Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, directed by Herbert Ross
Seven years after Funny Girl made her a film star, Barbra Streisand returned to Fanny Brice in Funny Lady in 1975, directed by Herbert Ross. Where the first film traced Fanny’s rise from the Lower East Side to the Ziegfeld Follies, the sequel follows her later life: a Broadway star coping with the Great Depression, a painful divorce from the gambler Nick Arnstein, and a turbulent second marriage to the songwriter and impresario Billy Rose. It is a darker, more bittersweet film than its predecessor, and Streisand’s performance — more mature, more reflective, and vocally superb — is its great strength.
The story picks up after Fanny’s divorce from Nick, played again by Omar Sharif, who drifts back into her life with his old charm and old unreliability. Fanny, now a mother and a major star, is professionally secure but personally adrift. Into her life comes Billy Rose, played by James Caan, a brash, ambitious, street-smart producer and lyricist who is everything Nick is not: unpolished, driven, and determined to build a show around her. Their collaboration becomes a romance, then a marriage, and then a creative partnership tested by two strong wills and by the economic pressures of the 1930s theatre. The screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and Arnold Schulman is, like its predecessor, a highly fictionalised account of Brice’s life, but its emotional core — a woman learning to choose a partner who respects her work — rings true.
Ross, who had staged the musical numbers for Funny Girl and directed Streisand’s first non-musical film, The Owl and the Pussycat, brings a choreographer’s eye to the production numbers and a director’s patience to the intimate scenes. The film’s musical sequences are lavish, including spectacular Depression-era revues and nightclub numbers, but Ross never lets spectacle overwhelm character. When Fanny performs, we see both the performer dazzling an audience and the woman behind the performance wondering what the applause is worth if her private life is in disarray. That double vision is the film’s most distinctive quality.
The score, by John Kander and Fred Ebb with period songs associated with Billy Rose, gives Streisand some of her finest screen singing. “How Lucky Can You Get” is a show-stopping celebration of good fortune that Streisand delivers with infectious joy, while “Isn’t This Better” is a quiet, searching ballad about the compromises of a second marriage, sung with a vulnerability that the first film rarely allowed Fanny. “If I Love Again” and “Am I Blue?” showcase her ability to inhabit a standard as if she had written it herself. Vocally, she is in magnificent form throughout: richer, warmer, and more controlled than in 1968, with a lower register that adds depth to Fanny’s maturity.
James Caan is a surprising and effective Billy Rose. Known at the time primarily for dramatic roles, including his Oscar-nominated turn in The Godfather, Caan plays Billy as a bundle of nervous energy — funny, pushy, tender, and sometimes infuriating. His chemistry with Streisand is combative in the best sense: their arguments feel like negotiations between equals, and their reconciliations feel earned. Sharif, returning as Nick, brings a melancholy glamour to a man who knows he has lost the best thing in his life but cannot change enough to win it back. Roddy McDowall, as Fanny’s confidant Bobby Moore, and Ben Vereen, as the performer Bert Robbins, add warmth and variety to the supporting cast.
Funny Lady was not the unqualified triumph that Funny Girl had been. Critics admired Streisand’s performance and the musical numbers but found the story episodic and the tone uneven, caught between backstage comedy and domestic drama. Audiences, however, responded warmly, and the film became a substantial commercial success. In retrospect, its unevenness feels less like a flaw than a reflection of its subject: Fanny Brice’s later life was itself episodic, shaped by economic upheaval and by relationships that did not follow a neat dramatic arc. The film honours that messiness rather than smoothing it away.
For Streisand, the sequel closed a chapter. She had played Fanny Brice on Broadway from 1964, on screen in 1968, and again in 1975 — more than a decade with a single character. In interviews she described the two films as bookends, and Funny Lady does feel like a farewell: a mature artist saying goodbye to the role that made her, by playing Fanny not as a girl with a dream but as a woman who has achieved the dream and discovered its costs. That maturity is what makes the performance endure, even for viewers who prefer the first film’s youthful exuberance.
Today, Funny Lady rewards rediscovery. Its songs are superb, its central performances are rich, and its portrait of a female star navigating fame, divorce, and a second chance at love feels strikingly modern. It may not eclipse Funny Girl, but it deepens it, and together the two films form one of the great character arcs in the movie musical: the funny girl who became a lady, without ever losing the humour that made her unforgettable.
One pleasure of revisiting the sequel is hearing how Streisand’s voice had changed since 1968. It is deeper, more flexible, and more conversational, capable of shifting from a whispered confidence to a full-throated belt within a single phrase. That vocal maturity suits the older Fanny perfectly, a woman who no longer needs to prove she can sing, but who uses singing to think aloud about love, work, and disappointment. Kander and Ebb understood this, writing songs that function as interior monologues as much as showstoppers, and Streisand repays them with performances that reward close listening, even on a soundtrack album heard apart from the film.
The supporting performances deserve a final word, too. Roddy McDowall brings loyal, witty companionship to Fanny’s circle, Ben Vereen brings dazzling energy to the revue numbers, and Omar Sharif brings a poignant sense of a man who cannot quite grow into the life Fanny offers him. Together they create a world that feels populated rather than merely decorated, which is why Fanny’s choices within it carry real weight, even when the plot moves in broad strokes.