Press didn’t last long. Her lack of interest in her work, her insubordination, and her constant humming, which annoyed her boss no end, got her fired within nine months. She applied for unemployment benefits and collected a weekly check of $32.50. It was barely enough to survive, and when she and Susan Dwaorkowitz had a “clash of personalities,” Susan moved back to Brooklyn and left Barbara in dire need of a roommate. She posted a notice on the Actors’ Equity office bulletin board, and another aspiring actress, Marilyn Fried, answered the summons. “We decided we could get along,” Marilyn said, “and I moved in. Each of us was getting unemployment. It barely covered the rent and our fees for acting classes.” Once a week Marilyn made a trip home to stock up on food from her mother’s refrigerator, and Barbara soon followed suit, figuring that would keep Diana from showing up at her door when she least expected it.
     
Diana used this admission of need from Barbara as further proof that she would never make it as an actress, that she should move back home and get a typing job in Brooklyn. Instead, buoyed up by Allan Miller’s belief in her and by her classmates’ positive reaction to her scenes and exercises, Barbara invited her mother to attend a class and watch her do a scene that she felt particularly confident about. She was sure it would change Diana’s mind about her acting ambitions.
     
Diana came, Barbara did the scene, and Marilyn Fried thought it went extremely well. “Barbara was very proud of it,” she recalled. But afterward Mrs. Kind said nothing as she climbed the stairs to Barbara’s apartment. Once they got inside, Barbara sat on the edge of her bed, and Diana began a tirade that shocked Marilyn and totally deflated Barbara. “Her mother said Barbara should find another outlet for whatever she had to offer because she did not have the ability to be an actress,” Marilyn recollected. “I was heartbroken. And yet Barbara never felt any anger or hostility about it. After that embarrassing session, one night Barbara and I sat together wondering what we would like most to do if we ever made it as actresses, and she said, ‘First of all, I want to buy my mother a mink coat. ’”
     
Such a possibility grew less likely than ever after Barbara lost her unemployment benefits when her caseworker checked up on her and found out that she hadn’t looked for a job similar to the one she had lost, as required, but had tried out for acting work instead. But then disaster was averted when an audition finally worked out for Barbara. She was hired for another summer of stock, this one at the Cecilwood Theater in Fishkill, New York. She received $30. 00 a week plus room and board, and between June 30 and September 7 she worked on ten plays. The only production in which she had anything substantial to do was Separate Tables , but as always, she loved all of it. For Barbara now, the theater was home.
     
And her actor friends were family. They often congregated at Roy Scott’s place. He would whip up macaroni topped with