Good morning. It's Friday, Dec. 22. I'm Julia Carmel, a West Coast experiences reporter. Here's what you need to know to start your day:
Finding a home for the world's largest Streisand collection
Helping a dying parent is hard in a multitude of ways: There are tough conversations to be had; steep costs for caregivers and nursing homes; and mountains of grief to face before and after they die. There's also the daunting task of handling their estate.
But when Louis Papalas died in March, his daughter, Mara, faced another tricky question: What should she do with his massive collection of Barbra Streisand memorabilia?
This conundrum wasn't a surprise to Mara — "for 20 years, I knew, 'I'm gonna have to handle this,' " she told me as we sat in one of Lou's six storage units in the Coachella Valley last month — but it was puzzling nonetheless. After watching her father accumulate tens of thousands of Babs-related items during his life, Mara was stuck with a steep monthly storage bill and the enormous responsibility of deciding what to do with everything.
For most of this year, she's been sorting through her father's storage units to label and organize all of the "Barbrabilia" he gathered since he first discovered Streisand in 1963. She has a solid idea of what's in there, but it's hard to count how many magazines, records, posters, clocks and nesting dolls make up this collection (the size has been estimated from 50,000 to 100,000 items over the years).
"This is sheet music; these are just clippings; rolled posters here; magazines; posters; road shows; these are framed album covers he exhibited," she said as we walked through the different units. "Magazines; more records; books; memorabilia; programs; CDs; VHS; stacking dolls. There's a jack-in-the-box with a Barbra inside; a Fabergé-style egg."
Many of these items were found on eBay, where Lou bought several pieces each day, establishing himself among a community of Streisand fans and collectors. PJ Miller, Lou's friend of more than 20 years, said she first met him on eBay and later traveled from her home in Phoenix to help him organize his collection in Palm Desert.
A 45 rpm record of Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
"I've talked to many other collectors, and they have a lot of larger items, but not as many of them," Miller said. "Lou got down to the nitty-gritty and collected the lobby cards and the clippings and the magazines — the small paper items that get lost in floods, get lost in fires, get thrown out, and become more and more valuable over the years."
Parts of Lou's collection were exhibited over the years at the Hollywood Museum, the Bernard Museum of Judaica, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. He became a de facto expert on anything related to Streisand, and Lou was even credited on Streisand's 2022 album "Live at the Bon Soir" for sharing memorabilia with her team.
Mara can appreciate Streisand's talent, but she's the first to admit that she's not a Streisand fanatic herself. Because she doesn't have the interest, money or space to keep her father's collection, she's hoping that someone will buy the whole thing.
Mara recently put a few items up for auction at Julien's, including the dress Streisand wore in her 1965 TV special, "My Name Is Barbra," but she can't imagine auctioning off each item on eBay herself.
"I just don't enjoy going to the post office," Mara said. "Even though I have a whole locker full of shipping material, I have no interest in packing it, shipping it, labeling it, listing it."
In an ideal world, she'd like to see Lou's dream come to fruition and find a buyer who would create a nonprofit Barbra Streisand museum and performing arts center.
"I feel like I'm sitting on a little avant-garde niche type of thing, someone could do something really grand with this, and I would love it and [my dad] would love it," she said. "But I don't think that somebody's me, because I don't have the love of it. I have the love of him."
You can read all about Lou's collection here, and anyone interested in contacting Mara can reach her via email or at (760) 229-7472.
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