By Arthur Flynn

 

During the 1950s and 60s it became the pattern for the rights to successful stage musicals to bought up and adapted for the cinema screen. This was the case with such leading musicals as My Fair Lady, Hello Dolly, South Pacific and West Side Story.

One of the biggest money making stage musicals during the 1960s was Funny Girl, a 1968 musical comedy based on the life of comedian Fanny Brice. The screenplay was written by Isobel Lennart adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title and went into production on a budget of $14.1 million.

It was loosely based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedian Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gamble Nicky Arnstein.

Fanny Brice should have become the Talkies’ first female star but she did not conform to Hollywood standards of beauty and was more suitable for the stage.

The film was produced by Brice’s son-in-law, Ray Stark, with music and lyrics by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. The film starred Barbara Streisand, reprising her Broadway role, as Brice. She was Stark’s first choice to play the lead although Columbia Pictures executives wanted Shirley MacLaine in the lead instead, but Streisand won out.

Choreographer Herbert Ross, who staged the musical numbers, had worked with Streisand in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, her Broadway debut.

In many ways Streisand’s rise to the top mirrored that of Brice but she was more fortunate with her film career and made a series of hits.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own