FUNNY GIRL DEBUNKED
This is an article I found on a website, thought it was really interesting. I still love Funny Girl after reading it, though.
FUNNY GIRL DEBUNKED
Although the stage and screen hit Funny Girl is based on the life of singer-actress Fanny Brice, much of it is delicious fiction with an occasional fact thrown in. Both the play and movie were produced by Fanny Brice's son in law, Ray Stark, who had the unenviable task of appeasing Fanny's surviving family and associates -- including Nick Arnstein.
On stage and screen, Stark had to take creative liberties with history. His goal was to create great entertainment -- and he succeeded. It is not the goal of this page to belittle a great musical. Rather, we will try to fill in some understandable actual gaps. After all, no one ever claimed that Funny Girl was a documentary.
Fanny's family name was Borach. After her career took off in burlesque, she changed it to Brice, but her mother was always known as Mrs. Borach.
Fanny's parents owned a chain of profitable saloons in Newark, New Jersey. They lived comfortably, with household servants and and frequent trips to visit relatives in Europe.
Fanny's mother Rosie spent years managing the bars while her husband played cards and drank his days away. When that got to be more than she could bear, Rosie got a legal separation and took the kids to Brooklyn.
In Brooklyn, Rosie made a good living buying and selling real estate. While Fanny struggled towards fame, her family lived in a series of handsome apartments and townhouses, including one on Manhattan's swanky Beekman Place (yes, the street immortalized in Mame) – nowhere near the folksy poverty of Henry Street seen in the film.
Fanny made her amateur debut as a solo singer at Frank Keeney's popular Brooklyn vaudeville theatre. She was not part of the chorus, on roller skates or otherwise.
Fanny was eventually fired from a chorus by Broadway legend George M. Cohan. He dropped Brice from the Broadway cast of Talk of the Town because she could not dance. To cover her disappointment, Fanny claimed she was dumped because of her "skinny legs."
In her teens, Fanny was married to (and quickly divorced from) Frank White, a small town barber with a taste for young actresses. Although the union was brief, it was consummated, so Fanny lost her sexual innocence years before meeting Nick Arnstein.
Funny Girl makes no mention of Fanny's long friendship with Irving Berlin. He wrote several special numbers for her, including "Sadie Salome," a song which helped Fanny break into the big-time.
Fanny was not in Brooklyn burlesque when Ziegfeld sent for her. In fact, she had already made her legit debut in a Shubert Brothers production.
Fanny performed material her own way, but the pregnant bride number depicted in Funny Girl never happened. If it had, Ziegfeld would have fired her on the spot, no matter how much the audience laughed! Fanny debuted in the 1910 Follies singing the now forgotten song "Lovey Joe."
Fannny and Ziegfeld had few (if any) disputes, and always treated each other with professional and personal respect. She never "gave him an ulcer."
When Fanny made her Follies debut, it was at The Jardin de Paris, an open air summer theater atop the now-gone New York Theater. The Follies did not move to the New Amsterdam Theater until 1913.
Nick Arnstein "gorgeous"? Oy vey! Compared to who – William Howard Taft? He may have been sophisticated, and at 6'6" he towered over most men, but he was not a beauty.
Fanny first met Nick in Baltimore while on tour in the Shubert Brother's 1912 revue Whirl of Society. Nick was betting on horses under the alias "Nick Arnold." His real name was Julius Arnstein – his friends called him Nick. He had several aliases, to cover his international criminal record.
Instead of running off, Nick tagged along with the Whirl of Society tour, returned to New York with Fanny, and immediately moved in with her and her mother. Mrs. Borach saw through Arnstein's charms and distrusted him from day one.
Fanny had Nick investigated and learned he was still married to his first wife. Hopelessly in love, Fanny pretended it didn't matter. She had to wait seven years for his divorce to come through, and married him in 1919 -- just two months before the birth of their daughter Frances.
Nick and Fanny sailed to England on The Homeric, but he didn't win any jackpots on the voyage. Instead, he shamelessly lived it up while Fanny supported him.
Funny Girl depicts Arnstein as a classy gambler who turned to crime because he didn't want to live on Fanny's money. Ha! Nick was nothing more than a common criminal, and he had no qualms about sponging off Fanny for their entire marriage. Before meeting Fanny, he had already been arrested for swindling in three European countries. Shortly after they met (and before their marriage), he was jailed for wiretapping. The lovesick Fanny visited him weekly in Sing Sing.
Nick and Fanny had a daughter named Frances -- and a son named William who became a respected artist and college professor. No one has ever explained why he was not mentioned in Funny Girl.
The film version shows Fanny doing a "Baby Snooks" routine in the Follies on the night Ziegfeld tells her Nick has been arrested. In fact, she did not play Snooks until the 1933 Follies – a year after Ziegfeld's death.
Fanny owned a Manhattan townhouse on West 76th Street and a large county place in Huntington, Long Island. Her money paid for both, so neither was lost because of Arnstein's financial losses.
Funny Girl suggests Nick's big mistake was selling phony bonds. In fact, he was part of a gang that stole five million dollars worth of Wall Street securities – a tremendous sum in 1920. Instead of gallantly turning himself in, he stayed in hiding for four months, leaving Fanny to face intense press and police harassment while giving birth to their son William. When Nick finally surrendered to the authorities, he fought the charges on every possible technicality for four expensive years.
A federal court finally threw him into Leavenworth for 14 months, where Fanny used her influence to arrange for special treatment (including meals cooked by the warden's wife!).
We hope this clarifies some of the misunderstandings about Fanny Brice, the original Funny Girl. Again, this page is not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but rather to enlighten those who are curious about the history behind all the swell razzle dazzle.
"My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine."