Fanny Brice

Fanny Brice, born Fania Borach on October 29, 1891, in Manhattan, New York City, was an American comedian, singer, actress, and illustrated song model whose career spanned stage, radio, and film. The third of four children born to Rose Stern Borach, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant, and Alsatian immigrant Charles Borach, she grew up in a family that operated saloons. Her younger brother Louis, who performed under the name Lew Brice, also entered show business and was the first husband of actress Mae Clarke.

Brice left school in 1908 to perform in the burlesque revue The Girls from Happy Land Starring Sliding Billy Watson. Two years later she began her long association with producer Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his Ziegfeld Follies in 1910 and 1911. Her Broadway career, which ran from 1910 to 1936, included appearances in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, The Honeymoon Express, and the play Why Worry?, among other productions. Ziegfeld hired her again in 1921, and she continued performing in the Follies into the 1930s, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931. She also appeared in the revues Sweet and Low and Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt, as well as the production Fioretta.

The 1921 Follies marked a turning point in Brice's career, as it was there she introduced "My Man," which became her signature song. She recorded it for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and the recording was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The second song most closely identified with her, "Second Hand Rose," also debuted in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921. Over the course of her recording career, Brice cut nearly two dozen sides for Victor and additional recordings for Columbia Records.

Her film work included My Man in 1928, Be Yourself! in 1930, and Everybody Sing in 1938, the latter alongside Judy Garland. Brice was among only three original Ziegfeld performers — along with Ann Pennington and Harriet Hoctor — to portray themselves in both The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 and Ziegfeld Follies in 1946.

Brice established a substantial radio presence beginning with an appearance on the Philco Hour in February 1930, followed by a regular role on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1933. The character of Baby Snooks, a bratty toddler she had first introduced in a Follies skit co-written by playwright Moss Hart, made its radio debut on The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air on CBS in February 1936, with Alan Reed playing her long-suffering father, Lancelot Higgins. Brice moved to NBC Radio in December 1937, performing the Snooks material as part of the Good News program, and in 1940 appeared on Maxwell House Coffee Time alongside actor Frank Morgan. By 1944, writers Philip Rapp, David Freedman, Arthur Stander, and Everett Freeman had developed a dedicated half-hour CBS program, Post Toasties Time, later retitled The Baby Snooks Show, which Freeman produced and which moved to NBC in 1948. Hanley Stafford played the Daddy on that program, while rotating co-stars included Lalive Brownell, Lois Corbet, and Arlene Harris as Snooks's mother, Danny Thomas as Jerry, Charlie Cantor as Uncle Louie, and Ken Christy as Mr. Weemish. Brice continued performing as Baby Snooks until the end of her life, appearing on Tallulah Bankhead's radio variety program The Big Show in November 1950, sharing the bill with Groucho Marx and Jane Powell. Her sole television appearance came on June 12, 1950, when she performed as Baby Snooks on CBS-TV's Popsicle Parade of Stars.

Brice's personal life included three marriages. Her first, to barber Frank White, whom she met in 1910 while touring in College Girl in Springfield, Massachusetts, ended in divorce in 1913 after three years. Her second husband was Nicky Arnstein, a professional gambler and con man. The two lived together for three years before Arnstein was convicted of a wiretapping fraud in 1915; Brice visited him weekly during the fourteen months he served at Sing Sing, pawned her jewelry to fund appeals, and secured his pardon. They married in 1918, one week after Arnstein obtained a divorce from his first wife. In 1920, Arnstein was charged with conspiracy to sell five million dollars in stolen Wall Street bonds; the case reached the Supreme Court while he remained free on bail, and he was ultimately sentenced to two years at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, where he was released on December 22, 1925. Brice divorced Arnstein in Chicago on September 14, 1927, on grounds of infidelity and loss of affection. They had two children: Frances, born in 1919, who married film producer Ray Stark, and William, born in 1921, who became an artist using his mother's surname. Stark later produced both the stage musical and film Funny Girl, loosely based on Brice's life, as well as the sequel film Funny Lady. Brice's third marriage, to lyricist and stage producer Billy Rose in 1929, ended when she sued for divorce in 1938.

Brice resided in a home in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, designed by architect John Elgin Woolf and built in 1938 on North Faring Road. She died on May 29, 1951, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood from a cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 59. She was initially interred at Home of Peace Memorial Park; in 1999 her remains were relocated to Westwood Village Memorial Park.

Her life was loosely adapted into the stage musical Funny Girl, in which Barbra Streisand portrayed her in the original 1964 Broadway production and again in the 1968 film adaptation, for which Streisand received the Academy Award for Best Actress. Brice was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with two stars, one for film at 6415 Hollywood Boulevard and one for radio at 1500 Vine Street. In 1991, the United States Postal Service included her on a first-class stamp as the only woman in a Comedian Commemorative Issue, illustrated by Al Hirschfeld. The restaurant Fanny's at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles bears her name.