Happy Birthday, Barbra Streisand.
Barbra Streisand has been such a force on the entertainment scene for so long (her 1963 debut album, recorded when she was just 20, won an Album of the Year Grammy) that a glimpse back at her first years in show business offers fascinating insights into her evolution as a performer, and a person.
Here, on her 70th birthday (April 24), LIFE.com offers a window into the intense, emotionally fraught world Streisand inhabited and, in a sense, created for herself with her own outsized insecurities and perfectionism early in her career.








