In the spring of 1961, a young talent manager named Marty Erlichman walked into a Greenwich Village nightclub to check on a comedian friend and walked out having found the voice of a generation. For the next 65 years he stood beside Barbra Streisand through every album, every film and every comeback. On Friday, October 31, Erlichman died in Los Angeles at 97, his family announced.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Streisand, 84, has called the loss one she never let herself imagine. In her tribute she also let slip a detail about their partnership that almost nobody in show business would believe, and it says everything about the man and the friendship.
Who Was Marty Erlichman?
Martin Lee Erlichman was born in Brooklyn on September 13, 1929, and graduated from Drake University before going into the business of managing performers. He died of age-related causes, family representatives told The Hollywood Reporter. To the world he was “a giant of Hollywood,” the family said, and to them “a deeply devoted and loving father, husband, grandfather and rock.”
He was married to his wife, Miko, for 52 years, and he is also survived by his son, J.J., his daughter-in-law, Talia, and four grandchildren, Mia, Sarah, Olivia and Jack, according to The Hollywood Reporter. His family asked that donations be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the National Kidney Foundation. But his name will always be tied to one client above all others, and to one night in a basement club.
How Did Marty Erlichman Discover Barbra Streisand?
The club was the Bon Soir, where Streisand was booked from May 9 to June 6, 1961, according to the Barbra Archives. Erlichman had come to see his friend, the comedian Phil Leeds, and Streisand was the opening act. “I went to check out his material, but out walked this eighteen-year-old singer as his opening act,” he told Vanity Fair in 1991. “She sang five songs and I had chills through all of them.” (She was actually 19.)
He wanted to sign her on the spot, and there was one problem. She already had a manager. So Erlichman bought out that contract for $750, and he did it with money Streisand lent him, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Within a year she was on Broadway in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and the man who had heard her first was managing everything that came next.
Streisand remembered the moment a little differently. In her telling, Erlichman came backstage with a promise rather than a contract. “If you’re as good an actress as you are a singer, then there’s no stopping you,” she recalled him saying, as Deadline reported. A few months later, by Deadline’s account, she phoned him from a club in Detroit, where she was earning $150 a week, and he flew out to negotiate her a better deal. From then on, the deals were his to make.
What Else Did Marty Erlichman Do?
Streisand was never his only client. Over the years he also handled the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, George Foreman and Chevy Chase, according to Deadline. He also became a producer, with credits on For Pete’s Sake with Streisand, the thriller Coma and Breathless with Richard Gere.
His proudest work was still with her. He produced Barbra: The Concert, which won an Emmy and a Peabody in 1994, and he was behind her Millennium Concert in 2000 and her tour in 2006 and 2007. Through two marriages, including the one to Elliott Gould that couldn’t survive her rise to fame, and decades of headlines, Erlichman was the one constant in her professional life.
What Did Barbra Streisand Say About Marty Erlichman?
Streisand shared her tribute on Instagram. “Although Marty lived a long and full life, nothing can prepare you for the reality of losing someone so dear,” she wrote, as Deadline reported. “I truly thought he would live forever. In my eyes, he was simply indestructible, always by my side, through everything.”
Then came the line that stopped readers cold. “And we never even had a contract,” she wrote. In a business built on lawyers and fine print, one of the most famous singers in the world and her manager went 65 years on nothing but their word. She had said as much in her 2023 memoir, My Name Is Barbra. “Marty and I worked together for sixty years and never had a contract, just a handshake,” she wrote.
She ended her tribute the way you would expect from someone who had just lost the man who heard her first. “Marty can never be replaced,” Streisand wrote, “and I will be forever grateful for his friendship, loyalty, and unwavering support.” It began with five songs in a Village nightclub, and it never needed anything more than a handshake.
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