10 revelations about Barbra Streisand of my name is Barbra
On November 7, Barbra Streisand‘s long -awaited memoires, My name is barbra was finally released. It offered Broadway and Babs fans, as well as 992 pages of surprises, unprecedented secrets and stories about one of the biggest stars of the American theater.
We put on our professional theatrical glasses to pick up the pages for some of the most interesting anecdotes and highlights. Of how ‘people’ were almost cut from Funny girl Until the time Streisand asked Stephen Sondheim Here are the most surprising discoveries of the “send the clowns” for her My name is barbra. If this tidbits are not enough for you, My name is barbra is now out Penguin Random House.
1. Streisand had a shoplifting as a teenager.
In the second chapter of her memoir, Streisand tells her short connection with shoplifting, which she believes was “not as simple as random shoplifting theft”, considering that Streisand operated much smart than your average teenage thief. “I was a very logical girl and had my own system,” she describes.
Streisand writes that she would collect discarded store receipts from the floor and then find an item in the store that was the same price as one of the items on the receipt. She will go to the repayment window with the unclaimed item and use the receipt of a stranger and the cash to get something else she wanted.
However, her tactics began to escalate, and once when she tried a shorts in a pass, she realized that she could wear it from the store just under her skirt.
Eventually, her steel line ended when she stole a few socks by dropping it into a bag with other purchases. A woman in the area told her, “I saw you put the socks in your suitcase. “With that, she put the bag down and stepped out of the store and never stole again. “I liked to test boundaries, but I couldn’t endure the humiliation and shame I felt at that moment,” she writes.
2. Streisand came up with the play for her big scene in I can get it for your wholesale.
At the age of 19, Streisand’s calling as a director was clear. During initial rehearsals for her first Broadway musical, I can get it for your wholesale In 1962, She assumed she would perform her character’s solo song “Miss Marmelstein” in an office chair, just as she did during her audition for the role.
“I thought my idea made perfect sense … Wouldn’t it be funny to push myself with my feet in the chair while singing the song?” she writes. But director Arthur Laurente has never intended the character to sit during the scene, rejecting the concept of Streisand.
However, Streisand would not deteriorate again, saying that he felt the play for her. In the end, he “lit in her” before the entire cast, which humiliated Streisand. And although embarrassment is a sore place for Streisand, it is calm wasn’t enough to disrupt her.
On the evening of the first rehearsal of the pre-Broadway clothing behavior in Philadelphia, Streisand again asked Lourente to let her try the scene in a chair, and he eventually admitted. The next morning, while the cast received notes, Laurents were ‘in anger’, and spit pure poison at Streisand with insults ‘so painful’ that Streisand says she completely blocked them. Meanwhile, the reviews praised the number as the highlight of the entire show, and a photo of Streisand sitting in the chair was erected outside the theater. The production even doubled her salary because of the sparkling reviews of her performance (although the consensus on the production itself was at its best.)
After the opening night in Philadelphia, the scene was left as Streisand performed it, although not without bays who constantly displayed contempt. Since then, the scene is still performed when Streisand devised it.
“Apparently, most young women, given their first part in a Broadway show, do not challenge the director. They feel lucky enough just to be there. It wasn’t me,” she writes.
3. “People” were almost cut from Funny girl.
When Funny girl were in tries for Broadway, Director Garson Kanin felt that the song “People” is not right for the character of Fanny Brice, and according to Streisand) that “she has just met this man,” so why does she “become” all philosophical “?
The composer of the show, Jule Styns, told Kanin the song would be ‘number one on the hit parade’. The lyricist, Bob merrill said, “If you put a spotlight on Barbra and she sings this song, she will bring the house down!” They were not wrong.
Fortunately, it turned out that Kanin’s biggest edition with the song was the way it was staged. Once choreographer Jerome Robbins During the previews in Philadelphia, he stepped in and formed the scene to be a tender moment between Fanny and Nick, and ‘people’ remained.
Of course, ‘People’ became one of Streisand’s most famous songs. As the show walked, the radio -singing became so popular that audiences would applaud as soon as they heard its instrumental extract during the Overture.
4. Streisand’s mother did not attend the opening night of Funny girl.
During her memoir, Streisand constantly processes the effect her family’s dynamics had on her. Her father died before she could ever meet him, and her mother’s pessimistic mindset always did not have the warmth that Streisand wanted. She described her mother as “another school of thought”: a generation that sacrificed power for power through their hardship. “I can’t remember her ever giving me a compliment. When I asked her once why, she said, “I didn’t want you to get a swollen head. ”
Then Streisand the Funny girl Opening night heard for her mother, she was nowhere to be found. “Later, when I asked her why she wasn’t in her seat, she said, ‘I was too nervous. I had to walk around. ‘
Streisand has described her long -time problems with the acceptance of applause, which she believes is the result of her trouble accepting compliments and praise because of the lack of friendly words in her childhood. “Now, in Funny girl, People clapped as soon as I walked on stage. It was actually disturbing. I felt to say, Wait, I haven’t done anything yet! And if you couldn’t find any applause, how much was it worth it? ‘
5. Sydney Chaplin Streisand on stage plagued in Funny girl.
While in Funny girlStreisand says she and her co-star Sydney Chaplin fell for each other. But not long after, Streisand put her foot down on the beginning of a throw between Chaplin and herself, because she was still married to Elliott Gould then. In response, Chaplin started acting on stage during the show against her. According to Streisand, he would mumble curses under his breath during the scenes and throw insults to Streisand while she acted.
“While the audience accepted that he whispered nothing in my ear, he would actually have a good idea: ‘You really hampered the scene. ” Streisand wrote that he did everything in his power to upset her on stage, and she decided to confront him from the stage and say, ‘Please let it go. We are both married. ‘ But Chaplin, says Streisand, continued to act in resentment.
“Sydney made me physically ill. Sometimes I threw up. I went to a doctor who gave me opium drops … but my stomach was still blowing like jelly, “she describes and writes that Chaplin’s emotional abuse against her was the start of her stage that worsened over the years until she had a 27-year-old gap in the performance of Live.
Streisand remained strong until Chaplin was finally released from the show in July 1965. “I had panic attacks. I was on stage just about every night. I wanted to stop health reasons, but I’m not lost, ‘she wrote. And so she stayed, and Chaplin went.
6. She may have slept with Warren Beatty. She can’t remember.
It is no secret that Streisand had a powerful magnetism about her, both of her singing, her astronomy and her refreshing honest personality. It not only drew audiences, but countless sugars on stage, on set, at parties and everywhere in between. During her memoir, she described as the recipient of admiring some of the world’s most famous politicians, movie stars and more.
Former Canada Pierre Trudeau prime minister once asked her to dance at a party (which she rejected, with the fact that I was not in public) and she described by him. Later, he took her to a restaurant in a Brownstone in the Upper East Side she remembers, “no printed menu and only two seats every night, so you had to book in advance.” When it was her turn to take him out of the city, they ventured to her favorite Chinese restaurant, which she describes as “a little dive on the corner of Bayard Street and the Bower.” According to Streisand, the former Prime Minister loved the restaurant and pointed out that although he was “so elegant”, he nevertheless “was completely unpretentious and constantly curious.”
Her childhood, Marlon Brandoonce came up behind her with the greeting: ‘Suddenly I feel someone kiss my back. Who would dare do it? I turned around and it was he. My idol. “When Streisand relapsed to the sudden gesture, he replied,” You can’t have such a back and not let kisses. “
Streisand even admits that during a short flirting with movie star Warren Beatty, she may Spent the night with him and wrote, “Did I sleep with Warren? I remember kind of. I think I did. Probably once.”
7. Mandy Patinkin tried to have a relationship with her.
When Streisand made her play film directing debut with her 1983 musical drama from 1983 Yentl, 29-year-old man Mandy likes Streisand brought back to one of the most challenging and most attractive moments of her career (the aforementioned Sydney Chaplin incident).
Streisand was with Patinkin with Patinkin, where Patinkin’s character served as her love interest. But Patinkin had a temper on set. “I thought, Oh, God. It can’t happen again,“She writes, and describes how she pulls aside Patinkin after his extraordinary volatile behavior has noticed him.” If you scream at people for a tissue or a line instead of just asking them nicely, it’s very alarming. Why are you so angry? “She asked Patinkin.
According to Streisand, he expressed his disappointment that he “thought they would have a relationship”, with tears rolling down his cheeks. Streisand remembers that she “looked at him as if he was crazy,” Omda T Patinkin married, Streisand was not attracted to him at all, and “I would never have a relationship with an actor I direct … I don’t work like that.”
Streisand put her foot further and told Patinkin: “Mandy, this kind of behavior cannot continue. I am willing to replace you. We are only two weeks inside. I can resettle all your scenes if you can no longer be professional. I waited 15 years to realize my dream and I will not destroy it.”
As a result, Streisand removed a sexual scene between her and Patinkin’s character from the film, feeling understandably uncomfortable and unsafe. But when she looks back as the director and the star of the film, she expresses her artistic regret about issuing the scene: “At this point, Mandy has made my life miserable for months … so I have changed it. I have rewritten the scene. And now that I look back on it, I wonder if I allowed my frustration with Mandy to drop my instincts.
8. Streisand asked Stephen Sondheim to change “Send the clowns in.”
When you are recording The Broadway album, Streisand studied the song “Send in the Clowns” before she recorded it and approached it “as an actress, and analyzed the lyrics as I would do a screenplay.” She writes that something about the emotion of the bow’s bow feels ‘strange’ to her. Without hesitation, she called Sondheim to highlight her mind.
“I thought that the line was” Don’t Plaar, they are Lord “brilliant … such a dramatic moment. But it came in the middle of the song, and I wanted it to be at the end, because it felt like the highlight of the piece. So, to be me, I asked, ‘Would you object to changing the line of line? “She remembers.
According to Streisand, Sondheim immediately closed it and said, “You can’t do it.” But just a few hours later he called back to tell Streisand … she was right.
Streisand then brought a final concern. “Send the clown” is from A small night musicand are sung, but his central character Desiree Armfeldt. But without seeing the important moment Desiree experiences, those who listen to Streisand’s album would not get the full picture of what the song is expressed. Streisand asked Sondheim to add a few more lyrics that describe what happened on stage at that moment, and he did.
“What a surprise, who could provide? / I would feel about you what you felt about me / why just now I see that you drifted away / what a surprise, what a cliché. “
To say the least, it was a very unusual event for Sondheim. But it is clear that he had the utmost respect for Streisand’s thoughts and ideas.
9. Streisand is quite the foodie.
During the memoir, Streisand readers regularly immerse in her memories through her descriptions of food, which she tells in perfect details … even meals she had more than 50 years ago. Here are just some of her descriptions of dishes she had, whether at the opening evening parties or on dates.
During the filming of Funny girl In England, she writes: “Thank God, I had tea and scones for comforting me, and I went down to the East end to get fish and chips, wrapped in the newspaper. Most people were dismissive of English food, but I actually loved it.
On Christmas styns“S woman, Margaret makes her a chicken sandwich, writes Streisand: ‘Margaret (whom all called Maggie) was not just lovely. She was also intuitive, and she read my mind. “Barbra, can I make you a sandwich? I will bet you are hungry. ‘ Hungry? I asked.
On her date with Pierre Trudeau, she writes: “I remember a starter from the palm of the palm, and then fried. Beads were bright red because it was cooked in red wine.
On her home cook, she writes: “My idea of a homemade meal was to open a can of wheat, to put it in a pot, add milk and heat, and it became corn soup. I would also become wheat with Aunt Jemima’s Pancake mix and in a Crisco braai, to make wheat pants … Sweat.) Before I served the cake (which also came out of the freezer), I had a specific technique.
10. Omar Sharif posted to Streisand.
Streisand admits in her memoir that she does flirt a little flirting between herself and Omar Sharif during the filming of the Funny girl movie. Although she finally stepped away – because she was still married, had a newborn baby, and generally did not see a future with Sharif. But Sharif’s feelings did not fade, and he continued to write letters to Streisand as soon as the filming was wrapped.
“I actually forgot about the letters until I started writing this book and found them in a large amount of personal memories … probably because I didn’t know how to respond at the time. There are lines like, “The thing I want the most in my life is to have you with me, to go everywhere, to keep you in my arms …” she writes in the Meoir. She also notes that Sharif acknowledged that he had bought and played all her albums, and pretended that the lyrics were addressing him.
Eventually, things dropped after Streisand rejected an invitation to spend New Year’s Eve with Sharif in Paris. But all these decades later, Streisand writes that Sharif’s love, according to his grandson, still remains: ‘I recently had the chance to meet his grandson, who said Omar said to him,’ Apart from your grandmother, Barbra is the only woman who ever captured my heart. If things were different, she could have been your bubbie! ”
Bonus: Streisand calls Playbill in her memoir.
If the opening of I can get it for your wholesale Streisand approached to use her first biography ever for a play bolt. She was uncertain about how slim her bio would be compared to the rest of the cast. So, she writes, she wanted to become “a little creative” with her, and she came up with a few fibers to make it funny. It reads: “Barbra Streisand is nineteen, was born in Madagascar and raised in Rangoon, trained at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, and appears out-of-Broadway in a one-nighter called Another night with Harry stones.‘
Streisand writes that she wants to make it interesting because she never felt very interesting on her own. She also added to the end of the biography: ‘She is not a member of the Actors Studio’, to tease with the fact that most actor’s biographies closed with their actor’s studio membership status at the time.
“In any case, the Playbill people didn’t get the joke. Finally, they made me change that,” she writes. Although, that original bio finally has it in the I can get it for your wholesale Playbills for a short period. Look at Streisand First Playbill Bio below.
And here is the modified bio that Streisand later submitted, which is in later playbills for I can get it for your wholesale: “Barbra Streisand is twenty, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, trained at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and appears outside Broadway in a one-nighter called called called Another evening with Harry Stones. Wholesale is her first Broadway show, although she appeared in New York’s two most famous dinner clubs, The Bon Soir and The Blue Angel. She also appeared on Mike Wallace’s Prime Minister fifteen times, twice on the few shows and recently on the Garry Moore show. ‘
Look at the bio as it appears in the Playbill, from August 1962, below.
Thank you for forcing us, Ms Streisand!