Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Adam H. Kerman" Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-05-09 (Thursday) Date: Fri, 10 May 2024 15:40:48 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 48 Message-ID: References: Injection-Date: Fri, 10 May 2024 17:40:48 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="242b6682f4d6545f5c3df8d169b99dc8"; logging-data="1516000"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/SIizPPw+NrGHdBw7zI1+60Wsl6Xn0rKI=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:Nqwz5SxGNY2i0FhBHlRk2qU5SW4= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 3341 Arthur Lipscomb wrote: >Funny Girl (TCM) 1968 musical starring Barbra Stresand as a real life >singer who rises to fame while falling in love with Omar Sharif. While Fanny Brice could sing, she's best known as a comedienne, and on radio variety programs (and eventually her own program) later in her career as a sketch comic, especially the Baby Snooks character. In the sequel movie Funny Lady (1975), they have one brief scene with her radio program, which was ridiculous. She had an enormous nationwide audience and that's what she was famous for. The sequel was disappointing but has a few good songs in it. Barbra didn't want to do the sequel but she was already contracted for it. The "real life singer" is Barbra herself, given that the Broadway production (developed by Brice's son-in-law) made Barbra a superstar. Kay Medford was also in the original Broadway cast. >I have tickets to see Funny Girl live on stage this weekend. I wanted >to watch the original movie before seeing it live. I saw the movie once >before many years ago but didn't remember it. On this viewing I think >I liked it a bit more. It's still not a movie I'd particularly want to >revisit, but it was watchable. I think my problem with the movie is that it's not stagey enough. Some of the big production numbers don't work, especially the earliest one showing the Jewish community she came from. That's always come off as contemporary and not from its historic period. I want to see the stage scenes, and I wanted more of the rehearsal scenes for the Ziegfeld musicals. The pregnant gag in the "beautiful girls" stage act cracks me up every time I see it. I know it's coming, and it's still funny. As far as Fanny not being pretty... She wasn't a Ziegfeld girl, but she posed for a series of nudes when she was a young adult, and they're quite erotic in an era in which nude photography wasn't always condemned as sinful. She was quite skinny but she was reasonably pretty. I always liked her looks. Barbra herself was always told she'd never have a career with that big ethnic Jewish nose and she needed to get it fixed. She refused, knowing it would hurt her ability to sing. I always took some of the plot points on not being pretty to be more about Barbra herself than the character she played. So, who is playing Barbra, er, Fanny?