FUNNY GIRL

COLUMBIA, 1968 | COLOR (TECHNICOLOR)/PANAVISION, 155 MINUTES

DIRECTOR: WILLIAM WYLER PRODUCER: RAY STARK SCREENPLAY: ISOBEL LENNART, BASED ON HER MUSICAL PLAY SONGS: JULE STYNE (MUSIC) AND BOB MERRILL (LYRICS) DIRECTOR, MUSICAL NUMBERS: HERBERT ROSS STARRING: BARBRA STREISAND (FANNY BRICE), OMAR SHARIF (NICK ARNSTEIN), KAY MEDFORD (ROSE BRICE), ANNE FRANCIS (GEORGIA JAMES), WALTER PIDGEON (FLORENZ ZIEGFELD), LEE ALLEN (EDDIE RYAN), MAE QUESTEL (MRS. STRAKOSH), GERALD MOHR (BRANCA), FRANK FAYLEN (KEENEY), MITTIE LAWRENCE (EMMA)

Fanny Brice wins stardom in the Ziegfeld Follies and heartache when she falls in love with a gambler.

When a major star makes a sensational film debut, the earth shakes and the planets realign. Such things occur so rarely as to be legendary—which is as good a word as any to describe Barbra Streisand’s arrival onto film in Funny Girl. She was hardly an unknown quantity. Few were unaware of the precociously talented young woman from Brooklyn with distinctive looks and an unforgettable way with a song. She had already conquered the recording industry, the stage, and television, and it stood to reason that a film career was at least a strong possibility.

It surprised virtually no one when her movie debut came in the film of her defining Broadway hit, Funny Girl. Purportedly a biography of the singer and comedian Fanny Brice, it became even more of a one-woman show on film than on the stage, with Streisand appearing in nearly every scene and singing nearly every song. At a time when roadshow musicals were beginning their decline, Funny Girl ran and ran, with Streisand fans as impassioned a group of repeat viewers as those who loved The Sound of Music. Her triumph was nearly unconditional, and her Academy Award (shared with Katharine Hepburn) all but inevitable.