Fanny Brice, although born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Oct. 29, 1891, had Brooklyn roots that go deep. Her mother, who was once a successful Brooklyn real estate operator, owned an eight-family house on St. Marks Avenue, and the family also lived for a time on Bergen Street.

Before moving to Brooklyn, her parents were saloon-keepers — Charles and Rose Borach. Charles was a bartender with a weakness for liquor and pinochle. Her mother was the actual head of the family and had a very good mind for business. Fanny loved to go to Coney Island. She later married another famous Brooklynite, Billy Rose.

Fanny’s first performances were warbling for pennies in her parents’ saloon. At 13, she won the amateur night contest at Keeney’s Theatre in Brooklyn, singing “When You’re Not Forgotten By The Girl You Can’t Forget.� Three years later she was hired for the chorus of “The Talk of New York,� but she was fired by George M. Cohan while the show was still in rehearsal. Most theater historians agree Cohan fired her because she couldn’t dance, although a few writers have insisted her clownish antics cost Brice her job. She took work as a comic on the flourishing burlesque circuit, where Irving Berlin spotted her and gave her “Sadie Salome� to sing. It was her comic renditions of this song, sung in a Yiddish accent, that brought her to Ziegfeld’s attention. At this early date in her career she spelled her first name “Fannie,� but in time she changed it and thereafter retained the new spelling.

Fanny appeared prominently in Ziegfeld’s “Follies of 1910� and was prominently cast in nine subsequent editions of the revue. A versatile performer, both singer and comedian, she was noted for her moving versions of dramatic songs and her hilarious Yiddish dialect numbers. Fanny once wrote: “I never did a Jewish routine that would offend my race because I depended on my race for the laughs. In anything Jewish I ever did, I wasn’t standing apart making fun. I was the race and what happened to me on stage is what could happen to my people. They identified with me, which made it all right to get a laugh. Because they were laughing at me as much as at themselves.�

In Manhattan, she lived from 1914 to 1918 at 8 West 58th St., and from 1918 to 1921 at 230 Central Park West. In the early 1920s, she bought a house at 306 West 76th St., where she lived with her smooth-talking swindler husband Nicky Arnstein until their divorce in 1927. She then had an apartment at 15 East 69th St. (now the Westbury Hotel) and lived there with Billy Rose after they were married in February 1929.

She became well known in Rose’s musical revues “Sweet and Low� (’30) and “Crazy Quilt� (’31). Fanny and Rose’s stormy marriage ended in divorce. Her final appearance on Broadway was in the Ziegfeld “Follies of 1936,� which closed on Jan. 19, 1937. She was at the time increasingly pained by illness (spinal neuritis) and depressed over the termination of her marriage to Billy Rose. She decided that the only possible cure would be a change of atmosphere and climate. Settling into the less frantic life of Los Angeles, she appeared in supporting roles in a few films but devoted most of her time to starring in her own radio series, which brought Baby Snooks into American homes for more than 10 years. Hanley Stafford played her long-suffering father in all the episodes.

Fanny Brice died May 29, 1951 of a cerebral hemorrhage, five months short of her 60th birthday. Fanny was a product of the theater and she once said: “I made a deal with the audience every time I came out. I look at them, I smile at them, and I tell them — and by looking at me they know — that this is really a private party. It’s just between them and me.� She was the first female Yiddish comedian to work successfully in musical comedy and radio in the commercial mainstream.

Who else but another Brooklynite could play the part of Fanny so well in the Broadway musical “Funny Girl� (’64), the film version (’68) and the sequel “Funny Lady� (’75). Barbara Streisand rose to the challenge and “became� Fanny. She is now a superstar, as was Miss Brice, of which Brooklyn can be proud.

— Vernon Parker

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