They finally divorced in , after his release from Leavenworth, on account of his flagrant infidelity. Years later, Brice admitted that she was shocked he did nothing to stop the proceedings or to contest the decree awarding her sole custody of their two children.
From to , Brice worked hard and steadily on the stage. She performed into the seventh month of both her pregnancies, returning to rehearsals soon after the birth of each child. She made several records, produced Is Zat So? Instead of the animated parody she typically offered, she stood almost motionless, sang without a funny accent, and created the illusion that she was sharing her own painful experience. The moving song always produced a powerful emotional effect on audiences who clamored for it.
In , tired of being a sight gag, she decided to have cosmetic surgery on her nose. However legitimate her dramatic aspirations, she was motivated in part by her wish to escape from the ethnicity of her comedy. She seems to have decided that her Yiddish-accented routines had become too limiting, particularly in the xenophobic and racist climate of the s when prejudice against ethnic groups was very real.
She had escaped from Borach fifteen years earlier; at thirty-two, thanks to medical advances made during World War I, Protestant prettiness might actually be attainable. Disappointed both with the results of the surgical procedure and the response to her attempts at more serious material, Brice accepted the inevitable and returned to comedy.
Even with her new nose, she did not have the kind of face Hollywood loved. Her film, unimaginatively titled My Man and now lost, was a box-office disaster. Audiences across America simply could not relate to her Yiddish accent and comic mannerisms. Although she would make six movies in all including Be Yourself, ; The Great Ziegfeld, ; Everybody Sing, ; and Ziegfeld Follies, , film stardom eluded her and she claimed she never felt comfortable in front of the camera.
The year brought another critical failure in the musical Fioretta and in another marriage. Nevertheless, the thirty-seven-year-old Brice seemed happy about the marriage. They shared a passionate commitment to show business, and she spent the next two years performing in the musical revues her husband created to showcase her talent, Sweet and Low and Crazy Quilt She also began a successful series of radio broadcasts and achieved her greatest stage triumphs in the Ziegfeld Follies of and In these posthumous editions of the Follies produced by the Shuberts, Brice created some of her most brilliant comic characters.
In , with her marriage to Billy Rose disintegrating, she moved to California. They were divorced on October 27, Beginning in November, she launched a new career on radio with a popular weekly program broadcast across the country.
With antisemitism rampant in the United States and Europe, even Brice, admittedly uninformed about world events, must have realized that a Yiddish accent was probably not the best way to win a national following.
Brice suffered a serious heart attack in July but was well enough to resume her radio show in the fall. The profitable series continued until , when she went off the air during a highly publicized contract dispute caused by fierce competition from the latest technological marvel to arrive on the show business scene: television.
Rather than take a salary cut, Brice refused to work and began an autobiography she would not live to complete. Returning to radio in , she continued happily wreaking havoc as Snooks. She had no interest in making the transition to television and, ironically, was contemplating retirement when she had a stroke on May 24, She died in Los Angeles, five days later, without regaining consciousness.
The hell with anything else. If they were bad, I worked just as hard for that. But I am not sorry. I will tell anybody that and it is the truth. I lived the way I wanted to live and never did what people said I should do or advised me to do. A performer in the dialect comedy tradition, Brice often played to the prejudices of the period, but mocking Jewish values was not generally part of her comic world and she was careful not to offend Jewish audience members.
A truly popular entertainer, Fanny Brice worked hard to establish a rapport with her audiences. She did not deal with upsetting topics or controversial events, and people did not look to her for an evening of corrosive social commentary. A deft satirist capable of adroitly lampooning a variety of contemporary subjects, she seemed entirely uninhibited in performance, and her name always meant laughter, hilarious antics, and great fun.
Fanny made her amateur debut as a solo singer at Frank Keeney's popular Brooklyn vaudeville theatre. She was never part of the chorus, on roller skates or otherwise. Fanny was fired from a chorus by Broadway legend George M. He dropped Brice from the Broadway cast of Talk of the Town because she could not dance. To cover her disappointment, Fanny claimed she was dumped because of her "skinny legs.
Fanny did not meet Nick Arnstein at Keeney's. In her teens, Fanny was married to and quickly divorced from Frank White, a small town barber with a taste for young actresses.
Although the union was brief, Fanny later claimed it was consummated, so she it is reasonable to assume that she lost her sexual innocence years before meeting Nick. Funny Girl makes no mention of Fanny's friendship with Irving Berlin. Fanny was not in Brooklyn burlesque when Ziegfeld sent for her.
In fact, she had already made her legit debut in a touring Shubert Brothers production. While it is true that Fanny performed material her own way, the pregnant bride number depicted in Funny Girl never happened. If it had, Florenz Ziegfeld would have fired her on the spot, no matter how much the audience laughed. Fanny actually made her Follies debut in singing the now forgotten song "Lovey Joe.
The Follies did not move to the New Amsterdam Theater until Fannny and Ziegfeld always treated each other with professional and personal respect. This satire on the sentiment in the song was much more her style than the straight emotionality of the earlier delivery.
In the same show she did a parody of Shirley Temple in an act with Bob Hope in which she played a child star who couldn't remember her lines. Due to ill health Brice left Broadway for Los Angeles, where she made a few film appearance, including MGM's Ziegfeld Follies she was the only Ziegfeld star who appeared in this film. She also immortalized "Baby Snooks" during her ten year radio series.
Despite her work in film Brice was a daughter of the stage. She knew exactly how to reach an audience and she gave her whole self with no reserves. During each performance she would get bigger and bigger until she seemed to envelop the audience with her whole being.
In Rose of Washington Square, a film suggesting the life of Brice, was made and Brice sued the producer. Yet it was through another film and Broadway show, Funny Girl, in which Brice was played by Barbra Streisand, that Brice's unique contributions to the theater became known to later generations.
A fantasized version of her life focussing on her Ziegfeld days and her marriage to Nickie Arnstein, the play brings back to life her favorite characters and songs. Through this play her life has become inextricably linked with that of her characters, Sadie and "Second Hand Rose"—the poor but spunky Jewish city girls. Unlike her contemporaries who were often known for one thing, Fannie could bring either broad slapstick comedy or pathos to her performances and sometimes both.
She was so popular and such a workaholic that she was still a top performer up until two days before her death, of a cerebral hemorrhage. In her choice of men and in her marriages, Fannie was remarkably unsuccessful. Her first marriage while she was still in her teens was simply a youthful mistake but her second, to gangster Nicky Arnstein, led to two jail terms for him and enormous expense for her for his trials. A third marriage to diminutive theater impressario and music composer Billy Rose, was yet another venue for heartbreak as Billy had quite an eye for the ladies and the nine year marriage of the unlikely couple was full of heartbreak, culminating in Rose's obsession with the beautiful Olympic swimming star and would-be singer Eleanor Holm.
Their very public affair led to another divorce for Fannie.
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