"Color Me Barbra", the TV Special that spawned a million drag queens

Subtle and tasteful as always.

  There was a glorious, golden period in Barbra Streisand's career around the time of her third album, right after she won her first Oscar for "Funny Girl," when her sense of humor was as big as her voice.  Always a lover of theatricality in all of her stage and screen performances, she translated this bombastic, over the top style to her television special called "Color Me Barbra."  
   Back before YouTube and the medium of music videos, television specials were the main method to reach a wide audience and give them a taste of the style a performer would put on in their shows. In early 1966 color television was still somewhat rare, and to host a television special entirely in color like Streisand did with "Color Me Barbra" was such a novelty that hundreds of thousands tuned in just to see what the special would look like.

  AMAZING IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE. There were dozens of costume changes into outfits such as "Nefertiti" or "Saucy Belle Epoque girl with a parasol" or "Fancy lady yelling at an aardvark", and the sets were the gallery halls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Songs, skits, jokes, and huge overwrought tunes it was big, loud, a bit silly but utterly serious--it was Barbra at her finest. 

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  Theatrical and overly emotive, her eyeliner thick and her voice clear as a bell, this was one of the first times that many a young gay boy saw a true "Performer," someone who unapologetically sang, danced, and costumed themselves in a way that only made sense to them. 
    Only six years out of singing in New York's gay nightclub "Lion", with the drag culture in the West Village just beginning, this television special was a touchstone and a springboard for Drag Queens, theater kids, and aspiring singers everywhere.