The success of Broadway's Barbara Cook, star of Plain and Fancy, Candide, The Music Man, She Loves Me, and countless other shows, has inspired many would-be singers during her career in musicals (the Fifties through the Seventies) and concert hall-cabaret years (the Seventies until now). Blessed with a crystalline soprano and strong acting chops, she has always made performing seem effortless. Yet few fans knew about the inner struggles that dogged her life since childhood.
This week Ms. Cook published her luminous memoir, Then & Now (Harper Collins). The book, coauthored by Tom Santopietro, follows her journey from a disadvantaged youth to leading lady to a dark period of depression and alcoholism. But her hardships seemed to make her unexpected rebirth as a concert artist--and song stylist non pareil--all the more rewarding, and the wonder of her memoir is the authenticity of her writer's voice as she honestly and often wittily recounts her rise in musical theater and later battle to regain her equilibrium.
I should admit that I’ve been a Barbara Cook devotee since my teen years. I grew up listening to her original cast albums including Bernstein’s Candide (1956), in which Ms. Cook sang the high-flying aria, “Glitter and Be Gay,” one of her two signature songs along with “Ice Cream” from She Loves Me. In my opinion, only one of Barbara Cook’s Broadway contemporaries, Julie Andrews, was in the same vocal league, Ms. Cook in The Music Man (1957) and She Loves Me (1963) and Ms. Andrews in My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960). They both possessed lyric-coloratura sopranos with singular timbres, and each has said that, although she had an extensive range, her voice was not quite right for opera. But whereas Ms. Andrews left New York for Hollywood fame after Camelot, Ms. Cook gradually quit the stage to focus on being a wife and mother.
Suddenly, Barbara Cook seemed to vanish. She had married actor and coach David Legrant in 1952, and now she raised their son Adam (born in 1959 and the light of her life), using alcohol and food to assuage demons she'd almost forgotten. Her early years in her native Atlanta had been marked by the death of her baby sister and the departure of her father, traumatic events for which her mother unfairly blamed her, and though she had initially dealt with her guilt and sadness through singing, she found herself having panic attacks in middle age.
Ms. Cook slowly lost her footing. Her marriage ended, her son went to live with his father, and her weight and drinking spiraled beyond her control. In her own words, "My life was a complete mess. I didn't shower or brush my teeth for days at a time. I couldn't imagine cooking a meal, or writing out checks, or going to sleep without liquor. It never occurred to me that alcohol was the problem. I thought if I could just work out some of my difficulties I wouldn't have to drink." Yet she survived through intrinsic grit, and her decision to quit alcohol after a particularly bad episode. It seemed almost miraculous to her that after meeting pianist-composer, Wally Harper, she staged a solo-concert comeback at Carnegie Hall in 1975. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Barbara Cook became “the” interpreter of the Broadway songbook, performing the works of composers from Berlin to Sondheim and recording albums that sold like hotcakes. She sang in small Manhattan clubs like Reno Sweeney’s and prestigious concert halls at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Royal Albert in London. In 2010 she returned to Broadway in Sondheim on Sondheim, a revue that earned her a Tony nomination, and in 2011 she was chosen for a Kennedy Center Honor.
In Then & Now, Ms. Cook describes her Broadway triumphs and more recent achievements with unassuming grace—and some credit for this must go to Mr. Santopietro, though she has told reporters that every word is her own. She offers rich anecdotes about theatrical giants she’s worked with, and her great collaborator, Wally Harper, who believed in her even when she reached her lowest ebb. And if you wonder about her relationships with her dishy leading men (Robert Preston, Farley Granger, Daniel Massey, Arthur Hill, George Hamilton), she’s got stories to tell and secrets to share. Her candid, plucky tone reminds me of Joel Grey’s terrific Master of Ceremonies, a recent memoir by one of her Broadway peers.
Surprises? I was amazed to learn that a singer who teaches master classes at Juilliard and is renowned for the way she can spin a legato phrase does not read music, a tidbit she mentions in passing. But given the beauty and flexibility of her well-trained voice, who cares? As for her weight, which gets much attention in her memoir, Ms. Cook has always looked lovely on stage (and I've seen her five times over the last forty years). She will turn 89 on October 25, and is now confined to a wheelchair. But she's still performing, still wowing her fans with sensitive interpretations of the timeless songs she champions.
Then & Now is both juicy and substantial, one of those books you’ll devour from start to finish, only to start again so you can savor Ms. Cook's observations. It was a privilege to learn more about this great artist through her prose, though hearing her sing for half a century had already told me everything I needed to know about the size and generosity of her heart.
