Her Name is Barbra: An Intimate Portrait of the Real Barbra Streisand

Offers new revelations from behind the scenes about the singer-actress's early career in Greenwich Village, on Broadway, and in films, as well as her political activism, her relationships with her family, and her work on Prince of Tides. 125,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Big, strongly researched life of the actress/singer that gives a rich sense of her life as a human being--and as an outsized ego. According to Riese (The Unabridged James Dean, 1991, etc.--not reviewed), the death of Streisand's father at age 35, left unexplained by her mother, gave the future star fears of a similar early death. Moreover, since childhood, she has heard clicks and a wailing in her ears that may or may not be tied to emotional abuse she suffered from her wife-beating stepfather. With her younger, pretty sister Rosalind the family darling, Streisand did chores and washed floors as both Cinderella and the Ugly Duckling. Though her singing voice was early recognized in her Brooklyn neighborhood, she focused on acting in summer stock upstate and on acting lessons in Manhattan and has ever since declared herself an actress, not a singer, since her voice comes from her mother (whom she allots $1,000 monthly) but her acting talent from her own hard work. At 19, in her Broadway debut in I Can Get it for You Wholesale, she stopped the show--and then took off like a rocket, performing in supper clubs, making records, harmonizing on TV's The Judy Garland Show, and, at 23, blowing the theater critics to tatters as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, which led to an Oscar for her film version. Though Riese apparently hasn't interviewed Streisand, he makes statements and assumptions about her emotional life that seem to be based on information from those close to her (``Despite sexist speculation that she was a pussycat on the Funny Girl set because she was being satisfied in bed [by her married hairdresser, Jon Peters], Barbra was her typically malcontent self during the production''). The star's directing and acting in The Prince of Tides takes up major space here. Warm, sometimes fanzine-toned treatment of an often gripping artist. (Twenty-four pages of photographs) (First serial to the National Enquirer) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Just as Barbra Streisand is a very big star, this is a very big book: lots of pages, lots of anecdotes, and lots of research. The result is a biography that's not just the usual cut-and-paste job. Film historian Riese seems to want to present an evenhanded portrait of Streisand, but without access to the people closest to her, it is mostly those with a gripe against her who get to speak. For instance, Riese presents a bevy of former friends who feel they were used and discarded by the star, but he virtually ignores the fact that her old boyfriends are still pals, that her best friend is a woman she met in the 1960s, and that her manager has been with her for almost 30 years. The best thing about this book is that, as a gathering of facts, it is amazingly complete. Riese recalls incidents that Streisand has probably forgotten. So for fans looking for a definitive biography of the events in Streisand's life, this will more than suffice. Readers who want a benevolent interpretation of those events, however, may have to look elsewhere. A big draw for the biography shelves. Ilene Cooper