Barbra Streisand started acting in 1957 when she was 15 years old. By age 22 she was starring in FUNNY GIRL, which ended up being her final appearance on a Broadway stage (in 1965).

<< Listen to Barbra on the Tonight Show in 1962 talk about making rounds, and her first Broadway Show, I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

"By the time I was fourteen, I wanted to get into summer stock. During my school vacation the next year, I went to a playhouse upstate with one hundred and fifty dollars my mother gave me ..."

"I had a wonderful time at the playhouse. I played in Picnic and was the sexy girl in The Desk Set. Can't you just see me at fifteen coming on the stage, sitting down on a desk, swinging my leg and playing sexy? I went back the following season too."

The Garrett Theater was an attic-like theater space with 40 seats. Driftwood played for six weeks.

"I remember throwing up my egg salad sandwich before I went on."

Three performances: May 8, 9, 10, 1960

(costume sketch by Terry Leong — click it to see full-size, color version in pop-up window.)

Samuel French describes "The Insect Comedy" by Josef Capek and Karel Capek as: "A wanderer who is something of a philosopher falls asleep after drinking in a forest. In his dream he observes the comedy and tragedy in the lives of the insects, whose problems and affairs are like those of humankind. The butterflies make violent love. The beetles hoard money and live selfishly. The ichneumon flies murder crickets and stuff their larders with food, and parasites greedily devour what others work to save. Finally the red and yellow ants wage war to see which shall have the right to travel a particular sunlit path between two blades of grass."

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Central Park photos by Vytas Valaitis, 1962

Interview with Martin Charnin by Robert Viagas

The following article is an excerpt about a Broadway show that Barbra was almost involved in ...

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…And we were then commissioned to write our first Broadway musical, which was HOT SPOT, which starred Judy Holliday in her last role on the stage…

I had, at that time, and I’m certain that everybody in this industry who’s still alive, who has written a book or who is about to write a book, will claim that they discovered Barbra Streisand. Our Barbra Streisand story, I think, is verifiable in many many ways. I saw her as Marmelstein in WHOLESALE. I saw her in a show down at the Blue Angel, or someplace, called AN EVENING WITH HARRY STOONES which was a rather silly little revue, and I believed that she would make the most incredible lead for HOT SPOT. And I called up her agent, who was a guy called Marty Erlichman, and said Mary Rodgers, Tec, me, Fryer & Carr - I mean, it was credentials, it was not like a couple of people coming out of the woodwork - and would she be willing to learn 3 of the songs, work with me on 3 of the songs, and read some scenes, to come in and audition. And she agreed; she came to my house; she worked with Mary; she worked with me.

The first time she arrived, she had a peach pit in her mouth, and sucked on a peach pit while she was learning all this musical material. Got it very quickly, and came on the stage of the Majestic Theatre for this audition. We were all sitting in the audience, except I was on stage, and I introduced her to the assemblage, Mary, Tec, Fryer and Carr, and Jack and Willie, and she sang “Hey Love” which was one of the songs from the show, and “Gabie”, which was another song from HOT SPOT, and she read 3 scenes, and she was dazzling, I mean, she was just staggering.

And at the end of the audition, we said “Thank you,” and she stood there. And I was on the stage, and I remember saying, “Is that it?” and it was Tec who said, “Thank you very much and we’ll be in touch.” And Barbra and Marty left, and she was not in tears, but I could see how deflated she was, how embarrassed I was, and I went and said I would call her that evening and apologized for their mind-bogglingly rude behavior, and went racing back into the theater and said “Are you guys nuts? Have you not just seen the most extraordinary human being that the musical theatre has ever produced? And she wants to do it and we’re ready to sign her, and Let’s go Let’s go” and Tec and Bobby Fryer said no one will ever believe that anybody could fall in love with that face, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, I will never forget it, “We are making the biggest mistake in the history of this business,” and I was simply outvoted. Mary agreed, I must say that Mary was very much on our side.

Jack and Willy were kind of in the middle about the whole thing, but the triumvirate, the power brokers were Tec and Fryer & Carr. And it was then that it was finally revealed to us that they had had Judy Holiday up their sleeves all the time; and that because we were basically untried, now Tec had done MUSIC MAN, so he had a rep, and Fryer and Carr had done some stuff. They were on the board with some successes, but it was a first-time-out lyric writer, and 2 book-writers who had been neglected by the Pulitzer Prize committee – Abe Burrows won the Pulitzer Prize for HOW TO SUCCEED, Jack and Willy didn’t, and Mary, who had not been around successfully since MATTRESS, and the name Rodgers did not mean that much in that context. And they just turned their back on her – one week, one month later, Barbra signed to do FUNNY GIRL. I mean, that is the story, had Barbra, who was young, pliable, tough, knew what she was up against, knew what she wanted, been the character in that show, that show could have run, because we could have made the changes. As it turns out, Judy was in not the best physical condition, she was dying of cancer.

copyright © 2003-2007 Matt Howe