Life of Comedienne Fanny Brice

¶ … Life of comedienne Fanny Brice [...] her life and career. Barbra Streisand made Fanny Brice's life on stage famous in the film Funny Girl. Brice was a legendary performer in the 1920s and 30s, and performed on Broadway, in burlesque, and in the famous Ziegfeld Follies. She was one of the first successful Jewish comediennes, and she worked in the business for over forty years. People still remember Brice today for her wit and her outrageous characters. Her success is still a model of learning to change with the entertainment business as it changes through time.

Fanny Brice was born in New York City in 1891. Her parents were immigrants who owned saloons, and her real name was Fania Borach. She began performing early in her life, and aspired to be a serious actress, but her Semitic looks always forced her into character parts. In fact, while she often sang humorous songs with a Yiddish accent, in reality she did not even speak Yiddish (Editors, 2006). She was also tall and skinny, which made her stand out from most of the chorus girls of the time, who were more statuesque (Sorel, 1986, p. 81). In 1906, she won an amateur night contest at a famous vaudeville theater at the age of fourteen, and her career in the theater got its start. She dropped out of school after the eighth grade to concentrate on her career.

She worked as a chorus girl and in several productions throughout burlesque, and changed her name to Brice. Her first memorable role came in 1909 when she starred in "The College Girls" and sang a song by Irving Berlin called "Sadie Salome, Go Home," while parodying a famous dance from a Strauss opera. She sang the song in a Yiddish accent because that is how Berlin sang the song when he taught it to her, and her career as a Jewish comedienne was born. The number was a big hit in the show, and Brice learned how to make the audience laugh. She would capitalize on that for the rest of her life (Grossman, 1991, p. 27-28). Her biographer, Barbara Grossman continues, "Nevertheless, 'Sadie Salome' was more important in the long run. With Sadie, Brice created the first of her many memorable characters and discovered the performance style that would eventually become her signature, a style based on parody, dialect, and physical humor" (Grossman, 1991, p. 32). Florence Ziegfeld heard her performance, and hired her to work in his famous Ziegfield Follies, where she worked in the 1910s through the 1930s. Another writer states, "In 1910, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies and spent more than a decade in each of the annual Follies, which she supplemented with vaudeville and other work. Hers was a face that could traverse the range of emotions that vaudeville audiences found so enticing" (Epstein, 2001, p. 48). Fanny found a method of performing that worked for her and pleased her audiences. Whenever she deviated from that method, and attempted serious work on stage and in film, her performances fell flat. She was a gifted singer and comedienne, and that is where she finally concentrated her efforts.

Brice worked almost continually on the stage, and one reason was, she had a family to support. In 1918, she married Jules "Nicky" Arnstein, who survived as a thief and a con man. She had two children with Nicky, and virtually supported him throughout their marriage. In 1924, Arnstein was accused of a Wall Street bond theft. Brice spent thousand of dollars on his defense, but he was convicted, and served time in the penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He was released in 1927, but he disappeared from her life, and she finally divorced him. She raised the children alone, and worked constantly to support them. She was a single mother, just as her own mother had been. Later, she noted how difficult the role could be. She said, "If you have a career, then the career is your life. [...] It is the biggest part of you and you can be married, have children, have a husband, but it isn't enough for you because the career is always there in your mind, taking the best out of you which you should give to your husband and kids" (Grossman, 1991, p. 229). She married Broadway composer Billy Rose in 1929, their marriage broke up in 1938, and she moved to California, where she would live the rest of her life.

Brice is known for many humorous songs, such as "Second Hand Rose," "I'm an Indian," "Yiddle on Your Fiddle," and many others. She could sing seriously too, however, and one of her most moving performances was "My Man," sung alone onstage in a single spotlight. She left the Follies in 1938 and began her own radio show. Author Grossman continues, "Until her death in 1951, she would be Baby Snooks, the mischievous moppet whose precocious pranks had delighted audiences in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 and 1936" (Grossman, 1991, p. 228). Brice understood the need to grow and change throughout her career, and recognized the importance of radio, so she capitalized on it.