Barbra Streisand tells Terry Gross about how she got to know her father, who died when she was 15 months old:

I read his theses. He had written two theses [for a Ph.D.]. … He was a teacher, you know. … The first one was on the behavior of my brother. It was written almost like a play, but it was based on the truth. … And I never read my father’s second thesis until I was 39 years old and wanting to see if I should direct Yentl. … It was all about how he taught English to prisoners and juvenile delinquents at Elmira Reformatory by using Chekov and Shakespeare and Ibsen. And so you see so much is in the genes, you know?

Streisand in the early 1970s via ladiesofthe70s

Coming up on Fresh Air Weekend, friends: Babs and the Pizzarellis.

Barbra Streisand on her famous 1963 TV appearance with Judy Garland:

“I can remember it distinctly. … She was holding my hand and I thought, ‘Gee, she seems nervous.’ At that time, I wasn’t nervous. I was still very young, I think, about to do Funny Girl, and now, when I think back on it, I think, ‘Oh, my God, I know exactly what she’s feeling.’ Or, you know, the fears. It’s like, as you get older and people are kind of looking for you to fail more, I think — not people, not the audience — but, you know, critics or producers or whatever. And I just felt her. I felt her anxiety. … Part of me is much more relaxed than I’ve ever been, less frightened, less anxious. On the other hand, it’s a coming-of-age-thing, and she was much younger than I am, but there are things with careers. … I just understand the anxiety even though in a sense I’m calmer. It’s a dichotomy. It’s hard to explain. … You wonder, ‘Well, do I give it up? Do I retire? Or do I get more in before my time is up?’ 

Barbra Streisand on discovering improvisation:

The end of that record when I was thirteen was the first time I experienced an improvisation or something that came out of nowhere, because we had rehearsed with the pianist that my mother had found in the Catskill Mountains, and he played these long interludes, you know, as a break before you come back for the last section and I remember saying to him, ‘I think that’s too long. The break, it should be shorter and then I’ll come back in.’ And I remember standing in front of that microphone and something came out of my voice at the end that was a whole other thing than I’d rehearsed with him. And it was like a shocking kind of, ‘Where did that come from?’ and I like that. It so surprised me.

1970 Richard Avedon image via mattystanfield

On today’s Fresh Air, the husband and wife songwriting team who wrote the score for Yentl, the theme song for Maude, and the songs “The Way We Were,” “Nice & Easy,” “In The Heat of The Night,” and “What Are You Doing the Rest Of Your Life.”