Femmes Fatales | Oct 18 2017 |
She was the original funny girl but her life was not all laughs.
U.S. born Fanny Brice, née Fania Borach, was a theater, radio, and film actress mainly remembered today as the creator and star of the radio comedy series The Baby Snooks Show. For a time she was one of the most popular performers in America. What makes Brice pulp worthy? She fell in love with her second husband Nicky Arnstein while he was serving time in Sing Sing prison for wiretapping. After his release she lived with him for six years before finally marrying him in 1919. In 1924 Arnstein was charged in connection with a Wall Street bond theft, and Brice used much of her wealth on a failed legal defense that ended with him going to Leavenworth Prison. After he got out three years later he disappeared and left Brice to care for their two children. A decade after Brice died in 1951 Barbra Streisand portrayed her in the Broadway musical Funny Girl, later adapted to cinema. Both the musical and movie play Brice life events a bit lighter than they must have been in reality, but both were huge hits and brought Brice's name back into the mainstream—right where she would have wanted it. The racy photo you see here is from around 1915.
Vintage Pulp | Jul 4 2011 |
Fame can be such a drag sometimes.
Above, a July 4 1965 issue of National Enquirer with Barbra Streisand on the cover and a lamentation inside on the hollowness of fame and fortune. Streisand was discovered singing in a Greenwich Village gay bar in 1960 and made her first appearance on television the next year on Jack Paar’s show. In 1964 she scored a Broadway hit playing Fanny Brice in the rags to riches musical Funny Girl, and her career took off from there. We don’t know if she ever actually claimed she was happier before her fame. If she did, all we can say is that into everyone’s life some rain must fall. And if that rain happens to be in the form of millions and millions of dollars, well, you just have to deal.