No More Broadway For Barbra?
April 23, 1966
Barbra Streisand made show business history in Funny Girl on both sides of the Atlantic but she may never do a big Broadway musical again.
She made the statement yesterday while wrestling with a couple of uncooperative knitting needles in a determined effort to be like any other expectant mother.
With a small chuckle of triumph, she clicked to the end of another row of a small but steadily growing square of pink wool which in her mind's eye she already sees decorating a baby carriage sometime next December.
“Look at that,” she said. “My kid's going to have the wildest blanket. I'm making it out of all kinds of pink.”
She laid on a sofa and said:
“You ask questions and I'll keep knitting. I envy the women in this country—they can all knit. I found it hard at first but now I'm getting the rhythm. In Funny Girl I'm on stage nearly all the time except for a couple of minutes in each act. As soon as I go off in the first act I grab the knitting and do a line. Then in the second act I knit another line. Knitting makes me relaxed, so keep asking.”
Well, what were her plans after her engagement in the London company ends in July?
“I think CBS wants me to do a special here,” she said.
“I don't think I'll do a stage show like Funny Girl again. A long run makes a show all the things I never wanted—a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. kind of thing. It becomes a job. But I like the idea of films. You can do your songs over and over again, 50 times if you want—and when you're finished they're there forever and ever, just as you wanted them.
“A stage performance is different. You do it and it's gone forever. It's not a tangible thing, is it?”
She waved the knitting: “Having a baby. That's a tangible success.”
What will she call the baby?
“If it's a girl—Samantha. You've got to think of the personality of your child. Samantha has possibilities. If she turns out to be a tomboy her friends can call her Sam. You've got to think of things like that. Or she can be Samantha—exotic or dignified as the case may be. Yes, I like a two-way name like that.
“Now if it's a boy I'll call him Jason Emanuel—Emanuel was my father's name. I like the same sound ... the what do you call it ... alliteration. Jason Emanuel Gould. I thought about calling him Gideon but at school they might give him a nickname like Giddy. I can't allow that. Gabriel was another candidate.
“Some of the newspapers here said I'd been trying to have a baby for three years,” she said. “That isn't true. Before now I was too young for it. Now I'm ready for it and forget about all that silly publicity that I"m a myth or a legend or whatever it is they say about me.
“I never asked to be called a legend, you know. I just do the work.”
End.
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