Fanny Brice

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Fanny Brice, ca.1911

Fanny Brice , actually Fania Borach (born October 29, 1891 in New York City , † May 29, 1951 in Hollywood ), was an American comedian , entertainer , singer , theater and film actress . Barbra Streisand portrayed Fanny Brice on stage (Musical Funny Girl , 1964) and in the films Funny Girl (1968) and Funny Lady (1975).

Live and act

Beginnings

Fanny Brice was born the third of four children on the Lower East Side of New York to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. From a young age she was determined to work in show business. In 1908 she left school after eighth grade to take a job as a "chorus girl" in a burlesque show. At the end of the year she changed her name from Borach to Brice, presumably to avoid being tied to a role cliché , as much of the musical comedy humor at the time was based on ethnic stereotypes - the drunken Irishman, the stupid Pole, the greenhorn with Yiddish Accent, etc. Brice didn't speak Yiddish and actually wanted to play serious roles - but it turned out that her niche in the market was supposed to be comic roles with a rehearsed Yiddish accent.

She had her first major Broadway hit in the musical The College Girls , where she sang Sadie Salome, Go Home in a false Yiddish accent while performing a parody of Salome's veil dance. Irving Berlin wrote the song for her, and they worked together for many years after that.

Ziegfeld Follies

In 1910 she began working with Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and was one of the stars of his Ziegfeld Follies until the 1930s . If she played serious roles, there was no success.

She first sang My Man (also famous in the version of Billie Holiday ) in the Follies of 1921 , which became a hit for her. On a trip to Paris, Ziegfeld bought the rights to the chanson Mon Homme and had an English text underlay for his follies. He insisted that Brice read it seriously, with no weirdness.

My Man was also the most successful of her 20+ records, which she recorded for Victor and Columbia Records . Other songs she made famous include Second Hand Rose , Cooking breakfast for the one I love, and I'd Rather Be Blue Over You (Than Happy with Somebody Else) .

Marriages

Brice got married three times. As a teenager, she was briefly married to the hairdresser Frank White. Her second husband was the professional gambler, thief and cheater Julius "Nicky" Arnstein. He was unfaithful, constantly involved in dark business, and bought expensive lawyers from Brice's money, but spent most of the marriage behind bars. Nevertheless, Brice had two children, Frances (1919–1992) and William (1921–2008), who was a well-known painter under the name William Brice , from him and supported him as much as possible. Perhaps this relationship was not innocent of Brice's only non-ethnic success: she, otherwise known only as an over-the-top comedian, stood at the edge of the stage and sang, without theatricality and without her artificial accent, My Man , with the closing line “But Whatever my man is, I am his, forever, body and soul. ”Many in the audience of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1921 were moved to tears. Her third husband became the songwriter and theater producer Billy Rose , in whose revues , z. B. Crazy Quilt , she performed. This marriage also failed.

Baby snooks

Brice's grave in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery

From 1936 until her death in 1951, she played the cheeky Baby Snooks on a hugely successful weekly radio show , a role she developed for the Follies . She had her only television appearance in 1950 in this role. The fact that this number did not go through was probably because Brice was already 59 years old. She preferred to return to the radio and so Baby Snooks made its next appearance in November 1950 on Tallulah Bankhead's lavish variety show The Big Show (NBC Radio), along with Groucho Marx and Jane Powell . Lily Tomlin later played Edith Ann on television , a role very similar to baby snooks .

Fanny Brice died of a stroke in Hollywood on May 29, 1951 at the age of 59. She was buried in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery .

Movies

Her best known films were My Man (1928), Be Yourself! (1930) and Everybody Sing (1938, German curtain up for Judy , with Judy Garland ). She plays herself in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Broadway Melodie 1950 (1946). Her contribution to the film industry was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .

Film portraits

Before the musical Funny Girl and the films Funny Girl and Funny Lady , all loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice, there was a film called Rose of Washington Square as early as 1939 , which was heavily based on her life. The names of those involved had been changed, but this was unmistakably plagiarism. Brice sued the production company 20th Century Fox for violating their personal rights and won. The producer Darryl F. Zanuck had to remove several scenes from the film.

literature

  • Herbert Goldman: Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl . Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-19-508552-3 .
  • Barbara Grossman: Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice . Indiana University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-253-20762-2 .
  • Michael Kantor, Laurence Maslon: Broadway: The American Musical . Little, Brown & Company. ISBN 0-8212-2905-2 .

Web links

Commons : Fanny Brice  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary by Frances Brice Stark at www.nytimes.com and William Brice ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.lalouver.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lalouver.com
personal data
SURNAME Brice, Fanny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Borach, Fania (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comedian, entertainer, singer, theater and film actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1951
Place of death Hollywood