“Barbra Streisand wants us to believe that her latest tour will be her last, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she won’t be performing anymore. Barbra’s in secret talks with the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to become a regular headliner. If she agrees to the multimillion-dollar deal, the hotel will have to bend over backward to fulfill all her demands. And that includes a new showroom built to her EXACT specifications! Barbra’s tempted and she is talking it over with her husband, James Brolin.”

TRUTH

This was the most outrageous press fabrication concerning Barbra Streisand’s recent final concert performance in Los Angeles and New York. It is one thing for journalists to wonder if the record-setting concert performer of the past century would actually retire from live concert engagements at such a successful stage of her career, but several journalists misleadingly reported that she had previously announced her retirement, that she stated that some upcoming engagement would be her last. She had never done that. In fact, when the Millennium concert in Las Vegas last New Years was announced, the release included a quote from her that she was considering performing the show in venues around the world that she and her husband would like to visit. A recent story in Newsweek erroneously said she has announced her retirement during her 1997 tour. There was no 1997 tour. She had never announced that some upcoming concert would mark here retirement from live concert appearance until the recent two engagements. And that was and remains her firm intentions.

But the Star story deserves special condemnation because, like so many of the publication’s fabricated stories about her, it gives details that exist only in the imagination of the “journalist.” There are no talks, secret or otherwise, with MGM or anyone else for future performance. Ms. Streisand stated during the recent concerts that she might appear to sing a few songs for some charity or cause in the future, but that this was the last full show she would ever undertake.