Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993 TAG: 9312280149
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB THOMAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
But don't worry: Barbra Streisand has never really wanted to be alone.
In a business notorious for superlatives, no one excels her: Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Golden Globe. Not to mention Superstar, Legend, Icon. She has 37 gold albums, 21 platinum and seven multiplatinum.
But the ambition and perfectionism that began in a Brooklyn flat remains undimmed for the 51-year-old singer-actress-director.
After 27 years of refraining from concert appearances in public, she will perform Friday and Satuurday in the 15,000-seat Grand Garden Theater of the new MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Her payment has been estimated at as much as $10 million per night.
This month she donated her 15-acre Malibu showplace, valued at $15 million, to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The conservation group plans to use the property and its five houses as an environmental research complex.
Her art-deco objects, collected lovingly for 30 years and valued at $4 million, will be auctioned at Christie's in New York on March 3-4. She explained on a segment of TV's "20/20":
"I think I'm going through a period of shedding, of letting go of a lot of things: fears, houses, objects, material possessions."
This year Streisand has shed her reclusive habits, making appearances for women candidates for U.S. senator from California, President Clinton's inauguration, AIDS Projects Los Angeles and David Dinkins' unsuccessful campaign for re-election as New York City mayor. She even turned up at Wimbledon to root for new tennis friend Andre Agassi. (He lost.)
Her agreement to sing in Las Vegas amazed many longtime Streisand watchers, who believed she would never again face a public audience.
Two years ago she told The Associated Press: "I don't really like performing. Only when I was 18-19 years old did I like it. After that I got real scared, shy. I just didn't feel good anymore. I got a notion in my head that I would forget the words. And then I forgot the words. I wasn't enjoying it. It was too frightening for me."
Close friends believe she also was concerned for her personal safety. A new biography, "Her Name Is Barbra" by Randall Riese, claims the singer received a death threat before her historic concert in New York's Central Park in 1967.
The New Year's concerts will add to Streisand's laurels.
The relentless pursuit of perfection has marked her career, leaving critics awed and co-workers often exasperated.
On her first movie, "Funny Girl," Streisand challenged three-time Academy-Award winner William Wyler, a director who had tamed Bette Davis. Even then, she knew what was good for Streisand.
"She is obsessed with perfection," said former Streisand agent Irv Arthur, "and that may be her greatest drawback. But talent has won out. She's still at the top."
"She works so intensely, so persistently," says Marilyn Bergman, who with her husband wrote lyrics for "The Way We Were" and "Yentl."
"She expects the last chair in the violin section to care as much about the work as she does. But she never expects more than what she gives."
Her detractors claim that indecisiveness has limited Streisand's output (she has made three movies in 10 years). Some co-workers become exasperated by her constant questioning; one longtime associate quit on doctor's orders.
Co-stars Walter Matthau ("Hello, Dolly!") and Robert Redford ("The Way We Were") are not among her fans.
Yet others, such as Nick Nolte ("The Prince of Tides"), are devoted to her. Even Wyler ended up an admirer after "Funny Girl."
She also has won admirers because of her penchant for giving.
As in all matters, Streisand approached philanthropy with great thoroughness. Since 1986, the Streisand Foundation has donated more than $7 million to hand-picked causes.
"Barbra decided early that she would pursue projects involving the environment, civil liberties and peace," says foundation Executive Director Marge Tabankin, speaking from Harvard University where she was lecturing. To that was added AIDS-giving and women's issues.
Streisand uses her talent to help support her causes. In 1986, she staged a full-length concert for an invited audience at her Malibu estate. The event helped finance the campaigns of five Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate; the Democrats won back the Senate majority in that election.
Even before the MGM Grand contract was signed, hotel boss Kirk Kerkorian's personal foundation donated $3 million to Streisand's foundation, including $2 million earmarked for AIDS. "That helped seal the deal," observed Tabankin.
Asked for the origins of Streisand's social conscience, she commented: "My guess is that she is passionate as well as spiritual. She is also a hard worker. Having come from a poor childhood, she enjoyed the fruits of her labor. Now she has conquered all of her demons. I think she wants to shed herself of some of her possessions and to give back to society what she has received."
She was born Barbara Joan Streisand in Brooklyn on April 24, 1942. She never knew her father, a high school teacher who died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 35 when his daughter was 19 months old. Her mother married a salesman who repeatedly berated Barbara as ugly and untalented. In his book, Riese quotes a former neighbor who said the stepfather hit the girl "at least once or twice."
That prompted Streisand's publicist, Dick Guttman, to reply that although she was "the object of an abusive person . . . he never physically abused her."
In a 1964 interview with the AP, Streisand recalled her childhood:
"I never took part in school activities or anything. I was never asked out to any of the proms, and I never had a date for New Year's Eve. I was pretty much a loner. I never needed anyone, really."
She defied her stepfather and others who found her homely. She declared herself beautiful, dressed in second-hand tacky and shortened her name. ("I don't care what you write about me," she later told interviewers, "just be sure you spell my name wrong.")
She began singing at amateur nights, dramatizing every song - "I'm an actress who sings."
Former agent Irvin Arthur remembers first hearing Streisand at a Greenwich Village joint, The Lion, where she had won an amateur contest. "I heard a voice that was unique and different; it sent thrills up my spine. She sang `Happy Days' as no one had ever heard it before."
Arthur persuaded his agency to sign her, and he booked her into the Bon Soir, a showcase on 8th Avenue. Phyllis Diller toplined the bill.
"After I heard her sing the third note, I got goose bumps," the comedian recalls. "She was singing `Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?' and I peaked through the curtain and wondered, `What kind of genius is this?'
"The gangsters who ran the Bon Soir didn't like the way she dressed, and they asked me to take her shopping. We spent an entire day in the stores, but nothing would please her. All her clothes came from thrift shops; she told me her shoes cost 35 cents. The clothes were fabulously right for her.
"We finally found a black chiffon dress that had been featured in Harper's Bazaar, totally conservative. She never wore it. She said, `Do you mind if I return it? I want to buy some material and have a friend make a gown I'll design.' "
Lyricist Marilyn Bergman also remembers the Bon Soir engagement:
"I was tired and distracted, but when she began singing, I started crying. I cried through the whole show. Alan [her husband and collaborator] and I went backstage to her dressing room, which was the size of a telephone booth. I said, `Do you have any idea how wonderful you are?'
"Then I looked at her and said, `Yes, you do.' "
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