Marty Erlichman

Martin Lee Erlichman was born on 13 September 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. He liked to remind people that his surname was spelled without an h. Little has been published about his family background or education.

In the early 1960s Erlichman managed The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, the Irish folk group that became popular in the United States, and he is credited with their adoption of the Aran sweater as their trademark look.

In 1960 he became the manager of the young Barbra Streisand. He later recalled the night he first heard her sing as the moment he knew there was nobody like her. During her 1962 engagement at the Bon Soir nightclub in Greenwich Village, a two-week booking that was extended to eleven, he helped build her reputation beyond New York. When she signed with Columbia Records, she and Erlichman secured complete creative control over her music and its promotion. Streisand later said that this control allowed her to make The Broadway Album in 1985 despite the label's doubts, and it went to number one.

As her manager he negotiated her recording, theatre, film, television, merchandising and concert contracts. He was executive producer of all her television specials and producer of her 1974 film For Pete's Sake. He produced her concerts, including the millennium concert of 2000 and her 2006 to 2007 world tour, which set box office records at many venues. As executive producer of Barbra Streisand: The Concert he won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and he received further Emmy, cable and Grammy nominations.

His other clients included Chevy Chase and Joan Rivers. He produced the films Coma (1978) and Breathless (1983) and several films in the Ernest series, and he represented the Where's Waldo? franchise in book, television and film deals. He later worked on stage projects including a planned musical, Buzz!!, with a book by Larry Gelbart and music by Alan Menken.

Erlichman was a private man who rarely spoke publicly about his own life. He ran his business, Martin Erlichman Associates, from offices on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. In March 2026 Roger Friedman of Showbiz411 reported that he had quietly retired at 96, noting that his famous office telephone number had been disconnected.

Erlichman's death at the age of 97 was reported by The New York Times on 1 November 2026, in an obituary by Ben Sisario. He is listed as having died on 31 October 2026. The place and cause of death were not given in the reports available when this page was written.

Erlichman's partnership with Barbra Streisand, which lasted more than six decades, was one of the longest between a manager and a star in American entertainment. Streisand repeatedly credited him with securing the creative control that shaped her career. Colleagues remembered him as tough in negotiation and loyal to his clients, and he was widely regarded in the industry as one of the most successful talent managers of his era.