Arts & Entertainment

‘Hello Gorgeous’

Gay biographer deconstructs Streisand’s ascent to superstardom

Published

14 years ago

October 18, 2012

Jewish Literary Festival: William Mann
Closing Night
Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
D.C. Jewish Community Center
1529 16th Street, NW
Tickets: $10

Barbra Streisand in the recording studio for Columbia in New York, mid-1960s. (Photo from the Collection of Stuart Lippner, courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

It’s an interesting time for Barbra Streisand fans.

She’s on tour and played New York last weekend (no D.C. dates scheduled).

A (sort of) new album dropped Oct. 9 called “Release Me” that collects 11 previously unreleased outtakes from various album projects going back to the beginning of her career in the early ‘60s. The faithful legion, of course, are beside themselves finally getting to hear rare cuts like her interpretations of Jimmy Webb’s “Didn’t We” and “Home” from “The Wiz.” Her MusiCares tribute concert, in which she was serenaded last year by Diana Krall, Barry Mainlow, Seal, Stevie Wonder and others, is out on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory Nov. 13.

But just as interesting is the new book “Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand,” also released this month from gay author William J. Mann, who, in addition to several novels, has penned well-received bios on William Haines, John Schlesinger, Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Mann, an iconoclast who doesn’t smash his subjects but delights in deconstructing widely parsed anecdotes of show biz folklore, zeroes in on Streisand’s early years from early 1960 (when she was 17) to the spring of ’64 by which time she had opened in the long-delayed “Funny Girl” on Broadway and recorded three platinum-selling albums for Columbia.

Mann focuses on her early years because he says “everything we think we know about her can be traced back to this seminal period … She arrived in New York in 1959 as a penniless teenager without any connections or experience. Less than five years later she was the top-selling female recording artist in the country and the star of one of Broadway’s biggest smash hits. Going in as close as I have in this book has allowed me to really shed light on how she accomplished such a feat.”

Mann’s in Washington Wednesday on his book tour at the D.C. Jewish Community Center for a 7 p.m. Streisand presentation after which he’ll sign copies of the book. During two phone chats this week, the 49-year-old author talked about the process of bringing the book — he wasn’t particularly a Streisand fan before — to fruition and how writing it compared to his mammoth Hepburn and Taylor tomes.

Mann says focusing on Streisand’s early years turned out to be an unexpected advantage. Because few of the key players are still in touch with the notoriously private and exacting legend, they felt freer, Mann says, to cooperate. He wasn’t on a mission to bash Streisand, but he did want an honest and fresh take.

“These very, very famous people really live in a bubble,” he says. “It becomes virtually impossible to get an unvarnished opinion because any colleague you talk to is going to have nothing but superlatives and that becomes very difficult. … About 90 percent of the people I spoke to didn’t continue on with her. … so they could be candid. They didn’t have to think, ‘Gee, is Barbra gonna be pissed at me, I have to work with her next month.’”

Barbara Streisand, William Mann, gay news, Washington Blade

Gay historian and author William J. Mann (Photo by Michael Childers; courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Despite calling the book “notable for its breadth of detail and fair mindedness,” biographer James Gavin writing for the New York Times said “little” of the book is new, a point Mann counters with his biggest coup — being granted the right to delve into the Jerome Robbins (the Broadway legend who worked on “Funny Girl”) papers at the New York Public Library, which had not previously been plumbed for any Streisand book and are not available to researchers (Mann got an exception through the Robbins’ estate).

And even though Streisand’s first boyfriend, Barry Dennen has written an entire book (1997’s “My Life with Barbra”) on their relationship, Mann says he got fresh material from the gay actor for “Gorgeous.”

One of Mann’s favorite experiences was visiting Phyllis Diller, who became a pal and mentor of the young Streisand during their time performing at seedy New York nightclub the Bon Soir in the early ‘60s. (Diller died in August.)

“She was such a hoot,” Mann says with a laugh. “That interview was probably the most enjoyable of the process. I got to go to her house and she was flirting and laughing. I asked her if she’d give me one of her trademark laughs and she did. I just sat there thinking, ‘I love my job.’”

Other “gets” weren’t so splashy but proved equally invaluable. Though scads of Streisand material has been released and is on YouTube, Mann says the Streisand aficionados — almost all gay — were helpful. He thinks his track record on the Hepburn and Taylor books helped open doors on several fronts.

“There’s one fan, and of course he’s made me promise never to reveal who he is, who had some really amazing stuff. There was a DVD (Streisand) was planning to put out maybe five-six years ago of all her old TV appearances but for whatever reason, it never came out. This guy had a bootleg copy of it, which was extraordinarily helpful. Another fan had some of her original contracts. Which is crazy. Who knows how they get this stuff. You’d think she’d have those herself, but somehow they had them and those were very helpful as well. And of course once you get in those fan circles, one things leads to another and another. I didn’t write it for the fans, because then you’d end up censoring it to please them, but they were a great help.”

Early signs are good.

Barbara Streisand, Hello Gorgeous, gay news, Washington Blade

(Courtesy Houghton Mifflin)

According to Nielsen BookScan, the book has already sold about 2,000 copies. And a glowing USA Today review said Mann’s “meticulous research and insightful analysis go deeper than any previous (Streisand) biography.” Liz Smith called it “excellent.” Amazon reader feedback has been highly positive and perhaps the surest sign that the writer did his homework, there’s been nary a peep, at least so far, from the Streisand camp (she devotes a whole section of her official website to debunking what’s written about her — check out the juicy reads on her tangles with Larry Kramer over a never-made film adaptation of “The Normal Heart” she wanted to do).

At more than 500 pages, “Gorgeous” makes for a lengthy yet brisk read. Mann, who splits his time between New York and Provincetown (where he does most of his writing), is happy to engage a few questions the book inspires, one common enough that he’s written a Huffington Post piece on the topic: that is, surely it’s no coincidence that Streisand, who had several key gay men in her life very early on in her career, ended up one of the biggest gay entertainment icons of all time, right?

“It’s not a coincidence at all,” he says. “She was shaped by so many gay influences … in various ways. The way she dressed, the way she put a song across, the way she styled her songs, they way she interacted with an audience, it’s so obvious all her early mentors were gay and I believe that when those early audiences went to see her, they responded to something familiar. The way she laughed, the way she moved, her campy humor. There was something there gay men recognized and thought, ‘Oh, we can relate to this chick.’ And she was not the first one to have this happen either. It goes all the way back to Mae West and the drag queens she worked with in New York. You see it with Judy (Garland) with Roger Edens, with Joan Crawford and Billy Haines … with Madonna it was the same thing.”

Barbara Streisand, Elliot Gould, gay news, Washington Blade

Barbra Streisand with first husband, actor Elliott Gould en route to the Tony Awards on April 29, 1962. (Photo from the collection of Stuart Lippner, courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

And since Mann, with the Taylor and Streisand books especially, has focused on the nature of fame and how it was achieved — a dissection of the lucky breaks versus the raw material — another question occurs: given Streisand’s undeniable talent and famous drive, was her legend and success inevitable?

Mann says no.

“She would like us to think that, but no, I don’t think it was at all. I think she benefited form some really shrewed salesmanship and a degree of luck. Just the fact that there were some major parts with ‘I Can Get it For You Wholesale’ and “Funny Girl’ for unusual looking Jewish girls, she was lucky that she was there for those parts at the time they came along. Of course she’s brilliantly talented but there are lots of people who were. You hear some of these other singers from the nightclub era like Blossom Dearie or Joanna Beretta and you’re like, ‘Wow, they’re every bit as good as Barbra,’ but they lacked something — either a very shrewd publicity campaign on their behalf or perhaps their own ambition … it took a terrific amount of PR to make it happen.”

Game time: Kate, Liz or Babs?

William J. Mann has written well-received bios of three of the most famous legends the 20th century produced: Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and now, Barbra Streisand. At the end of an interview, Mann was game for a “lightening round” in which he considers how the three icons stack up. He had to answer each question with one of the three names.

Of the three, which had:

the most raw talent? “Streisand”
the most career triumphs? “Taylor”
Was the most personally content? “Taylor”
Whose personality evolved the most over the decades? “Hepburn”
Which was the most fan friendly? “Taylor, by far.”
The most private? “Streisand. Hepburn was private, but she also put things out there, although not always her true self. So I guess Streisand.”
Whose work has best stood the test of time? “That’s kind of a draw. They all have. You look at Hepburn in a film like “Alice Adams,” which is this beautiful, brilliant, heartbreaking film that totally stands up. Or Elizabeth in ‘Virginia Woolf’ and you just think, ‘Wow, nobody could have done that better.’ Or one of Barbra’s albums.”
Which had (or has) the most ardent fans? “Streisand”
Was the toughest to research? “I suppose Hepburn but she had just passed away so that opened some doors. The other two were alive when I was writing.” (Taylor died shortly after the Mann book came out.)
Had the most gays in her personal life? “Taylor”
Had the easiest path to stardom? “Taylor. It was practically handed to her.”
The toughest? “Streisand, even though it was really fast.”
And just for fun, any word on how Streisand or Hepburn felt about tying for the Best Actress Oscar in ’68? “They both probably hated to share it,” he says. “Hepburn made a big show of not caring about the Oscars but of course she cared a great deal. … Streisand was very gracious when she accepted (Hepburn did not attend) and said she was ‘in great company.’ It was probably unlike either of them to send the other a congratulatory note, but I don’t fully know the answer to that or whether anybody ever tried to get them together for a photo. I suspect neither of them would have been too wild about that.”

— Joey DiGuglielmo

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Books

‘Transcendent’ a tough but important read

Laverne Cox’s memoir recounts horrific abuse as a child

Published

1 day ago

July 3, 2026

Terri Schlichenmeyer

(Book cover image courtesy of Gallery Books)

‘Transcendent: A Memoir’
By Laverne Cox
c.2026, Gallery Books
$30/238 pages

OK, let’s just say it: You’re tired of lies.

They come from above, behind, from either shoulder. They’re repeated, laid out in a line, told as if they’re true but they’re not. You wish people would stop lying to you. As in the new memoir “Transcendent” by Laverne Cox, you wish you could tell the truth about yourself.

Sissy.

If the bullies in the neighborhood weren’t constantly calling Laverne Cox that name, then Cox’s mother was. “Sissy,” was just one word, though; the others were worse. The boys would say those things while they beat Cox, when they could catch her. Her mother screamed at her gentle child who didn’t like “boy” activities.

Even at eight years old, says Cox, “I was a prim and proper lady.”

Despite the verbal abuse about her perceived feminine behavior and a furtive, failed attempt at conversion therapy, Cox’s mother sent her and her brother to the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where Cox learned to dance. It was a lifeline for her, and the talent gained there helped Cox get into college in Indiana.

From there, Cox expected to find fame and fortune in New York City.

And yet, the abuse she suffered as a child held Cox back, and the words “There is something wrong with me” became a daily mantra.

“I didn’t know how to say it.” Cox says. “I’m a girl.”

There were therapy sessions to get to that point, as Cox learned the language and skills needed to speak the truth. Landing a sense of style helped, as did her brother’s support, a handful of friends, and happy, scent-infused memories of her mother’s make-up table.

At each step, Cox says, “I was expressing myself, I was also allowing myself to edge closer to my girlhood.”

Let’s start here: “Transcendent” is a difficult read – not for style, but for substance.

From her earliest memory of being sexually abused as a toddler; to verbal and physical abuse from many sources; to what, judging by photo captions, seems perhaps like forgiveness, author Laverne Cox glosses over nothing. Be ready, in other words, for pages and pages of memories that, like a roller-coaster, will make you cringe and want to hide your eyes, although doing so would be a mistake.

As this book progresses, Cox’s story does, too. We see a child who knows a truth but has no words for it. The child becomes a teen with a bursting sense of self, then a young adult who craves love as she’s stretching her wings. By the time Cox advances to writing about her career and the abuse is (mostly) over, readers will breathe a well-deserved sigh of relief. Whew, you’ve winced through a harrowing tale to reach a satisfying but not complete update.

Fans of Cox’s work will want “Transcendent,” as will anyone who’s transitioned, is thinking about it, or loves someone who has. It’s a rough read, but a necessary one, then, and that’s no lie.

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Movies

Ethereal ‘Camp’ a moody allegory for queer shame

An unsentimental yet empathetic exploration of guilt

Published

2 days ago

July 2, 2026

John Paul King

Zola Grimmer stars in ‘Camp.’

When one watches movies for a living, it’s as easy to fall into routine as it is with any job. Each movie is different, of course, each with its own characters, its own viewpoint, and its own story – (or at least its own variation on one), but in so many other ways, they have a tendency to be very much the same.

This is because there is an entire “language” of filmmaking, established from the earliest days of cinematic storytelling, a process so subtle that most of us are barely aware of it: the image directs our attention, the script provides the shape and structure of the story, and the actors are our stand-ins, allowing us to “experience” the reality of the film through a transference of identity that occurs so reflexively that we don’t even notice it’s happened.

That’s why it can be such a jolt when we come across a movie that doesn’t follow the expected rules, and we can’t think of a better recent example than Avalon Fast’s “Camp,” which drew attention as it made the rounds at last year’s festival circuit and embarked on a series of screenings in select cities beginning on June 26.

Fast, 26, is a queer Canadian filmmaker who specializes in “Girl Horror” (a genre that centers female experience), and who has already become a prominent force in the “new queer indie” movement. Her first feature, “Honeycomb,” got a Slamdance “virtual” screening, and she’s appeared as a performer in films like Alice Maio Mackay’s “The Serpent’s Skin” and leading trans filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s yet-to-be-released Cannes hit, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” With “Camp,” however, she stakes her claim to territory in a burgeoning field of queer/trans/feminist cinema to establish herself as a formidable “brand” of her own.

Rooted in a blend of trope-ish horror conventions and presented in a dreamy, ethereal style that elevates feeling over cognition, it’s the story of Emily (Zola Grimmer), a young woman accidentally responsible for two horrific tragedies, who feels hopelessly trapped by guilt and shame. At the suggestion of her father (Mike Tan), she takes a summer job as a counselor at a camp for “troubled” young people like herself, where she is quickly embraced and assimilated by the core group of female counselors – most of them “hot weirdos” who are more interested in all-night partying and a kind of home-grown witchcraft than they are in the wholesome camp activities they supervise during the day. Her initial response to this new environment is guarded, but as the summer goes on she comes to feel a strong connection to her fellow counselors, beginning to hope that she has – at last – found her place among a “family” that accepts her despite the life-shattering incidents that have come to define her sense of self. Yet at the same time, she becomes ever more aware of a call to confront and quiet the ghosts of her misfortunate past – even if it requires an unthinkable sacrifice.

Dreamy and purposefully opaque when it comes to differentiating between real experience and metaphysical reflection, Fast’s movie draws us in from the start with its edgy mix of visual atmosphere, blending an aesthetic that combines home-movie nostalgia with the ironically whimsical flourishes of the digital age to establish a tone that feels like a half-forgotten memory reconstructed in the form of an Instagram “reel.” It’s a potent effect, creating a milieu of surreal impressionism in which the plot advances more through mood and fragments of subjective experience than through concrete narrative form; at times, it feels untethered, yes, but it always manages to orchestrate its seemingly disjointed perspective into a shape that makes sense — even if we’re not quite sure how or why, or even what is actually happening.

The effect is cumulative, as the story becomes less bound to logic and realism while leaning further into a perspective that favors the arcane and mysterious over the rational and concrete. And while that might prove frustrating for viewers expecting a more traditional kind of “horror,” it provides for an experience that’s more likely to satisfy the kind of fans who appreciate being left to provide their own interpretations. The most obvious comparison would be with the work of David Lynch; there’s clearly an influence there for Fast’s darkly intuitive approach, which goes beyond the obvious parallels of its “Twin Peaks”-ish setting (the forest is most definitely a character here) to emulate the stream-of-consciousness narrative flow that marked much of Lynch’s late-career work.

“Camp” is far from imitative, however. While it may share some traits with the work of Lynch and other masters of contemporary surreal horror, it creates a unique “vibe” by allowing its own creative feminine energy to take the lead. The traumas it depicts spring from a definitively female space, from first-menstruation nightmares to the absurdities of having to defer to the “leadership” of a mediocre male who has more power than you (in this case, Austyn Van de Kamp as the camp’s supervisor, a naive but endearing yokel whose Jesus-centric worldview is undermined by the “coven” under his tentative command), and the overall treatment of its few male characters is largely less than forgiving. Yet on a deeper level, its subtext of carrying “unforgivable sin” that affects every aspect of one’s interactive life feels ultimately as much an expression of queer trauma as it does feminist ideology. The result is just cryptic enough to leave us pondering what we’ve just seen yet clear enough to deliver an emotional catharsis which feels, if not exactly curative, at least healing enough to pave a way forward.

Admittedly, it’s not a film that will likely tick off all the boxes for hardcore horror fans; while it might deal in dark emotions and a certain witchiness that ties it to the legacy of such pagan-flavored classics as “The Wicker Man” or “Midsommar,” its terrors are more existential than visceral, pondering the difficulties of overcoming self-hatred rather than pitting us against a palpable physical threat, supernatural or otherwise. Indeed, it’s more introspective psychodrama than it is traditional horror – which is less a criticism than it is a disclaimer.

Though it’s Fast’s moody aesthetic that emerges as the “star” attraction of “Camp,” much of its effectiveness hinges on the performances of its cast. Grimmer, especially, is central, and she succeeds admirably not only in winning our empathy but in peeling back the morally murky layers of Emily’s path to redemption in a way that feels like empowerment rather than ethical compromise. However, the ensemble of “soul sisters” that surrounds her (Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Ella Reece, Lea Rose Sebastianis, and Sophie Bawks-Smith) all play their own particular part in creating the “magic” that makes the whole thing work.

All in all, “Camp” is an exhilaratingly fresh – if sometimes opaque – expression of queer filmmaking from a feminine perspective; that’s a regrettably rare occurrence which makes Fast’s fastidiously unsentimental (yet deeply empathetic) exploration of queer guilt all the more powerful, and makes her movie an essential addition to your watchlist.