No. 45 “Don’t Rain on My Parade”
FUNNY GIRL (1964). By Jule Styne (music), Bob Merrill (lyrics), and Isobel Lennart (book). Based on an original story by Isobel Lennart.
June 1964. You’ve finally scored a ticket to see Funny Girl, a new musical biography of Ziegfeld/early radio star Fanny Brice. Brice isn’t really a personality that means much to you, but the young actress playing her sure does. 22-year old Barbra Streisand has already established herself as a rising supernova thanks to her scene stealing role in 1962’s I Can Get if for You Wholesale, TV appearances (including an amazing duet with Judy Garland), and two albums (the first of which recently won Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal Performance). As a musical, Funny Girl is…adequate. But Streisand is sensational and nothing else matters much when she’s onstage. She starts as an awkward girl from Brooklyn who nonetheless believes she’s “The Greatest Star,” and you believe her! She clowns around, belts several great Jule Styne tunes (though everyone else gets decidedly less exciting material), and falls in love with inveterate gambler Nicky Arnstein. At the end of Act 1 , Arnstein runs off to play a high stakes poker game, and, despite the well-founded objections of everyone she knows, Brice decides to take a leave of absence from the Follies and follow the man she loves, telling the naysayers, “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”
I don’t know if anyone has held a firmer grip on a role than Barbra Streisand held on Fanny Brice, and Streisand is rather singular in that she hasn’t reprised the role since it’s initial Broadway/London runs and the subsequent film. In fact, Streisand has not performed in any stage musicals at all since Funny Girl. The musical about Fanny Brice’s rise to stardom became Bab’s story—a gangly girl with unconventional beauty grows up in Brooklyn certain of her innate star power and overcomes initial rejections to triumph as a distinctive and beloved performer. The musical’s fate was so intwined with Streisand’s that it was seen as impossible to revive for nearly 60 years.
The project began when producer Ray Stark, married to Brice-Arnstein’s daughter, commissioned a biography of Fanny only to stop its publication when he was unhappy with the results. Then he went through 11 screenwriters trying to find a workable script for a film biography before landing on a draft by Isobel Lennart. Somehow Mary Martin got a copy of the screenplay and suggested it become a stage musical (perhaps thinking the path that worked so well for The Sound of Music would succeed here). Jerome Robbins was initially involved, but quit because he didn’t think Lennart could make her screenplay work as a musical, and Stark wouldn’t fire her. Robbins was basically correct about Lennart, though he returned to help the show when it struggled out of town. In the end, the musical never succeeded in telling us much about Fanny Brice beyond the fact that she existed and succeeded, but it had a large part in creating one of the “Greatest Stars” in the history of entertainment.
Recommended Recording: ”Don’t Rain on My Parade” Funny Girl (1964 Original Broadway Cast)
The Funny Girl OBCR captures a raw, unpolished performance, the likes of which were rarely really heard from Streisand again. (She has a legendary reputation as a perfectionist who likes absolute control over her recordings. Complimentary.) I love the octave jumps on the final “is GON-na RAIN on MY” followed by the little riff on “parade,” which becomes a four-syllable word (“paaaah-raaaaa-eeeeeee-dah”).
Alternate Performances
Funny Girl has only received ~5 cast recordings, plus a few “Songs from...” Interpretations, including one by Diana Ross and the Supremes! “Don’t Rain on My Parade” has been covered at least 55 times and is likely to appear on any Broadway-themed setlist.
1968 Film - Funny Girl on film is probably much closer to what the material wanted to be all along, had Mary Martin not stuck her nose into things. It’s more of a play-with-music that jettisons most of Styne’s score and interpolates some songs associated with Brice (“Second Hand Rose,” “My Man”). One senses they would have done away with all mimetic signing were it not for the fact that audiences would riot if they cut “Don’t Rain…,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” and “People.” It was the top grossing film of the year, and Streisand won the Oscar and became the entire personality of a few generations of gay men.
2016 London Cast - Michael Mayer directed a 2016 London revival, with a revised book by Harvey Fierstein, at the intimate Menier Chocolate Factory. It was a hit in London, meriting a cast recording and a proshot. It doesn’t really make a case for Funny Girl as a “good” musical, but it opened the door for a non-Streisand performance to be well received.
2022 Broadway Cast - Various folks have announced or attempted a Broadway Funny Girl revival that would never materialize, so a transfer of Mayer-Fierstein production seemed inevitable. When they announced it would hit the Great White Way with Beanie Feldstein as the star, it seemed like a good idea on paper. Feldstein was winning absolutely delightful in the Hello, Dolly! revival and films like Lady Bird and Booksmart. But from first preview, the internet was buzzing that she just didn’t have the voice for the role. I think there’s room for a version of Funny Girl where Fanny doesn’t have Streisand-level vocals, but the production needs to be wholly conceived around that alternate vision and offer something else to make the mediocre material work. Her understudy, Julie Benko, first went on early in the run and the internet again buzzed that Benko DID have the voice and should take over the role. The reviews were not kind to Feldstein, who unfairly bore the brunt of all of the production’s numerous shortcomings. Then the producers pulled a Hail Mary and brought in Lea Michele to replace Feldstein. Michele, who wanted to play Fanny more than most people want oxygen, had a smashing critical and commercial success with the role, and the production made a cast recording with her replacement cast (having never announced a recording of any kind during Feldstein’s tenure).
Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?
The Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. performed “Don’t Rain…” on a television special.Bobby Darrin isn’t really in the Rat Pack, but he’s certainly aligned stylistically, and he had a hit cover of “Don’t Rain…” that makes a memorable appearance in American Beauty.
Audra McDonald has not recorded “Don’t Rain…,” but she sings another Funny Girl song in concert, “Cornet Man,” accompanied by an anecdote about singing in it competitions as a high schooler.
Glee - Lea Michele as Rachel Berry first sang “Don’t Rain…” on season 1, episode 13 (“Sectionals”). It appears again as a go-to audition song for Berry, who, in the world of Glee, stars in the first Broadway revival of Funny Girl. Michele, as herself, sang “Don’t Rain…” at the 2010 Tony Awards.
In the Wings
I do apologize that there was more of a wait for this edition than usual. But this past weekend I marched in Pride in the CLE with my chorus, where it literally threatened to rain on our parade, and we were like, “don’t,” and it didn’t. So perhaps the universe wanted me to wait until then to write this. If you want to know more about both the genisis of Funny Girl and every meal Barbra Streisand has ever eaten, check out Babs’s epic memoir. The audio book is 48 hours long and took me like a month to listen to on my commute. For some less informative, but much shorter, bonus material, I suggest this incredibly detailed spoof of the movie’s “Don’t Rain…” performed by RuPaul’s Drag Race alumn Plasma. And just as I mentioned a lucky 1959 audience member could see the original casts of The Sound of Music and Gypsy on the same day, 1964 audiences could have done with same with Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly!. If one waiting until the fall of 1964, they could make it a three-show weekend and catch Zero Mostel in Fiddler…!
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