Funny Girl (musical) Funny Girl (musical) Funny Girl is a 1963 musical (opened on Broadway in 1964) with a book by Isobel Lennart, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The semi-biographical plot is based on the life and career of Broadway star, film actress and comedian Fanny Brice featuring her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nick Arnstein. Its original title was "My Man." The musical was produced by Ray Stark, who was Brice's son-in-law via his marriage to her daughter Frances, and starred Barbra Streisand. The production was nominated for eight Tony Awards but, facing tough competition from "Hello,
Fanny Brice Sanborn Hour", a thirty-minute program which ran on Wednesday nights at 8 pm in 1933. From the 1930s until her death in 1951, Fanny made a radio presence as a bratty toddler named Snooks, a role she premiered in a "Follies" skit co-written by playwright Moss Hart. Baby Snooks premiered in "The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air" in February 1936 on CBS, with Alan Reed playing Lancelot Higgins, her beleaguered "Daddy". 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