July 25, 1963 - A 21-year-old nightclub singer who has appeared on Broadway only once will play Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl,” a new musical planned for this season. She is Barbra Streisand (pictured performing on the Ed Sullivan Show in March), whom New York theatergoers may recall as the comical secretary, Miss Marmelstein, in the musical “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.” At the Riviera in Las Vegas today, where she is appearing until August 4, Miss Streisand expressed delight at getting the part in “Funny Girl.” She said she did not know too much about Miss Brice except what she had learned from the script. “But,” she added, “I feel we’re very much alike. It’s like me talking. Like Miss Brice, I find it hard to take advice from anyone. Here was a woman who was the same way — she refused to heed her mother or Florenz Ziegfeld, the showman who engaged her for one of his musicals.” “Funny Girl” deals with the romance, marriage, and divorce of Miss Brice and Nicky Arnstein, the late New York gambling figure. Asked how she was preparing for the role, Miss Streisand replied that she would “be myself.” She said she would do this because it was what the show’s director, Bob Fosse, had asked of her.
