Streisand Estate

Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers awarded an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT).

Streisand began her career by performing in nightclubs and Broadway theaters in the early 1960s. Following her guest appearances on various television shows, she signed to Columbia Records, insisting that she retain full artistic control, and accepting lower pay in exchange, an arrangement that continued throughout her career, and released her debut ''The Barbra Streisand Album'' (1963), which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Throughout her recording career, Streisand has topped the US ''Billboard'' 200 chart with 11 albums—a record for a woman—including ''People'' (1964), ''The Way We Were'' (1974), ''Guilty'' (1980), and ''The Broadway Album'' (1985). She also achieved five number-one singles on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100—"The Way We Were", "Evergreen", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and " Woman in Love".

Following her established recording success in the 1960s, Streisand ventured into film by the end of that decade. She starred in the critically acclaimed '' Funny Girl'' (1968), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Additional fame followed with films including the extravagant musical '' Hello, Dolly!'' (1969), the screwball comedy '' What's Up, Doc?'' (1972), and the romantic drama ''The Way We Were'' (1973). Streisand won a second Academy Award for writing the love theme from '' A Star Is Born'' (1976), the first woman to be honored as a composer. With the release of '' Yentl'' (1983), Streisand became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical. Streisand also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, becoming the first (and for 37 years, the only) woman to win that award. Streisand later directed ''The Prince of Tides'' (1991) and ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'' (1996).

With sales exceeding 150 million records worldwide, Streisand is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the second highest-certified female artist in the United States, with 68.5 million certified album units. ''Billboard'' ranked Streisand as the greatest female artist on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart and the top Adult Contemporary female artist of all time. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, 10 Grammy Awards including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award,"Barbra Streisand Goes Platinum for History-Making 31st Time with Partners"
''Broadway World''. January 20, 2015. five Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and nine Golden Globes.

Early life

Family

Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York City, the daughter of Diana Ida ( Rosen; 1908–2002) and Emanuel Streisand. Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary. Her father was a high school teacher at the same school, where they first met. Streisand's family is Jewish. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Galicia (modern-day Poland and Ukraine) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand's first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier.Christopher Nickens, and Swensen, Karen. ''The Films of Barbra Streisand'', Citadel Press (2000) The family fell into near-poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an "outcast", explaining, "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day. Mine didn't." Her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved: "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

Streisand recalls that her mother had a "great voice" and sang semi-professionally on occasion. During a visit to the Catskills when Streisand was 13, she told Rosie O'Donnell, she and her mother recorded some songs on tape. That session was the first time Streisand ever asserted herself as an artist, which also became her "first moment of inspiration".

She has an older brother, Sheldon, and a half-sister, singer Roslyn Kind, from her mother's remarriage to Louis Kind in 1950.

Education

Streisand began her education at the Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva of Brooklyn when she was five. She was considered bright and inquisitive about everything; however, she lacked discipline, often shouting answers to questions out of turn. She next entered Public School 89 in Brooklyn, and during those early school years began watching television and going to movies. "I always wanted to be somebody, to be famous ...You know, get out of Brooklyn."

Streisand became known by others in the neighborhood for her voice. With the other kids she remembers sitting on the stoop in front of their apartment building and singing: "I was considered the girl on the block with the good voice." That talent became a way for her to gain attention. She would often practice her singing in the hallway of her apartment building which gave her voice an echoing quality.

She made her singing debut at a PTA assembly, where she became a hit to everyone but her mother, who was mostly critical of her daughter. Streisand was invited to sing at weddings and summer camp, along with having an unsuccessful audition at MGM records when she was nine. By the time she was 13, her mother began supporting her talent, helping her make a four-song demo tape, including "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart", and "You'll Never Know".

Becoming an actress was her main objective. That desire was made stronger when she saw her first Broadway play, ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' when she was 14. The star in the play was Susan Strasberg, whose acting she wanted to emulate. Streisand began spending her spare time in the library, studying the biographies of various stage actresses such as Eleanora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. In addition, she began reading novels and plays and studying the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov.

She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1956 where she became an honor student in modern history, English, and Spanish. She also joined the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, where she sang with another choir member and classmate, Neil Diamond. Diamond recalls, "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." The school was near an art-movie house, and he recalls that she was always aware of the films they were showing. She had a crush on 15-year-old US Chess Champion and fellow student Bobby Fischer, whom she found to be "very sexy".

During the summer of 1957, she got her first stage experience as a walk-on at the Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York. That small part was followed by a role as the kid sister in ''Picnic'' and one as a vamp in ''Desk Set''. In her second year, she took a night job at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village helping backstage. When she was a senior, she rehearsed for a small part in ''Driftwood'', a play staged in a midtown attic space.

She graduated, aged 16, from Erasmus Hall in January 1959, and despite her mother's pleas that she stay out of show business, she set out trying to get roles on the New York City stage. After renting a small apartment on 48th street in the heart of the theater district, she accepted any job she could involving the stage, and at every opportunity, she "made the rounds" of the casting offices.

Career beginnings

Aged 16 and living on her own, Streisand took various menial jobs to have some income. During one period, she lacked a permanent address, and found herself sleeping at the home of friends or anywhere else she could set up the army cot she carried around. When desperate, she returned to her mother's flat in Brooklyn for a home-cooked meal. However, her mother was horrified by her daughter's "gypsy-like lifestyle", wrote biographer Karen Swenson, and again begged her to give up trying to get into show business, but Streisand took her mother's pleadings as even more reason to keep trying: "My desires were strengthened by wanting to prove to my mother that I ''could'' be a star."

She took a job as an usher at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater for ''The Sound of Music'' early in 1960. During the run of the play, she heard that the casting director was auditioning for more singers, and it marked the first time she sang in pursuit of a job. Although the director felt she was not right for the part, he encouraged her to begin including her talent as a singer on her résumé when looking for other work.

She asked her boyfriend, Barry Dennen, to tape her singing, copies of which she could then give out to possible employers. Dennen found a guitarist to accompany her:

Dennen grew enthusiastic and he convinced her to enter a talent contest at the Lion, a gay nightclub in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. She performed two songs, after which there was a "stunned silence" from the audience, followed by "thunderous applause" when she was pronounced the winner. She was invited back and sang at the club for several weeks. It was during this time that she dropped the second "a" from her first name, switching from "Barbara" to "Barbra", due to her dislike of her original name.

In the early days Streisand was repeatedly told she was too ugly to be a star and advised to get a nose job, which she did not do.

Nightclub shows

Streisand was next asked to audition at the Bon Soir nightclub, after which she was signed up at $125 a week. It became her first professional engagement in September 1960, where she was the opening act for comedian Phyllis Diller. She recalls it was the first time she had been in that kind of upscale environment: "I'd never been in a nightclub until I sang in one."

Dennen now wanted to expose Streisand to his vast record collection of female singers, including Billie Holiday, Mabel Mercer, Ethel Waters, and Édith Piaf. Streisand realized she could still become an actress by first gaining recognition as a singer. From his collection she drew the song that best defined her mission in singing: ''A Sleepin' Bee'', with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Truman Capote for the 1954 musical '' House of flowers''. "The lyrics to that song gave me the three acts of a play that I longed for as an actress," Streisand said. "And Harold was one of those writers who could write these magnificent melodies. That gave me what I needed." According to biographer Christopher Nickens, hearing other great female singers benefited her style, as she began creating different emotional characters when performing, which gave her singing a greater range.

She improved her stage presence when speaking to the audience between songs. She discovered that her Brooklyn-bred style of humor was received favorably. During the next six months appearing at the club, some began comparing her singing voice to famous names such as Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Fanny Brice. Her conversational ability to charm an audience with spontaneous humor during performances became more sophisticated and professional. Theater critic Leonard Harris wrote: "She's twenty; by the time she's thirty she will have rewritten the record books."

Early theatre roles and Broadway debut

Streisand accepted her first role on the New York stage in ''Another Evening with Harry Stoones'', a satirical comedy play in which she acted and sang two solos. The show received terrible reviews and closed the next day. With the help of her new personal manager, Martin Erlichman, she had successful shows in Detroit and St. Louis. Erlichman then booked her at an even more upscale nightclub in Manhattan, the Blue Angel, where she became a bigger hit during the period from 1961 to 1962. Streisand once told Jimmy Fallon, with whom she sang a duet, on the ''Tonight Show'', that Erlichman was a "fantastic manager" and still managed her career after 50 years.

While appearing at the Blue Angel, theater director and playwright Arthur Laurents asked her to audition for a new musical comedy he was directing, ''I Can Get It for You Wholesale''. She got the part of secretary to the lead actor businessman, played by then unknown Elliott Gould. They fell in love during rehearsals and eventually moved into a small apartment together. The show opened on March 22, 1962, at the Shubert Theater, and received rave reviews. Her performance "stopped the show cold", wrote Nickens. Groucho Marx, while hosting the ''Tonight Show'', told her that 20 was an "extremely young age to be a success on Broadway". Streisand received a Tony Award nomination and New York Drama Critic's prize for Best Supporting Actress. The show was recorded and made into an album.

Early television appearances

Streisand's first television appearance was on ''The Tonight Show'', then credited to its usual host Jack Paar. She was seen during an April 1961 episode on which Orson Bean substituted for Paar. She sang Harold Arlen's "A Sleepin' Bee". During her appearance, Phyllis Diller, also a guest on the show, called her "one of the great singing talents in the world."

Later in 1961, before she was cast in ''Another Evening With Harry Stoones'', she became a semi-regular on '' PM East/PM West'', a talk/variety series hosted by Mike Wallace and Joyce Davidson. Some of Streisand’s ''PM East'' segments survive as audio recordings, and still photos survive, but moving images do not.

In early 1962, she went into the Columbia Records studio for the cast recording of ''I Can Get It for You Wholesale''. Also that spring she participated in a 25th anniversary studio recording of ''Pins and Needles,'' the classic popular front musical originated in 1937 by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Reviews of both albums highlighted Streisand's performances.

In May 1962, Streisand appeared on ''The Garry Moore Show'' where she sang "Happy Days Are Here Again" for the first time. Her sad, slow version of the 1930s upbeat Democratic Party theme song became her signature song during this early phase of her career.

Johnny Carson had her on the ''Tonight Show'' half a dozen times in 1962 and 1963, and she became a favorite of his television audience and himself personally. He described her as an "exciting new singer." During one show, she joked with Groucho Marx who liked her style of humor.

In December 1962, she made the first of a number of appearances on ''The Ed Sullivan Show''. She was later a cohost on the Mike Douglas Show, and also made an impact on a number of Bob Hope specials. Performing with her on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' was Liberace who became an instant fan of the young singer. Liberace invited her to Las Vegas to perform as his opening act at the Riviera Hotel. Liberace is credited with introducing Barbra to audiences on the West Coast. The following September during her ongoing shows at Harrah's Hotel in Lake Tahoe, she and Elliott Gould took time off to get married in Carson City, Nevada. With her career and popularity rising so quickly, she saw her marriage to Gould as a "stabilizing influence."

First albums

When she was 21, Streisand signed a contract with Columbia Records that gave her full creative control, in exchange for less money.

Lieberson relented and agreed to sign her. Nearly three decades later, Streisand said:

The most important thing about that first contract – actually, the thing we held out for – was a unique clause giving me the right to choose my own material. It was the only thing I really cared about. I still received lots of pressure from the label to include some pop hits on my first album, but I held out for the songs that really meant something to me.

She took advantage of this several times during her career.
Columbia wanted to call her first album, in early 1963, ''Sweet And Saucy Streisand''; Streisand used her control to insist that it was called ''The Barbra Streisand Album'', saying "if you saw me on TV, you could just go o the record shopand ask for the Barbra Streisand album. It's common sense". It reached the top 10 on the ''Billboard'' chart and won three Grammy Awards. The album made her the best-selling female vocalist in the country. That summer she also released ''The Second Barbra Streisand Album'', which established her as the "most exciting new personality since Elvis Presley." She ended that breakthrough year of 1963 by performing one-night concerts in Indianapolis, San Jose, Chicago, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

Return to the stage

Streisand returned to Broadway in 1964 with an acclaimed performance as entertainer Fanny Brice in '' Funny Girl'' at the Winter Garden Theatre. The show introduced two of her signature songs, "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade." Because of the musical's overnight success, she appeared on the cover of ''Time''. In 1964, Streisand was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical but lost to Carol Channing in '' Hello, Dolly!'' Streisand received an honorary "Star of the Decade" Tony Award in 1970.

In 1966, she repeated her success with ''Funny Girl'' in London's West End at the Prince of Wales Theatre. From 1965 to 1968 she appeared in her first four solo television specials, including the Emmy award-winning ''My Name is Barbra''.

Career

Singing

Streisand has recorded 50 studio albums, almost all with Columbia Records. Her early works in the 1960s (her debut ''The Barbra Streisand Album'', ''The Second Barbra Streisand Album'', '' The Third Album'', ''My Name Is Barbra'', etc.) are considered classic renditions of theatre and cabaret standards, including her pensive version of the normally uptempo "Happy Days Are Here Again". She performed this in a duet with Judy Garland on ''The Judy Garland Show''. Garland referred to her on the air as one of the last great belters. They also sang "There's No Business Like Show Business" with Ethel Merman joining them.

Beginning with ''My Name Is Barbra'', her early albums were often medley-filled keepsakes of her television specials. Starting in 1969, she began attempting more contemporary material, but like many talented singers of the day, she found herself out of her element with rock. Her vocal talents prevailed, and she gained newfound success with the pop and ballad-oriented Richard Perry-produced album '' Stoney End'' in 1971. The title track, written by Laura Nyro, was a major hit for Streisand.

During the 1970s, she was also highly prominent on the pop charts, with Top 10 recordings such as "The Way We Were" (US No. 1), "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)" (US No. 1), "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" (1979, with Donna Summer), which is reportedly still the most commercially successful duet, (US No. 1), "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (with Neil Diamond) (US No. 1) and "The Main Event" (US No. 3), some of which came from soundtrack recordings of her films. As the 1970s ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the U.S. – only Elvis Presley and The Beatles had sold more albums. In 1980, she released her best-selling effort to date, the Barry Gibb-produced ''Guilty''. The album contained the hits " Woman in Love" (which spent several weeks on top of the pop charts in the fall of 1980), "Guilty", and "What Kind of Fool".

After years of largely ignoring Broadway and traditional pop music in favor of more contemporary material, Streisand returned to her musical-theater roots. Columbia records objected that the songs she wanted to sing were not pop songs, but Streisand asserted the full creative control her contract gave her—'I've always had the right to sing what I want'— with 1985's ''The Broadway Album'', which was unexpectedly successful, holding the coveted No. 1 Billboard position for three straight weeks, and being certified quadruple platinum. The album featured tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Stephen Sondheim, who was persuaded to rework some of his songs especially for this recording. ''The Broadway Album'' was met with acclaim, including a Grammy nomination for album of the year and handed Streisand her eighth Grammy as Best Female Vocalist. After releasing the live album '' One Voice'' in 1986, Streisand was set to release another album of Broadway songs in 1988. She recorded several cuts for the album under the direction of Rupert Holmes, including " On My Own" (from ''Les Misérables''), a medley of "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" and "Heather on the Hill" (from ''Finian's Rainbow'' and ''Brigadoon'', respectively), "All I Ask of You" (from ''The Phantom of the Opera''), "Warm All Over" (from ''The Most Happy Fella'') and an unusual solo version of " Make Our Garden Grow" (from ''Candide''). Streisand was not happy with the direction of the project and it was scrapped. Only "Warm All Over" and a reworked, lite FM-friendly version of "All I Ask of You" were ever released, the latter appearing on Streisand's 1988 effort, '' Till I Loved You''. At the beginning of the 1990s, Streisand started focusing on her film directorial efforts and became almost inactive in the recording studio. In 1991, a four-disc box set, ''Just for the Record'', was released. A compilation spanning Streisand's entire career to date, it featured over 70 tracks of live performances, greatest hits, rarities and previously unreleased material.

The following year, Streisand's concert fundraising events helped propel President Bill Clinton into the spotlight and into office. Streisand later introduced Clinton at his inauguration in 1993. Streisand's music career, however, was largely on hold. A 1992 appearance at an APLA benefit as well as the aforementioned inaugural performance hinted that Streisand was becoming more receptive to the idea of live performances. A tour was suggested, though Streisand would not immediately commit to it, citing her well-known stage fright as well as security concerns. During this time, Streisand finally returned to the recording studio and released ''Back to Broadway'' in June 1993. The album was not as universally lauded as its predecessor, but it did debut at No. 1 on the pop charts (a rare feat for an artist of Streisand's age, especially given that it relegated Janet Jackson's ''Janet'' to the No. 2 spot). One of the album's highlights was a medley of " I Have A Love" / "One Hand, One Heart", a duet with Johnny Mathis, who Streisand said is one of her favorite singers.

In 1993, ''The New York Times'' music critic Stephen Holden wrote that Streisand "enjoys a cultural status that only one other American entertainer, Frank Sinatra, has achieved in the last half century". In September 1993, Streisand announced her first public concert appearances in 27 years (discounting her Las Vegas nightclub performances between 1969 and 1972). What began as a two-night New Year's event at the MGM Grand Las Vegas led to a multi-city tour in the summer of 1994. Tickets for the tour sold out in under an hour. Streisand also appeared on the covers of major magazines in anticipation of what ''Time magazine'' named "The Music Event of the Century". The tour was one of the biggest all-media merchandise parlays in history. Ticket prices ranged from US$50 to US$1,500, making Streisand the highest-paid concert performer in history. '' Barbra Streisand: The Concert'' went on to be the top-grossing concert of the year and earned five Emmy Awards and the Peabody Award, while the taped broadcast on HBO was the highest-rated concert special in HBO's 30-year history. Following the tour's conclusion, Streisand once again kept a low profile musically, instead focusing her efforts on acting and directing duties as well as a burgeoning romance with actor James Brolin.

In 1996, Streisand released "I Finally Found Someone" as a duet with Canadian singer and songwriter Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for an Oscar as it was part of the soundtrack of Streisand's self-directed movie ''The Mirror Has Two Faces''. It reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was her first significant hit in almost a decade and her first top 10 hit on the Hot 100 (and first gold single) since 1981.

In 1997, she finally returned to the recording studio, releasing '' Higher Ground'', a collection of songs of a loosely inspirational nature which also featured a duet with Céline Dion. The album received generally favorable reviews and once again debuted at No. 1 on the pop charts. Following her marriage to Brolin in 1998, Streisand recorded ''A Love Like Ours'' the following year. Reviews were mixed, with many critics complaining about the somewhat syrupy sentiments and overly lush arrangements; however, it did produce a modest hit for Streisand in the country-tinged "If You Ever Leave Me", a duet with Vince Gill.

On New Year's Eve 1999, Streisand returned to the concert stage, selling out in the first few hours, eight months before her return. At the end of the millennium, she was the number one female singer in the U.S., with at least two No. 1 albums in each decade since she began performing. A two-disc live album '' Timeless: Live in Concert'' was released in 2000. Streisand performed versions of the ''Timeless'' concert in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, in early 2000. In advance of four concerts (two each in Los Angeles and New York) in September 2000, Streisand announced that she was retiring from playing public concerts. Her performance of the song "People" was broadcast on the Internet via America Online.

Streisand's subsequent albums included ''Christmas Memories'' (2001), a somewhat somber collection of holiday songs, and '' The Movie Album'' (2003), featuring famous film themes and backed by a large symphony orchestra. '' Guilty Pleasures'' (called ''Guilty Too'' in the UK), a collaboration with Barry Gibb and a sequel to their ''Guilty'', was released worldwide in 2005.

In February 2006, Streisand recorded the song "Smile" alongside Tony Bennett at Streisand's Malibu home. The song is included on Bennett's 80th birthday album, ''Duets''. In September 2006, the pair filmed a live performance of the song for ''Tony Bennett: An American Classic'' directed by Rob Marshall. The special aired on NBC November 21, 2006, and was released on DVD the same day. Streisand's duet with Bennett opened the special.

That same year Streisand announced her intent to tour again, in an effort to raise money and awareness for multiple issues. After four days of rehearsal at the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, New Jersey