Britney: Inside the Dream

The offices of the Carson-Adler talent agency are somewhat anonymous-looking on West 57th Street, New York; situated high above a Gap store between 8th Avenue and Broadway and yet forensic officers would be able to follow a trail of Stardust stretching back almost 30 years, from the revolving doors of Hollywood and Broadway to the elevator that takes you to one of the most respected agencies in the industry, on the twentieth floor of the Fisk Building. This is where child stars come to learn, grow and find guidance.

Names such as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Mischa Barton and Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon have all passed through here as children, wide-eyed with expectation and dreams. And Britney Spears joined their ranks when she arrived for a meeting with Nancy Carson, the agency’s owner, after Matt Casella’s over-the-phone recommendation persuaded her to meet with the little girl from Louisiana.

This mother hen of Broadway was the ideal rep for the Spears, who were already lost and uncertain within the vast-ness of their daughter’s mere potential. Nancy’s experienced but maternal tenderness was extremely reassuring. Indeed, she would go on to write a parental guide for young hopefuls called Raising A Star, promoted as a ‘guide to helping kids break into theater, film, television or music’. She looks for youngsters driven by an inexplicable but burning desire to perform; a child who will drag their parent into her office, not vice versa. And that was Britney, always pulling on Lynne’s arm to allow her to perform. It was Britney who was propelling her destiny, contrary to popular opinion.

Lynne, with the detached support of Jamie, may have facilitated the dream, but she never invented nor pushed it. If anything she was excited by the prospect of her child bettering the life that she’d had, as family friend Joy Moore told an NBC Dateline special in April 2008: ‘Lynne just had such high hopes, you know? That her kids were going to have it better. It was just these wonderful dreams.’

Lynne had already spoken to Nancy over the phone, and submitted a raw videotape showcasing Britney’s talent as she belted out ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’ and Sinead O’Connor’s haunting ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. It was then that she invited them to New York. Within the community of Kent-wood, Jamie and Lynne could see the frowns from those who felt they were opening up their daughter to crushing, inevitable rejection. And even if she made it, they would be denying her the riches of childhood, it was argued. The consensus was that the Spears shouldn’t allow their child’s schooling to be interrupted by far-fetched dreams. It was, says Lynne, indicative of ‘a small-town way of thinking.’

Dance tutor Steve Hood explained: ‘The only thing kids were encouraged to do here was go to church, leave school and get married—anything else simply wasn’t an option. Singing and dancing was something people did on television and it wasn’t for the likes of us Louisiana folk. No one liked change and everyone did exactly what was expected of them—until Britney came along.’

Undeterred, the Spears kept going, so emotionally invested were they in Britney’s dream, and they headed to New York in February 1991. Unable to afford the airfare, they made the 1,400-mile journey by Amtrak, travelling the No. 19 train from New Orleans Union terminal direct into New York’s Pennsylvania station. The travelling party was Britney, Lynne, Jamie, brother Bryan, his friend Hunter, Aunty Jeanine (Jamie’s sister) and cousin Tara. The average journey time is 30 hours, so the family bunked down in a two-bed sleeper carriage and booked one hotel room for all of them once they’d arrived in the Big Apple.

The country folk pitched up in Manhattan slightly bewildered by its density. Horizons were compressed into the narrowing funnels of the avenues, and the sky could only be seen by looking upward. Britney’s first question was to ask where the cows were. It must have been an odd experience for a child to be transported from the remote roads of trundling trucks to the bedlam of Manhattan, where bumper-to-bumper cars and yellow cabs are seemingly strung together in neverending loops of traffic.

In Nancy’s office, Britney was wide-eyed with excitement. Removed from her parents, and seemingly okay to be without Lynne’s presence, she exuded all the attributes the agent was looking for: motivation, imagination, expression, obvious talent and a winning look. ‘I liked her instantly. Britney is a terrific person, and she was a remarkable child,’ said Nancy, speaking from her offices, ‘she and her mum are honest people, and I still know the family well today.’ She still gets the chills thinking about the young Britney whom she has described as ‘unique’ and among the best she’s seen at such a young age. She also told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ‘She walked through the door, and she was shy. But the moment she was asked to perform, this amazing little performer just started up. She evolved on the spot.’

All Jamie and Lynne wanted to know was the answer to one burning question: did their daughter have what it takes or were they wasting their time? Nancy was honest, imparting her view that their daughter had something that could be honed with professional training, but there are never any guarantees in show business. Sensing the same opportunity as the gymnastics, Jamie and Lynne somehow knew this was more than parental belief—they shared an instinct, and they wouldn’t be the ones to stand in Britney’s way. Their love knew no other option but to back her. Britney, in her tenth year, was New York-bound to be both schooled and professionally trained.

On 4 April 1991, Britney’s younger sister Jamie-Lynn—another bundle of nervous energy—was born. By the May, both newborn and a recovered mum joined Britney in a tiny apartment in the heart of New York’s theatre district, off 48th Street. Bryan, then fourteen, was left with Jamie, aided by assistance from their neighbours, the Reeds.

The Manhattan apartment was an ideal location because of its proximity to Professional Performing Arts School, where Britney would spend three summers attending educational classes, as well as receiving vocal and acting coaching. She was back and forth between New York and Kentwood, returning to her roots and Park Lane Academy in between her performing arts studies.

The arts school, which has also assisted Alicia Keys, had only opened the previous year to meet the needs of young students whose ambitions were fixed on the arts. Its mission statement is to offer personalised teaching, ‘to develop, refine, and showcase students in dance, drama, and vocal music whilst providing a rigorous, meaningful academic curriculum’.

It was here, it is said, that Britney mastered her ‘more breathy’ signature vocals, as well as polishing her moves at the Broadway Dance Center off 45th Street, just off Times Square. If someone had tracked Britney in those days, her Manhattan was virtually contained within a twelve-block parameter, from 45th Street to Nancy’s agency offices in 57th Street. The sight of Britney and her mum pushing a stroller around theatre-land, and taking in theatre row in 46th Street, was a regular occurrence. Lynne was convinced the bright lights of Broadway would be where Britney would end up.

But she would have to settle for less starry surroundings in the beginning, and it was on one of her return visits to Louisiana that Britney first sampled what it felt like to draw a crowd—at an annual spring arts and craft on a former sugar cane plantation on the banks of the Mississippi. It was March 1992, and Lynne had been looking for venues where Britney could sing, when a local in Kentwood suggested a new festival held in Vacherie, about a two-hour drive away. Britney’s ‘stage’ was the spectacular setting of the Oak Alley plantation, so-called because of a quarter-mile canopy of oak trees with contorted branches that reach over to form a natural archway leading to a classical antebellum home. It is an immensely popular festival in the Deep South, attracting 8,000 tourists, artists and crafters from Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Tennessee, and it was Britney’s biggest test to date.

There is probably not a more picturesque location in the whole of Louisiana and yet these beginnings could not have been more basic. Britney’s venue among the 150 stalls was a 60×60ft tent filled with picnic tables and chairs, where visitors could find shade and escape the sun. The stage was a square of wooden flooring. Backing music came courtesy of a little sound system borrowed from the son of a groundsman. Most of the crowd was busily shuttling between stalls when the little girl, wearing blue jeans, a buttoned-down white shirt and a trilby, walked anonymously onto stage with a microphone in her hand. In front of Britney, about twenty people sat at the tables on the grass, and that included mum Lynne, and family friends Jill Prescott and Felicia Culotta.

Outside the tent was a moving sea of people. The music piped up, and Britney started to sing, confidently, loudly, brilliantly. Slowly but surely, that empty tent filled with an estimated 200 people. Britney remembers the moment for the ‘amazed look on Mama’s face’. One of the festival’s organisers recalls the day vividly: ‘I remember people commenting afterwards, saying what an amazing and powerful voice she had. No one had heard of Britney Spears back then, but her voice literally drew people into the tent.’

What surprised this particular observer, who had met Britney and her family on arrival, was the difference between the performer and the timid girl who showed up: ‘She was quiet, shy, almost withdrawn. She wasn’t a child performer who was full of herself, at all. Then she sang and became someone else. We were like, “Wow—she’s got some talent!” We booked her to return the following year.’ Britney also walked away with her first-ever performance fee—$50 in cash and some food coupons. Lynne treated her to a new doll from one of the stalls.

Britney had come on by leaps and bounds on the back of intense vocal and dancing coaching, both in New York and at home, and now she was ready for the stage. But television would beckon first: an appearance on a talent show called Star Search which, after being devised in 1983, was the forerunner to such modern-day shows such as America’s Got Talent or American Idol. The format was a face-off between two acts, presided over by four judges who rated each performance with full stars, quarter-stars or half-stars before presenter Ed McMahon announced the scores. It was a show which produced a stellar crop of future stars, including Christina Aguilera, LeAnn Rimes, Rosie O’Donnell, Tiffany, Justin Timberlake, Usher and, oddly enough, Sharon Stone as a ‘spokesmodel’.

When it came to Britney’s ‘star turn’, she breezed through initial episodes, notching up regular three-and-a-half and three-and-three quarter scores out of a four-star maximum ‘perfect’. With Kentwood cheering, she progressed to the final in a head-to-head with a boy called Marty Thomas, and the winner was to be crowned the 1992 Junior Vocalist Champion. Countless documentaries on Britney have shown the archive clip of her big moment, singing Naomi Judd’s ‘Love Can Build A Bridge’, and Britney herself has often cringed at flashbacks to the conservative black dress and Minnie Mouse-style bow in her hair. It was a powerful performance and she couldn’t have felt happier.

She had become used to the dramatic anticipation of awaiting the judge’s scores and then hearing her name as the winner. But her face fell when Ed McMahon declared Marty Thomas as the champion, winning by the narrowest of margins: a quarter-star.

She had to settle for the silver medal and was noble in defeat, hugging her competitor and smiling bravely. But, as the credits rolled and she walked off stage, she burst into tears, and ran heartbroken into Lynne’s arms. In Britney’s mind, there were no second bests. She had striven to be best at everything, and felt she’d let herself and all of Kentwood down. But that very public defeat delivered a positive outcome when the phone in Nancy Carson’s office rang soon afterwards.

The producers of a new off-Broadway production, Ruthless! The Musical, were looking for a youngster with ‘triple threat’ capabilities who could play an eight-year-old at the 248-seat Players Theater in Greenwich Village. Britney was approached to be understudy for the lead role, played by first choice Laura Bell Bundy The irony contained within this opportunity lies in the musical’s Hollywood spoof storyline: promoted as a tale about ‘…a precocious little girl, Tina Denmark, who will stop at nothing to reach her goal of becoming a star, whilst encouraged by an equally obsessed mother.’

The opening line of the play is delivered from agent Sylvia St Croix:

Talent! Where does it come from? Is it a product of one’s environment…Or is talent something you are born with? Something passed down from generation to generation, something in the blood?

Lynne Spears, watching in the wings with Britney, would say it’s in the blood; her English blood. For the roots of Britney’s talents can be found on grandma Lillian’s side of the family. Her sister, and Britney’s great-aunt Joan Woolmore, now 80, told the Daily Mail: ‘We came from humble beginnings. We didn’t have a great deal…but what both Lillian and I loved to do was dance and play music. Our father saved up and sent us to dance classes and piano lessons. During the war, we used to go dancing in Covent Garden where they had turned the Royal Opera House into a dance hall. We could jitterbug with the best of them!’

It’s also obvious that Britney’s talents spoke to a dormant dream within Lynne because her own mother, Lillian, reminded her that she, too, would sing and dance as a girl. ‘It must be in Britney’s genes,’ said the grandma, ‘music runs in our blood.’

Britney joined the cast at the end of August 1992 and rehearsed her lines like a pro. She was at rehearsals from two o’clock and remained, in costume, backstage each night until the end of every performance just in case the lead fell sick. But Laura Bell Bundy hardly missed a show. Broadway veteran Donna English, who played the role of the fame-hungry mother, rehearsed with Britney on a few occasions but the only thing that sticks in her memory, according to a broadway.com (http://broadway.com) Q&A, ‘…was that she had a big voice.’

Donna doesn’t remember Britney ever taking the stage but in actual fact, she stepped in when Laura Bell Bundy took a brief sojourn to film a small part in the movie, The Adventures of Huck Finn. Consequently, the role of Tina Denmark fell to Britney, appearing like a version of Annie in a pink polka-dot dress with lace hem and collar, and a giant bow in her hair. There were no critiques of her performance but agent Nancy said she was ‘a natural’. But Laura Bell Bundy returned, and Britney fell back into the shadows.

Success, let alone stardom, must have felt light years away for both Britney and Lynne during those long days and nights, confined backstage in a quaint theatre and then cooped up in a tiny apartment, which they wouldn’t reach until gone midnight most days. Suddenly, the reality—and odds—of ‘making it’ whilst treading the boards didn’t match Britney’s great expectations. As with gymnastics, the fun was being drummed out of the experience by the tedium of routine and the frustration of playing second-fiddle.

As Christmas neared, Britney began to pine for home. She gazed at the spindly miniature tree decorated with sparse tinsel in their apartment and imagined the scent of the large evergreen that Jamie brought home each year; she looked ahead to a bleak Christmas Day morning, and then imagined missing church one more time. And that’s when she turned to Lynne to ask: ‘Mama, can we go home?’

That was all her mother needed to hear. Neither was particularly enjoying the experience anymore, and Lynne’s absence wasn’t helping a deteriorating marriage. Agent Nancy rang the producers and they found a replacement in child actress Natalie Portman, who would grow up to win international acclaim in movies such as Leon, Closer and The Other Boleyn Girl. As Nancy says today: ‘Three little girls—Laura, Britney and Natalie—went on to great things in their own rights so the casting director for Ruthless! clearly had a good eye!’

Britney returned to the bosom of Kentwood, cushioned by Disney casting director Matt Casella’s reassuring message: ‘You’ll be back’. That remained the opportunity she was holding out for. Britney’s faith was pinned to the map at Central Florida.

Everyone was home for the Christmas of 1992, and Lynne returned to become a second-grade teacher at Silver Creek Elementary School. But the New Year would bring exciting beginnings. Disney executives knew Britney would be ready, transformed into a slick and edgier performer because of her New York experience.

Out of 20,000 applicants, she was selected as one of 24 contenders to fight for seven places as a new ‘mouseketeer’ at a three-day audition camp at Disney/MGM studios in Orlando. Inevitably, she shone and her performance earned her a B+ mark with the reported comments: ‘Very good…nice girl! Sign her up.’

She was announced as one of the all-new seven mice to join the established 20 members of The Mickey Mouse Club, aka MMC. This time, Kentwood didn’t just hang out the bunting and bang its drum; it went on a hi-tech spending spree. Local demand soared for cable television installation so that the community could tune into the Disney Channel for its half-hour daily broadcast. Buddy Powell, from the Golden Corral restaurant, said Britney was living proof that anything was possible and described her as a walking inspiration to everyone in Kentwood to follow their dreams.

After all the television coverage and the town mayor’s proclamation of a Britney Spears Day, the family posted a message at the council buildings:

Dear Kentwood,

Britney has many memorable moments to remember in her short, little life. But April 24th 1993 has to be the most sentimental moment yet. It is so exciting to have these wonderful experiences but what makes it so wonderful is to have so many loved ones you can share them with.

Thank you Kentwood for your support and encouragement.

We love you—The Britney Spears Family

If you asked either Britney or Lynne at this time, this was probably as good as it got: handpicked for the televised Mickey Mouse Club.

People have since questioned why Lynne said yes to the opportunity, taking her daughter out of mainstream schooling so she could be thrust into the limelight. Britney would never know a normal junior high education, and it’s not as if Lynne wasn’t warned by Kentwood locals who counselled against such an upheaval. It does seem that what Britney wanted, Britney got. But who could blame Lynne? She was no different to the proud dad who felt his young son could go all the way to Old Trafford, or the parents convinced their classically trained musician child could one day play for the London Philharmonic. Besides, The Mickey Mouse Club would take responsible care of Britney’s educational needs. And when your child is hell-bent on a dream, it is hard for any parent to deny them when opportunity knocks. It is presumably why hundreds of thousands of youngsters line up, with parental consent, to take their chances on American Idol or The X-Factor, never once considering the ramifications of the fame they are chasing.

In Britney’s case, The Mickey Mouse Club seemed a natural opportunity to embrace and she’d no longer need to invent her own make-believe world. She was about to become an integral part of a Disney fantasyland. It was, by any stretch of her furtive imagination, a pinch-me dream come true in its own right.

But it was only the beginning.

5 The Disney Dream (#ulink_9c05ba22-723f-58dd-bba6-d4a498356f52)

‘She always wanted to learn,

always wanted to better herself.’

–Choreographer Myles Thoroughgood on Britney

‘I’ll be honest, I didn’t see instant star quality and I worried about what would become of her. I walked away, thinking, “This business is going to eat her up,’” said Chuck Yerger. He is seated on the patio of his Floridian home, and has just cast his mind back to an initial one-on-one meeting with Britney as she arrived for her first day on the Disney lot, with Lynne pushing a stroller that carried a restless Jamie-Lynn, aged two.