Portraying Fanny Brice brought Barbra Streisand to Hollywood and Fanny Brice did end up in Los Angeles, too, starring and featured in some early Hollywood talkies.
The 1968 film version of “Funny Girl” doesn’t use all the songs of the stage musical and makes some changes that pay tribute to Fanny Brice’s Hollywood movies and New York stage performances.
Funny Girl
These days, Barbra Streisand needs no introduction, but at the time of the film, she wasn’t that well known, but she had been the star of the original Broadway musical “Funny Girl.” However, there are so many changes to the musical that you need to see the stage version to really know and understand both the musical as a piece of theater and Streisand’s performance in the original and her transition on to the silver screen.
The film begins with the camera following a well-dressed woman walking alone into the theater. She has her own dressing room and an assistant. She’s an established star of the “Ziegfeld Follies,” but tonight she’s waiting for news about her husband, Nick Arnstein (Omar Shariff), who’s being released from prison today. In an extended flashback, she remembers how she struggled to be cast because of her funny looks and even her mother and her mother’s friends didn’t think she had the right looks to make it (“If a Girl Isn’t Pretty”). Yet she does get cast and at one of the crucial performances (“Rollerskate Rag”), she meets Nick. He’s with some well-to-do people and she’s dazzled. They will meet again after she’s gotten the call from the great Florenz Ziegfeld. Fanny believes that Nick was behind her casting. Fanny falls in love with Nick “You Are Woman, I Am Man”, but pursues him to Europe after he’s lost a fortune (“Don’t Rain on My Parade”). He tells her that if he wins a fortune, he will marry her. He does and they say, “I do” (“Sadie, Sadie”), but Fanny will go back to work because she wants to and also because, due to business losses, they need the money. This, supposedly emasculates Nick, forcing him to take risks on the wrong side of the law.
The film includes songs that Brice was associated with but were not in the original Broadway musical score nor are they in the current national tour: “Second Hand Rose,” “My Man” and “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You (Than Happy With Somebody Else).” “I’d Rather Be Blue” by Fred Fisher and Billy Rose, “My Man” with music by Maurice Yvain (lyrics by Channing Pollock) and “Second Hand Rose”with music by James F. Hanley and lyrics by Grant Clarke are from the 1928 Warner Bros. musical, “My Man,” which starred Fanny Brice. Currently, “My Man” is not streaming.
Seven numbers from the musical were not included in the film production. Instead songs were composed specifically with Streisand in mind: “Rollerskate Rag,” “The Swan” and “Funny Girl.” Isobel Lennart who wrote the musical play also wrote the screenplay with music by Jule Styne (and uncredited music by Walter Scharf).
Ultimately, “Funny Girl,” movie and stage musical, is a Hollywood story. Although it begins in Brooklyn and New York City’s Broadway, in real life, the main character, Fanny Brice, died in Hollywood (1951). The man she falls in and out of love with, Julius “Nicky” Arnstein, also died in Los Angeles (1965), although they had been divorced since 1927. Their daughter, Frances (b. 1919), married producer Ray Stark in 1939 and both she and her husband died in Los Angeles (1992 and 2004). Brice and Arnstein’s son, William Arnstein, professionally known as William Brice, first taught at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles (1948-1952) and then at UCLA (1953-1991) and died in California (2008).
The WilliamBrice.org website, gives a scathing account of his father under Nick and Criminality.
Nick’s vocation was not “professional gambler”, who followed the elegant and romantic racetrack crowd around the country, as he had intimated to Fanny in 1912 when they first met. That was a con job.
He was a sophisticated confidence man, who sailed on elegant ocean liners to bilk wealthy, grey-haired widows and naive debutantes out of their money. In fact, Nick had been arrested for swindling in London, Paris, and Monte Carlo between 1909 and 1912, but was never imprisoned. Fanny, normally clear-eyed and streetwise, was too crazy about this elegant man to see the con. They moved in together—without Nick letting her know that he was still married to his estranged wife. Another con.
Then in 1915 while living with Fanny, Arnstein was charged with using an illegal wiretap as part of a scheme to swindle stocks and was sentenced to fourteen months in Sing Sing. Fanny visited him in prison—and so did Nick’s wife although Nick kept Fanny unaware. Yet, another con.
By 1918, though, Nick’s wife finally agreed to divorce Nick, and in October of that year, he and Fanny were legally wed.
Nick Arnstein was not a particularly affectionate father, either.
Despite Nick’s subsequent marriage in 1932 to a Pasadena heiress and his son’s eventual relocation to Los Angeles, just a forty-minute drive door to door between father and son, Nick only bothered to see Brice three more times before his death in 1965.
The film “Funny Girl” is, like the stage musical, a sanitized version of the Fanny Brice story. It’s still a must-see because of the star, Barbra Streisand, and, for students of musicals, an interesting study of how a stage musical can be successfully translated to the silver screen. William Wyler (“Ben-Hur,” 1959) and cinematographer Harry Stradling focus in on Streisand’s eyes for a mesmerizing effect. Streisand isn’t mimicking Brice, but bringing her own background into an interpretation of apprecitation.
Because this is about Ziegfeld, the costumes are extravagant. The gowns and other costumes are beautiful (costume design by Irene Sharaff) although the famous bride scene looks more like a product placement with dancers for sale for wedding night role play than a celebration of bridal gown fashions.
“Funny Girl” had its premiere in New York City on 18 September 1968. It was released in the US the next day. It would make its UK premiere in 1969 and be released there on 16 January 1969.
More on Fanny Brice
If you want to see what the “Ziegfeld Follies” were possibly like, at least according to Hollywood, you can rent and stream the 1945 “Ziegfeld Follies,” directed by Vincente Minelli. That includes a comedy sketch with Brice, but doesn’t have her singing. Another vehicle that is available to stream for free is “Be Yourself,” a 1930 black-and-white feature film starring Brice as a nightclub entertainer.
The film begins up in the clouds where the Chicago-born Ziegfeld now resides (d. 22 July 1932). His home in home in heaven resembled a Broadway theater and his ornately furnished bedroom has ornately framed dioramas which contain dolls resembling the stars and other celebrities. Using stop-motion animation, we’re introduced into that world. Ziegfeld then write up a new “Ziegfeld Follies” review that is introduced by Fred Astaire.
While the film claims, “The world will never forget the Ziegfeld Follies” that might not be true today. In the film, we return to live-action as Ziegfeld begins writing his final show, noting that his friend Fred Astaire would have nice things to say about him. From there, the film moves into this edition of the Ziegfeld’s Follies. Brice has only one segment, “The Sweepstakes Ticket,” but Fred Astaire is prominently featured, including the famous “The Babbit and the Bromide” skit which pairs Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
Watching this, I looked up some of the phrases and names of people mentioned as well as the actors in the film in my long essay.
You’ll see more of Brice in “Be Yourself“ (1930), which also features her singing as a nightclub entertainer who decides to help a down-on-his-luck fighter by becoming his manager. In all, this is a minor film that is just over an hour, but gives you a good idea of what Fanny Brice was like as an entertainer and an actress. You can read my short essay here.
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