For almost the entirety of the “Wicked: One Wonderful Night” television special, which aired Thursday night on NBC, performances focused on Stephen Schwartz’s songs from the two “Wicked” movies. But at the climax of the two-hour show, stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo took a spectacular turn to cover a medley of songs first made famous by Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland 62 years ago.
While some younger viewers may have been confused by the mashup at first, fans of a certain age or with a penchant for show tunes may have figured it out from the first bars, or even dared to expect it when Erivo and Grande sat side by side on stools. It combined two different standards, “Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again,” both of which date back nearly 100 years. For some, these two classics have become linked in their minds, but that’s only because Garland and Streisand first sang them as such on a legendary 1963 episode of “The Judy Garland Show.”
Judy and Barbra’s performance was legendary in part because it captured two legends at opposite ends of their careers. Streisand, then 21, was far from a superstar and hadn’t even played “Funny Girl” on Broadway yet — though she had released her debut LP, The Streisand Album, earlier that year, which included the leadoff number on side two, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The 1929 song (composed by Milton Agar and Jack Yellen) remained a staple of her concerts (excluding duets and interpolations) until her final tour in 2019.
Garland also sang the signature song on half of the intertwined duet. This was reportedly her idea to spice up the special. “Get Happy,” originally written in 1930 (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), is a pseudo-gospel number that she popularized in the 1950 MGM musical “Summer Stock,” and continued to sing until the end of her life. Garland, then 41 years old, was considered to be in professional decline and was six years away from the end of her life when she personally cast the budding upstart on the October 6, 1963 episode of her weekly variety show.
This particular mashup is not culturally widespread in 2025. But Grande and Erivo aren’t the first to bring it back to modern times, as the medley continues to be popular among musical theater actors looking for memorable pairings.
Erivo himself has been practicing this song. She previously performed the song alongside Ben Platt one night during his concert in London in 2024. Scroll down to see a video of Erivo and Pratt’s duet, as well as other covers. (There is no apparent record of Grande ever singing this song with anyone. She has sung it with Streisand both live and on record, but they missed the opportunity to sing the song together.)
If this double cover feels somewhat nostalgic to a younger generation, it may be because it was heavily exposed in 2011 through an episode of Glee that teamed up Lea Michele and Chris Coffer side-by-side in the show’s second season—Michelle’s costume was clearly designed to resemble Streisand’s 1963 look.
Other duets that can be seen and heard in the clips below include Rufus Wainwright and Kristin Chenoweth. Billy Porter and Cyndi Lauper. Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone — co-stars on repeat over the years! (We know, we know). And back in 1964, Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli.
In the fall of 1963, Garland, who had caught Streisand in the summer at Coconut Grove, decided to cast her on the show. Norman Jewison, who would go on to become a famous feature director, directed the Streisand episode (which also featured Ethel Merman and the Smothers Brothers). Mel Tormé was hired to produce special musical material for the series and provided the backstory for the duet in his book Over the Rainbow: Dawn Patrol with Judy Garland. There, he writes, Garland called him into her dressing room and pitched an inspired idea for a show while playing Streisand’s LP version of “Happy Days Are Here Again” and singing the countermelody of “Get Happy.”
Torme writes, “The result was shocking, one of those serendipitous discoveries where two great songs merged into one special piece.”
That and other performances by Streisand greatly impressed CBS executives, regardless of whether the guests were still big stars at the time. They moved this episode up ahead of other episodes that had already been filmed, and it aired on October 6, 1963, just two days after it was taped.
Even now, more than half a century later, that impression has not changed. Promoting Streisand in The New York Times in 2016, the paper’s theater critic Ben Brantley wrote, “Each interpreted the bright songs with a voice like a big trumpet, yet hinted at a small, lonely person within. The happiness celebrated in these performances is by no means easily won. The video can be found on YouTube, but it’s impossible to watch without shuddering.”
When speaking with Brantley, Streisand said of Garland, “After that, she used to visit me and give me advice. She came to my apartment in New York and said, ‘Don’t let them do to you what they did to me.'” I didn’t understand what she was saying at that time. I was just getting started. ”
In a 2005 interview with Diane Sawyer, Streisand said of Garland, “She was amazing. She was amazing. I loved her…I felt so safe at that time. I think I was only 21. I wasn’t afraid of failure or anything. But it was interesting to see someone so great, so famous, so talented… She was drinking Liebfraumilch, or white wine, and her hands were shaking and she was clinging to me, and I thought, “What is this?” As I get older, I now understand what this fear is all about. ”
This episode earned Streisand her first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program.
Few contemporary singers would have the guts to recreate a moment so closely associated with two of the 20th century’s greats (or in Streisand’s case, the 20th becomes the 21st), but few would be happy about the chops plus goodwill that will see Erivo and Grande join the second and final part of the Wicked film series. Their ability to pull off a tricky duet classic may have played a small part in their happy day at the Oscars ceremony, should clips of their performance be widely circulated as expected.
Meanwhile, for those in the audience who saw the recording on September 24th at the Dolby Theater and have managed to keep the climax a secret even on social media, let’s hear this song. Either that, or they were too young to realize its importance…well, let’s tread carefully.
Below are some other versions rendered over the years. That includes a version that LuPone and MacDonald went through on and off over at least a decade and a half, long before the former called the latter “not friends” earlier this year. Perhaps the return of this medley will encourage them to hold each other’s space once again.
