Funny Girls: Fanny Brice and Her Legacy

“A jester may be first in the kingdom of heaven because he has diminished the sadness of human life.”
– Rabbi Max Nussbaum, read at Fanny Brice’s memorial service in 1951

Born Fania Borach on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1891 to middle-class Jewish parents, young Fanny Brice’s drive to perform was nurtured by the patrons at her mother’s saloon on Lafayette Street, where as a child she would dance, sing, and enact scenes based on fairytales. Her first prize-winning performance at a Brooklyn amateur night in 1906 led to a career spanning four decades. After a start on the burlesque circuit, Brice joined the glamorous Ziegfeld Follies as the ensemble’s first true comedienne, and this high-profile affiliation led to extensive radio appearances, recording contracts, and roles in Hollywood films, her life later inspiring Funny Girl, the 1964 Broadway musical in which Barbra Streisand originated the role she would take to the screen four years later.

Inspired by this trailblazing performer, Funny Girls: Fanny Brice and Her Legacy spotlights funny Jewish women behind the camera (Elaine May, Joan Micklin Silver, Emma Seligman), and comedic Jewish actors on screen (Streisand, Goldie Hawn, Sandra Bernhard), whose films remind us that humor is one of life’s necessities.