Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand - Hardcover

Mann, William J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547368925 ISBN 13: 9780547368924

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

Synopsis

The best-selling biographer of Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor tells the electrifying story of how Barbra Streisand transformed herself into the greatest star of her era, etching “an indelible portrait of the artist as a young woman” (Publishers Weekly).

In 1960, she was a seventeen-year-old Brooklyn kid with plenty of talent but no connections and certainly no money; her mother brought her soup to make sure she stayed fed as she took acting classes and scraped out a living. Just four years later, Barbra Streisand was the top-selling female recording artist in America and the star of one of Broadway’s biggest hits. Now the acclaimed Hollywood biographer William Mann chronicles that dizzying ascent, telling the riveting behind-the-scenes story of how Streisand and her team transformed her from an unknown dreamer into a worldwide superstar.

Drawing on the private papers of Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, and interviewing scores of the friends and lovers who knew Barbara before she became Barbra, Mann recreates the vanished world of 1960s New York City and uncovers the truth behind the myths of her formative years. He shows us how Funny Girl was slowly altered, by Fosse and Robbins among others, from a Fanny Brice bio into a star-making vehicle for Streisand; takes us into the clubs and onto the set for her early nightclub and television appearances, including her torch-handing turn with Judy Garland; and introduces the canny marketing team whose strategies made her stardom seem inevitable. The Streisand who emerges is a revelation: a young woman who, for all her tough-skinned ambition, was surprisingly vulnerable in love.

Everyone who has felt outside the gate, as she once did, remembers a time when the newness and difference of Barbra Streisand changed everything and rewrote all the rules. In Hello, Gorgeous, Mann incisively illuminates the woman before she became the icon and pays tribute to one of the world’s most beloved performers.

About this title

Book Description:

HMH hardcover, 2012Previous ISBN: 978-0547368924

From the Back Cover:

PRAISE FOR Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn

“Thoughtfully examining the differences between the ways Hepburn chose to present herself and the facts of her life . . . Kate is a real-life version of one of America’s favorite fairy tales.” – Janet Maslin, New York Times

“A page-turner and a revelation.” – USA Today

“While previous biographers may have added more embroidery to the accepted story of Hepburn’s life, Mann pretty much blows everything out of the water.” – San Francisco Chronicle

PRAISE FOR How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood

“Rendered with a verve and fluidity . . . Mann has clearly done his research and just as clearly adores his subject.” – Frank Bruni, New York Times Book Review

“Ridiculously entertaining.” – USA Today

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0547368925
• ISBN 13: 9780547368924
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576