Who wouldn’t want to resurrect Fanny Brice? She was a wonderful entertainer. And since Fanny herself could not be brought back, the next best thing was to get a young Barbara Streisand to sing and strut and go through comic routines a la Brice. Streisand was, in 1964, well on her way to becoming a splendid entertainer in her own right, and in Funny Girl, she went as far as any performer could toward recalling the laughter and joy that was Fanny Brice.
But this Tony winning show was about much more than a tribute to the buffoonery of Ms Brice. It was also intent on telling the story of how Fanny loved and lost Nick Arnstein, and it was both sentimental and touching.
These costumes and sets reflected everything from Ziegfield’s Follies to Brice’s dressing room and a Circle Line cruise ship. The most famous was this stairway in which Streisand as a pregnant Fanny – amidst a bevy of chorus girls and beneath this grand chandelier – enters in this wedding gown and got the most resounding laugh of the evening.
Streisand performed over 1,348 nights … and cemented her career as a Broadway phenomena.
