Funny Girl (film) Funny Girl (film) Funny Girl is a 1968 American biographical romantic musical comedy-drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart was adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title. It is loosely based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedian Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nicky Arnstein. Produced by Brice's son-in-law, Ray Stark, with music and lyrics by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, the film stars Barbra Streisand (in her film debut reprising her Broadway role) as Brice and Omar Sharif as Arnstein,
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