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very happy there. It’s an assumption that people made about Barbara.”
     
Barbara and the twins stayed fast friends, and before long they formed a singing group they called Bobbie and the Bernsteins. “Barbara, of course, was Bobbie, and we were her backup girls,” Carolyn said. “We’d sing the popular songs of the day around the gymnasium and the playground. It wasn’t something that amounted to very much. Barbara had that voice even then. Of course, it became stronger, but she certainly had the same quality, absolutely.”
     
Carolyn recalled that Barbara often expressed an interest in becoming a singer at this time. “She would talk to us about her dreams, and she always stressed singing. She was very intense about it.” According to William Corride, another classmate, Barbara sang a little too much for some kids. “Her voice wasn’t so great at that time—it was immature. We used to tell her, ‘Barbara, please, don’t sing anymore. ’”
     

     
B EGINNING WHEN SHE was around ten, Barbara constantly badgered Diana to let her take ballet and singing lessons, to let her audition for the movies, to let her perform in public. Mrs. Kind was reluctant for two reasons. She didn’t think her daughter had the looks to be a successful child performer. “She was not a good-looking girl,” Diana has said. “In show business at that time, there were very pretty girls around.” She also worried about the expense of lessons.
     
But Barbara wouldn’t accept no as an answer. “She was a demon as a little girl,” Diana said. “I never could stop her from doing what she wanted to do, because she was always ready to jump into something and carry it out on her own.” When Diana relented and allowed Barbara to take ballet lessons at Miss Marsh’s School, she worried constantly. “She kept practicing, and I thought it might hurt her, because it’s not very nice when you’re on your toes.”
     
Barbara took ballet lessons for six months. “She wanted everything [that went with the lessons],” Diana recalled. “She had a high hat, a stick. I couldn’t believe this kid!” But after six months Miss Marsh moved away, and Barbara’s interest in ballet went with her. “Was I happy!” Diana exclaimed.
     
Still, there was no holding Barbara back. When she was ten, the family spent two weeks in August at the Barbary Hotel in South Fallsburg, New York. The hotel had a casino and a twice-weekly talent show for youngsters. Barbara sang and danced in the shows, delighting once again in the audience’s friendly applause.
     
When she was eleven she heard about singing auditions being held locally by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, which was looking for kiddie talent. Diana reluctantly agreed to let Barbara try out when she pointed out that if she was accepted she’d be put under contract and paid quite well.
     
On the way to the Steve Allen Studio for the audition Barbara, wearing a blue dress from Abraham & Straus with a white collar and cuffs, fantasized about how it would go. “I thought I’d wear a beautiful gown and dance under a huge sparkling chandelier.” But when she arrived, her illusions evaporated. “Instead, there was a microphone in a glass-enclosed cagelike cell and a man in a booth who said, ‘All right, kid, sing!’ I sang ‘Have You Heard’ behind a glass booth. You couldn’t hear anything outside—they had to press a button to talk to you.” When she finished her song she was confident they would hire her. “But they just said thank you, and that was that.” In fact, Barbara had impressed the talent scouts enough that they wanted her to join their training classes, but Diana nixed the idea. “When they said ‘No pay,’ I said ‘No child. ’”
     
The following year, Barbara pleaded with her mother to let her audition for Star Time, a school for child performers on Brooklyn’s Church Avenue. Graduates got a chance to appear, with pay, on the television show of the same name,