© 2011, Christian Cassidy. Updated 2026.
July 1, 1961, Winnipeg Tribune
July 5, 1961. Winnipeg Free Press
On Monday, July 3, 1961, a 19-year-old singer named Barbra Streisand began a two-week stint at Winnipeg's The Towers nightclub in the Town N Country Restaurant for a fee of $350 per week. (She dropped an 'a' from her first name the previous year, so the Free Press ad above is misspelled - it was corrected in later editions.)
Streisand played to critical acclaim in her first Canadian booking, but her avant-garde style and quirky manner of dress were very new to Winnipeggers.
Gene Telpner, in a favourable Free Press review, wrote, "Miss Streisand is the type of singer you'd expect to find in the Blue Angel or San Francisco's hungry i. That's why Winnipeggers may find her rather strange... When she sings, her hair flies, her hands twirl, and her whole torso gets into the act. The boys in the band think she’s terrific, and musicians are usually good judges of talent."
The Winnipeg Tribune, it appears, did not review her show. did not review her show.
The audience watched quietly. Some say it was because they didn’t 'get' her, but others said that they were silenced by her amazing voice.
Months later, she appeared on the Tonight Show, and spoke of the Winnipeg gig. She said she liked it, but that the audience was very casual: "I worked in Winnipeg. This was a beautiful nightclub, very posh, except the people wore short shirt sleeves. They didn't wear ties to come to the nightclub."
Winnipeg Visitor's Guide, August 1958
The Towers was an upscale, 300-seat supper club added to the third floor of the Town N Country restaurant at 317 Kennedy Street in September 1959.
It was another entrant in the "supper club" trend that would soon dominate the city's nightlife in the late 1950s and 1960s. At these clubs, you could catch dinner while watching a show, then dance late into the night with the house orchestra. A full evening of entertainment in one stop.
Other Winnipeg supper clubs included the Copacabana, Pierre’s, Chan’s Moon Room, Rae and Jerry’s Scarlet Lounge, Club Morocco, The Paddock, Rancho Don Carlos, and the Constellation Room. The Towers and Rancho Don Carlos appear to have been the largest.
To fill their stages, the clubs relied on a travelling circuit of mid-level and up-and-coming Canadian and U.S. entertainers booked through an agency in Toronto or Chicago. This is how Streisand, who had a Chicago-based agent, ended up here.
Galpern ca. 1980, Winnipeg Tribune
For a time, local lore said that Streisand ended her Winnipeg gig a few days early after being 'fired' by Town N Country co-owner Auby Galpern. He allegedly told her that she would never make it as a cabaret singer. This has been disputed many times as being an urban myth.
Gene Telpner, Winnipeg Tribune entertainment columnist, wrote in April 1964, that Galpern said of Streisand, "I liked her but I thought she dressed very strangely" (she bought her wardrobe at rummage sales for an eclectic look). There was no mention of her being dismissed.
In a 1985 article in the Canadian Jewish News, Winnipeg Free Press entertainment columnist Morley Walker says he recalled that Galpern once told him that he did suggest she should get a change of clothes for the stage. Again, no mention of a firing.
Gene Telpner, Winnipeg Tribune entertainment columnist, wrote in April 1964, that Galpern said of Streisand, "I liked her but I thought she dressed very strangely" (she bought her wardrobe at rummage sales for an eclectic look). There was no mention of her being dismissed.
In a 1985 article in the Canadian Jewish News, Winnipeg Free Press entertainment columnist Morley Walker says he recalled that Galpern once told him that he did suggest she should get a change of clothes for the stage. Again, no mention of a firing.
July 8, 1961, Winnipeg Tribune
Here is how the rumour likely got started not long ago in 2006.
Winnipeg Free Press entertainment columnist Morley Walker noted in a November 2006 column that the "firing" story had been making the rounds for years, but the first person to put it in writing was likely historian Russ Gourluck in his book "Going Downtown", also published in 2006.
In a sidebar about the Town N Country / Studio 44 building, Gourluck mentions that Streisand had been terminated after just a week and that Galpern told her she'd never make it as a performer.
It is likely Walker's mention of this brought the firing story to the mainstream, but the point of his column would show that it was not true.
Saturday, July 15, 1961, Winnipeg Free Press
Streisand was in the news in 2006 as she was preparing to return to Canada for concert dates in Montreal and Toronto as part of a North American tour. Walker decided to find out once and for all if the rumour was true by reaching out to Ted Zapp, The Towers' club manager in 1961,
Zapp said he was in the room when Galpern received the call from Streisand's agent, Hal Munro, asking if she could be released early to return to the U.S for a work opportunity. Zapp said Galpern agreed, and Munro promised future headliners as a thank-you. “Streisand was NOT fired,” Zapp insisted.
A strange side note to the story is that it is likely that Streisand DID work out her full two weeks at the club.
Newspaper ads, "at the clubs" listings, and entertainment columns in both daily papers make no mention of Streisand's run being cut short. It appears that she performed right up until Saturday, July 15, with a footnote to The Towers' ad that day stating "last time tonite" (see above). She was replaced on Monday, July 17th by musician David Romaine.
Why and how the urban legend got started is a mystery.
Did Galpern request an extended stay for Streisand that was declined by her manager, which gave the perception that she had been let go? Perhaps not, as Telpner wrote in a June 1967 column that she "drew no raves when she sang at the Towers and the management of the club declined to book her again even though they could have signed her for peanuts."
Could it be that Streisand was set to leave early, but due to 1961 cross-border train / plane schedules it made more sense for her to finish off her run and leave on Sunday or Monday?
Maybe she was fired, but those involved were all sworn to secrecy to their grave!
TIME, April 10, 1964
Streisand certainly had a busy remainder of 1961.
On August 1, she got a part in an off-Broadway musical revue called "Another Evening with Harry Stoones". She was then booked at the prestigious Blue Angel nightclub in New York. By the end of the year, she was cast in the Broadway musical "I Can Get it For You Wholesale", which earned Streisand her first Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical.
Thanks in large part to the Blue Angel and Broadway musical, Streisand got noticed, and a star was born. She released her first album in 1963, and in April 1964, while starring in the musical Funny Girl, made the cover of TIME magazine.
Winnipeg Tribune, January 29, 1970
Streisand never returned to Winnipeg. The closest she came was singing "Happy Birthday" to Manitoba!
January 28, 1970, was declared Manitoba Day in Ottawa to celebrate the province's centenary. A gala was held at the National Arts Centre that featured on-stage entertainment by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Metis championship fiddler Jellico LaFreniere, Dozens of artists, architects and other Manitoba notables were there to show exhibits of their work.
The dignitaries in the audience included Governor General Roland Michener, Premier Ed Schreyer and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau showed up with his then-girlfriend Barbra Streisand, to the delight of the crowd. At the end of the night, the orchestra played Happy Birthday for Manitoba and the crowd, including Streisand, sang along.
After her Winnipeg gig, it would take Streisand another 45 years to return to Canada to perform. She held three concerts in Toronto and Montreal in October 2006 as part of her as part of her North American concert tour.
January 4, 1971, Winnipeg Tribune
As for The Towers, it suffered the same fate as most local supper clubs.
As the 1960s wore on, a new generation's idea of a night out was at an intimate tea room with a folk performer, or to hear a rock band at a social or hotel beverage room. As a result, most supper clubs had to change with the times and hire local rock and folk bands in place of the travelling crooners. Eventually, the format all but disappeared.
In January 1971, the Town N Country building suffered a major fire. The Free Press described it as being "destroyed in a two-hour holocaust that reduced the night sport to a gutted shell.”
The Ginakes brothers, by then the owners of the club and eventually of Pony Corral fame, vowed to rebuild. It reopened as Studio 44, Winnipeg's largest discotheque. In 1981, it was renovated again to become Stage West Dinner Theatre.
The building was torn down in 1985 to make way for the Portage Place / North Portage Development project.
Updated January 2026 to fix links and investigate the urban legend about the firing.
9 comments:
I was interested in this building, because roughly across the street from where it stood is now the Hostel Royal Plaza. I wonder why Streisand said the bldg. used to have 3 floors, when later as Studio 44 it had only one. Maybe it was already torn down and replaced before 1985, or two storeys were removed in the renovation. The photo I saw of the outside of Studio 44 had only one level.
Are you sure Studio 44 had the same street address?
Here's the photo of Studio 44 (formerly Town & Country Restaurant) owned by Jimmy Ginakes & his brothers. It shows a building on Kennedy St. with only one storey, but a high ceiling, which also can be seen on an indoor photo from 1979, when it was a discotheque (Wpg Tribune archives).
Barbra Streisand must have been referring to the different levels for dining and dancing, when she said it had three floors. She was not referring to the floors of a building.
Thanks for the pic. That building was not the same one she played ... it was rebuilt after 1971.
Jan 5 1971 Winnipeg Free Press: “Late Sunday night, the popular Town N Country Restaurant at 317 Kennedy Street was destroyed in a two-hour holocaust that reduced the night sport to a gutted shell.”
That's the information I needed to clear up this mystery! So, 317 Kennedy Street—before the fire—was probably a standard 3-storey brick building, as Streisand described in her appearance on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar.
Presumably, the new building that replaced it in 1971 kept the same address. In the background of the photo of Studio 44 (that I linked to in my earlier comment) you can actually see the first few letters of "Free Press" at the top of the old Wpg Free Press building on Carlton. The same building today still bears that lettering on the roof, although it now houses Manitoba Health. One could line up that sign by sight today, to pinpoint the exact location of Studio 44 on Kennedy Street.
the town and country was 3 floors.the restaurant was 2nd floor - the club on the third. i was there when this girl showed up on stage dressed in some weird hand me down looking clothing. us guys were seated in an area room to the left of the stage. we started to throw snide comments to her which she quickly resonded to in the same manner. then she started her show. i just about freaked out when i heard her sing. told my pals to shut up and made abeline to sit at the closest table to the stage. her voice was just incredible. she finished her first set and at my invitation came and joined me. i can't remember if she took the drink i offered to buy for her, but i do have a vague memory osome sort of pink drink. we had a great and lengthy conversation. she told me a friend of hers in new york had a song for her. i told her she should quit this place (run by a complete donkey(galpern) and go there cause this circuit was crap. next i heard was her first hit and she was a star. my name yogi
my father was the chef there & my mom the baker . I went there very often & would help the banquet girls as they were called back then to set the tables . I knew that place very well.
Ther were 3 restaurants, one on the first floor, then you would go up the stairs to the left was a cocktail lounge with entertainment and thru the lounge was the Carriage Room steak restaurant done in red with the chef cooking steak on a glassed-in grill. Turn to the right and go up to the Tower room. I worked as a waiter in the lounge and the helped at the bar in the Tower Room during shows. Saw Barbra every show. Between shows she would come out and sit in the lobby area of the Tower. My friend George played piano in the band. The Town and Country cheesecake was famous and the food was great. Wonderful restaurants and club.
Roy Orbison appeared at this venue about 1969, followed by Bobby Curtola.
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