22 Facts About Fanny Brice

Fania Borach, known professionally as Fanny Brice or Fannie Brice, was an American comedian, illustrated song model, singer, and theater and film actress who made many stage, radio, and film appearances.

Fanny Brice is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series The Baby Snooks Show.

Fanny Brice was portrayed by Barbra Streisand, Beanie Feldstein and Lea Michele in the stage musical Funny Girl.

In 1908, Fanny Brice dropped out of school to work in a burlesque revue, "The Girls from Happy Land Starring Sliding Billy Watson".

Fanny Brice was hired again in 1921 and performed in the Follies into the 1930s.

Fanny Brice made a popular recording of it for the Victor Talking Machine Company.

The second song most associated with Fanny Brice is "Second Hand Rose", which she introduced in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921.

Fanny Brice recorded nearly two dozen record sides for Victor, and cut several for Columbia Records.

Fanny Brice is a posthumous recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for her 1921 recording of "My Man".

Fanny Brice's first regular radio show was probably The Chase and Sanborn Hour, a 30-minute program which ran on Wednesday nights at 8 pm in 1933.

Fanny Brice moved to NBC in December 1937, performing the Snooks routines as part of the Good News show, then back to CBS on Maxwell House Coffee Time, with the half-hour divided between the Snooks sketches and actor Frank Morgan.

Fanny Brice was so meticulous about the program and the title character that she was known to perform in costume as a toddler girl, though seen only by the radio studio audience.

Fanny Brice was 45 years old when the character began her long radio life.

Fanny Brice handled herself well on the live TV broadcast but later admitted that the character of Baby Snooks just did not work properly when seen.

Fanny Brice returned with Stafford and the Snooks character to the safety of radio for her next appearance, on Tallulah Bankhead's big-budget, large-scale radio variety show The Big Show in November 1950, sharing the bill with Groucho Marx and Jane Powell.

Fanny Brice resided in a house built in 1938 on North Faring Road in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, designed by architect John Elgin Woolf.

Fanny Brice had a short-lived marriage in her late teens to a barber, Frank White, whom she met in 1910 in Springfield, Massachusetts, when she was touring in College Girl.

Fanny Brice insisted on his innocence and funded his legal defense at great expense.

Fanny Brice divorced him on September 17,1927, soon after his release.

Fanny Brice wed lyricist and stage producer Billy Rose in 1929 and appeared in his revue Crazy Quilt, among others.

Mexican comedienne Maria Elena Saldana was influenced by Fanny Brice and created a character similar to Fanny Brice's Baby Snooks, la Guereja.

In 2006, Fanny Brice was featured in the film Making Trouble-Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women, a tribute to Jewish comediennes produced by the Jewish Women's Archive.