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After a career-spanning musical overture, Streisand walked on stage at the MGM Grand to a tremendous, eight-minute standing ovation from the audience. “It was quite amazing,” Streisand reflected in 1997. “I mean, still a bit frightened … I felt so much love. I wanted to let the love in, and I wanted to give it back.” The Tonight Show with Jay Leno dubbed fitness and exercise video guru Richard Simmons the show’s New Year’s Eve correspondent for the Streisand concert. “I’ll do live cut-ins for the show,” Simmons explained. “All I own is shorts and tank tops. I called Donna Karan – she’s sending me something nice.” Simmons was a shameless Streisand fan and said that Leno gave him a hard time. “He thinks for a 45-year-old, I’m acting a little eccentric. So to make up for it, he made me the correspondent.” After a few of Simmons’ funny cut-ins, the Tonight Show broadcast Streisand’s opening number to the people at home who couldn’t be there. Unfortunately, they did not show the entire song. The audience was quite surprised when Mike Myers appeared as his Saturday Night Live character, Linda Richman, in a skit with Barbra in the second act. Linda, as played by Myers on SNL, was a Long Island housewife with a cable-access talk show in which the topic always tended to be her undying love of Barbra Streisand, who she felt “was like buttah.” In the concert, Richman was invited on stage to join Streisand and they exchanged several Yiddish phrases. The character of Linda Richman is actually based on Myers' real-life mother-in-law, Linda Ruzan. Ruzan told People magazine, “I said to her, ‘I waited 30 years to meet you, but I’m going to kiss my daughter first.’ And I walked over and hugged and kissed Robin and Mike, just to gain my equilibrium.” Ruzan described Streisand as a “teeny-tiny, skinny white little angel. She kissed and hugged me, and I just thought to myself, ‘Oh, my good God, this is more than I can bear.’” When Streisand performed in Las Vegas six years later, she incorporated a New Year's Eve countdown with fireworks and singing. In 1993, however, the show was over before midnight. At the end of Friday’s show, Barbra joyously yelled, “I did it, I did it, I did it!” The concert was a triumph for Streisand. Her What’s Up, Doc? director, Peter Bogdanovich, who saw her in concert in Las Vegas in 1972 also attended the MGM show. “The other one was small, kind of intimate,” he shared. “This was colossal. It signifies what a legendary name Barbra has become over those years.” But she wanted to make some changes before the next night. Streisand and crew held a two-hour rehearsal on Saturday, January 1st, when they adjusted the show even more. One number they worked on was “People.” On Friday night it didn’t quite get the reaction from the audience that was expected. It was performed opening night with a plaintive, soft ending with violins (which was dubbed the “Movie” version). Larry Olson (for All About Barbra magazine) wrote that the orchestra rehearsed “every conceivable ending for ‘People,’ and that “the written score had alternate endings labelled Broadway, Studio, Movie, and Concert.” The ending to “People” performed on Saturday night was the one you see on the MGM Grand DVD – the big concert ending.