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Fanny
Brice (1891-1951) made her amateur debut as a solo singer
at Frank Keeney's popular Brooklyn vaudeville theatre, and was later fired
from the chorus of George M. Cohan's Talk of the Town because of
her "skinny legs" (or so she claimed). However, despite
all this, she was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld to star in his Follies
as an "Ethnic comedienne" and singer, despite the fact that
she in no way resembled the famed beauties of his chorus. Brice was
hilarious, but was afforded a rare non-ethnic success: in the Ziegfield
Follies of 1921, Brice stood nearly motionless and sang "My
Man" in a beautiful, unaccented voice, moving the audience to tears.
(Ziegfeld actually took the song away from another singer and gave it
to Brice, knowing that her well-publicized affair with gangster Nicky
Arnstein would add extra dramatic "heft" to the performance.)
She was celebrated for playing her "Baby Snooks" character and
also had a life-long friendship with Irving Berlin, who wrote several
specialty numbers for her. One such number included "Sadie
Salome, Go Home" (which she sang with a put-on Yiddish accent while
dancing a parody of the Dance of the Seven Veils from the Richard Strauss
opera), but she also sang hits like "Second-Hand Rose" and
"Joey Love." Brice died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May
29th, 1951. Her life, of course, was inspiration for the hit musical
Funny Girl (1964). |
