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New York circa 1922. "Fanny Brice." The singer-actress-comedienne born Fania Borach. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
I love Fanny Brice and it seems that my great-grandmother did, too. My grandmother was named Fanny in her honor, although she later changed it to Fay.
She may not have been a classic beauty, but this earlier "Glamour" picture shows that Fanny could hold her own!
Fanny doesn't look so bad to me at all here. In fact she looks pretty elegant. What a gorgeous dress.
My mother always used to say, whenever a conversation started drifting into nonsensicalness, "This is turning into a Baby Snooks conversation!"
Fanny, as I remember her, was featured as Baby Snooks in the second half of a half-hour radio program in the early 1940s. The first half featured the actor Frank Morgan (of "Wizard of Oz" fame) in a comedy bit. Her own Baby Snooks half-hour program was a later spinoff. Hanley Stafford played her father, whom she plaintively and demandingly called "DAAAA-DY," and there was a baby brother named Robespierre.
Listening weekly for Baby Snooks on the Fred Allen Radio Show was looked forward to by many a wartime and postwar youngster. Great radio shows: Burns & Allen, A Date With Judy, The Great Gildersleeve, The Shadow, The Creaking Door, Gunsmoke, Amos & Andy, Lum & Abner, just to name a few. Movie versions were produced and several made a successful transition to TV. Much better shows than some of the junk now found on TV and the "yaksters" on radio.
When I was a kid during the war years, my favorite evening of the week was when Fanny Brice's "Baby Snooks" was on. It was the funniest radio show ever, at least to my way of thinking. Fibber McGee & Molly were probably No. 2.
Brice and Streisand have one thing in common in that they had to make it on pure talent and moxie, as the classic-beauty thing just wasn't going to happen for them.
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