Streisand / LIVE 

Another Evening with Harry Stoones was an Off-Broadway musical-comedy revue. Its writer, Jeff Harris, described it as “an anti-revue. All the sketches kind of made fun of everything.” Stoones' director, Glenn Jordan, recalled “it was more like Laugh-In,” the NBC sketch comedy TV show that ran from 1968 to 1973. Even the title made fun of the theater conventions of the day— Harry Stoones wasn't in the cast, nor did he exist, and furthermore, there had never been a first evening with him!

The show was produced by Stenod Productions, consisting of producers G. Adam Jordan and Fred Mueller. They were twenty-six years old Harvard grads who had raised $15,000 from twenty-five investors to mount the show.

At this point in her career, Barbra Streisand still wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, despite the fact that she was earning money as a singer in nightclubs. So she continued to audition for the theater, including an Off-Broadway musical co-produced by Burke McHugh called Greenwich Village, U.S.A.

Another musical she auditioned for was Bravo Giovanni. Producer Phillip Rose recalled, “Barbra Streisand came up to my 57th Street office and there was something about her personality and guts that fascinated me,” said Rose. “I called [director Stanley Prager] to meet her, and after he did and even after he auditioned her as our leading lady, he said it was out of the question, that she was too ugly. Over the years, I never let him forget it — even though we wound up with a very nice leading lady in Michele Lee, who made her Broadway debut with the show.”

Streisand auditioned for Another Evening with Harry Stoones in August 1961. “The auditions were very extensive,” Jeff Harris told writer Randall Riese in 1993. “We needed people who were multifaceted. They all had to sing, they all had to be able to move, and they all had to do comedy.”

Glenn Jordan also told Riese about Barbra's audition. “Jeff Hunter, the agent, sent her in to us. We had been seeing people for a very long time, most of whom were not very good, and most of whom sang the same songs. And then Barbra came in and auditioned.” Jordan remembered that she sang I Stayed Too Long at the Fair and A Sleepin' Bee at that audition. “She was as good, I think, as she ever got,” Jordan stated. “I still remember the way she used her hands. She had these beautiful hands, and wonderful nails, and she used them very expressively when she sang.”

Jordan did not cast her immediately, though. They already had one legit singer in the cast (Susan Belink) and couldn't figure how Streisand would fit into the ensemble.

Glenn Jordan and Jeff Harris continued to audition performers: Linda Lavin, Louise Lasser, Barry Newman, John Voight, and even Joan Rivers.

But because Jordan couldn't “couldn't get that girl out of my mind” he called Streisand back to audition again on September 1, 1961. “I wrote ‘perfect,’ ‘wonderful,’ in my notes,” Jordan said. He spoke to Jeff Harris, “She's so good that I think we have to use her.”

Barbra Streisand was hired. And because of her talent “we changed the whole configuration of the revue so that she would have more songs to do,” Glenn Jordan said.

The Stoones creators rehearsed with the actors for three or four weeks, mostly because Harris disagreed with Jordan's directing. There was also a problem with Streisand — this was only the first major show she'd worked on (she earned $37.50 a week). Musical director Abba Bogin explained to Randall Riese that it was difficult to get Streisand to be disciplined. “You had to explain to her that if she didn't do certain things a certain way with some sort of consistency, that it was impossible for anybody who she was working with to work around her,” Bogin said.

Actor Lou Antonio was cast in Stoones and even posed for publicity photos before he left the show and was replaced by Ben Keller. Antonio remembered one rehearsal: “Dom and I were downstage rehearsing a comedy sketch and we noticed the director Glenn Jordan looking upstage, not at us. Dom and I dwindled to a stop and looked over our shoulders. That little Streisand gal was doing some outlandish comical bit, and she wasn't even in the sketch!”

Barbra's friend Bary Dennen recalled, “In this show, Barbra's role was more kooky comedy misfit than glamour puss. Her sketch performances were great: underplayed yet terrifically funny.”

Harry Stoones had nine preview performances — public performances to allow the director and cast to improve the show before the critics attended. Stoones opened Saturday, October 21, 1961.

With a first act billed as “The Civil War” and a second act titled “The Roaring Twenties” (neither act had anything to do with those time periods), Another Evening with Harry Stoones was never recorded or filmed. To date, no script has been uncovered. So, what we are left with are memories from the cast and crew and fans who saw the show during its ten performances.

• In “Indian Nuts” Streisand played an Indian in a spoof of Columbus’ discovery of America
• The song, “Value” (“I’m in love with Harold Mengert”), which Barbra sang in her nightclub act for years, came from Harry Stoones
• “I’ve Got the Blues” was in Stoones, according to Jeff Harris (although it does not appear in the Playbill's list of songs). The short comedic number (“I've got the blues ... I've got the blues ... now I feel better!”) was used in Barbra's first TV special.
• “Big Barry” was a comedic sketch set in the boys' and girls' high school locker rooms. Barbra played Nancy, a homely girl who the other slutty girls made fun of for being under-sexed. In the boy's locker room, skinny Kenny Adams played Barry, the homely male version of Barbra's character. The punchline of the sketch came at the end, when Barry and Nancy met center stage and Barbra delivered her line: “Barry, I’m pregnant.”
• “Jersey” was another of Streisand's songs. It was a three-act song about a woman whose lover has moved to New Jersey. “It was a full-blast jungle number right from a movie,” Jeff Harris told James Spada. “She worries about all the dangers that can befall you in Jersey, and there are native jungle rhythms. She resolves to go after [her boyfriend]—even though she may die—and bring him out.” The song ended with Streisand vowing to find him: “I won’t yell, I won’t scream, I won’t squawk, for it’s better to die together in Jersey than be single in New York.” Barbra, with her Brooklyn accent, rhymed “squawk” with “York.”
• The last number “Dream House” was described by Barry Dennen. He recalled that “the cast, some in workman's overalls with saws and hammers, tried to put together a honeymoon cottage for two but halfway through the number someone bumped into someone else, banging into the set and setting off a chain reaction: the house started to fall apart. As the set began collapsing and picket fences and ladders fell over, crashing to the ground, everyone tried to scramble for safety. Barbra was simply a scream as the cross-eyed bride being carried across the threshold.”

Variety’s review mentioned Streisand as “a slim, offbeat comedienne with a flair for dropping a black-out gag. And she belts across a musical apostrophe to New Jersey with facile intensity.”

Jeff Harris wrote more songs for Streisand in those early years of her career: She recorded “Sweet Zoo” for her television show, My Name is Barbra, and “Marty the Martian”, which appeared on A Happening in Central Park. She continued to use Harris' song from Harry Stoones—“Value”—up until her Las Vegas act in the 1970s.

Because the initial reviews of Stoones were not kind, and because, financially, it made more sense to close the show than to wait for audiences to buy tickets, Harry Stoones ended after its opening night performance.

Ironically, Super Agent Sue Mengers saw Streisand in Harry Stoones — and later represented her in Hollywood during the 1970s. In 1961, however, Mengers was a secretary at the William Morris talent agency, making rounds, trying to find new talent in New York. “She thought I was nothing, which she told me later” Streisand told Mengers biographer Brian Kellow. “She didn't get my drift.”

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