The Blue Angel

152 East 55th Street

New York, NY

Nov. 16—Dec. 13, 1961

July 16—Aug. 17, 1962

Jan. 8—Jan. 28, 1963

The Blue Angel, named after the Marlene Dietrich film and run by Max Gordon and Herbert Jacoby, was a classy New York nightclub with a red carpet at its entrance. The back room, where Barbra and other entertainers performed, was long and narrow, with quilted walls. The stage was lit by a single spotlight.

After closing the off-Broadway review Another Evening with Harry Stoones, Barbra went to work at The Blue Angel. Arthur Laurents, Harold Rome and Jerome Weidman (the director, composer, and writer of I Can Get It for You Wholesale) saw Barbra at The Blue Angel. It was her performance there, as well as her audition, that helped her win the role of Miss Marmelstein in Wholesale—Streisand's first Broadway musical.

Barbra performed midnight shows at The Blue Angel after her Wholesale performance. In 1995, Laurents said, “I helped her with her nightclub act at the Blue Angel, and I brought Steve Sondheim to hear her. He didn’t like her voice at all. And she didn’t like his music. Now you couldn’t get a piece of paper between the two of them, they’re so close.”

Broadway producer Philip Rose (A Raisin in the Sun and Owl and the Pussycat) saw Streisand at the Blue Angel and wrote about it:

At the Angel, where she was the opening act for Fat Jack Leonard, a borscht belt comic, she did something amazing. The audience, which had of course come to see Leonard, paid no attention to the loudspeaker accouncement, “We now present Barbra Streisand.” She came on, sat down on a stool, and her pianist Peter Daniels played an introductory arpeggio to her first song. The audience continued drinking, talking, paying no attention, obviously prepared to be bored until Leonard would appear. While the pianist repeated the arpeggio, Barbra continued to wait. Only when most of the audience was finally looking at her, did she nod to the pianist and begin her opening number, a quiet Harold Arlen song. During that performance she also sang her incredible version of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” By the end, the audience wouldn't have cared if Jack E. Leonard had never come on.”

Columbia Records’ A&R (Artists and Repertoire) director David Kapralik, who saw Streisand almost every night, convinced his boss, Goddard Lieberson (President of Columbia Records) to see Barbra’s act. Seeing Barbra live in front of an adoring audience helped convince Lieberson to finally sign her to Columbia Records in October 1962.