Fanny Brice

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Brice, Fanny [née Borach] (1891–1951), comedienne and singer. The native New Yorker first performed for customers in her parents' saloon, then at thirteen she won an amateur night contest in Brooklyn. In 1909 her performance at a benefit, where she sang Irving Berlin's “Sadie Salome” with a comic Jewish accent, landed her a part in the burlesque musical comedy College Girls. It was while touring with this troupe that she came to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld who signed her for his Follies of 1910. Brice stopped the show with Berlin's “Goodby, Becky Cohen” and thereafter she was an important performer in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911, 1916, 1917, 1920, 1921, and 1923, as well as in Honeymoon Express (1913), the Music Box Revue 1924–1925, Fioretta (1929), Sweet and Low (1930), and Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt (1931). She also appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 and 1936, which were produced by the Shuberts after Ziegfeld's death. Although Brice was a great comedienne and introduced such comic songs as “Second Hand Rose,” “I'm an Indian,” and “Old Wicked Willage of Wenice,” Ziegfeld discovered she could be a moving torch singer as well, and some of her most memorable Follies' moments came when she introduced “My Man” and “Rose of Washington Square.” She initially played the mischievous brat Baby Snooks (a character she later popularized on radio) in the 1934 Follies, having done similar brats earlier. Her personal history, especially her marriage to gangster Nicky Arnstein, served as the basis for the 1964 musical Funny Girl. Biography: Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl, Herbert G. Goldman, 1992.

Fanny Brice (1891-1951) was a vaudeville, Broad way, film, and radio singer and comedienne.

Fanny Brice was born on October 29, 1891, on New York's Lower East Side. She was the daughter of Charles Borach, a saloonkeeper, and Rose Stern, a real estate agent. As a child she sang and danced in her father's saloon, and at the age of 13, after winning an amateur contest, she sang and played piano in a movie theater. Brice's acute sense of humor made its way into her act early on. She began to work parody into her songs and toured in burlesque. In 1910 she was asked by Max Spiegel to be in The College Girls at a major New York theater and also to do a benefit he was producing. Since this was an important job for her she asked Irving Berlin to write her some songs, one of which - "Sadie Salome, Go Home" - became a Brice trademark. The song told the story of a Jewish dancer who shocked her family by going on the stage. It required a Jewish accent for its comic effect. The audiences loved this character, and from then on Brice's most successful characters would be drawn from her own Jewish background.

Aside from discovering her forte, Brice was rewarded for this performance with a job on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies of 1910. This was the beginning of an association between the famous impresario and the talented comedienne that would last for 14 years. In 1911 she left New York and toured the vaudeville circuit, during which time she created two more characters which became her hallmarks: the "vamp" and the pretentious "dancer."

Following the tour she appeared as the major attraction at two important theaters: the Victoria in Times Square and the Victoria Palace in London. She also played a Yiddish soubrette, a part specifically written for her, in Shubert's The Whirl of Society, which also starred Al Jolson. She played the same part in another Shubert hit, Honeymoon Express, and she played the female lead in Jerome Kern's Nobody Home.

In 1916 Brice returned to the Ziegfeld Follies with her popular skit "The Blushing Bride." She remained with Ziegfeld until 1924, in all appearing in seven editions of the Follies and four revues.

Brice was considered to be one of the greatest comediennes on Broadway. Although she was an attractive, graceful woman offstage, she elicited the audience's sympathy and laughter by bringing out the imperfections of her characters. She could be ugly, lack grace, and be mischievous - all for a laugh. She could bring out pathos and at the same time mock sentimentality. In her vaudeville number "You Made Me Love You" the first half was a heart rending song, followed by Brice laughing at her own sentiment by kicking her heels, winking her eyes, swinging on the curtain, and then lifting her skirt to show off her knock knees Not only did she make fun of herself but she parodied standard theatrical styles and actors of the period, such as the Barrymores. Brice also appeared several times with W. C. Fields in a popular family sketch.

In 1921 Brice introduced "My Man" to American audiences. She stood on an empty stage against a lamppost and sang the painful song about a woman whose total devotion to her "man" had brought nothing but unhappiness. Perhaps the pathos she brought to that character was from her personal experience - her husband, Nickie Arnstein, had just been jailed for embezzlement and she had to stand by him. This was one of her few totally straight performances, and it is one for which she will be remembered.

In 1924 Brice, displeased with the material Ziegfeld was giving her, returned to vaudeville for a time. She played the lead role in the film "My Man" and then appeared in Billy Rose's (her third husband) Sweet and Low (1930) in which she introduced "Babykins," a three year old in a high chair. This character was the starting point for another Brice trademark, "Baby Snooks."

In the Shubert's 1936 Follies she did a spoof of "My Man" in which she said that she had been singing about "that bum" for more than 15 years. This satire on the sentiment in the song was much more her style than the straight emotionality of the earlier delivery. In the same show she did a parody of Shirley Temple in an act with Bob Hope in which she played a child star who couldn't remember her lines.

Due to ill health Brice left Broadway for Los Angeles, where she made a few film appearance, including MGM's Ziegfeld Follies (1946) (she was the only Ziegfeld star who appeared in this film). She also immortalized "Baby Snooks" during her ten year radio series.

Despite her work in film Brice was a daughter of the stage. She knew exactly how to reach an audience and she gave her whole self with no reserves. During each performance she would get bigger and bigger until she seemed to envelop the audience with her whole being.

In 1938 Rose of Washington Square, a film suggesting the life of Brice, was made and Brice sued the producer. Yet it was through another film and Broadway show, Funny Girl, in which Brice was played by Barbra Streisand, that Brice's unique contributions to the theater became known to later generations. A fantasized version of her life focussing on her Ziegfeld days and her marriage to Nickie Arnstein, the play brings back to life her favorite characters and songs. Through this play her life has become inextricably linked with that of her characters, Sadie and "Second Hand Rose" - the poor but spunky Jewish city girls.

Aside from her theater career, Brice was a dress designer, painter, and interior decorator. She had two children, William and Frances. She died May 19, 1951, of cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 59.

Further Reading

A concise biography and analysis of Fanny Brice's work is included in The Great Clowns of Broadway (1984) by Stanley Green. Reviews, an interview, and a short biography can be found in Famous Actors and Actresses on the American Stage, Vol. 1 (1975) by William C. Young. Daniel Blum's Great Stars of the American Stage (1952) includes a short biography and photographs. For background information on the Ziegfeld Follies and Brice's role in their creation, see Randolph Carter's The World of Flo Ziegfeld (1974).

Additional Sources

Goldman, Herbert G., Fanny Brice: the original funny girl, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Grossman, Barbara Wallace, Funny woman: the life and times of Fanny Brice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Quotes:

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"

"Men always fall for frigid women because they put on the best show."

"Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn't get serious with people. They don't expect it from you, and they don't want to see it. You're not entitled to be serious, you're a clown, and they only want you to make them laugh."

"Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience."

• Born: October 29, 1891, New York, NY
• Died: May 29, 1951, Beverly Hills, CA
• Active: '10s, '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s
• Genres: Comedy
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "Fanny Brice (Original Funny Girl)," "Makin' Whoopee," "As Baby Snooks"
• Representative Songs: "My Man," "Cooking Breakfast for the One," "Second Hand Rose"

Biography

The fame of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice has been largely carried on in a biographical adaptation of her life that has almost nothing to do with the facts of the case, the musical Funny Girl, a star vehicle designed for Barbra Streisand. The real Fanny Brice was, in her time, a tremendously popular comedienne who first established herself in vaudeville and later in radio, portraying her trademark character, Baby Snooks. Her skill at Yiddish/English dialect, penchant for wacky facial expressions, and loud, perfectly timed comic singing voice endeared her to American audiences for more than four decades.

Fanny Brice was born Fania Borach in New York's Lower East Side and dropped out of school in the eighth grade to become a chorus girl. While some sources place the beginning of Brice's career in Yiddish vaudeville, she did not speak Yiddish and seems to have bypassed that step in favor of regular vaudeville. In 1909, she scored her first success singing an Irving Berlin song, "Sadie Salome, Go Home," in a musical called The College Girls while performing a parody on "The Dance of the Seven Veils" from Richard Strauss' opera Salome. This attracted the attention of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, and though Brice, it seems, would've made an unlikely "Follies Girl," she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910; Brice was 18 years old. Brice continued through 1923 to star in several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies as a top-billed performer alongside acts such as W.C. Fields, Raymond Hitchcock, Van & Schenck, Moran & Mack, and Ted Lewis. She was also a featured attraction in shows produced by Irving Berlin and Billy Rose, whom she married in 1929 (Brice divorced him in 1938). Brice popularized the classic torch song "My Man" and was indelibly associated with such comic songs as "Second-Hand Rose" and "I'm an Indian." At the height of her popularity as a stage star, Brice attempted to take on roles in serious plays, but her efforts to this end proved unsuccessful.

In 1918, Brice married Nicky Arnstein, a second-tier racketeer and con man who by 1920 had become implicated in a Wall Street bond robbery. Although in retrospect it seems likely that Arnstein was not guilty in the matter, he was convicted and sent to Leavenworth in 1924. Upon his release three years later, Arnstein disappeared and was never heard from again. This sad tale ultimately became the seed for Funny Girl; Brice's later marriage to Billy Rose provided the inspiration for the film musical Funny Lady. While neither of these fictionalized projects reflects the true life story of Fanny Brice, one film that does is Rose of Washington Square (1939), starring Alice Faye. The resemblance was so close, in fact, that Brice sued the film's producer, 20th Century Fox, for defamation of character; Brice and the studio settled out of court.

With arrival of talking pictures, Brice went to Hollywood and starred in a Vitaphone feature, My Man (1928), and Be Yourself (1930) for United Artists. Both of these films were failures, and Brice soon returned to Broadway. At some point during the early '30s, while appearing in some of the posthumous stage editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, Brice developed the persona of the bratty widdle kid Baby Snooks. Brice revived this character on an episode of a radio program entitled The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air, which aired February 29, 1936. The public response was immediate, and throughout the late '30s Brice carried Baby Snooks through an assortment of variety programs until settling in with Maxwell House Coffee Time in 1940. By 1944, her spot on the radio schedule was finally named The Baby Snooks Show in earnest. Brice often performed the part of Baby Snooks in an adult-sized baby outfit, departing from the usual standard of radio actors in that relatively few of them dressed the part when playing a character. As popular as she had been on Broadway in the early '20s, it was nothing compared to her success portraying Baby Snooks, and through this character Fanny Brice became a national institution. Brice suffered a stroke on May 24, 1951, and died five days later at the age of 60. She had long suffered from nervous disorders, and in the past had been known to cancel out of stage productions on the advice of physicians. An entire subplot was developed on The Baby Snooks Show in 1945 in which Baby Snooks had been kidnapped -- this was in order to cover an illness that Brice suffered, taking her out of the cast for several weeks.

Interested persons hoping to grasp something of Brice's early stage career are in for a disappointment; although she began recording in 1916 for Columbia, she only did so sporadically through 1930, and cut just 26 titles -- six of these were rejected, and four of the issued recordings are versions of "My Man." The Vitaphone film musical bearing that title has disappeared; though all but one of the soundtrack discs have been recovered, these are long on spoken dialogue and short on music. Brice appeared in only 11 films, usually in guest cameos, and three of these are shorts; she apparently never appeared on television. In an attempt to get at the appeal of Fanny Brice, you would have to weigh this tiny amount of film clips and recordings against the veritable mountain of Baby Snooks broadcasts that survive, and under the circumstances there is no way to get a balanced picture of her talents -- several critics who have seen Brice on film have commented that they can't understand why she was so popular. Nonetheless, Fanny Brice was considered to be the greatest Jewish female comedienne of her day. It's a pity that her greatest moments were sustained on the Broadway stage, as more than 50 years after she died, posterity is barely able to grasp what Fanny Brice's celebrity was about, based on the legacy that has survived. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

• Born: Oct 29, 1891 in New York City, New York
• Died: May 29, 1951 in Beverly Hills, California
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '20s-'50s, '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Musical, Comedy
• Career Highlights: Be Yourself, The Great Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Follies
• First Major Screen Credit: My Man (1928)

Biography

Widely celebrated as one of the most beloved comediennes in the history of entertainment, stage and screen star Fanny Brice tickled audience's funny bones for more than a decade as the main attraction of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies in the early 1900s. She later moved successfully into film and radio, where her comic talents helped her flourish as the lovably bratty Baby Snooks. The third child in a family that included four siblings, Brice was born Fanny Borach to immigrant saloon proprietors in the Lower East Side of New York in 1891. She was smitten with the life of a performer from an early age, and performances in her father's saloon soon led her to participate in a local amateur talent contest. After taking home the prize, the adorable lass charmed moviegoers by singing and playing piano in a local cinema. She dropped out of school after the eighth grade and worked as a chorus girl in a burlesque review (changing her name in hopes of avoiding Jewish typecasting), and soon found herself in increased demand for stage roles. In 1910, Brice was approached by Max Spiegel to star in College Girls, and she, in turn, asked songwriter Irving Berlin to write her some memorable songs for the occasion. The resulting tune, "Sadie Salome, Go Home," quickly become the actress' trademark.

Despite the fact that Brice had briefly married early in life, it was her second union that really fueled the tabloids. Wed to con man Jules Arnstein in 1919, Brice remained steadfastly at her husband's side despite frequent philandering and a stint in prison. When Arnstein was charged with Wall Street bond theft in 1924, Brice spared no expense to fund his defense. Arnstein was eventually convicted and, upon his release in 1927, abandoned his wife and two children. Though audiences turned out in droves to see Brice perform in Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s and '30s, attempts to establish herself as a serious dramatic actress proved less than fruitful. In the years that followed, she appeared in small capacities in numerous films (as well as starring in 1930's Be Yourself). She married again in 1929, this time to Broadway impresario Billy Rose. Although her third marriage was brief and her film career never quite took off, Brice found fame in her later years when she launched a weekly radio show in 1938. Her final wave of success endured until her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in May 1951. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

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