One of her self-mythologies is the claim that she became a singer because she was not wanted as an actress. There is evidence that she made her first singing recording in a studio in 1955, that she appeared on stage as a fifteen-year-old in the play “Driftwood” and that she was first praised in a newspaper article in 1960 as “gifted young comedian”. Barbara Joan Streisand had just dropped an A from her first name.
The so-called Streisand effect refers to information that is supposed to be suppressed and only then becomes conscious. Something like this: “My manager Marty pointed out to me that I’ve had number one albums in six decades. No, I don’t want applause for that, it’s just a fact. And I thought: Gosh, have I really been around that long?”
Absolute control from an early age
Nobody, not even Bob Dylan, has been around as long as Barbra Streisand. Her legendary manager Marty Ehrlichman negotiated a record deal that gave her absolute control, and in 1962 the first record, “The Barbra Streisand Album,” was released, which Columbia Records wanted to call “Sweet and Spicy Streisand,” as the artist later mocked. The nightclub singer had already appeared on the “Tonight Show” a year earlier. Then she had her first role on Broadway, as Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get It or You Wholesale” – a sensation. She married leading actor Elliott Gould in 1962. In the same year, “The Second Barbra Streisand Album” was released, “Second” underlined in red.
In 1963 she performed a duet on Judy Garland’s television show. Nobody (except Streisand) knew yet that the torch of American entertainment was being passed here. Barbra Streisand has carried this torch for 60 years.
She was born on April 24, 1942 in Brooklyn-Williamsburg, daughter of English teacher Emanuel and his wife Dinah. Father Emanuel suffered from epileptic seizures and died a year later at a summer camp in the Catskills – his breathing stopped after a morphine injection. Barbara was alone with her mother and older brother Sheldon; Later Dinah, who remarried, gave birth to another daughter.
Streisand later made fatherlessness and abandonment a move in “Yentl”; Some probably see a transference in her love affairs with Sydney Chaplin, Omar Sharif, Kris Kristofferson and Barry Gibb. When asked what she was wearing when she took the famous cover photo of “A Star Is Born,” she replies: “Musk!”
Barbra Streisand and the cinema
While filming her most popular film, “The Way We Were,” she raved about Robert Redford: “All men should be like that!” The stoic, silent Redford was less impressed by the constantly talking loudspeaker and retreated to sandwiches during breaks in filming. The relationship pretty much mirrors the relationship between her film characters, the communist activist Katie Morosky and the writer Hubbell Gardiner, who is like his country because everything falls on him. The last shot of the film is the most beautiful farewell scene in cinema (next to “Casablanca”).
It’s incomprehensible that Barbra Streisand didn’t win an Oscar for this role. But she already had one for “Funny Girl” (1968), her first film role ever. She never tires of praising the great William Wyler, who taught her what she used as a film director many years later.
She’s brilliant in “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972), Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy, in which Ryan O’Neal plays Cary Grant.
Streisand was already a producer on “A Star Is Born” (1976). She cast the fantastically talented but little-known songwriter Kris Kristofferson and learned guitar for an instrumental piece that she ended up cutting from the film (Kristofferson hides his face behind his hand in the scene). The song then got lyrics (by Paul Williams), was titled “Evergreen” and became the title track of “A Star Is Born”.
In 1977, Streisand and Williams won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Neil Diamond – who comes from Brooklyn and sang in the same school choir as Streisand – made it somewhat obtrusive in his introduction that only Streisand could win the award. That’s how it was. Paul Williams thanked everyone on behalf of all little people. After 50 years of Academy Awards, Barbra Streisand became the first woman to be honored in this category.
She was often the first, but even more brilliant is Streisand’s sense of talent, adaptations and fashions. With Donna Summer she sang the disco hit “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” in 1979 – a number one hit. Barry Gibb wrote the songs for Guilty in 1980, produced the album and sang with Streisand – her most successful album. In 1985, after many years, she recorded a record of Broadway plays; the record company complained about old “Show Tunes” – a number one album. Her 1972 song “Stoney End” became a fan favorite after decades.
Barbra Streisand’s singing is the subject of scholarly treatises. Antonio Banderas, a late-aughts duet partner, says: “Velvet.” Others say: liquid gold. Her mature voice suddenly reaches a register in which something steel flashes, a hard, hoarse edge. And she immediately takes it back. At her 2016 concert in Miami, she begins – the audience has just sat down – with “The Way We Were”. She sings the famous lines (“Memories/ May be beautiful and yet/ What’s too painful to remember/We simply choose to forget/ So it’s the laughter/ The laughter we’ll remember”) as if casually, but her silver-eyed face looks like that of a madwoman. She always sings “The Way We Were,” but she sings it differently each time.
You know you’re world famous when you call Joe’s during intermission at your Miami concert and ask if the five servings of stone crabs will be delivered in time for the end of the show. And please also the fried chicken pieces from the children’s menu. They’re delivered on time, Sammie the dog is waiting in the catacombs, and you eat the crabs with your fingers and put spray cream on the key lime pie.
“And I’m on a diet!”