My Name is Barbra (1965)
After being the guest star on several variety and talk shows, Barbra Streisand was ready for her own network television special.
Barbra made news in 1964 when CBS Television announced a ten-year, $5 million deal with the singer to star in several television specials.
With Barbra the only talent in front of the cameras, her manager Marty Erlichman hired a top-notch team to support her behind the scenes as rehearsals began in January 1965 for her first special. “I was concerned with artistic control only,” Barbra said. “I wanted to produce my own shows and now I can and nobody—not sponsors or advertisers or anyone—can interfere. The people like Dick Lewine, Joe Layton, Dwight Hemion and Marty Erlichman—they are on my team. They're for me and what I want to do.”
She was working concurrently on Broadway, doing eight shows a week of Funny Girl. Barbra also planned to deliver an album (later, two) to Columbia Records to coincide with the broadcast of the special.
On Sunday, March 21, 1965 (her day off from Funny Girl) Barbra taped the Bergdorf Goodman scenes. Director Dwight Hemion recalled that “because the first floor was lined with mirrors, the segment was a nightmare to light.”
William Klages, who lighted Streisand's locations for the television special, agreed about how hard Bergdorf's was to light. As for lighting Ms. Streisand herself, Klages said she had “absolute breathtaking skin. It lit so easily. ”
Halston was retained to create the hats that Streisand wore in the fashion sequences at Bergdorf's department store.
Bergdorf’s resident designer, a Hungarian named Emeric Partos, created several furs for use in the fantasy shopping sequence. He wrapped Barbra in a $15,000 Somali leopard coat with a black leather belt. For “Brother Can You Spare A Dime,” Partos fitted her with white mink knickers. When Barbra stomps on her coat during the finale, she is stomping on Canadian wild mink. “I used to hate mink,” she told the press. “But now I appreciate it for its solidity. I really didn’t like boa scarves as much as they say I did. I like simple elegance, neat.”
My Name is Barbra continued taping segments on April 12 and 14 in a CBS soundstage a few blocks from Funny Girl's Winter Garden Theater.
Director Dwight Hemion remembered that the segments which were videotaped in the studio were “done without an audience. We rehearsed a little bit, as I recall, in the rehearsal hall. But only rehearsed the music and a little bit of the staging. Then we went into a studio, with the scenery and everything, no audience, and started to tape. [Barbra] sang to tracks. That is, we recorded everything so there was no orchestra there much of the time. She sang to tracks and we taped. We taped each [segment] until we were all enthused about it. Each number — we did each number on tape, never done as a full show. We had as close to perfection as you can get and Barbra, being a perfectionist — even at that time — she wasn’t a director yet, that came later …”
Eric, a Streisand fan, attended the concert taping in 1965. He told “The Barbra Archives”:
“I got the tickets through the fan club I had joined. Since I was such an early member, and it had to be one of the first, if not still the only, Barbra Fan Club at the time, they seemed to have an inside track on lots of things.
“The taping for My Name is Barbra was at least 2 hours. It was a smallish TV studio, so I don't think there could have been more than 200 people, if that much. It certainly was a very enthusiastic audience: literally everyone there could have only been there through a keen interest in Barbra (or their date!) I remember an announcer telling us what we could expect, like telling us what we were about to see on the monitors, and that we should applaud and otherwise react like a good audience.
“The only thing that wasn't pre-taped for the Bergdorf sequence was the VERY end, where you see her at a kettle drum, singing ‘...because the Best Things In Life Are Free!’ They taped that bit live in front of the audience. I do believe it took more than one take, and she lip-synched.
“I remember only being able to see parts of her through all the cables and cameras and monitors, so the only way to see ALL of her was to, indeed, look at the monitor. It was like being at a Barbra concert. There was an elation that we had not only been part of our idol's historic first tv special, but that she delivered such a tour de force it was clear we had witnessed something truly sensational.”
Another fan who was there at the studio taping of the concert segment remembered:
“Our group was in the first row, because Marty Erlichman wanted our reactions [applause and cheers] to be prominent on the soundtrack ... There was a rehearsal taping in the afternoon, which was much better than the evening taping that was aired. The evening taping lasted close to four hours. At the end we were practically the only people left in the theater. There was a problem with the closing credits being in just the right place. Barbra had to do ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ about 12 times.”
Roger Perry and Johnny Melfi are actors and songwriters. They’ve written a Broadway musical “Nothing Can Stop Me Now” … One hit from their proposed show, “A Kid Again,” received a breakin by James Darren in his Cocoanut Grove act. Barbra Streisand sat in the audience that night. She’ll record the same tune as well as two others from the show, “Can I Keep Him Happy” and “I Like Him.”
(From Barney Glazer’s column, “Out of This Sho-World”)
(Above) The New York Times ran a full-page advertisement the day Barbra's television special aired.
(Below) Here's another local newspaper ad for Barbra's first television show.
(Below) And here's one more ad ... this time for the October 1965 rebroadcast of My Name is Barbra.
The Soundtrack Albums
The My Name is Barbra soundtrack album was released May 1965.
My Name Is Barbra, Two..., its sequel, was released October 1965 to coincide with the rebroadcast of the special on CBS.
The Chemstrand Commercial
Barbra filmed a “commercial” for her first television show.
It was common practice for a corporation to sponsor a show. Barbra’s television sponsor was Chemstrand (which later became Monsanto). Chemstrand manufactured fibers which were used in rugs and action-wear. They paid for Barbra’s special and received on-air mention (which was edited out of the home video versions of Barbra’s specials but was included during the actual airings in the 1960’s.)
The commercial was not shown on network TV. Instead, it was a promotional piece meant to be shown internally at Chemstrand. Perhaps it was shown at a Chemstrand convention.
In it, Barbra addressed the camera directly. She was in her Funny Girl dressing room (or a set meant to suggest that). She spoke about her upcoming television special, “The Barbra Streisand Show” then told viewers about how she and husband Elliott Gould had been choosing carpet for their new home. She even rattled off some Chemstrand carpet brand names. They had to re-record some of the dialogue at this point. The tongue-twisting chemical names appeared to have challenged even the nimble-tongued Streisand — “nacrylic fibers” !
At the end of the promo, the camera focused on Barbra’s dressing room door and she declared, “Roll out the carpets.”
MNIB On Home Video
My Name is Barbra was first released on home video in 1981 by Reel Images. The VHS contained a kinescope of the 1965 television special, complete with commercials. Around the same time, All Star Video also compiled My Name is Barbra onto a VHS tape entitled “The Barbra Streisand Story”—Streisand sued them for $11 million in damages.
It wasn't until 1986 that CBS/Fox officially released the TV special on VHS and laser disc (pictured below).
Ed Green—the original audio engineer for the special—remastered the home video version. Billboard reported that “there were four of five versions of audio for each show” that Green had to work with. Streisand's manager Marty Erlichman coordinated the release of Color Me Barbra and My Name is Barbra to VHS.
As a bonus on the VHS, Streisand filmed an introduction to her first television special in which she briefly recalled making it.
It wasn't until almost 20 years later that My Name is Barbra saw a DVD release. This time, Rhino Home Video produced a 5-DVD set called Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials which included all five of Streisand's CBS programs. A year later, Rhino released each special as an individual DVD. The Rhino version of My Name is Barbra contained an animated menu and several audio mixes of the sound, as well as Streisand's 1986 filmed introduction.
It should be noted that the 2005 DVD has been altered. “Love, Come Back to Me” contains an alternate take in the second half of the song that was not included on previous VHS and laserdisc versions.
‘My Name is Barbra’ Trivia
- Barbra left the Winter Garden Theatre after her Funny Girl performance and attended a telecast party which celebrated the airing of her first television show, thrown in penthouse atop Bergdorf’s.
- Barbra promoted the show April 25 as the mystery guest on What’s My Line?
- Marty Erlichman played the footman outside Bergdorf’s.
- The TV show was presented by Ellbar Productions, Inc., a production company Barbra formed with Elliott Gould. Ell[iott] + Bar[bra] = Ellbar. (You know what I mean?)
- The show was nominated for 6 Emmy Awards (for Barbra, director, concept/staging, art direction, music, and “Outstanding Program Achievement in Entertainment”)
- It won 5 Emmy Awards on September 15, 1965 (director Dwight Hemion did not win).
- The title tune, “My Name is Barbara” was written in 1943 by Leonard Bernstein as part of “A Cycle of Five Kid Songs for Soprano” —it was not a special piece for Barbra. Barbra also sang another song from Bernstein’s cycle (“I Hate Music”) in her early club dates.
- My Name is Barbra made its debut on home video in 1986, but remained out of print since. Barbra filmed a personal introduction to the 1986 home video tape. A DVD version of the special was released in 2005. The 2005 DVD replaced the second half of “Lover, Come Back to Me” with an alternate take. The DVD included the 1986 introduction.
- The blue sailor dress that Barbra wore in the first act of My Name is Barbra was auctioned in 2004. The final bid for the dress was $14,400.00. The auction description of the dress said: “Custom blue wool and silk sailor dress, having blue wool shell with blue silk chiffon over-lay, white linen cuffs and collar trimmed in blue ribbon and red bow under the collar, tied at bodice which streams down the front of the dress, no labels.”
End.
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