The real Streisand Effect was my watching the ending of Funny Girl while flipping through the channels when I was fourteen. That day in 1982 I immediately stopped using my allowance to buy Matchbox cars and moved on to only buying Streisand LP’s and cassettes. So began my own Barbra Streisand fandom.
My father was a big Streisand fan, and I saw why he kept on arguing with people that she was the best singer in the world “by far” and that “she never had a lesson in her life!” These points were really important for my father to make. Indeed, once in a while, I could see my big macho father reduced to tears when he heard a song of hers he hadn’t heard for years. One I remember in particular was Jenny Rebecca. Needless to say, especially since my father died, Barbra is a connection I have to him. He and I generally had very different tastes, but when it came to this woman, we could not have been any more in tune!
Have you seen me wishing Barbra a happy birthday on the Rosie O’Donnell Show?
I currently co-host BarbraBlab, a Zoom meeting for uber Streisand fans with the Facebook group called Color Her Barbra.
Here is Barbra’s official site and Instagram account.
Undeniably the best Barbra Archive site is here, thanks to Matt Howe.
Here is a sampling of the key pieces of Barbrabilia I’ve collected over the years. Each piece of course has a story and many of them are absolutely unique:
The six-foot Streisand face used to hang in the Virgin Record store in Times Square. My dear friend who worked in their jazz department saw that they were throwing it out after the promotion, so he transported it “Back to Brooklyn” via the subway, where he lived two blocks from me. I brought that (and all my other Barbrabilia) cross country when I moved back home to California. In the process of getting to move, my then-boyfriend suggested I part with it. As if! I told him I would fucking drive it cross country myself if I had to!
Here is the obligatory gallery of my favorite photos of her (I do not own any copyright to any of these images), some of which are rare than what you would typically find online:
Favorite Barbra Quotes:
- If I would of know there were so many people on the two sides of me, I would have had my nose fixed!…. Never
- I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.
- A human being is only interesting if he’s in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.
- I was a personality before I became a person. I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.
- Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work . . . a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.
- Success to me is having ten honeydew melons, and eating only the top half of each one.
- The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country’s immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.
- They’re called “angels” because they’re in heaven until the reviews come out.
- What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other . . . but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.
- Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married?
- What does it mean when people applaud? . . . Should I give ’em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The “lack” of applause — that I can respond to.
i watched funny girl again today- she is so beautiful and amazing in every way! 🙂
I love Barbra as much as you do my friend. I believe we’ve talked about that when I was in SF. She got my attention in Hello Dolly.
Now that I’ve retired from the healthcare field as a surgeons’ assistant I am actively pursuing my singing and (sometimes acting career).
When I go to auditions or I book gigs around town and even with my personal home recordings I sing/ perform a lot of Barbra’s songs to a very pleasing audience response. When asked why I sing her songs I tell them “I’m channeling Barbra” She and I connect very similarly to the emotions brought out in these songs.
For me it was when I saw On A Clear Day at the movies when I was 10. I was blown away and that she was Jewish and from Brooklyn like me, well I found god that day!
When people say that I don’t look my age I tell them that it’s because I’ve listened to Barbra for over 50 years.
My favorite album is Lazy Afternoon. I was glad to read in Her memoir that it’s one of her favorites!