The trivia book BIGGER SECRETS goes into a lot of detail describing an alleged 1960s sex loop supposedly starring a then-unknown Babs Streisand.
The author studied a few copies of the creditless videotapes and says it could be her. The people the author showed the tape to thought it was her.
I’ve seen a copy of the tape and I’m pretty convinced it’s her. Has anyone else seen this tape? Has any new info come to light since that trivia book was published about ten years ago?
I’m not a big BS fan but of all the celebs on this planet who might possibly have done a porn loop BS would be near the bottom of the list.
Although it does make an amusing picture to imagine the control freak that is BS directing herself in one of these features.
“You call that a woody! I’ve seen better wood on a popsicle stick! Fluffer! Not not you, you idiot the fluffer for Mr. Performace Anxiety over there. Makeup!!! I’m sweating like a sow under these lights.”
I guess I should have said that this was most likely made before Madam Control Freak got famous. If I’m not mistaken, this sex loop appeared on the same videotape as footage from Sly Stallone’s early porn movie. Though while Stallone’s stuff was softcore, this “Babs” stuff was definitely hardcore.
I suppose I should have been more clear. Although I don’t find BS particularly likable she is very intelligent and canny about business and doesn’t strike me as anyone that would need to resort to porn to make ends meet regardless of how strained her circumstances were.
Yea but you got to see the tape
Its either her or a damn near clone of her. Even in shady quality it sure as hell look like Babs.
Barbra Streisand was already pretty famous in 1962:
http://www.shapirobernstein.com/mbr/tour/strei.htm ,
at least where she wouldn’t have had to do it for $$.
I know she also was invited to the White House during
JFK’s administration. I think she was too well known
to have done something like that.
If this tape were “the real thing” don’t you think that every adult book shop, internet porn site and “mens magazine” would be selling or otherwise touting “The Streisand Tape” if it had even a hint of veracity attached to it just as they have with every celeb x rated video that’s popped up over they years that they could get their hands on.
I suppose anythings possible but I don’t think I bet my lunch money on this scenario.
Also (you’re makin’ me use google) look at the following history timeline from http://home.clara.net/rmns/barbra1.htm
Barbara Joan Streisand was born in Brooklyn on 24 April 1942. Her parents Diana and Emanuel Streisand were married in 1930. They had their first child, Sheldon in 1935. It was seven years later that Barbara arrived. Later she would change her name, as she once said to a reporter ‘Two a’s are plenty. For nineteen years I had three a’s and enough is enough. Now I’m Barbra’.
** (13 years old)**
Barbra made her first record in 1955 when she was 13 years old at Nola Recording Studios, New York City. The song was called “You’ll Never Know”.
** (19 years old)**
Her first TV appearance was on The Jack Paar Show on April 5 1961 singing “A Sleepin Bee”.
** (20 years old)**Her first Broadway show was ‘I Can Get It For You Wholesale’ at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre/Broadway Theatre from March 22 - December 9 1962.
** (21 years old)**‘The Barbra Streisand Album’ was her first Columbia Records album, released in February 1963 to be followed by ‘The Second Barbra Streisand Album’ in August the same year. ‘Barbra Streisand The Third Album’ followed in 1964.
At what point in this rapidly and almost seamlessly ascending career would it have seemed like a “a good idea” for this intelligent and reasonably well educated successful singer/actress to take a day off to do a porn loop?
Yeah Yeah I know… “But man it looks just like her.”
But Astro, I’ve seen that porn loop and it did look like her. Honest!
Has anyone considered the possibility that some boyfriend might have videotaped them in the act without her knowledge?
I seriously doubt her boyfriend could have videotaped her without her knowledge in 1962. Back then there were no vcr’s He’da had to sneek a tv studio into the bedroom. Now if he FILMED her in secret…
Small personal videotape cameras did not exist in 1962 and (IIRC) handheld movie cameras of the time made a pretty good whirring racket. Also, just from a practical perspective, why would someone go to the trouble of filming her surreptiously when they could pay a more willing and attractive starving coed, starlet or prostitute and probably get a livelier performance.
“Oh but it’s just got to be true. It’s just gotta be. All those Kleenexes wasted on a look alike!!! It’s outrageous!”
Okay, now I think that I’m going to be ill.
I will have to defer to your superior knowledge of video technology, Astro, but believe me, the young woman on the tape I saw, whoever she may be, gave a pretty lively performance.
But I trust that those that have say it did look like her.
In a related line, though. . .
When Frank Gifford consummated his affair with Suzen Johnson (sp?), was that captured on film/tape for all to enjoy?
(Also, there’s supposedly a porn with a young Joan Crawford look-alike. Haven’t seen it either.)
Nah, whoever that actress was, she knew Mr. Cameraman was there. He was practically using a macro-lens through the whole thing.
Clips of the loop have been shown on cable TV and in magazines. The video distributor of this tape surely wants you to think it’s her. During the whole film, the mystery woman’s scenes are interspersed with glossy present-day head shots of Babs. I’m wondering why Barbra didn’t try to sue these distributors out of business. Wouldn’t this amount to slander?
Just because she was hugely famous by 19 doesn’t mean she couldn’t have made the film while she was underage. I doubt the early 60s were as stringent about age verification as they are now. Heck, look at Traci Lords. She was making them when she was 14. And don’t think that Babs didn’t have some lean years when she was starting out. She surely did.
Hold on there. Babs was not “hugely famous by 19.” She was an up-and-comer by age 19.
Her role in I Can Get It for You Wholesale in late 1962 (age 20) was her first real break – but even then she had a very minor bit role and sang just one song (“Miss Marmelstein” [sp?]). But, boy, she sang it swell.
One factor everyone seems to overlook is that Babs may have wanted to be filmed! Look at it this way…anyone who at whatever age she was when she filmed Yentl, no i don’t care if that’s the correct spelling, tries to pass herself off as an 18 year old anything, has to be a bit screwy! And just about anyone who knows artists knows that they don’t think like normal people, for good or ill. Ego, perhaps!!! Compensating for a low self image, perhaps!!! Trying to make the love of her life happy??? Point being, she may have done it money or no, famous or no, knowingly or no (Ha! i’m proud of that one)!
Yes, Babs was a little nutty in her early days. I remember reading the I Can Get It for You Wholesale liner notes on the original cast album – this was an original original cast album, not one of the numerous reprints that have been stamped over the years. Babs claimed in her bio blurb that she was born in Madagascar.
This fellow-Brooklynite says, “For shame!”
I’ve seen a copy of the tape. Like most people who’ve seen it, I’d agree that the woman in it bears an uncanny resemblence to Barbara Streisand. Despite this, I strongly doubt it’s her. By this time, the tape is well enough known that if it was actually her, confirmation would have been made by someone.
Not that minor she won the NEW York Drama Critics Award and was nominated for a Tony.
She had begun her singing career as a teenager by winning a contest. Before her first Broadway role she was a highly regarded nightclub singer performing at places as swank as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel. She sure wasn’t struggling.