'Funny Girl' has serious LI connections

Comedy trailblazer Fanny Brice is a woman in motion in “Funny Girl,” the 1964 musical back on Broadway for the first time with Beanie Feldstein leading the way in the role that made Barbra Streisand a star. 

In the revival, which opens Sunday, audiences get to see Brice’s bedazzled career and bedeviled marriage unfold. We watch and listen — ears prick up to hits like “People” — as she zips from one New York City stage to another and to the domestic embrace of Long Island. 

While she was forging a name for herself as “the greatest star” of the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s, Brice was also making a home for herself and Nick Arnstein, her hunky (Hello, gorgeous!) but less-than-reputable gambler husband, in Huntington. Hello, Halesite!

The Suffolk County hamlet is one way “Funny Girl” and the pioneering performer it celebrates share a rich history with Long Island — and there’s more where that one came from. That includes another famous local performer’s connection to the show and a formative gig from a century-plus ago.

HER HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

On a recent April morning, Lynn Pezold, 77, who headed up memberships at the Nassau County Museum of Art before retiring, proudly played tour guide to Brice’s North Shore nest. The place pops up in the number, “Sadie, Sadie,” where Fanny cheekily warbles about being a married lady.

“People still call this the Fanny Brice house,” Pezold said, speaking with authority since she and her husband, George, 83, a lawyer, bought the place in 1982. The amiable couple has raised their two kids in this late 1800s home, hosted numerous exchange students and thrown fabulous parties there. 

Their flower show in 2013 featured a singer covering Brice standards (“My Man,” “Second Hand Rose”) while guests gathered in the garden and around the piano in the living room. 

The Pezolds haven’t just preserved the original molding and fancy inlaid floors, but kept the spirit of its famous former occupant alive. 

Brice looms large in the entrance to the house, where pictures of the star are displayed. In one of them, Brice’s upward glance and sly grin suggests she’s just told herself a killer zinger. In other images, she’s adjacent to her characteristic wisecracks that comment on her complicated relationships: “I never liked the men I loved and never loved the men I liked.” 

The pictures overlook the main staircase that speaks directly to Brice’s star power — and know-how about making an entrance. “Fanny had it widened at the bottom and put in a curved banister so that it would look grander,” says Lynn.

She and George knew nothing about the home’s celebrated past when they discovered it as party guests. Over the past four decades, Lynn has become something of an armchair aficionado — “a Fannyphile” — who loves sharing stories. 

One tale concerns an upstairs fire that broke out during one of Brice’s parties. She seized the interruption as a chance to charm the Halesite first responders. When life gave her lemons — or unwanted flames — Brice was resilient.

Arnstein and Brice bought the house in 1919 as newlyweds. By 1927 they were divorced. She kept the house. He moved on. She lived in the house through most of the 20s, renting it out over the next two decades. She sold it in 1946, five years before she died.

‘A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS’

“Funny Girl,” created by composer Jule Styne, lyricist Bob Merrill and writer Isobel Lennart — whose story in this revival directed by Michael Mayer has been revised by Harvey Fierstein — tempers showbiz triumphs with personal heartaches. The focus is on the early chapter of Brice’s life. The Pezolds have never seen “Funny Girl” on stage, but plan to see the revival with a group of friends. 

When they settle into seats at the August Wilson Theatre, the Pezolds will get a stylized take on the Long Island home. “The musical is sort of a world without walls in a way,” said scenic designer David Zinn, adding that the production takes “an abstract” approach to physical spaces.

Still, he did homework to inform his designs. “My research did extend to Long Island,” said Zinn. “I was curious what that house looked like and found some pictures online.” The 1968 film version of the show, for which Streisand won an Oscar, bears no resemblance to the real thing.

The movie leads to a link with a Long Island pop singer. Debbie Gibson, 51. She fell hard for the film growing up in Merrick. As a girl she belted “Don’t Rain On My Parade” as her go-to audition song. 

In 1996, she was performing the knockout number for audiences in a multicity tour of “Funny Girl” ideally aiming for Broadway. The ill-fated production ended prematurely, a casualty of slack ticket sales. But the impact of playing Fanny Brice stays with her.

“I stretched myself as an actor and as a vocalist,” Gibson said by email. “Taking on ‘Funny Girl’ is like entering the Olympics of theater. The vocal strength, dramatic acting chops, and the physicality of it are not for the faint at heart. I take that training with me in whatever I do.” That includes her current album tour, which hits stops at Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts on June 11. 

“I grew up with the movie,” Gibson said. “ ‘Funny Girl’ throws the stereotype of leading lady on its ear. My quirks became assets in that role … not detriments. I love that Fanny was indeed fiercely independent and a career woman in a time when women were supposed to ‘need’ a man.” 

Feldstein, 28, who’s known for “Hello Dolly!” opposite Bette Midler on Broadway and the films “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird,” recently expressed similar admiration for Brice’s “unapologetic” attitude on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” 

“She was very popular in the 1920s,” she told the host, adding that Brice paved the way for Jewish woman female performers that followed. “That is something that’s really inspirational to play every night.”

BLAZING A TRAIL

One way Brice blazed her own trail came while appearing in a benefit performance around 1909 on Long Island — specifically the Arverne Theatre, Queens, according to Herbert G. Goldman’s 1992 bio “Fanny Brice.”

Brice was still fine-tuning her unique skill set. As she performed “Sadie Salome, Go Home,” a ditty by Irving Berlin, no less, her scratchy starched sailor suit “goosed her,” Goldman writes. She squirmed. The audience cracked up.

There was more going on than just ants in her pants, according to Barbara W. Grossman, author of the 1991 book, “Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice.” “That number got her to do Yiddish-accented comedy for the first time,” she told Newsday.

Brice tapped into dialect comedy and broad physical antics that would later emerge in signature characters including Baby Snooks. “In a way,” said Grossman, “Long Island catapulted her to success.” 

Back at Brice’s former Halesite home, the Pezolds are happy that the new production of “Funny Girl” will spark interest in the star and make her part of cultural conversation again. 

“I found a young woman peering through the fence with her mother,” said Lynn, recalling an encounter early in their tenure as homeowners. “I said, ‘Can I help you?’ And they said, ‘Is this the Fanny Brice house?’ I asked them if they’d like to see it. They were thrilled. So was I.”