Funny Girl (film) "funny girl" with her body, voice, gesture, and character, tying together her Jewishness and oddness. The film values women over men and portrays the men as dependent to their women; it reverses the gender roles. "Funny Girl" helped change the way women were viewed and used comedy to deflect Jewish mockery. Streisand was widely praised by critics, with "The New Yorker"s Pauline Kael calling it "A bravura performance ... As Fanny Brice, she has the wittiest comic inflections since the comediennes of the 30s; she makes written dialogue sound like inspired improvisation. ... Streisand's triumphant talent rides right over the
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