The producer of Wholesale was the notorious David Merrick (whose nickname in the business was “The Abominable Showman”).  Merrick was infamous for his publicity stunts, including the one in 1961 when he found seven New Yorkers who had the same names as the seven leading theater critics. Merrick ran newspaper ads for his show, featuring glowing reviews from the critics, who were not actually critics.

“[Merrick] let me have the cast and designers I wanted,” Laurents stated in his memoir. “He gave me complete freedom at rehearsal.”

The biggest obstacle in casting the show was finding the leading man to play Harry Bogan – described by Laurents as an “antihero.” Ken Mandelbaum described how the character came off in Weidman’s 1937 book: “Harry narrates the novel, and his stream of nasty cynicism is loathsome. In the novel, Harry despises his Jewishness and considers everyone except Ruthie a jerk to be manipulated.”

Bogen was not written as such an extreme character for the musical version, however. Harold Rome told an associate, “the garment trade isn’t what the show’s about. Sure, it’s the Seventh Av. Locale and has its flavor, but what it’s about is a Jewish boy from the Bronx who goes wrong.”

Laurents, at first, considered casting singer Steve Lawrence as Bogen.  His wife, Eydie Gormé, auditioned for Wholesale, too. While Laurents liked Gormé for the role of Ruthie, he felt Steve Lawrence wouldn’t work as Harry because, ultimately, Lawrence was not an actor. “The only chance [Wholesale] did have to succeed commercially was for it to succeed artistically.”  Laurents, therefore, declined to cast the husband and wife singers.

They also tried to cast actor Laurence Harvey as Bogen, but David Merrick botched the contract negotiations with him.

Instead, Laurents hired 23-year-old Elliott Gould to play Harry Bogen. Weidman declared that Gould “is so personable that his playing will take some of the curse off Bogan as the character might impress you in reading the books.”

Arthur Laurents put together “a cast that included two beginners who became stars, Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould … and two former stars, Lillian Roth and Harold Lang. Most of the others were exceptional dancers, a few were exceptional singers, and all could act.  With that company, the prosaic flatness of Wholesale and its songs could be given theatrical life.”

Rehearsals began January 2, 1962 at the New Amsterdam Roof on 42nd Street.  Once a fashionable nightclub, it became the go-to rehearsal space for new Broadway musicals after years of non-use.

Wholesale began out of town tryouts at Philadelphia’s Shubert Theatre February 12, 1962. “Tryouts have often involved exhausting re-writes and revisions,” writer John Kenrick explained. “After the authors sit up all night re-writing scenes and songs, the cast rehearses the changes and add them as soon as possible. This frequently entails rehearsing the new material in the morning, performing the old version at a matinee, and debuting the new material that evening!”

Mostly, Wholesale’s creative team wrestled with the tone of the musical out-of-town.  Harold Rome confessed that David Merrick was worried the show was “too Jewish.”  Rome said, “He wanted to take out the ‘Bar Mitzvah Song’ and ‘The Family Way’ and everything and I just got up and walked out of the room and said, ‘Why don’t you close the show?’”

The Philadelphia Daily News wrote that “Elliott Gould … impresses as a nimble and vocally assured selection; but his dramatics do not yet have male lead authority ... Barbra Streisand, as the harassed secretary, comes out of left field in the second act to stop the show with a comic plaint about why ‘nobody ever calls her by first name.’”

Time magazine criticized the Philadelphia production, too. “Wholesale relies heavily on Jewish folk and speech ways. But as comedy, Jewish dialect is in awkward transition, no longer funny and not yet English.”

Laurents staged Wholesale with minimal sets; actors pushed dress racks across the stage to give the feeling of the busy Seventh Avenue Garment District. “I had the whole show designed in stark black, white, and gray with an arbitrary slash of color for each scene: morning blue for the kitchen, lipstick red for the nightclub, tarnished gold for the office, etc.” Laurents said.

Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Henry Fonda saw the show in Philadelphia “and registered considerable enthusiasm for comedienne Barbra Streisand.”

PHOTO RIGHT:  Director Arthur Laurents with the cast of Wholesale during rehearsals.

By the time Wholesale reached Boston for its second out-of-town run, the creative team rewrote the book, shortening sections and tossing some songs out. “Cutting and editing Weidman’s script to clean out dross and get pace came easily,” Laurents stated.

Cyrus Durgin, reviewing for The Boston Globe, had problems with the main character, comparing Harry Bogan to another musical comedy anti-hero, Joey in Pal Joey. “But there is not enough charm, as Harry is drawn by Weidman, or acted by Elliott Gould, to make him credible to this atom in the audience, to borrow Percy Hammond’s phrase.” 

He noticed Miss Marmelstein, though. “Barbra Streisand wins applause for a stock performance of the stock Miss Marmelstein,” he wrote.

“Wholesale had one problem the cast knew,” Arthur Laurents wrote in his memoir. “They knew the producer wanted to fire Elliott Gould, the leading man, and Barbra Streisand, who was stealing the show, or would have been had there been a show to steal.”

“Every night of rehearsal and out of town, Merrick wanted me to fire her,” Laurents told The Advocate in 1995. “He said, ‘She’s so unattractive,’ and she was not a smash out of town. She also had to be controlled. She didn’t care what anybody else did. She knew she was going to be a star right then and there, and she made sure you knew.”

Elliott Gould knew Merrick disliked him, too. “Out of town there was some talk of replacing me,” Elliott Gould confessed to the Associated Press.

In March, Broadway columnists began printing the rumors. Jerry Gahan reported that “film actor Mickey Callan flew in from Hollywood to look over the Elliott Gould role.” And Dorothy Kilgallen wrote that the “Shubert Alley scuttlebutt has it that Tommy Sands is being considered for an important role” in Wholesale. 

Meanwhile, on March 12, tickets went on sale in New York for the March 22nd opening of I Can Get it For You Wholesale.

After it opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre, the reviews for Wholesale were mixed.  

Walter Kerr, writing for the New York Herald Tribune was an unabashed fan of the show. “It is unbelievable how much that is touching can come from a show that is essentially tough,” he wrote. “Heel Elliott Gould performs his chores splendidly … “

Kerr praised the choreography of Herbert Ross, and specifically mentioned the two songs that “Mr. Ross has staged for a sloe-eyed creature with folding ankles named Barbra Streisand (yes, Barbra is spelled right, and Barbra is great.)”

Summing up his thoughts, Kerr wrote, “what counts is the economy, the speed, the straight-forwardness, and the unblinking vigor with which a highly original project, with a great amount of stick-to-itiveness, keeps its vision clear, its head and toes high, and both its musical and dramatic intentions honor-bright.”

For Cue, Emory Lewis offered, “This musical remake of the Jerome Weidman novel is better than the usual pallid fare. Unfortunately, this saga of garment-district chicanery has distinction only part of the time.”

Howard Taubman of The New York Times singled out Streisand in his review. “The evening’s find is Barbra Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud, irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne, and Mr. Rome has given her a brash, amusing song, ‘Miss Marmelstein,’ to lament her secretarial fate.”

David Merrick couldn’t argue with Laurents an longer after Barbra Streisand stopped the show and received such positive notices.  But, Merrick finally had his way with Gould.  Three months after Wholesale opened, it was announced that actor Larry Kert (Tony in West Side Story) would fill in for Elliott Gould in the role of Harry once a week, as well as function as Gould’s standby.  Eventually, Kert played Harry Bogen in the 1962-1963 touring production of I Can Get it for You Wholesale. Carol Arthur was cast as Miss Marmelstein on that tour.

Another way I Can Get it for You Wholesale was probably not just a professional high for Streisand is because she met and fell in love with the show’s star, Elliott Gould.

Streisand and Elliott Gould first connected during auditions for Wholesale when Gould was watching from the audience.

“I sang,” Barbra recalled, “and then I sort of ran around the stage yelling my phone number and saying, ‘Wow! Will somebody call me, please! Even if I don't get the part, just call!’ I'd gotten my first phone that day, and I was wild to get calls on it. When I got home, the phone rang, and a voice said, ‘This is Elliott Gould. You were brilliant,’ and he hung up. I didn’t know who he was.”

Nevertheless, a romance blossomed between Streisand and Gould during the rehearsals and run of I Can Get it for You Wholesale.  They both moved into a walkup tenement apartment at 1157 Third Avenue, New York.

“I had to be a star,” Streisand told Rona Barrett in 1963. “I never could have been in the chorus. I was the most hated girl on Broadway. I think that’s why I married Elliott. He was the only one in the show who liked me. Like no one could understand how a girl like me could suddenly come off with all those raves. Everyone expects you to slave in 70 plays before you make it.”

Streisand and Gould eventually married in 1963, and three years later Streisand gave birth to their son, Jason Gould.

Certainly, the eight-month run of Wholesale must contain cherished memories for Streisand.  She celebrated her 20th birthday during Wholesale at the Lichee Tree restaurant, owned by her friends Chichi and Irene Kuo.  The cast of Wholesale and other Broadway actors were invited to the May 10th event (at midnight, after the show).

Streisand also moonlighted during the run. After Wholesale’s curtain call, she would catch a taxi  to go perform her nightclub act at The Blue Angel and The Bon Soir. (Some of the newspaper ads billed her as “Barbra ‘I Can Get it For You Wholesale’ Streisand”). 

Barbra was also booked on local and national television shows during this time: The Today Show, P.M. East, The Tonight Show, and The Garry Moore Show (where she sang “Happy Days Are Here Again” for the first time).

Also, when Columbia Records put together a 25th Anniversary recording of Harold Rome’s Pins and Needles, she was asked by Rome to sing six songs on the album – with two solos!

In October 1962, the company of Wholesale moved theaters in the middle of the run, too! Wholesale occupied the Broadway Theatre in midtown Manhattan until it closed in December.

At the 16th Tony Awards, Barbra Streisand was the only person from Wholesale who received a nomination – for “Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.” She was competing with Phyllis Newman (Subways Are For Sleeping), Elizabeth Allen (The Gay Life as Magda) and Barbara Harris (From the Second City).  Phyllis Newman won the Tony for her work in Subways.

Streisand did win the New York Drama Critics Award for “Best Supporting Actress,” though.