The musical “Funny Girl” is based on the life experiences of comedian, singer and actor Fanny Brice. The story chronicles her tumultuous marriage to Nick Arnstein in tandem with her stage career, or, more specifically, her career in the revues of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld.
“The Ziegfeld Follies” was a series of nearly annual, lavish revues featuring showgirls — a crossover between vaudeville and more legitimate Broadway productions. Between 1907 and 1931, Ziegfeld produced nearly two dozen editions of his “Follies” on the Main Stem (as well as other revues); his second wife, Billie Burke, continued the tradition, producing four more after Ziegfeld’s death in 1932. Brice appeared in 10 of those 26 productions, plus two additional non-Follies Ziegfeld revues, starting in 1910 and making her final “Follies” bow in 1936.
Brice’s résumé extends far beyond her Ziegfeld triumphs, however. Brice’s career spanned five decades, one of the few 21st-century entertainers who excelled across the stage, film and radio — the full scope of which, naturally, couldn’t fit into a two and a half hour-long musical.
Prior to her “Follies” premiere, Brice hit the stage in the touring revue “Girls From Happy Land,” headlined by popular burlesque comic Billy W. Watson. The show made stops in Chicago, Buffalo and Montreal in the fall of 1908, eventually playing a stint in Brice’s native Brooklyn in February 1909.
