"On February 25, 1963, Columbia Records released The Barbra Streisand Album. The first song was Cry Me a River, and with that a star was born. Barbra Joan Streisand had a zany personality backed by a talent that Stephen Sondheim once described as one of the two or three best voices in the world of singing songs, adding Its not just her voice but her intensity, her passion and control. Harold Arlen, another of her favorite composers, commented, This...

"Barbra Streisand has been called the 'most successful ... talented performer of her generation' by Vanity Fair, and her voice, said pianist Glenn Gould, is 'one of the natural wonders of the age.' Streisand scaled the heights of entertainment-from a popular vocalist to a first-rank Broadway star in Funny Girl to an Oscar-winning actress to a producer and director. But she has also become a cultural icon who has transcended show business. To achieve...

"Crosby, Holiday, Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Garland, and Streisand were the major interpreters of the American songbook, and this is the interlocking story of their lives and careers. Here is the epic tale of how these artists dominated American popular musicover a fifty-year period, a roller coaster ride that gains momentum through the 1930s and '40s, reaches a crest of magical creativity in the 1950s and early '60s, and then crashes down by the early...

“Streisand: A Biography” is much more than the story of the world's greatest living performer, how she got there, and why she remains at the top after three decades, it is also, in Anne Edward's sure hands, a compelling chronicle of a woman's fight to validate her appearance, her talent, and her right to love and be loved. Time and time again Streisand has demonstrated the ability to reinvent herself to keep pace with the continuing changes in...

"At every stage of her career, Barbra Streisand's genius finds its fullest measure in screen song, first in Emmy-winning TV specials, then in Hollywood blockbusters from Funny Girl to Funny Lady. She goes on, as emerging auteur, to direct her own "musical concepts" in A Star Is Born-before reconceiving the big-screen musical altogether in the writing as well as directing of her own starring role in Yentl ("A Film with Music"). In this intensive reading...

The four incandescent stars in this compilation indicate clearly on 'Inside the actors studio' why they have risen to, and remain at, the peak of their powers--and their profession.