Barry Manilow Read online

  Barry asked Marty to witness the brief City Hall ceremony, while Susan asked her best friend from high school, Joan De Santis, to act as her maid of honour. It was to be a simple civil ceremony only, but Susan wanted to make it special. “They were giggly and so full of life and hope for the future,” Joan’s mother, Anne De Santis, later told an interviewer. “They went to Lord & Taylor’s on Fifth Avenue together to get dresses and spent just about every penny they had saved. I remember Joan bought a lovely green velvet dress … Susan was such a pretty bride. She had beautiful jet-black hair and was so happy.”

  Barry and Susan were married on their lunch break. The actual wedding ceremony took place in a judge’s chambers, and took far less time to make official than the amount of time the judge insisted Barry and Susan take before the ceremony to rethink their actions. Not unwisely, the judge thought it prudent to subject them both to a stern admonition about the serious responsibilities of marriage, but neither bride nor groom could be dissuaded. So, vows exchanged, all documentation signed and filed, Mr and Mrs Manilow parted company outside City Hall, and each went back to finish their day’s work.

  If the couple thought they’d be spending their first night of wedded bliss in each others’ arms in the apartment they’d surreptitiously rented on Sullivan Street, they were quite mistaken. When Barry and Susan arrived home after work that night and broke the news to Susan’s parents, the Deixlers refused to acknowledge a civil ceremony, and wouldn’t even consider letting Susan and Barry move in together until the union had been solemnised by a rabbi.

  That weekend, Barry and Susan were again married, and again attended by Marty and Joan. This time, though, the ceremony took place under a chupeh in a rabbi’s office, while both sets of parents – each still not speaking to the other – looked on without the beatific smiles that normally grace such occasions. Now the Manilows were joined in the eyes of God and man – and the Deixlers. It was official. Again.

  A week later Susan’s parents held a lavish wedding reception for the newlyweds. It was a disaster. Grudges firmly in place, the Deixlers refused to invite any of Barry’s family other than Edna and Willie, who refused to attend. Out of a sense of family loyalty, Barry said he wouldn’t go if Edna and Willie weren’t there. Edna finally talked him into attending, though she and Willie maintained their boycott of the event. Because Susan’s extended family had been cheated out of the big wedding Nettie and Al had so hoped for, at the reception they produced a rabbi and made Barry and Susan go through the wedding ceremony again, for the benefit of all those assembled.

  Then, in a stunning display of one-upmanship, Edna and Willie threw a reception of their own for Barry and Susan the following weekend. Perhaps assuming that Nettie and Al Deixler would boycott the affair in retaliation for Edna and Willie’s refusal to attend the earlier event, the Murphys simply neglected to invite the Deixlers. But Edna had learned a lesson from the Deixlers and she, too, produced a rabbi at their reception and insisted that Barry and Susan take their vows a fourth time, this time for the benefit of the groom’s extended family.

  If a wedding a week for a solid month can’t cement a marriage, then perhaps it’s a sign that something about the union was seriously, seriously wrong from the very beginning.

  Chapter Six

  Not long after Barry and Susan were married, Barry was offered a chance to play piano for the revival of a 19th century stage play, The Drunkard. Bro Harrod, who worked as a director at CBS, owned a small theatre on 13th Street called, appropriately enough, the 13th Street Theater. Barry’s talents as a pianist, songwriter, and arranger were by now widely known among the CBS personnel. When Bro stopped by Barry’s office one day to offer him the job playing piano for the production, Barry jumped at the chance. It paid only $15 a performance, but it was a toe in the door, which was priceless.

  Barry’s schedule was exhausting. His studies at New York College of Music had led to a brief stint at Juilliard, but he’d had to leave the prestigious music school for lack of funds. Still, he was working a full-time job, still playing gigs with The Jazz Partners, and now he’d taken on a nightly accompanist job with the 13th Street Theater as well. And – oh, yes – he also had a wife.

  Susan was determined to play the role of supportive wife, to do whatever it might take to help Barry realise his dreams of becoming a successful professional musician. Jack Wilkins, the leader of The Jazz Partners, remembers: “Susan was very nice, a supportive girl, I liked her. But [Barry] was just completely wasted, he was working so hard to make this work, and he was like almost crying at the piano he was so tired.”

  To cap it all, it was right around this time that Edna Manilow made her first suicide attempt.

  Barry was working at the 13th Street Theater when Susan called to tell him she was on her way to pick him up. She offered no explanation, but simply asked that he be in front of the theatre waiting for her when she arrived by cab. On their way to Brooklyn, Susan explained that Edna had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Edna would later tell her son that the attempt was prompted by a combination of financial and marital problems. However, friends hint that Edna was despondent over her son’s marriage. Indeed, she had tried to talk him out of marrying Susan, whom, some observers noted, Edna resented for taking her son away.

  Barry Manilow has never publicly discussed the circumstances of Edna’s fortuitous rescue from the brink of death. Someone had called the police before it was too late, but who? If her suicide attempt was timed and staged to get Barry’s attention without actually killing herself, it proved most effective: Barry was confused, terrified and racked with guilt. The police were not so moved. They told Barry if his mother attempted to take her own life again, they would have no choice but to commit her to a sanatorium. It was another stone added to the load of stress and guilt Barry was already carrying with him on a daily basis.

  As he had always done to escape his troubles, Barry buried himself in his work, his music. In addition to his day job at CBS and evening work with The Drunkard, Barry had also finagled his way into conducting music for a community church theatrical group’s production of The Pajama Game by exaggerating his past experience. Combining his wish to work with his guilt over his neglected wife and troubled mother, Barry even managed to find small parts in the production for both Susan, so she could feel involved in Barry’s work, and Edna, so Barry could keep an eye on her. Still, it was a juggling act that was proving impossible to sustain. “Edna wanted to perform, more than anything on the planet,” recalls Jeanne Lucas. “And any time that he could make that come true for her, even if she got a little part or whatever in one of these little shows, he would do it. Because he really wanted her to be happy.”

  *

  Jeanne Lucas was a vivacious and talented young woman who had arrived in New York from Michigan with $200 in her pocket. She didn’t know anyone in New York, but, like so many young performers, was determined to make it in the big city. Soon she discovered the 13th Street Theater and auditioned for a part in The Drunkard, which is how she first met Barry Manilow. “Before I even left the theatre they told me I had the job,” Lucas recalls. “Barry got all enthusiastic and he said, ‘Oh, you’re the next Ethel Merman, you’re the next Judy Garland … you have to be in the show.’ So I got cast in The Drunkard and we rehearsed and worked together in that show where I played Crazy Agnes.”

  Jeanne and Barry became fast friends immediately. They took to calling each other “Harry” and “Ethel”. Explains Jeanne, “We just started fooling around one day and calling each other corny names, and Harry and Ethel hit the wall and stuck. They seemed like the corniest names we could think of.”

  Barry confided in Jeanne his insecurities about his future. Though he loved music, he craved the kind of financial security he’d never known as a child. He acted as Jeanne’s accompanist when she would make the rounds auditioning. “He used to say to me constantly, ‘Ethel, I can’t imagine myself ever leaving CBS. I have to have security. I couldn’t do wha
t you’re doing. It’s just not possible.’” Still, he kept exploring his musical options. “He once in a while would play the piano and would sing and tape record himself singing,” Jeanne says, “and Susan and I would listen to it. And it wasn’t good. Even he knew. It was just – we used to tease him about it. But he kept working on it and he kept working on it and he kept working on it.”

  The problem was, Barry was working on just too many things. So many opportunities were coming his way, he felt he couldn’t afford to miss out on any of them, nor did he want to. In fact, he kept seeking out new opportunities that would demand even more of his time. His job at CBS started at 8:00 a.m., and he often didn’t get home until 2 or 3 in the morning. Susan had a full-time office job as well and had no desire to stay out until all hours of the morning, so the two were apart far more than they were together.

  Like Jeanne, Mary Moesel had also been in New York only a short time when she landed a job as stage manager at the 13th Street Theater. She remembers how the cast and crew of The Drunkard would often stay after performances to put on a show of their own, for fun. “Saturday night, after the show was over, those of the people who were talented vocally or whatever way, would stay. And Barry was always willing to stay and play the piano for them while they did their favourite things, other than what was being done in The Drunkard. You know, they’d sing their favourite songs, or something they’d like to do. And he was always such a good sport about it that, you know, I thought that was great. He never sat there and played something or sang anything, he always just played for the rest of them. I thought that was a nice thing to do.” It also kept him from going home to his wife for another few hours.

  “You know what I remember about Susan the most?” says Lucas. “Two things: the smell of Jean Nate – she wore that all the time, and the whole place was just permeated by it, it was just wonderful – and a leopard robe that she wore. She was beautiful. Susan was the most lovely person. She was so sweet and so understanding of him. Because he was out more than he was there. But she had a job and stuff, and she couldn’t be out all night.”

  More often than not, Barry would literally be out all night. After he would finally leave the 13th Street Theater each night, sometimes as late as 10 p.m., he and Jeanne would then start checking out the local clubs. “He was very ambitious,” she recalls, “and he would go out to clubs or wherever to try to see what was going on. Because, even though at that time he was working at CBS and he was an accompanist, he had big eyes.”

  At this stage in his career Barry saw himself as a support mechanism for other people’s work, not a front man himself. He played all of Jeanne’s auditions and had put together a programme of songs for her to sing that they could take to clubs or theatres. “So we would do the show at the 13th Street Theater,” says Lucas, “and then at night we would start hitting some of the small clubs that had piano bars. And he would play music that we’d worked on and I would sing. So we became sort of little regulars at these little places after the show.” But even Jeanne couldn’t help but wonder at Susan’s seemingly endless patience with her husband’s constant absence. “She was just very, very sweet about it all. And I remember thinking, god, just what an amazing woman she was because we would stay out nights until 2, 3 in the morning going from club to club to hear people sing and all that kind of good stuff.”

  The next opportunity that came Barry’s way would cause a serious reassessment of priorities. By now he had written music for two stage plays in addition to The Drunkard, and one of these productions was about to go on the road. The producer offered Barry the job of musical director for the production. Barry felt excited – and trapped. Music was his passion, and the thought of working in the field fulltime was unbelievably tempting. But the job would mean he would have to be away from New York for months, which would mean giving up his day job. The job at CBS was an important security blanket for Barry, one he wouldn’t give up lightly. And then there was the fact that he was now a married man.

  The marriage had been a bad experiment from the start and by now was effectively over. Barry turned for help to the “Advisor” column in Playboy magazine.

  Jim Petersen, who has been with Playboy since 1973 and acted as Playboy’s “Advisor” for 22 years, isn’t at all surprised that Barry would have felt more comfortable sharing his doubts and fears with the Advisor than with his friends, family, or even his wife. In fact, he says, scores of young men at the time felt exactly the same way.

  “Even when I took the column over in 1973,” says Petersen, “the first thing that struck me about the people who wrote to the magazine was that they trusted the magazine before they trusted neighbours, parents, priest, doctors. They had no one in their own life to turn to, so they turned to the voice of the magazine because they trusted our voice.” Playboy was catering to an intelligent, upwardly mobile male readership that typically wanted more out of life than their fathers had settled for. According to Petersen, the collective consciousness of the typical Playboy reader was: “I will not settle for this; I believe life can be better, help me out.”

  “And that’s the underlying sentiment of all the letters,” Petersen says. “I have a great relationship, but … I do this, it doesn’t work – what’s wrong? How do I get out of this situation? How do I catch the bus?” And, he adds, most importantly, “I think that you are more like me than the people around me are.”

  “I took over the column right at the crest of the sexual revolution – Joy of Sex was out, Masters and Johnson had just published, I had a sexual vocabulary no one had had before me – and I took the Advisor column into the bedroom. But prior to 1973, it was a career counselling guide. It was financial, it was collecting stamps, it was how many holes should I have in my belt, it was what wine goes with what fish; should I deal with my boss this way, should I take this chance with my career. When Barry wrote to [Playboy], he might as well have been writing to Money magazine, or Boy’s Life.”

  There was also a certain New York sensibility about Playboy, a cultivated cool that had very little to do with naked women and much to do with simply being too imperturbable and in command to ever have to make compromises. “Hefner always compared Playboy to the Sear’s catalogue,” says Jim Petersen. “We were a dream book, and sex was only one of the dreams. For the first ten years of its life Playboy was a jazz magazine with naked women in it. We didn’t discover rock and roll until about 1963.”

  This jazz mentality suited Barry just fine. After all, he’d never been interested in the pop scene, preferring ever-cool swing and be-bop music to the seemingly transitory nature of most pop music and culture. For years, Playboy felt exactly the same way. “My daughter and a number of the other kids in the neighborhood have formed a real cult over the Beatles …” wrote a concerned father in a letter to the Advisor that appeared in the March 1965 edition of Playboy. “If they weren’t so darned serious about this, it would be pretty funny. But when Susan doesn’t go to church with us because they are having their own service in their Beatle church, I start to worry a little. Worst of all, we have to listen to that awful music over and over and over. What should we do?” The Advisor’s answer was reassuring, if not prescient: “ ‘And this, too, shall pass away,’ said a sage about another plague at another time. We suggest you keep cool until the Beatle bugaboo likewise passes away, as it most assuredly will. In the meantime, when Susan plays her records, do your listening with earmuffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Oops.

  “Our tastes and sensibilities were very much with the jazz world and the showbiz world, the Frank Sinatra world, the Miles Davis world,” says Petersen. “I mean Hefner was an urban man at a time when most of America had left the city for the suburbs. So he was sharing the city with jazz musicians and showgirls. So [Playboy taught the reader] how to be a man, how to be a success, how to break the mould, how to be an iconoclast, how to do it your way. This was the message on every page of the magazine. And Barry Manilow just got swept up in that.”

  Indeed, B
arry’s letter to the Playboy Advisor, which appeared in the December 1965 issue of the magazine, seemed heartfelt and sincere, even though he neglected to mention he was married:

  Music has always been a vital part of my life. Due to financial difficulties, however, I had to stop attending music school and accept a job at a leading radio and television network. Through enormous good fortune, I have been promoted very rapidly and at the age of 22 I hold a junior executive position with a very generous salary. The only drawback is that this position has absolutely nothing to do with music.

  During these past few years, between working and attending college, I have managed to musically direct and conduct three full-scale musicals at various theatre workshops in New York. I now have an offer to take this last musical out of town for a period of six to eight months at a good salary with the promise of a permanent position as a musical director.

  My musical wild oats are screaming to be sown, but it means giving up my secure job. Leaves of absence are rare, so it looks like it’s either one or the other. Any suggestions?

  –B.M., Brooklyn, New York

  Playboy’s answer was swift and certain:

  Follow your real interest and take the musical out of town. At your age, your financial responsibilities are few. If you remain in the secure job, you may regret for the rest of your life that you didn’t sow your notes. You can always go back to radio and television: your ability was recognized once; chances are it would be recognized again – if not with your former employer, then elsewhere.

  “I look at that as one of our great letters,” says Jim Petersen, “because we read him correctly and we said, fly. Take this chance.”

  But Barry Manilow wasn’t yet ready to try his wings, at least professionally. Personally, his marriage was coming to its inevitable end. In fact, by the time Barry’s letter appeared in Playboy, Barry and Susan had parted, and Susan had filed for an annulment, charging Barry with fraud. They’d been married just 18 months.