Elle s’appelle Barbra

Abstract This, the longest chapter in the book, focuses on Legrand’s hugely successful collaboration and intense personal relationship with Barbra Streisand. It starts in 1965, when Legrand is told that he will arrange, conduct and produce a French-language album entitled Je m’appelle Barbra. He travels to New York for the first time since his revelatory 1956 visit and meets Streisand on Broadway, where she is performing every night in Funny Girl. He describes her as a strange combination of a vulnerable girl and an iron lady, but above all, he is blown away by her singing talent. Two years later, when Legrand moves to Los Angeles, he introduces Streisand to his lyricist songwriting partners Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and the four of them hit it off. In 1970, Legrand and the Bergmans write a concept album for Streisand entitled Life Cycle of a Woman. At first, she is enthusiastic, but the album begins with a song about birth and ends with one about death, and Streisand says these songs “stir up too many buried feelings in me. As soon as I try to sing them, my voice dries up.” The project dies, but thirteen years later the four of them collaborate on Yentl, Streisand’s first movie as a director, which goes on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song Score.