And LIFE magazine photographers were there. Gjon Mili, such a wonderful documenter of the arts, is responsible for a great many pictures here, but Gordon Parks, George Silk, Bill Ray and many others all took their swings. Their pictures capture artists at work—including actors who would later become familiar faces on television, such as Jerry Orbach (Law & Order). Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) , Barbara Bel Geddes (Dallas) and Julie Newmar (Batman).

The thrill of theater is, of course, being there. This photos are the next best thing.

Nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand played Miss Marmelstein in the 1962 Broadway play “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1947.

Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1947.

Eliot Elisofon /The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1943 production of “Oklahoma!”

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pearl Bailey during a curtain call for the Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! in 1967.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shuttertstock

Jerry Orbach (left) and an unidentified actress in a scene from the off-Broadway production of ‘Scuba Duba,’ October 1967.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury opened on Broadway in “Mame” to a standing ovation, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1953 production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, featuring Madeline Sherwood (rear, second from left), Arthur Kennedy (right) and Walter Hampden (second from right).

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman (left) and Geraldine Page in the Tennessee Williams play Sweet Bird of Youth, 1959.

Gordon Parks/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a scene from “Porgy and Bess,” 1959.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

ason Robards Jr. (L) and Farrell Pelly (R) in a scene from the Eugene O’Neill play “The Iceman Cometh,” 1956.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mary Martin and her fellow cast members soared in the 1954 Broadway production of the musical Peter Pan.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from “All My Sons,” 1947, starring Karl Malden.

Eileen Darby The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Julie Newmar, right, with Claudette Colbert in a scene from the Broadway play “The Marriage-Go-Round,” 1958.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Barbara Bel Geddes in the Tennessee Williams play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from Death of a Salesman, 1949, with Lee. J. Cobb as Willy Loman.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Patrick O’Neal (right) and Margaret Leighton in the play ‘The Night of the Iguana’ by Tennessee Williams, 1962.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hair, the original Broadway cast, 1968

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Jesus Christ Superstar, Jeff Fenholt, as Jesus, was elevated with angels while Judas, played by Ben Vereen, was on a wing-shaped set platform.

John Olson/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post LIFE’s Images of Classic Broadway appeared first on LIFE.

Somehow, she looks as if she knows what’s coming, even if others didn’t. As LIFE magazine reviewed her performance in the May 18, 1962, issue:

“Barbra has a lovely face that goes well with Cry Me a River and other sad ballads that she sings in nightclubs. But for her stage role she makes herself look like a sour persimmon in order to play an overworked office girl who secretly wants to be called pet names instead of being yelled at all day long, ‘Miss Marmelstein!'” It was at least a kinder review than the one she received in the New York Times, which described Streisand as a “natural comedienne” but also “a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh.”

It was Streisand’s role a few years later as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl that would make a more lasting impression on audiences and critics. As TIME reported in its April 10, 1964, cover story on her breakout, “as she sings number after number and grows in the mind, she touches the heart with her awkwardness, her lunging humor, and a bravery that is all the more winning because she seems so vulnerable. People start to nudge one another and say, ‘This girl is beautiful.'”

She had come a long way from her days as an introverted Brooklyn teen and the years before she removed an “a” from her first name, as a feature in TIME magazine explained:

Her recollections of a Brooklyn girlhood are somber. “It was pretty depressing, and I’ve blocked most of it out of my mind,” she says. She never knew her father. He was a school teacher who died of a cerebral hemorrhage when his daughter Barbara Joan was a year old (1943). Her mother spent the next three years lying in bed, crying, and living on her brother’s Army allotment checks until the checks stopped and she took an office job. Barbara spent her days in the hallways of the six-story brick apartment building they lived in, accepting handout snacks from neighbors.

As a slightly older kid, she used to go up on the rooftop, smoke, and think about being the greatest star. Down in the apartment, her mother warned her never to hold hands with a boy. “I never took part in any school activities or anything,” Barbra remembers. “I was never asked out to any of the proms, and I never had a date for New Year’s Eve. I was pretty much of a loner. I was very independent. I never needed anybody, really.”

…When she was 14, she made her first trip out of Brooklyn a subway ride to Manhattan to see The Diary of Anne Frank. “I remember thinking that I could go up on the stage and play any role without any trouble at all,” she says. After school at home, she used to smoke in the bathroom and do cigarette commercials into the mirror, but she never bothered to go out for school plays. “Why go out for an amateurish high school production when you can do the real thing?”

By the time the TIME cover story came out, Streisand’s three albums already made her the world’s best-selling female recording star on LP. And so much more was yet to come.

Nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand played Miss Marmelstein in the 1962 Broadway play “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elliot Gould, who played the show’s unscrupulous hero, sang to his mother, played by Lilian Roth; Gould and Streisand, who met during the show, were married from 1963 to ’71.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lillian Roth and Elliott Gould in a scene from “I Can Get It for You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sheree North and Harold Lang in a scene from “I Can Get It for You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Barbra Streisand at 19: Her Broadway Debut appeared first on LIFE.

Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery of some of moviedom’s most celebrated (and gorgeous) young talents on the very brink of life-altering fame, from Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn to Kim Novak, Ann-Margret, Liz Taylor, Rita Moreno, Barbra Streisand, Catherine Deneuve and others who would go on to dazzle audiences for years. 

Marilyn Monroe posed in 1947. The next year, she’d get a six-month Columbia Pictures contract.

J. R. Eyerman/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Seen here in a 1954 photo that ended up on the cover of LIFE, Rita Moreno debuted on Broadway at 13 before making it big years later in the film version of West Side Story.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Rita Moreno, 1954.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

.Kim Novak, 1954

J. R. Eyerman/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Kim Novak, 21, posed with crystal figurines in 1954. The Chicagoan started off as Miss Deep Freeze for a local refrigerator company, and was recruited by Columbia Pictures to be a more manageable replacement for Rita Hayworth.

J. R. Eyerman/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor in 1947, at age 15.

J.R. Eyerman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren posed in 1957, the year she began to make a name for herself in America in such movies as Boy on a Dolphin (her U.S. debut) and Legend of the Lost.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn in 1951—two years before her film breakthrough in Roman Holiday—posing under a theater marquee for the stage version of Gigi.

Time Life Pictures/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Catherine Deneuve in 1961, at age 18.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margarita Carmen Cansino, soon to be Rita Hayworth, modeled tennis fashions in 1939. After her small turn in Only Angels Have Wings that year, fan mail started pouring in. She was soon a major star.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Cyd Charisse, seen here in 1945, was best known for her dancing roles opposite Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Nineteen-year-old Ann-Margret belted out a tune during a screen test for the movie State Fair in 1961.

Grey Villet/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Esther Williams, the famed synchronized swimmer (seen here in 1943), got her start in movies when MGM wanted a female sports star to rival Fox’s figure skater, Sonja Henie.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Eva Marie Saint opened a prop door during a TV shoot at NBC studios in 1947. The Newark, N.J.-born actress started her career as an NBC page.

Andreas Feininger/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Eva Marie Saint (in 1949) got her film break in 1954’s Oscar-winning On the Waterfront.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain took a bubble bath for her role in the movie Margie in 1946.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Jane Fonda was a well-regarded actress by the time this shot was taken in 1959, when she was 22, but it took the screwball Western Cat Ballou (1965) to turn her into a movie star.

Allan Grant/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Jane Fonda, 1959.

Allan Grant/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The actress Gene Tierney posed in 1941. Best remembered for 1944’s Laura, Tierney left New York’s socialite life to be an actress.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Rooney kissed co-star Judy Garland at the premiere of Babes in Arms in 1939. The two starred in nine movies together, among them the popular Andy Hardy series.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand sang in the musical that was her Broadway debut, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in 1962.

George Silk/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine sang on the TV program Shower of Stars in 1955.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Debbie Reynolds, circa 1950. She’d won a film contract just two years earlier, after winning the Miss Burbank pageant at age 16.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews ran lines in My Fair Lady rehearsals, 1956. Though the stage musical helped launch Andrews’ career, she was replaced in the big-screen version by Audrey Hepburn.

Leonard McCombe/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Actresses on the Brink of Fame appeared first on LIFE.