- 16 Feb 2011, 15:22
#2140617
Actress/singer/director/writer/composer/producer/designer/author/photographer/activist Barbra Streisand is the only artist ever to receive Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, National Medal of Arts and Peabody Awards and France’s Legion d’Honneur as well as the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also the first female film director to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
She won Oscars for both Best Actress (“Funny Girl”) and Best Original Song (for her composition of “Evergreen” which has since become a standard.) She also was nominated for Best Actress for “The Way We Were.” The three films she directed received 14 Oscar nominations. A leading film star in dramas, comedies and musicals, her latest film, “Meet The Fockers,” became the first live-action comedy to earn over half a billion dollars and remains the highest-grossing comedy..
An eight-time Grammy Award winner who is the only performer to have number one albums in five consecutive decades, her 51 gold albums, 30 platinum and 18 multi-platinum, each of which, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, exceeds all other female singers. Only Elvis Presley has achieved more Gold albums than she. The RIAA also notes that her 71 million albums sales tops the RIAA list of album sales by a female singer. With the recent debut at #1 of her “Love Is The Answer” album, her 9th record to reach that top spot, the time-span between her first and most recent Number One albums, exceeding that of any other performer or act, is now 46 years.
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For her very first solo recording, “The Barbra Streisand Album," she won two 1963 Grammy Awards. One of these was for Best Female Vocal Performance. The other, Album of the Year; made her the youngest artist to have received that award.
She is the first female composer ever to win an Academy Award, this for her song, "Evergreen," the love theme from her 1976 hit film, "A Star Is Born." She was nominated again in 1997 as co-composer of "I Finally Found Someone," based on her love theme for her 1996 film as director/producer/star, "The Mirror Has Two Faces." The film achieved two Oscar nominations and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for Lauren Bacall.
DVD releases of her concerts have achieved notable recent firsts. In 2009 her three-disc offering, “Streisand The Concerts,” reigned in the #1 position on the Music DVD Billboard charts for three weeks. A year later, “One Night Only,” capturing her heralded performance at the Village Vanguard before an audience of one hundred lottery-picked fans and some of her notable friends, opened at #1 as well.
The "actress who sings," as Streisand once termed herself, has repeatedly been at the top of the record sales charts.
Since resuming paid concert performance on December 31, 1993, Barbra Streisand has set a long list of records in that area as well. Following her sold-out 20 concert tour in the U.S. and Canada in 2006 and the follow-up nine concert 2007 tour of Europe, Ms. Streisand holds the house records in all 27 venues in which she has appeared in that period.
Virtually every aspect of Barbra Streisand's 1994 concert tour was record setting. Those twenty-six appearances were her first paid concerts in nearly three decades, all intervening concerts since 1966 having been fund-raisers for various social or political causes. The tour initiated with the celebrated 1994 New Year's performances at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas and continued to set attendance and box-office records with immediate sellouts in London, Washington D.C., Southern California, Detroit, San Jose, and New York's Madison Square Garden. Over 5 million phone requests were recorded in the first hour when tickets for the first American leg of the tour went on sale. The tour also generated over $10.25 million for charities the artist supports, channeling money to significant causes in each locale. Reflecting Streisand's social concerns, over $3 million went to AIDS organizations, with other gifts addressing such urgencies as women and children in jeopardy, Jewish/Arab relations and agencies working to ameliorate relations between African-Americans and Jews.
Ms. Streisand's Millennium New Year's Eve concert, "Timeless," at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, December 31, 1999, set an all-time Ticket Master record for one-day sales of a single event, virtually selling out in the first few hours of sale eight months before the performance. The New Year's concert was widely covered as one of the key events of the worldwide millennium celebration.
Her two-night Madison Square Garden engagement in September 2000, and two preceding Los Angeles live appearances at Staples Center, also were record-setting successes. Similarly her second national concert tour in the Fall of 2006, received rave reviews and broke the house records in all 16 of the cities in which she had not already set the venue record. The tour, “Streisand – Live In Concert 2006”, was recorded in three sites, becoming the top-selling album of the same name. In the Spring and Summer of 2007, that show then became Barbra Streisand’s first ever concert tour of the Continent of Europe, with performances in Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ireland, a designated portion of the proceeds again being directed to charities through The Streisand Foundation.
Barbra Streisand’s home video releases have created records of their own. “Barbra Streisand: The Concert," became a quadruple-platinum home video as well as a triple-platinum double album (exceptionally rare for a multi-disc set). Most recently, in 2009 her three-disc offering, “Streisand The Concerts,” reigned in the #1 position on the Music DVD Billboard charts for three weeks, with her 2010 DVD “One Night Only – Barbra Streisand And Quartet At The Village Vanguard – September 26, 2009” again brought her a #1 winner in its opening week. The home video/DVD of the “Timeless” concert was gold and platinum as well, with six other home videos also being certified gold. . In 2004, "Barbra Streisand - Live at the MGM Grand" was released on DVD, and was quickly certified Platinum. In November 2005, 'Barbra Streisand- The Television Specials' was released as a five-DVD box set which went quintuple (5x) platinum, within six weeks. The recent DVD release of her 1986 “One Voice” concert has joined the list of her successes in that market.
The filmmaker/entertainer was born April 24th in Brooklyn to Diana and Emanuel Streisand. Her father, who passed away when Barbra was 15 months old, was a highly respected teacher and scholar.
An honor student at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, the teenage Streisand plunged, unassisted and without encouragement, into show business by winning a singing contest at a small Manhattan club. She developed a devout and growing following at the clubs which began hiring her, and soon she was attracting music industry attention at such spots as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel.
Streisand signed a contract with Columbia Records in 1962, and her debut album quickly became the nation's top-selling record by a female vocalist.
Following her award-winning stage debut performance in "I Can Get It For You Wholesale," she was signed to play the great comedienne Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of "Funny Girl." When the curtain came down at the Winter Garden Theatre on March 26, 1964, the star and the show were major hits. Her distinctly original musical-comedy performance won her a second Tony nomination.
In 1966, Streisand repeated her "Funny Girl" triumph in London at the Prince of Wales Theatre. London critics voted her the best female lead in a musical for that season.
Recent honors reflecting the range of her involvement in charitable and social causes include the 1992 Commitment to Life Award from AIDS Project Los Angeles for her dedication to help people living with that disease, the ACLU Bill of Rights Award for her ongoing defense of constitutional rights and the Humanitarian Award from The Human Rights Campaign.
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