Anne Francis role

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As a long-time fan of Anne Francis, I've often wondered about that; I understand that she played a showgirl/friend of Fanny Brice. How much time would that subplot have added to the already lengthy road-show cut of "Funny Girl" is an interesting question. At any rate, keep an eye on Ms. Francis' own website; she writes (I checked it today) that she intends to write about "Funny Girl" on that site at some point.

I remember the negative press that ensued, seeing the film (road-show version) and agreeing; her character disappears abruptly (right after "Don't Rain on My Parade" I think) and there was not a lot of film footage about her function in the film to begin with. In retrospect one wonders about the power of unions during that era and whether they had any impact on studio editing decisions like these. It certainly was an odd decision to keep her role in the film, but cut to ribbons, and puts a poor light on the latter films of William Wyler who was an actors' director including one of supporting actors in his films and proved it repeatedly.

As an aside, I believe that the character played by Eddie Ryan is almost invisible and he disappears too (he retained billing). These two observations really take some of the gloss of the film away in my opinion.

The link below devotes about five pages to the cut scenes. The fifth page discusses Anne Francis and includes a link to her "open letter to Barbra Streisand."

http://barbra-archives.com/films/funny_girl_movie_cut1.html

As you can see, a lot of footage ended up on the cutting room floor (I just wish they would have cut "The Swan" and reinstated "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat").