Barbra Streisand:
Miss Marmelstein in
I Can Get It for You Wholesale

Can you spot Barbra?

Streisand met future husband Elliott Gould during Wholesale

Barbra Streisand had a short career on the Broadway stage — only two shows. But I Can Get it For You Wholesale put her on the map.

Arthur Laurents, director of Wholesale, wrote in his book Original Story By:

"True, with her bird's nest of scraggly hair and her gawky, disorganized body, she was a poster girl for Spinster Incarnate. Equally true was the debit side: thrift shop clothes which proclaimed eccentricity, behavior which was calculated spontaneity.... When she sang, she was simple; when she sang, she was vulnerable; when she sang, she was moving, funny, mesmerizing, anything she wanted to be. The authors were beaming, the producer wasn't thrilled but if Barbra Streisand's agent could have read my mind, he would have asked a fortune for her to play Miss Marmelstein."

 

Laurents told The Barbra Archives about that day in 1961 when Barbra auditioned for Wholesale. He called her audition “calculated spontaneity.” Barbra, he recounted, came on the stage with a stack of music, which she placed on the upright piano. She took out one piece of music and proceeded to cross the stage. Well, the music unraveled across the stage to comedic effect.

Barbra, a 19 year old neophyte, hardly a star at that point, got to center stage and summoned the stage hand to fetch her a chair! Laurents smiled at the memory of her audacity.

Then, he said, “she sat in the chair and interviewed us! It was like the Barbra Streisand talk show.” He asked her if she’d care to sing something for him, as it was an audition. When he heard her voice, Laurents said, “I kept her singing.”

There was no part for Barbra in Wholesale. The only suitable role was written as a 50-year-old spinster. Laurents carefully explained that “at 19, Barbra was a spinster. Two years later her look became chic — Nefertiti. But at 19, she looked like a homely Jewish-girl spinster.” Laurents added, "She knew she would be a star, and so she is.”

In 1982, Barbra said: "Harold Rome was a whole other person, who never liked me and wrote an article about me saying that I was never grateful for — he wrote I Can Get It For You Wholesale. I was absolutely shocked by this article. He never even gave me the part. Arthur Laurents gave me the part. I never felt that I should be grateful. I felt that I give and they give, and we each get something out of it."

Barbra's mother, Diana Kind, had to co-sign the contract for Wholesale. Barbra's mother signed it "Diana Streisand".

I Can Get It For You Wholesale opened on March 22, 1962 in New York City at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre. Harold Rome wrote the music and lyrics. Barbra played the put-upon secretary Miss Marmelstein. In the second act of the show she rolled onto the stage in an office chair and sang, "Oh, why is it always Miss Marmelstein?" Barbra stopped the show.

Miss Marmelstein

Listen to Barbra be interviewed about her role in I Can Get It For You Wholesale:

Wholesale ran for 300 performances until Dec. 8, 1962. By then, it had moved from the Shubert to the Broadway Theatre.

	In the book "Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater" by John Bush Jones, he recounts the opening night of Wholesale ... [...] "From our perch in the ethereal reaches of the Shubert theatre's balcony, my friends and I had a clear if distant view of the stage and also of a good portion of the orchestra seats, many filled with luminaries of the American theatre. Conspicuous at the absolutely opposite ends of third or fourth row center were on the left, Leonard Bernstein, and on the right, Richard Rodgers. As this workmanlike - and, for its time, almost relentlessly dark - musical progressed, Rodgers politely but perfunctorily applauded each song, while Bernstein, arms folded across his chest, sat motionless in an attitude of 'Okay, show me something' - until the middle of the second act. Then, in one of the show's few light moments, a secretary bemoans in song how her bosses and co-workers are on strictly formal terms with her while on a familiar first-name basis with each other. When the 'Miss Marmelstein' number ended, Bernstein leapt to his feet and began clapping so wildly I feared for the person to his right. Following the maestro's cue, the entire audience rose to its feet for a prolonged ovation. What we had witnessed and what inspired Bernstein's enthusiasm was the Broadway debut of an unknown nineteen-year-old performer named Barbra Streisand. It was, as they say, worth the price of a ticket."

Read Jerome Weidman's first-hand account of auditioning and casting Barbra in Wholesale >>

copyright © 2003-2007 Matt Howe