Streisand was the golden girl of Columbia Records and the toast of Broadway, in “Funny Girl.” Two years before, people had called her a “kook” lately they were proclaiming her beautiful. To her fellow outcasts, from unattractive girls to gay men, Streisand, at 21, was a symbol of victory.īy 1964, she had made the covers of Time and Life, and sung on TV with Judy Garland in what looked like a passing of the mantle. Torch songs like “Cry Me a River” and “When the Sun Comes Out” became roller coasters of psychodrama, yet she never played the victim one felt her ferociousness every time she lurched for a high note, then seized it as though she had scaled the Matterhorn. Her voice - big, nasal, braying and edged with her native Brooklynese - was seldom pretty, but it was unmistakably hers, and it riveted the ear with its reckless intensity.
Singing in nightclubs and on television, she faced down audiences with her crossed eyes, beaklike nose and thrift-store costumes. In the wake of the white-bread, conformist 1950s, Streisand was the ridiculed young misfit whose every move shrieked defiance. Barbra Streisand’s story may be the most triumphant case of revenge in show business history.
