Fanny Brice
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Fanny Brice, early Ziegfeld Follies portrait photograph |
Fanny Brice (
October 29,
1891 –
May 29,
1951) was a popular and influential
United States comedian,
singer, and
entertainer, remembered best for her many
stage,
radio and
film appearances, her
phonograph records, and as the creator and star of
Baby Snooks. After her death she was depicted on stage and film by
Barbra Streisand as
Funny Girl.
Fanny Brice (occasionally spelled Fannie) was the stage name of
Fania Borach, born in
New York City, the third child of relatively well-off saloon owners of Hungarian
Jewish descent. In 1908, she dropped out of school to work in a
burlesque review. She is best known for both her association with
Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his
Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 into the 1930s, and for her later radio career which lasted a decade and a half.
In the 1921 Follies, she was featured singing "My Man" which became a big hit and is considered Fanny Brice's signature song. She made
phonograph records of it for
Victor Records and appeared singing it in the 1930
sound film "My Man." The second song most associated with her is the tune "Second Hand Rose". She recorded nearly two dozen record sides for Victor, and also cut several for Columbia. She is a posthumous recipient of a
Grammy Hall of Fame Award for her 1921 recording of "My Man."
Trying to leap from stage to screen, Fanny made several films. She appeared in
My Man (1928),
Be Yourself! (1930),
Everybody Sing (1938) (with
Judy Garland),
The Great Ziegfeld (She,
Ray Bolger and
Harriet Hoctor were the only original Ziegfeld performers to portray themselves in the 1936 film.), and 1946's
Ziegfeld Follies. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at MP 6415 Hollywood Blvd.
From the 1930s until her death in 1951, Fanny made a radio presence as a bratty toddler named Snooks, a role she first premiered in a Follies' skit. With first Alan Reed (later known as Falstaff in
Fred Allen's famed "Allen's Alley" skits) and then Hanley Stafford as her bedeviled Daddy, Baby Snooks premiered in
Ziegfeld Follies of the Air in February 1936 on
CBS. She moved to
NBC in December 1937, performing the Snooks routines as part of the
Good News show, then back to CBS on
Maxwell House Time, the half-hour divided between the Snooks sketches and comedian Frank Morgan, in September 1944. She was back to NBC in November 1948, in a full show of her own, first called
Toasties Time but soon enough known as
The Baby Snooks Show.
Brice was so meticulous about the show and the title character that she was known to perform in costume as a toddler girl even though none but the radio studio audience could see her. She was 45 years old when the character began her long radio life. In addition to Reed and then Stafford, her co-stars included Lalive Brownell, Lois Corbet, and Arlene Harris playing her mother, future television star
Danny Thomas as Jerry, Charlie Cantor as Uncle Louie, and Ken Christy as Mr. Weemish. And she was completely devoted to the character, as she told biographer Norman Katkov:
Snooks is just the kid I used to be. She's my kind of youngster, the type I like. She has imagination. She's eager. She's alive. With all her deviltry, she is still a good kid, never vicious or mean. I love Snooks, and when I play her I do it as seriously as if she were real. I am Snooks. For twenty minutes or so, Fanny Brice ceases to exist.One of Brice's
Baby Snooks writers, Everett Freeman, told Katkov Brice didn't like to rehearse the role but always snapped to on the air, and lost herself completely in the character:
While she was on the air she was
Baby Snooks. And after the show, for an hour after the show, she was still Baby Snooks. The Snooks voice disappeared, of course, but the Snooks temperament, thinking, actions, were all there.Brice's second husband was the professional gambler Julius "Nicky" Arnstein. After he had served two years at
Fort Leavenworth for conspiracy to carry stolen securities into the District of Columbia (he previously did time at
Sing Sing, where Fanny visited him every week), a heartsick Brice divorced him. She later married songwriter and stage producer
Billy Rose and appeared in his revue
Crazy Quilt, among others. Unfortunately, that marriage also failed.
Brice and Stafford brought Baby Snooks and Daddy to Tallulah Bankhead's legendary big-budget, large-scale radio variety show,
The Big Show, in November, 1950, sharing the bill with
Groucho Marx and
Jane Powell, among others, and performing a skit in which Snooks knocks on Bankhead's dressing room door for advice on becoming an actress when she grew up in spite of Daddy's warning that she already lacked what it took.
Six months later her
Big Show appearance, Fanny Brice died in
Hollywood, California at the age of 59 of a cerebral hemorrhage. She is interred in the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in
Los Angeles. The 29 May 1951 episode of
The Baby Snooks Show was broadcast as a memorial to the star who created the brattish toddler, crowned by Hanley Stafford's brief on-air eulogy: "We have lost a very real, a very warm, a very wonderful woman."
A loosely-based Hollywood biopic of Brice appeared in 1939 entitled
Rose of Washington Square, starring
Alice Faye and
Tyrone Power. The title "Rose of Washington Square," came from the title of a song which Fanny popularized by performing it in the Follies.
Barbra Streisand later starred as Brice in the 1964
Broadway musical
Funny Girl, which made Streisand an overnight sensation. In 1968, she won the
Academy Award for Best Actress for reprising her role in the film version of "Funny Girl." In 1975, a sequel film,
Funny Lady, was produced. Streisand also eventually recorded both "My Man" and "Second Hand Rose".
Film stories versus reality
"Funny Girl" is an example of how films will take liberties with the lives of historical figures and/or events. The Streisand film makes no mention of Brice's first husband at all. It also suggests that Arnstein turned to crime because his pride wouldn't allow him to live off of Fanny; the real Nicky shamelessly sponged off her. The film also suggests Nicky sold phony bonds; he was actually part of a gang that stole $5 million of
Wall Street securities. Instead of turning himself in, as in the movie, Arnstein went into hiding. When he finally surrendered, he did not plead guilty, as he did in the movie, but fought the charges for 4 years, taking a toll on his wife's finances. Further, two children were born of the Brice-Arnstein marriage, but only their daughter is depicted in the film (the daughter Frances would marry
Ray Stark, producer of both the Broadway musical and the film, while the son, William, became an artist of note).
* Goldman, Herbert,
Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0195085523.
* Grossman, Barbara,
Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice, Indiana University Press, 1992, ISBN 0253207622.
* [
1] Visit a large gallery of images from the career of Fanny Brice
* [
2] Brice on eb.web
* [
3] Arnold Rothstein, Nicky Arnstein and Fanny Brice
* [
4] Fanny Brice article at the Jewish Women's Archive
