The overlooked musical that prepared Barbra Streisand for ‘Funny Girl’
Streisand’s Broadway debut as a frumpy secretary in ‘I Can Get It For You Wholesale’ set the stage (literally) for her breakout performance as Fanny Brice
With I Can Get It For You Wholesale, a pattern of artistic concerns and critical reception emerged that would shape Streisand’s public persona for decades. Photo by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Rebecca Salzhauer November 8, 2023
Barbra Streisand never should have played Miss Marmelstein. At 19, she was decades too young to pass for the frumpy, middle-aged secretary composer Harold Rome had written into his new musical, I Can Get it For You Wholesale.
Plus, she had never auditioned for a Broadway show.
In November 1961, Streisand — then working as a nightclub singer — arrived to audition with a packet of sheet music under one arm. She knew the show followed a group of 1930s Jewish garment workers, so she’d thrifted a honey-colored coat trimmed with fox fur for the occasion. Almost immediately, she fumbled her music, scattering pages across the room. A nervous, inexperienced teenager, Streisand hadn’t planned the gesture. But to director Arthur Laurents, the moment was a perfectly calibrated bit of physical comedy.
Then, Streisand sang. “We sat up,” Rome recalled in a 1991 interview. “We had her come back three times because it was such a pleasure to listen to her.” Impressed by Streisand but unsure of how to fit her into the musical as it was written, Rome and Laurents took an unusual step: They rewrote and expanded the minor role of Miss Marmelstein to show off the diva-in-training’s talents.
Streisand made her Broadway debut as the homely (but now young!) secretary that spring. Despite the role’s limitations, Streisand transformed her only solo song, “Miss Marmelstein,” into a showcase for her physical comedy and vocal chops — introducing audiences to the exact skills that would catapult her to fame in Funny Girl two years later, and inaugurating a pattern of critical responses that would define her public persona and artistic output for decades.
At face value, “Miss Marmelstein” is a short comedy number with little bearing on the musical’s plot. I Can Get It For You Wholesale (currently enjoying a revival at New York City’s Classic Stage Company) primarily follows Harry Bogen, an ambitious clerk from the Bronx (played by “likable newcomer” Elliot Gould, Streisand’s eventual first husband), as he scams his way to the top of the garment business. Miss Marmelstein, an employee of Harry’s boss who eventually jumps ship to work for him, is onstage for just a handful of scenes. But one of them emerged as the show’s most memorable. As tensions mount between Harry and his business partners, the show takes a detour into Miss Marmelstein’s world, where she has to man the office alone while everyone else is at a bar mitzvah. She’s fending off delivery boys who need signatures, executives who need answers and subordinates who need instructions — all the while wishing they’d see her as a Hot Girl, not just a competent secretary.
Always a multitasker, Streisand starts Miss Marmelstein’s tour de force rolling around in an office chair while operating a switchboard. Singing through gritted teeth, she brings the character’s frustration to a boil. “Nobody calls me ‘baby-doll’ or ‘honey dear’ or ‘sweetie pie,’” she laments. “Even my first name would be preferable, though it’s turrible, it might be betta.” (As the rhyme scheme might lead you to suggest, that name is in fact “Yetta.”)
As the lyrics build in absurdity, so does Streisand’s performance. She mocks the people demanding her assistance by repeating “Miss Marmelstein” in goofy voices. Streisand wrings each drop of comedy from Rome’s multisyllabic lyrics, letting Miss Marmelstein lose control as she rails against the “drab appellation” by which she’s “persistently, perpetually, continually, inevitably addressed.” By the end of the song, Miss Marmelstein’s rage manifests in the incredible high notes which have since become Streisand’s signature.
The song earned Streisand a fabled three-minute ovation on opening night and, eventually, a Tony nomination. Although the audience couldn’t have foreseen the number’s significance, “Miss Marmelstein” also introduced the themes and comedic techniques that Streisand would develop, two years later and to much more acclaim, as Fanny Brice.
Throughout “Miss Marmelstein,” Streisand assumes a Borscht Belt cadence to land punchline after punchline — a feature that defines her line deliveries as Fanny Brice. She also demonstrates her ability to cram ridiculous asides in between lyrics (think: “Oh, pardon the big words I apply, but I was an English major at CCNY”), a skill she would later deploy in the Funny Girl anthem “I’m the Greatest Star.” But Streisand’s performance in I Can Get It For You Wholesale anticipated Funny Girl in more than just aesthetics. Viewed in hindsight, her comedic choices as Miss Marmelstein read as a roughly sketched, unfinished character study, not only for Fanny Brice but for the rest of her career.
Audiences and critics alike fell for Streisand, with reviews calling her a comedic star and declaring her solo a highlight of the musical. Still, they failed to square her talent with her appearance: Critics couldn’t help complaining about her “oafish expression” and alleged lack of “sex appeal.” These reviews foreshadowed both the criticism that would continue to dog Streisand for decades and the themes that she would tackle in her later work. As she started leading major films, Streisand gravitated toward playing brilliant outsiders who long to be loved — from Marxist-with-a-blowout Katie Morosky in The Way We Were to the titular cross-dressing Talmud scholar in Yentl. Similarly, the Barbra Streisand we know from interviews, concert tours and albums is gutsy but self-deprecating, excessive but magnetic — just like Miss Marmelstein. With Streisand’s debut in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, a pattern of artistic concerns and critical reception emerged that would shape her public persona for decades.
When Barbra Streisand returned to Broadway in Funny Girl, she wore a very different coat: a now-iconic leopard-print trench paired with a matching hat. Striding onstage for the first time, she looked at her reflection in a mirror and delivered the legendary line: “Hello, gorgeous.” Within the next few years, Streisand would become a household name, inseparable from the character of Fanny Brice. But that night, as thousands of people stared up at her from the audience, the ones who recognized her knew her as Miss Marmelstein.
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