Herbert Ross, who helmed the musical sequences for Funny Girl (which had been directed by William Wyler), serves as the director. The screenplay, written by Jay Presson Allen and Arnold Schulman as based on a story by Schulman, is a highly fictionalized account of the later life and career of comedienne Fanny Brice and her marriage to songwriter and impresario Billy Rose. The primary score was by John Kander and Fred Ebb. The film was nominated for numerous awards including Golden Globe nominations for Streisand as Best Actress and Best Actor for Caan. Streisand revisited the soundtrack to the film in her 2016 concert.
Plot
Fanny Brice, now finishing her Broadway show after its success has come and gone in the midst of the Great Depression, finds only flowers and a divorce decree from her estranged husband Nicky Arnstein. Fanny and her confidant Bobby Moore are now out of work since Florenz Ziegfeld is not available to produce a new musical show. During a meeting with Bernard Baruch, her financial advisor, she meets his former secretary Billy Rose. When Fanny and Bobby go into nightclubs looking for material to "borrow", they hear a torch song in "More Than You Know" that was written by Rose. Although irritated by his pushy nature in trying to sell the song to her, Fanny soon records the song at a studio before being shocked to read in the newspaper that she will star in a show by Rose called Crazy Quilt.
The show ends up getting $50,000 from Buck Bolton when Rose promises to cast Bolton's mistress Norma Butler as one of the stars. Despite having a big number for Fanny in “I Found A Million Dollar Baby In A Five And Ten Cents Store”, opening night proves to be a disaster in terms of collapsing sets and more. Fanny considers leaving the production but stays when hearing that Billy borrowed money from mobsters that would kill him if he can't make the money back. The two work together to scale down the show. The improved show opens in New York to applause and great reviews before Fanny sees Nicky backstage with a ring on his finger from a rich woman, to whom he's now married. Billy, ready to travel to Fort Worth, Texas for a new show, offers to marry Fanny beforehand. She accepts only to find that Billy was bluffing about borrowing money from the mob to keep her close.
The wedding party finds Billy treated roughly by Fanny's society friends before the honeymoon in Texas turns to bickering between the newlyweds. During the next few years their careers are so busy that they only talk to each other when they telephone their publicist at the same time. Billy does a show called Aquacade, featuring Eleanor Holm, a 1932 Olympic gold medalist as the star. Later on, Fanny encounters Bobby Moore and Norma Butler in Los Angeles and sees Nicky on the field of a polo game in Beverly Hills and feels that her friends tricked her. She calls Billy, but he cannot leave his Aquacade show. While Fanny and Nicky reminisce about old times, Fanny notes that Nicky hasn't asked about their daughter Frances, whom he hasn't seen in six years. Fanny travels to Cleveland only to find Billy in bed with Eleanor. She goes to the train station where Billy arrives to apologize. She states that her love for Nicky was gone for good while blaming herself for Billy's infidelity. She then asks him to leave her alone to wait for her train. Years pass and in the 1940s Fanny is starring in The Baby Snooks Show on radio while Billy works as a writer of popular songs and plays. They meet each other again and he plays "Me And My Shadow", a song he tells Fanny he wrote about their marriage. He tells her about his recent purchase of the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City and an idea for her to star in his new show. Fanny says she will think it over as the two kiss and part once again.
Although contractually bound to make one more film for producer Ray Stark (Fanny Brice's one-time son-in-law), Streisand balked at doing the project. She told Stark "that it would take litigation to make her do a sequel." However, Streisand liked the script, which showed Fanny to be "...tougher, more acerbic, more mature...", and she agreed.[5][6]
Casting
The first to read for Billy Rose was Robert Blake. Other actors were mentioned, including Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but ultimately James Caan was chosen. Streisand explained: "It comes down to whom the audience wants me to kiss. Robert Blake, no. James Caan, yes."[6]
Filming
Stark, unhappy with the scenes shot by original cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, lured an ailing James Wong Howe out of retirement to complete the film. It proved to be his final project, and it earned him an Academy Award nomination.[7]
Post-production
Studio executives forced Ross to trim the film to a manageable 136 minutes before release. Much of Vereen's performance ended up on the cutting room floor, together with a recreation of Brice's Baby Snooks radio show and dramatic scenes involving her and her daughter.[8]
In addition to Howe, Oscar nominations went to Ray Aghayan and Bob Mackie for Best Costume Design, Kander and Ebb for Best Original Song ("How Lucky Can You Get"), Peter Matz for Best Scoring of an Original Song Score and/or Adaptation, and the sound team. Streisand, Caan and Vereen all received Golden Globe Award nominations, as did Kander and Ebb and the film itself, but it was shut out of any wins in both competitions.[9]
Release
Box office
Funny Lady opened Wednesday, March 12, 1975 and grossed $2,254,3851 in its first five days from 111 theatres to be number one at the US box office.[10][11] It went on to gross $40,055,897 at the U.S. and Canadian box office, making it the seventh highest grossing picture of 1975. It was one of Caan's most successful films at the box office.[12]
Critical reception
The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 30% of 20 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.8/10.[13]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "As long as Miss Streisand as Fanny is singing the blues, or singing anything else, Funny Lady is superb entertainment, but the minute she stops the movie turns into a concrete soufflé. It's heavy and tasteless ... Moments meant to be dramatic are embarrassingly bad."[14]
Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four and called it "a big, messy flop of a movie that's almost cruel in the way it invites our memories of Funny Girl and doesn't match them."[15]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "It takes few chances and delivers mostly what you'd expect ... What was missing, for me at least, was a sense of surprise, of unpredictability—the sort of wit or pacing that separates a memorable musical like Cabaret from the merely tuneful."[16]
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "Streisand is in beautiful voice, and her singing is terrific—too terrific. It's no longer singing, it's something else—that strident overdramatization that turns a song into a big number. The audience's attention is directed away from the music and onto the star's feat in charging it with false energy. Streisand is out to knock you cold, and you get cold, all right." Kael also criticized the plot as "right out of those terrible forties movies in which couples who break up spend a lifetime thinking about each other, with encounters every five or ten years. And we get a double load of it here, with two graying ex-husbands."[17]
Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Barbra Streisand was outstanding as the younger Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, and in Funny Lady she's even better ... However much of a letdown the plot becomes, there's no denying the superior integration of drama, comedy, show music and personal dramatic music en route."[2]
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Barbra Streisand, like the picture, extends the characterization she launched so dazzlingly in Funny Girl ... What I find most impressive and likable about the performance is the softened, bittersweet maturity that Streisand lets us see in Fanny Brice. You sense that Streisand understands the star as well as she understood the impetuous young hopeful. An extraordinary presentation is the power and delight of both movies."[18] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it a "lavish but uninspired" film that "seems to be celebrating stardom for stardom's sake. It's a joyless, mechanical Big Movie Musical."[19]
Caan thought there were "too many cooks messing around", although he liked his performance.[20]
