Barbra Streisand

• 1. Introduction

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  Barbra Streisand once filed a lawsuit that sent a crowd of strangers to look at a single photograph. In 2003 she claimed that a website documenting coastal erosion had invaded her privacy. Among its more than 12,000 images, one happened to show her home in Malibu, California. That picture had been viewed only four times before she took legal action. The suit was dismissed, yet the publicity pushed hundreds of thousands of people to download the photo. Out of the episode came the Streisand effect, a name for any attempt at censorship that ends up publicizing the very thing it hides.

  That singer, actress, songwriter and filmmaker has spent more than six decades in public view. Her awards include Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and Tonys. She also cares how her name sounds. She says the surname takes an s sound, like sand on the beach, and not a z. When Siri first got it wrong, she contacted Apple chief executive Tim Cook personally, and the company soon fixed it.

  How does a girl who practiced singing in a Brooklyn apartment hallway come to correct a chief executive and win? What did she demand from record labels, and why did they agree? And what happened when she asked Hollywood to let her direct?

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• 2. Brooklyn Beginnings

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  Streisand was born on the 24th of April 1942 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Diana Ida Rosen and Emanuel Streisand. Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a music career before becoming a school secretary. Her father taught at the same high school, which is where the two met. Both families were Jewish. Her father's parents emigrated from Galicia, and her mother's came from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor.

  In August 1943, a few months after her first birthday, her father died at age 34. The cause was complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly tied to a head injury years before. The family fell into near poverty, and her mother worked as a low-paid bookkeeper. Streisand later said she always felt like an "outcast" in those years. "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day," she said. "Mine didn't." Her mother could not give her the attention she craved. "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

  At five, she started at the Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva of Brooklyn, where she was considered bright and inquisitive. She lacked discipline and often shouted answers out of turn. She later moved to Public School 89, and during those years she began watching television and going to movies. "I always wanted to be somebody, to be famous... You know, get out of Brooklyn," she remembers.

  On the stoop outside the family's apartment building, she sang with the other kids. "I was considered the girl on the block with the good voice," she recalled. She also practiced in the hallway, whose acoustics gave her voice an echoing quality. Her singing debut came at a parent-teacher association assembly. Everyone loved it except her mother, who stayed critical. Invitations followed to sing at weddings and summer camp, though an audition at MGM Records when she was nine went nowhere. By 13, her mother had come around. Together they made a four-song demo tape, including "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" and "You'll Never Know".

  The Diary of Anne Frank, which Streisand saw at 14, was her first Broadway play. Susan Strasberg starred in it, and Streisand wanted to emulate her acting. She spent spare hours in the library reading biographies of stage actresses such as Eleanora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. She also read novels and plays and studied the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov.

  In 1956 she entered Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where she became an honor student in modern history, English and Spanish. She sang in the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club beside a classmate named Neil Diamond. "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn," Diamond recalls. "We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." She also had a crush on a fellow student, the 15-year-old US Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. The summer of 1957 brought her first stage experience, a walk-on at the Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York. Roles as the kid sister in Picnic and a vamp in Desk Set followed.

  She graduated from Erasmus Hall in January 1959, at age 16. Her mother pleaded with her to stay out of show business. Streisand rented a small apartment on 48th Street, in the heart of the theater district.

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• 3. Nightclubs And Broadway

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  During one stretch after school, Streisand carried an army cot and slept wherever friends would let her set it up. Biographer Karen Swenson wrote that her mother was horrified by this "gypsy-like lifestyle". The pleading only made Streisand more determined. "My desires were strengthened by wanting to prove to my mother that I could be a star," she said.

  Early in 1960, she worked as an usher at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater for The Sound of Music. When she heard the casting director was auditioning more singers, she tried out, her first time singing to get a job. The director felt she was not right for the part. He still encouraged her to list singing on her résumé.

  Her boyfriend, Barry Dennen, taped her voice so she could hand copies to possible employers. He found a guitarist to accompany her. Dennen later recalled that she had "one of the most breathtaking voices I'd ever heard." He then talked her into a talent contest at the Lion, a gay nightclub in Greenwich Village. After her two songs came a "stunned silence" from the audience, then "thunderous applause" as she was named the winner. She was invited back and sang there for several weeks.

  Around this time she dropped the second a from Barbara. She was 18, wanted to be unique, and thought a made-up stage name would be too false. Cutting a single letter let her keep her own name and still stand out. Early on, she was also told she was too ugly to be a star and was advised to get a nose job. She declined.

  At the Bon Soir nightclub in September 1960, she began her first professional engagement at $125 a week. She opened for comedian Phyllis Diller. "I'd never been in a nightclub until I sang in one," she said. Dennen introduced her to his record collection of female singers, including Billie Holiday, Mabel Mercer, Ethel Waters and Édith Piaf. From it she drew "A Sleepin' Bee", with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Truman Capote. "The lyrics to that song gave me the three acts of a play that I longed for as an actress," she said.

  Over six months at the club, audiences began comparing her to Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Fanny Brice. She discovered that her Brooklyn-bred humor worked when she talked between songs. Theater critic Leonard Harris wrote: "She's twenty; by the time she's thirty she will have rewritten the record books."

  Her first New York stage role came in Another Evening with Harry Stoones, a satirical comedy that received terrible reviews and closed the next day. Then her new manager, Martin Erlichman, booked shows in Detroit and St. Louis. He later placed her at the Blue Angel in Manhattan, where she became a bigger hit between 1961 and 1962. Decades later she told Jimmy Fallon that Erlichman was a "fantastic manager" who still managed her career.

  At the Blue Angel, director Arthur Laurents asked her to audition for I Can Get It for You Wholesale. She won a part opposite the then unknown Elliott Gould, and the two fell in love during rehearsals. The show opened on the 22nd of March 1962 at the Shubert Theater and drew rave reviews. Biographer Christopher Nickens wrote that her performance "stopped the show cold". She earned a Tony Award nomination and the New York Drama Critic's prize for Best Supporting Actress.

  Television came quickly. In April 1961 she sang "A Sleepin' Bee" on The Tonight Show, with Orson Bean substituting for host Jack Paar. Diller, also a guest, called her "one of the great singing talents in the world." In May 1962 she performed "Happy Days Are Here Again" on The Garry Moore Show. Her sad, slow version of that cheerful 1930s Democratic Party song became her early signature. Johnny Carson had her on the Tonight Show about half a dozen times across 1962 and 1963. He described her as an "exciting new singer".

  In December 1962 she made the first of several appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Liberace, who performed on the same episode, became an instant fan. He invited her to open for him at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas and is credited with introducing her to West Coast audiences. The following September, during her engagement at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, she and Gould took time off to marry in Carson City, Nevada. She saw the marriage as a "stabilizing influence" on a career rising so fast. Their son, Jason Gould, would later play her on-screen son in The Prince of Tides.

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• 4. Terms Of Control

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  At 21, Streisand signed with Columbia Records on a deal that gave her full creative control in exchange for less money. Columbia's Lieberson relented and agreed to sign her. Looking back almost three decades later, she called the clause the thing "we held out for". It gave her the right to choose her own material. "It was the only thing I really cared about," she said. The label still pressed her to put pop hits on her first album, and she resisted.

  Columbia wanted to title that early 1963 record Sweet and Saucy Streisand. She used her control to insist on The Barbra Streisand Album. Her reasoning: "if you saw me on TV, you could just go to the record shop and ask for the Barbra Streisand album." It reached the top 10, won the Grammy for Album of the Year and made her the best-selling female vocalist in the country. The Second Barbra Streisand Album followed later that year. It established her as the "most exciting new personality since Elvis Presley."

  Control mattered most in 1985. After years of favoring contemporary material, she wanted to record Broadway songs, and Columbia objected that they were not pop songs. She answered by pointing to her contract: "I've always had the right to sing what I want." The Broadway Album held the No. 1 spot on Billboard for three straight weeks and was certified quadruple platinum. It featured songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Stephen Sondheim, who was persuaded to rework some of his songs for her. The record brought a Grammy nomination for album of the year and her eighth Grammy, for Best Female Vocalist.

  The same independence could also stop a project cold. For a second Broadway collection planned for 1988, she recorded songs under the direction of Rupert Holmes. They included "On My Own" from Les Misérables and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera. There was also a solo "Make Our Garden Grow" from Candide. She disliked the direction, and the project was scrapped. Only "Warm All Over" and a reworked, FM-friendly "All I Ask of You" ever came out, the latter on Till I Loved You. In 1991 a four-disc box set, Just for the Record, gathered more than 70 tracks of live performances, hits, rarities and unreleased material.

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• 5. Voice And Records

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  In 1969 Streisand began trying contemporary material and found herself out of her element with rock. Her fortunes turned in 1971 with Stoney End, produced by Richard Perry. Its title track, written by Laura Nyro, was a major hit. Through the 1970s she kept reaching the top of the pop charts. "The Way We Were" and "Evergreen" both hit No. 1, and "The Main Event" reached No. 3. "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", a duet with Neil Diamond, also went to No. 1. So did "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" with Donna Summer in 1979, reportedly still the most commercially successful duet. As the decade ended, only Elvis Presley and The Beatles had sold more albums than she had.

  In 1980 she released Guilty, produced by Barry Gibb, her best-selling album to date. "Woman in Love" spent several weeks on top of the pop charts that fall. In June 1993 came Back to Broadway, which debuted at No. 1 and displaced Janet Jackson's Janet. That feat was notable for a mature artist. Stephen Holden of The New York Times noticed the status she had reached. He wrote that she "enjoys a cultural status that only one other American entertainer, Frank Sinatra, has achieved in the last half century".

  The 1990s brought more. In 1996 she recorded "I Finally Found Someone" with Bryan Adams, her first top 10 hit on the Hot 100 since 1981. In 1997 Higher Ground debuted at No. 1 and featured a duet with Céline Dion. Love Is the Answer, produced by Diana Krall in 2009, also reached No. 1. That made her the only artist with No. 1 albums in five different decades. Partners, a 2014 album of duets with Andrea Bocelli, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel and others, added a sixth decade. It sold 196,000 copies in its first week, and it even included a song with Elvis Presley.

  The totals are formidable. She was the first woman with 11 number one albums on the Billboard 200. That run stretched from People to Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway in 2016. She holds 31 platinum albums and has sold 200 million records worldwide. The Recording Industry Association of America certifies 68.5 million album units for her. Billboard ranked her the greatest solo artist on the Billboard 200.

  What explains that run? Streisand has a mezzo-soprano range, which Howard Cohen of the Miami Herald called "peerless". Critic Whitney Balliett praised her shrewd dynamics, her rolling vibrato and the "singular Streisand-from-Brooklyn nasal quality" of her voice. Writer Allegra Rossi says she cannot read or write music, yet hears melodies as finished compositions in her head. Pianist Glenn Gould called himself "a Streisand freak". Adam Feldman of Time Out described her style as "a suspension bridge between old-school belting and microphone pop."

  Since about 2010, critics and audiences have noticed her voice lowering and taking on a husky edge. Holden argued that her distinctive tone and musical instincts remained. Reviewing Partners, Gil Naveh of Haaretz wrote that her voice was "velvety, clear and powerful... and the passing years have given it a fascinating depth and roughness."

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• 6. Behind The Camera

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  Funny Girl reached Broadway in 1964, with Streisand as entertainer Fanny Brice at the Winter Garden Theatre. It introduced her signature songs "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade", and overnight success put her on the cover of Time. She was nominated for a Tony but lost to Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! In 1966 she repeated the role at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London's West End. Her first film was the 1968 screen version, directed by William Wyler. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, sharing it with Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter, the only tie in that category.

  Hello, Dolly!, the show that beat her at the Tonys, became her second film in 1969, directed by Gene Kelly. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and The Owl and the Pussycat followed in 1970. In the 1970s she starred in screwball comedies, including What's Up, Doc? with Ryan O'Neal. The Way We Were, opposite Robert Redford, earned her another Best Actress nomination. For "Evergreen" from A Star Is Born, written with lyricist Paul Williams, she won an Oscar for Best Original Song. She was the first woman honored as a composer.

  In 1969 she joined Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, with Steve McQueen later, to form First Artists Production Company. Its purpose was to let actors secure properties and develop their own films. Her first project there was Up the Sandbox. From 1969 to 1980 she appeared in the exhibitors' Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll ten times, often as the only woman on the list.

  In 1972 she set up Barwood Films to produce her own work. Yentl, which she proposed to direct and star in, was turned down by every Hollywood studio at least once. Orion Pictures finally took it on, with a $14 million budget. She produced, directed and starred, and she co-wrote the script with Jack Rosenthal. That made her the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major studio film. Andrew Rosenthal, an editor at The New York Times, made the point that her writing credit is often missed. He said, "The one thing that makes Barbra Streisand crazy is when nobody gives her the credit for having written Yentl."

  Yentl won an Oscar for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical. Streisand also won the Golden Globe for Best Director, the first woman to do so and, for 37 years, the only one. Yet its five Oscar nominations skipped Best Picture, Actress and Director, which caused controversy. The Prince of Tides, which she produced and directed in 1991, drew more nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay, but again none for director. Its screenwriter, Pat Conroy, who also wrote the novel, called her "a goddess who walks upon the earth." She then produced, directed and starred in The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996.

  After All Night Long disappointed commercially in 1981, her film output fell sharply. She made only eight films in the decades after. She returned to acting in Meet the Fockers in 2004 after an eight-year absence, alongside Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Blythe Danner and Robert De Niro. The Guilt Trip, with Seth Rogen as her character's son, reached theaters in December 2012. Streisand reportedly exited the musical Gypsy, and neither it nor a Catherine the Great biopic reached production. In December 2008 she said she was considering directing Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart, a project she had worked on since the mid-1990s.

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• 7. Stage Fright And Sellouts

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  In 1992, Streisand's fundraising concerts helped propel Bill Clinton into office, and she introduced him at his inauguration in 1993. A tour was suggested afterward. She would not commit, citing her well-known stage fright and security concerns. In September 1993 she nonetheless announced her first public concerts in 27 years, discounting her Las Vegas nightclub shows between 1969 and 1972. A two-night New Year's event at the MGM Grand Las Vegas grew into a multi-city tour in summer 1994.

  Tickets sold out in under an hour. Time magazine called it "The Music Event of the Century". Prices ranged from US$50 to US$1,500, making her the highest-paid concert performer in history at that time. Barbra Streisand: The Concert was the top-grossing concert of the year and earned five Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. Its HBO broadcast was the highest-rated concert special in HBO's 30-year history. Afterward she turned back to acting and directing. She also grew closer to actor James Brolin, whom she married on the 1st of July 1998.

  On New Year's Eve 1999, she returned to the concert stage. Tickets had sold out in the first few hours, eight months ahead. That MGM Grand date remains the house record and the highest-grossing concert of all time. In September 2000, ahead of four shows in Los Angeles and New York, she announced she was retiring from public concerts. Her performance of "People" was broadcast on the Internet through America Online.

  She did not stay retired. In 2006 she announced a new tour to raise money and awareness for multiple issues. It opened on the 4th of October at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. It ended on the 20th of November at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Il Divo appeared as special guests. The 20 concerts grossed $92,457,062 when she was 64 and set house records in 14 of the 16 arenas. Many people criticized her for price gouging, since tickets sold for upwards of $1,000.

  In summer 2007 she played continental Europe for the first time, opening in Zürich on the 18th of June. Vienna, Paris and Berlin followed, then Manchester and three London shows. Stockholm was canceled. London was the only European city she had played before. The tour carried a 58-piece orchestra, and London tickets cost up to £1,500. The date in Celbridge, near Dublin, was hit by serious parking and seating problems, and Hot Press called it a fiasco.

  Streisand uses teleprompters during her concerts, as many singers do, and has defended the choice. On the 11th of October 2012, she performed for three hours before 18,000 people at the Barclays Center. It was her first public performance in her home borough of Brooklyn. Trumpeter Chris Botti, the trio Il Volo and her son Jason Gould joined her. She paid tribute to Donna Summer and Marvin Hamlisch, both of whom had died earlier that year. In May 2016 she announced a nine-city tour that again included Brooklyn.

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• 8. Causes And Honors

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  Streisand's politics began modestly, with the anti-nuclear group Women Strike for Peace in 1961 and 1962. In 1968 she backed Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam War presidential campaign. That July she performed at the Hollywood Bowl with Harry Belafonte and others. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference sponsored the fundraiser for the poor. By 1971 she appeared on President Richard Nixon's list of political enemies.

  In 1972 she headlined Four for McGovern, a benefit concert organized by Warren Beatty and Lou Adler for George McGovern's campaign. The recording was released as Live Concert at the Forum. A year later she held a benefit at film mogul Jennings Lang's mansion to pay for Daniel Ellsberg's legal defense. With Marvin Hamlisch on piano, she took paid song requests from the guests and by telephone, bringing the night's total to $50,000.

  In 1984 she joined Jane Fonda and ten others to found the Hollywood Women's Political Committee, which grew to 300 members. It fought for liberal causes for more than a decade, helped Democrats win the Senate in 1986, and funded Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. In 1995 she spoke at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government about the role of the artist as citizen. She also backed the unsuccessful "No on 8" campaign against California Proposition 8 in 2008. Her 2018 album Walls was released on the 2nd of November, just before the midterm election.

  Her giving began close to home. In 1984 she donated the Emanuel Streisand Building for Jewish Studies to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on Mount Scopus, in memory of her father. The Streisand Foundation, established in 1986, has contributed over $16 million through nearly 1,000 grants. She has personally raised $25 million for organizations through live performances. In 2009 she gave $5 million to endow a women's cardiovascular program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and in 2012 she raised $22 million for it. In October 2009, at Julien's Auctions, she sold 526 items from her collection of art and furniture, with all proceeds going to her foundation. The top lot was a painting by Kees van Dongen.

  On the 22nd of September 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited her to serve as an ambassador for the UNITED24 platform. She helped raise $240,000 for medical care.

  Recognition has been enormous. Her awards include ten Grammys, nine Golden Globes, five Emmys, four Peabodys and two Academy Awards. In 2000 President Bill Clinton presented her with the National Medal of Arts. French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave her the Legion of Honour in 2007. In November 2015 President Barack Obama announced she would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is the only artist who belongs at once to ASCAP, the Screen Actors Guild, AFTRA, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Actors' Equity.

  The Library of Congress chose Funny Girl for preservation in the National Film Registry in December 2016. The National Recording Registry selected "People" in March 2017. Streisand said she was humbled to have it honored "as part of the flow of our nation's culture."

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