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Archive on 4: To Barbra

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, To Barbra

Dame Maureen Lipman celebrates the radical career of Barbra Streisand.

Maureen Lipman celebrates the radical career of Barbra Streisand. How did a kooky girl from Brooklyn become a record-breaking singer, actor, director and producer on her own terms?

Dame Maureen Lipman presents a personal tribute to Barbra Streisand, to mark the Hollywood legend's 80th birthday. 

Recipient of two Oscars, 10 Grammys, 5 Emmys, and 9 Golden Globes. Streisand's also the top-selling female album artist of all time in the USA. 

For Maureen, it's an admiration that goes back six decades. As a young girl growing up in Hull, she first set eyes on the Brooklyn teeenager in her brother's Time Magazine. Barbra had just made a big splash on Broadway in the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale and Maureen felt her rebellious chutzpah from 3000 miles away.  Once Streisand started releasing albums in 1963, they formed the soundtrack to Maureen's life. Fast forward to 1983, and you can imagine the thrill when Maureen's late husband, playwright Jack Rosenthal, was hired as a writer on Barbra's directorial debut, the movie Yentl.

Using BBC interviews, we trace Barbra's career from her Brooklyn childhood to Maureen's eventual meeting with the superstar in London during production of Yentl.  

Streisand was a revolutionary. Defying the conventions of the early 60s with her thrift store fashions, brazen Jewishness, and kooky persona. In Hollywood, she challenged rigid beauty ideals by refusing to get her nose fixed. As one of the top box office stars of the 70s, she became a powerful player in an industry ruled predominantly by men. 

But there was, of course, enormous pushback and criticism from the start. An auteur at heart, It took 15 years, from reading the short story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer, before she was able to produce, direct, co-write and star in her movie adaptation.   

Contributors include acting coach Alan Miller, who taught Streisand as a teenager; historian David Kaufman, author of Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity; Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel Beverly Hills; LA Times columnist Patt Morrison; and Dr Julie Hubbert, Professor of Music History at the University of South Carolina.

Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive Producers: Susan Marling and Sara Jane Hall
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

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