Barbra Streisand can boast of having more platinum-selling albums than any woman, and of winning an Academy Award. All that success was in front of her in the photos presented here. Back then, she was a 19-year-old making her Broadway debut in a lesser-known Harold Rome musical about the garment business, I Can Get It for You Wholesale.
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.
(Photos by George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)
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