Queer author William Mann has balanced his popular gay erotic novels with a raft of best-selling Hollywood biographies—many of them with strong ties to the LGBT community.
Mann has profiled William Haines, the first openly gay movie star; Katharine Hepburn; director John Schlesinger; and Elizabeth Taylor. Now, Mann takes on Barbra Streisand. In Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand the author follows the seminal five-year period in which the diva's DIVA went from Barbara, the homely Jewish girl from Brooklyn with insatiable dreams of stardom, to B-a-r-b-r-a, the show business sensation whose meteoric rise to fame and praise for her unique beauty and style perhaps eclipsed even what she had imagined for herself.
In typical Mann fashion, he carefully pieces together little-known details with new research that combine to offer a multifaceted portrait of the young girl on the brink of womanhood who, with her stark individuality (not to mention her stunning singing voice), would become a lasting, shining beacon for the gay community.
Streisand, at 70, shows little sign of slowing down—she's, at present, on tour with son Jason Gould, has just released the first of what promises to be a multivolume selection of songs from her vault and, this Christmas, is starring in her first movie in years, a comedy with Seth Rogan titled The Guilt Trip. As the mega-superstar enters her 50th year in show business at the top of the heap, Mann's book about her formative years makes for fascinating reading. Streisand's strong tie to the gay community that has championed her from the start is no less telling.
Windy City Times: This bio reminds me of your Liz Taylor book where you took a specific portion of her life and put it under the microscope. I can't believe the amount of detail—Streisand enthusiasts like myself are going to be verklempt. [Laughs]
William Mann: I wanted it to be a very up close and personal look at those five beginning years of her career, and I have to say that I would not have done this book if there wasn't new material to be found. I know she doesn't talk to biographers but after doing some research I found that, indeed, the Jerome Robbins papers had never been utilized before; I requested and was given access to them which help rewrite the whole "Funny Girl" period of her career.
And, also, having access to the Bob Fosse papers and the Bob Merrill papers helped. Then I found all these wonderful people who knew her in those early days, like Bob Schulenberg, who was practically my right arm in writing this book because his memory is so photo recall. So I was pleased to see that this new material was out there.
WCT: Well, as someone who reads biographies first and foremost, this is certainly a book to be savored. As a gay man, it's a wonderful bonus to read about the influence gay men had on helping to bring out her individuality, her taste, her look, etc. Very cool.
William Mann: Gay men put together her act [and] her look, and brought her to a gay bar, and gay audiences gave her her first rousing welcome. So her gay connection goes back very far. Bob had been mentioned in a couple of earlier biographies and I knew that he had clearly been right there with her, elbow to elbow, and I knew that if I could win his trust there would be a wealth of stories and, indeed, there was. And, likewise, Barry Dennen—who I knew through mutual friends, who told their story in his own memoir. But I knew there were points I wanted to push him on and ask him about which he was willing to revisit. That's just two of them.
WCT: How brave was this young woman at 19 to go to Detroit for a gig by herself, to begin with, and then after not doing well at first, the gays find her and embrace her?
William Mann: She was incredibly brave but heartbroken as well—her heart had just been broken by the man (Dennen) she thought she was going to get married to—
WCT: …until she discovered him in bed with a man.
William Mann: Yes—but it didn't stop her from going to Detroit on her own. She had incredible wherewithal to pull that off.
WCT: This book reveals the bravado shielding the vulnerability and that often indifferent home life from which she sprang. It's eye-opening to learn that the first time she was on national television she wasn't even sure if her mother was going to watch her.
William Mann: I was hoping this would come through in the book—and it sounds like it did for you. She had many moments where she was grasping and perhaps self-centered but she's also incredibly vulnerable and sweet and kind and really, really funny.
WCT: The relationship with Barry Dennen is in so many ways so classic—the gay man and the unrequited passion of the quote-unquote ugly duckling female best friend with the dazzling personality.
William Mann: That's a piece, I think, that's been missing from a lot of previous accounts of her life, or it's been barely mentioned. He was her first love and you never forget that—especially when you're that young. Barry said to me, "You know, sometimes I think the fans don't like me because they think I hurt Barbra" and I said, "Barry, if we could all remember what we were like at 21 or 20 or 19, we all made impulsive choices and decisions." I think their story is sweet in a way because they were so young and were still trying to figure out who they were. But you're right: As a gay man, I can certainly relate to that, and I think a lot of women who have been in those situations can also relate to it.
WCT: What was different about this book, Bill, after having chronicled so many interesting lives?
William Mann: What I'm always interested in is finding out "why" and "how" a person goes after fame and success and the limelight. And Streisand's pursuit of fame was so different from Hepburn's or Taylor's.
With Streisand, it was completely different than either of those. She was looking for some kind of affirmation that she didn't have as a kid: a sense that she mattered, a sense that she was good—and not just good but great. I came away with a real respect for her because she wasn't looking for the applause—she was looking for the acknowledgement that her work was good and that it mattered. She craves anonymity and wants the work to speak for herself. I think that's the key to understanding her.
WCT: You also illuminate something that's underlined her entire career—her indifference to her singing voice. You write about how tough it was to get her to her club gigs on time because she didn't want to sing—literally—for her supper.
William Mann: Exactly. She thought singing in a nightclub made her like a floozy. I think that goes back to her desire to prove herself. She held her father, who she never knew, in such high esteem and I think she wanted to do something that would have impressed him. He was an intellectual and was well-read and she went through his library and read Shakespeare and Shaw, but singing? And she never had to work at singing—she worked her heart out at acting, though. So yes, it's a great irony. In a way I think she felt, "I didn't have to work for this so it mustn't matter." Maybe today—I would suspect—that she probably now sees that her voice was a great gift.
WCT: She had/has incredibly high standards for herself, which is a curse as much as a blessing, I would suspect.
William Mann: Oh, yes. During her two times on Broadway shows when the audience would go crazy for her before she'd done something to deserve the applause, it drove her crazy. She knew what nights she was good and what nights she wasn't up to par, and on those nights if the audience went nuts she would resent it. That's admirable but I think that also became a bit of an obsession for her because she was constantly pushing herself to excel.
WCT: Perhaps, as you say, she's learned to live with a few mistakes. Well—she's said that very publicly in interviews for this new collection of never released material from the vaults. When you hear this material and her stunning performances, it really illuminates her exacting standards.
William Mann: I also love hearing in some of them a certain vulnerability that I think disappeared from her recordings at about the time I finish the book—when she became a sensation with "Funny Girl." I think she learned how to protect herself emotionally in her work, and I hear a difference. It's not that the later work isn't wonderful; it's just more guarded to me.
She gave an interview around that period where she said, "I was giving my all every single time and if I give my 'all' all the time, I'm going to use myself up." And I don't think it's coincidental that that interview came not long after her appearance with Judy Garland because there's a supreme example of a performer who always gave her all and just burned herself out. I think Streisand took that lesson to heart and it was probably a good strategy but I also think something was lost for her audiences when that raw, personal revelation that she brought to almost everything she did before that point was covered over.
WCT: This is also the story of a great feminist, a great liberal—she didn't give a crap about someone's sexuality, for example—and as I once termed her, the story of the ultimate individual, in a way.
William Mann: I think that's a great assessment. Thank you.
WCT: Have you heard from her camp?
William Mann: No, but I don't sense any hostility, either. That inner circle just doesn't talk about her, period. I just wrote to Marty Erlichman (her manager of decades) and sent him a copy of the book and said, "It must be weird for Miss Streisand to have some stranger writing a book about her early years and talking to all her old friends from when she was 20 years old. If someone did that to me, I would be saying, 'Oh my God, what are they saying?'"
So I understand that, but hopefully she'll read the book and know that my intent was sincere to treat her story respectfully and to put it into context with the story of popular culture in America in that pivotal period of the early 1960s. That's what I tried to do, anyway.
