Music
Happy Birthday, Barbra Streisand! 29 Gorgeous Vintage Pictures of the Greatest Star
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Barbra Streisand’s career accomplishments are the stuff of legend: After leading the original Broadway production of Funny Girl in her early 20s (and an Oscar-winning film adaptation a few years later, in 1968), she was off to the races, forging a body of work that touched everything from zippy screwball comedies to swooning romantic dramas; three impressively varied directorial efforts; a zillion chart-topping, Grammy-winning studio albums; and a 970-page memoir.
To celebrate her 84td birthday today, we’ve gathered some of the most glamorous old pictures of the greatest star that we could find. Hello, gorgeous!
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Early 1960s
Born in Brooklyn on April 24, 1942, Barbra Streisand began her music career in the early 1960s, stringing together gigs at New York nightclubs while she auditioned for acting jobs. (She has, over the years, referred to herself as “an actor who sings.”) Her first record, The Barbra Streisand Album, came out in early 1963, when she was just shy of 21.
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1963
With Judy Garland on The Judy Garland Show, where the two performed a stirring rendition of the 1929 standard “Happy Days Are Here Again” crossed with Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Get Happy.”
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Early 1960s
Modeling a vintage coat from her wardrobe. “I haunt local thrift shops and offbeat stores. You can find more interesting clothes there,” she told Cue magazine in 1963. “I particularly like clothes of the late twenties and early thirties.”
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c. 1964
From 1963 to 1971, Streisand was married to the actor Elliott Gould, whom she met while working on the Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. “I found her absolutely exquisite,” Gould told Time magazine in 1964.
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1967
On stage during A Happening in Central Park, Streisand’s concert in Sheep Meadow on June 17, 1967. Free and open to the public, the performance attracted some 135,000 people.
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1968
Garrison, New York, stood in for turn-of-the-century Yonkers when Streisand (at bottom right) starred opposite Walter Matthau in Hello Dolly, directed for the screen by Gene Kelly.
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1969
Embracing her younger half-sister, singer Roslyn Kind.
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1969
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c. 1970
In 1970, Streisand starred in the romantic comedy The Owl and the Pussycat opposite George Segal. Directed by Herbert Ross (The Goodbye Girl, Footloose, Steel Magnolias) from an adapted screenplay by Buck Henry (The Graduate), it follows a sex worker named Doris who is forced to move in with her stuffed-shirt neighbor.
Earlier that year, Streisand’s mother, Diana Kind, had told the Times about her visit to the film’s set. “She had on a skimpy costume and was very embarrassed when she saw me,” Kind recalled. “I’m really shocked at all these things an actress has to do today. But I guess it’s part of the job.”
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c. 1971
Wearing a jaunty checked coat and tidy topknot as she chats with Peter Bogdanovich.
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c. 1971
With Ryan O’Neal and Bogdanovich, their director, on the set of What’s Up Doc. Streisand would re-team with O’Neal—her boyfriend for a time—in the 1979 boxing rom-com The Main Event.
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1972
In 1972, Streisand participated in a fundraising concert for George McGovern’s presidential campaign at the Forum in Los Angeles. Also on hand were the likes of Carole King, James Taylor, and Quincy Jones.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection
c. 1972
On the set of Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were. For her performance as Katie Morosky, Streisand earned her second Oscar nomination for best actress.
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1973
Sharing the stage with Ray Charles for another TV special, Barbra Streisand…and Other Musical Instruments.
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c. 1974
Sporting a pixie cut (and an impish grin) in a promotional image for Peter Yates’s screwball comedy For Pete’s Sake, co-starring Michael Sarrazin.
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1975
With then-beau Jon Peters (and a leonine fur) at JFK airport.
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1975
Greeting Queen Elizabeth at the London premiere of Funny Lady—the sequel to Funny Girl—as co-star James Caan looks on.
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1976
After versions led by Janet Gaynor and Fredric March (in 1937) and Judy Garland and James Mason (in 1954), Streisand starred in a third A Star Is Born with Kris Kristofferson in 1976. This iteration, directed by Frank Pierson from a screenplay co-written by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, moved the story’s action from Hollywood to the music industry. It won Streisand her second Oscar, this time for best song (“Evergreen”).
Among the film’s most impressive set pieces was a very large, very real concert at the Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona.
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c. 1977
With Neil Diamond—her erstwhile classmate at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn—promoting their hit duet, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”
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1982
Posing with Geraldo Rivera, who interviewed Streisand about the making of Yentl, her 1983 directorial debut, for 20/20.
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1983
Out to dinner with Steven Spielberg in London. After seeing a cut of Yentl, Spielberg allegedly called it “the best first film since Citizen Kane.”
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1984
Starring Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, and Amy Irving, Yentl did well at the 1984 Golden Globes, making Streisand the first woman to win best director. (It also scooped up the prize for best musical or comedy.)
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1988
Streisand with Don Johnson, another paramour. The two duetted on the song “Till I Loved You” from her 1988 album of the same name, and Streisand made a (very brief) cameo in his hit series Miami Vice during Season 4.
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1989
With Michael Douglas, Don Gummer, Mick Jagger, Meryl Streep, and Jerry Hall during the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour.
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1992
At the 34th Grammys, Stephen Sondheim presented Streisand with the Grammy Living Legend award. “She’s as good as they come,” he said warmly in his introductory speech.