Funny Girl [Original Soundtrack]

by Barbra Streisand

Overview

The film adaptation of the Broadway musical Funny Girl arrived in theaters four years after the show had opened, again starring Barbra Streisand, but much had changed in the interim, and that's reflected in the soundtrack album. While the stage show had been dominated by Streisand, there had still been room for character songs performed by other people, and the cast album contained 15 different numbers, all written by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. For the film, eight of those songs were dropped, replaced by three new Styne-Merrill numbers and two period tunes, one of them the torch song "My Man," which was associated with Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, of whom the film was nominally a biography. There were still a few moments for secondary characters to burst into song, notably the comic "If a Girl Isn't Pretty" and a verse of "You Are Woman, I Am Man" for co-star Omar Sharif (who proved to have an adequate conversational tenor). But the movie version of Funny Girl was even more of a showcase for Streisand than the stage production had been. She responded with a more mannered performance than the one she had given on the cast album, broader and full of spoken interjections. In part, that was necessary -- when you're singing "Don't Rain on My Parade" from a tugboat in New York harbor, you'd better oversing just to keep up with the production values. But the third time around with it (including the hit single rendition), she loaded "People" with vocal effects that bordered on self-parody. With a full movie orchestra, this version of the score is generally bigger and glossier, and Streisand holds her own and then some. But the result is that this drastically revised rendering of the score is less successful than the previous one. ~ William Ruhlmann

Product Details

Release Date:	01/29/2002
Label:	Columbia / Sony Music Distribution
UPC:	0696998515123
Rank:	56602

Tracks

1. Funny Girl, musical~Overture
2. Funny Girl, musical~I'm The Greatest Star
3. Funny Girl, musical~If A Girl Isn't Pretty
4. Funny Girl, musical~Roller Skate Rag
5. I'd Rather Be Blue Over You (Than Happy with Somebody Else)
6. Funny Girl, musical~His Love Makes Me Beautiful
7. Funny Girl, musical~People
8. Funny Girl, musical~You Are Woman, I Am Man
9. Funny Girl, musical~Don't Rain On My Parade
10. Funny Girl, musical~Sadie, Sadie
11. Funny Girl, musical~The Swan
12. Funny Girl, musical~Funny Girl
13. Mon homme (My Man), song~as used in film "Funny Girl"
14. Funny Girl, musical~Finale

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Barbra Streisand   Primary Artist,Vocals
Omar Sharif   Vocals
Anne Francis   Vocals
Walter Scharf   Conductor
Walter Pidgeon   Vocals
Kay Medford   Vocals

Technical Credits

Stephen Marcussen   Remastering,Original Engineering
Trevor Rabin   Composer
John Kander   Composer
Billy Rose   Composer,Lyricist
Jack Gold   Producer
George Gershwin   Composer
Geoffrey Burgon   Composer
Janet Gari   Composer
David Shire   Composer
Walter Scharf   Arranger
Leonard Bernstein   Composer
Leslie Bricusse   Composer
Jule Styne   Composer
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky   Composer
Michel Legrand   Composer
Harold Rome   Composer
Warren Vincent   Sound Supervision
Stan Freberg   Composer
Stan Weiss   Engineer,Editing Engineer
Stephen Schwartz   Composer
Richard Adler   Composer
Bob Merrill   Composer,Lyricist
Jacques Charles   Composer
Fred Fisher   Composer
Channing Pollack   Composer
Richard Rodgers   Composer
Mark Mancina   Composer
Jerry Ross   Composer
Miklos Rozsa   Composer
Maurice Yvain   Composer
Stewart Whitmore   Digital Editing
Albert Willemetz   Composer