Funny Girl
This all started with a conversation I had with a friend about the TV show (from five years ago)
Smash.
Smash was about the process of putting up a Broadway musical from start to finish. The fictional musical in the TV show was
Bombshell! about the life of Marilyn Monroe.
The idea for the TV show came from
Garson Kanin's trashy 1980 novel
Smash - also about mounting a musical based on obscure 1920's vaudeville performer
Nora Bayes. But Kanin was only using Bayes as a stand-in so he could draw on his actual experiences directing the 1964 musical
Funny Girl.
So, if you know
Smash you can pick out the similar details, but even if you don't here is an abbreviated (but annotated) look at how the sausage gets made in the business of show.
If a Girl Isn't Pretty
Funny Girl was a tortured production -
the brain child of its producer
Ray Stark, who was married to
Fanny Brice's daughter. He was a successful B-movie producer who wanted to do a film musical based on his famous mother-in-law. He saw a Broadway musical as a cheaper first step to making that happen. Around 1961 he started getting articles in the trade papers that the his new show would soon be coming.
Fanny Brice started as a singer but gained fame as a comic in the Zigfeld Follies. She went on to have a huge career in radio - most famous for her character of "Baby Snooks".
Since Stark was a movie producer with no theater experience (or union contracts), he partnered with the number one Broadway producer:
David Merrick.
Ray Stark wanted a star in the role of Fanny and offered it to
Anne Bancroft. But composer
Jule Styne wanted the relatively unknown
Barbra Streisand in the part. He deliberately wrote songs Bancroft couldn't sing.
After much bickering and an all-out year and a half campaign, Streisand's manager,
Marty Erlichman, got all the entertainment columns talking about how perfect newcomer Barbra would be. She finally got the part in July 1963. Of course, after she signed, everyone pretended like she was the first choice.
The definitive version of this well-known song for me is the movie version; there were 14 versions before Streisand and the music director were satisfied.
Find Yourself a Director
She was hired by Stark, Merrick, and
Jerome Robbins who was set to direct. That summer he was working with the creative team on script changes, sets, and staging ideas. But Robbins & David Merrick clashed constantly, and finally Robbins simply left town. He didn't tell anyone where he was - he just left and dropped off the grid.
Bob Fosse was brought in as replacement to get the show up for the Boston preview. However, Robbins threatened to sue if they used any of his ideas or choreography in the show. That meant that pretty much everything that had already been prepared had to be thrown out.
Jule Styne was adamant that the score be 100% original - which meant avoiding songs closely identified with Fanny Brice like "Second Hand Rose" and "My Man". (He won that argument for the Broadway show, but if you've seen the movie you know those songs went back in.)
Fosse went to work with the principals, and brought in
Carol Haney as choreographer to make the work go faster. He was well respected by Barbra and the ensemble and worked hard to eliminate the Jerome Robbins material. But he hadn't yet signed a contract, and Ray Stark was nickel and diming his agent in negotiations. Ultimately, Fosse felt he couldn't trust Stark, so he bailed out.
Enter
Garson Kanin, along with his wife
Ruth Gordon. Kanin had to get the show up out of town. His style was the complete opposite of Robbins and Fosse - Kanin was a gentle man who would listen patiently and then consider his choices. This made some happy, but Streisand preferred the more forceful style of her previous directors, and setting a pattern that would continue throughout her career, took it upon herself to make decisions when Kanin dallied, or tried to placate all sides.
Barbra Streisand cut the single for "
People" before the show went out-of-town, and it became her first Top 10 single.
Lainie Kazan was a veteran chorus girl who desperately wanted the part of Fanny.
She auditioned several times for Robbins and Stark, but wasn't surprised when the part went to Streisand. Still, Ray Stark pursued the buxom brunette for the ensemble, even inviting her to his hotel room for some personal negotiations. Kazan was reluctant to go back to the chorus, but Stark sweetened the deal by making her an employee of his production company (giving her two paychecks), free singing and acting coaches, and making her Barbra's understudy.
Lanie Kazan (left) at the recording session for Funny Girl. Barbra was not happy with Ray Stark's protege. Kazan fell in love with Barbra's pianist and arranger Peter Daniels. That was the end of Daniels working for Streisand. When Lanie alerted the press that she would be going on for Streisand, Barbra had her fired when she returned.
Meanwhile David Merrick's other show that season was
Hello, Dolly!. (Here is a clip from the 1967 Pearl Bailey company
that shows off Gower Champoins brilliant staging.)
Dolly was premiering out-of-town in Philadelphia. Stark felt that Merrick was betting against
Funny Girl and they came to a parting of the ways. Merrick left the production.
Out of Town
Ah, the glamour of the out-of-town tryout. This is typical - actors on the floor with the writer and stage manager trying to insert new pages into the script so changes can go in that night's performance. From left to right: Sydney Chaplin (Arnstein), Isobel Lennart (Writer), Barbra Streisand (Fanny), Richard Evans (Stage Manager)
Funny Girl opened during a blizzard in
Boston to somewhat poor reviews (but raves for Streisand). Still, she was enough to put butts in seats and they nearly sold out. However, the show was also three and a half hours long. They started making cuts and replacing numbers (a very expensive proposition - throwing out orchestrations, sets, and costumes) driving everyone crazy, especially choreographer Haney. Stark decided he couldn't bring the show into New York in that condition, so he postponed the opening, and then scheduled a second out-of-town tryout in
Philadelphia.
Despite the creaky script, Funny Girl ran on the strength of it's star and it's music. This is audio from one of Barbra's final performances on Broadway.
Plenty of hanky-panky went on backstage, most notably between Streisand and her co-star
Sydney Chaplin.
Sydney Chaplin (son of Charlie Chaplin) and Barbra had a passionate affair out-of-town with the show. But the glowing notices for Streisand and lukewarm reviews for Chaplin pretty much killed that relationship. (And of course, both were married to other people.) By the time the show opened in New York, the love had turned into a vicious battle. The future Edith Bunker, Jean Stapleton is between them in the photo.
By the end of the Boston run Stark finally lost faith in
Garson Kanin to fix the troubled show, and so he went back to
Jerome Robbins on bended knee and with open wallet to beg for help. Robbins agreed. He met the cast in Philadelphia and began revisions there.
Supervised By Jerome Robbins
After Philadelphia the show went in to rehearsal at the Winter Garden theater. They had three weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of previews as Robbins reformed the show. Everyone who was not named Barbra Streisand found their roles reduced or even eliminated. While Carol Haney was still officially the choreographer, her services were no longer required and much of her work was replaced by Jerome Robbins numbers. Her alcoholism got worse, and within three months
she was dead.
After half a dozen postponements (a Broadway record, until
Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark), Funny Girl opened with positive to mixed reviews. In the end it was considerably better than it was out-of-town. The first act was always pretty strong watching Fanny rise to success. The second act is just the break-up of the Arnstein marriage, and it isn't much different than anyone else's divorce. All of Nick's Act 2 songs were cut. The thing that makes the final act bearable is the concentration of Barbra Streisand numbers.
From left to right: Ray Stark (Producer), Isobel Lennart (Writer), Barbra Streisand, Jule Styne (Composer), Jerome Robbins (Director), Bob Merrill (Lyrics)
Kanin was still in the program as the director and Chaney as choreographer, while the production was listed as being "under the supervision of Jerome Robbins".
Tony Awards
Ray Stark campaigned hard for his show, but he was up against two of the best mid-century book/music packages ever:
Dolly and
She Loves Me. Clearly the main competition, especially for Streisand was
Dolly. Both shows had hit songs, and had shared a producer. Behind the scenes
Funny Girl lyricist Bob Merrill passed on a rejected lyric for a song he had written for the Fosse version of his show over to friend Jerry Herman who used it to open
Dolly's second act: "Elegance". On the big night
Dolly took
everything. Even Barbra couldn't prevail over Carol Channing.
Revival?
Funny Girl only worked in 1964 by merging the characters of Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand in the script. Anyone taking on the role today is has two ghosts following her. Even so, there is a feeling out here 50 years later that it is time to revisit and perhaps revise the material.
In 2012
Bartlett Sher, who has recently helmed revivals of
Fiddler on the Roof,
The King and I, and
South Pacific, was starting rehearsals for a new
Funny Girl revival for Broadway. Unfortunately, a big investor had to withdraw, beaten back by the credit crunch and no new partner could be found.
This year two successful revivals appeared. The first in London with
Sheridan Smith in the lead role. That show just completed it's run and is about to start a UK tour. The second was at North Shore Music Theater with
Shoshana Bean as Fanny. They made some structural alterations in the book that look interesting, including having Fanny surrounded by the "ghosts" of her past (Eddie Ryan, Mrs. Strakosh, Vera the showgirl) that initiate the flashbacks. (Shades of
Follies.)
I've done
Funny Girl myself and I can attest first hand that it is still a fun audience-pleasing show with a powerful score. But it has no gravity to it, and retains only the barest outlines of the Fanny Brice Story on which it is supposedly based. It would probably need a strong director like Bartlett Sher or Sam Mendes to make us feel like the story matters again.
For more information
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entary Part 1
