Nightclubs: The Treatment

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"Tonight," she sings, "tonight won't be like any night." And the audience, basking in reverie and a second brandy, believes her. Svelte in a glittering, hip-hugging gown, her generously exposed bosom gently heaving, she moves like a vision in a halo of amber light. "You'd be so nice to come home to," she purrs, and the menfolk are hooked. Now she is happy, now she is blue, and so, alternately, is the audience. They can hardly help it. It all seems so sincere, so spontaneous, so terribly special.

Except that it isn't. The performance of a supper-club songbird, in fact, is a coldly calculated exercise in group seduction. Every movement, every lighting change is as carefully mapped out as a market-research study and a subliminal soft-sell. There is, for instance, the old "arctic gust" routine, whereby the air conditioning in a club is turned up full blast a few minutes before showtime. The hapless audience, unaware of what hit it, naturally attributes the sudden lift in spirits to the personality of the performer. And when it comes time for the singer's exit, the orchestra breaks into a fast "bright four" tempo that compels the listeners, whether they want to or not, to applaud briskly in rhythm with the music.

Breezy Patter. The originators of these and other crowd-manipulating gimmicks are Jerry Bresler and Lyn Duddy, the Rodgers and Hammerstein of nightclubs. Since they teamed up nine years ago, they have masterminded 40-odd acts for nightclub singers—Robert Goulet, Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Jane Morgan, Teresa Brewer, Connie Francis, Bobby Vinton—providing everything from songs and arrangements to lighting and makeup. No detail is overlooked. They scramble into the rafters to scrub the grime off the spotlights, hustle around a club blowing out the candles because "they detract attention from the stage." They wire the singer's microphone through an echo-chamber box, or provide a cordless shortwave mike that transmits to an FM receiver hooked up with the sound system.

Bresler and Duddy, both in their early 40s, begin by psychoanalyzing a performer "to find what she stands for," then work as long as six months polishing her delivery. With Jane Morgan, they played up her sex appeal and styled her vocal treatments after Lillian Russell; with Teresa Brewer, they provided "lots of saloon songs arranged as if they were done 30 years ago." They teach their singers how and where to walk (glide, but never too close to the tables lest someone see sweat or telltale wrinkles), give them mildly risque parodies of such standards as Let's Do It and breezy between-song patter (says Duddy: "Most singers should not be allowed to ad-lib hello").

Given the Bresler-Duddy treatment, almost any fledgling songbird can be preened into a passable nightclub performer. Take the classic case of Bobbe (nee Barbara) Norris, 23. When she moved into a one-room apartment in Manhattan last year about the only experience she could boast was singing at high school proms in her native San Francisco. A friend got her an audition with Columbia Records, which signed her to a recording contract and sent her to Norman Rosemont, a high-powered producer-manager, who got her booked into the elegant Persian Room in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel.