Mimi Hines, Who Replaced Barbra Streisand on Broadway in ‘Funny Girl,’ Dies at 91
Mimi Hines, the delightful Canadian-born actress, singer and comedian who stepped in for Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in the original Broadway production of Funny Girl, has died. She was 91.
Hines died Monday of natural causes at her home in Las Vegas, her friend and attorney Mark Sendroff told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Hines was married to late actor-comic Phil Ford from 1954 until their 1972 divorce, and as “Ford and Hines,” they had a thriving nightclub act that was featured on variety/talk programs like Jack Paar’s The Tonight Show.
In her Broadway debut, Hines starred in Funny Girl from December 1965 through its final performance in July 1967. When she got the gig, she told The New York Times — who described her as a “mischievous sprite” — that she was not nervous.
“It’s always easier to follow a good actress than a bad one,” she said. “Miss Streisand is wonderful. [And] there is such a veil of success about Funny Girl that I feel protectively wrapped by it.”
Watch her perform “The Music That Makes Me Dance” from Funny Girl here.
After that, Hines starred in touring companies of I Do! I Do!, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Hello, Dolly! and in such productions of Anything Goes, Never Too Late, The Pajama Game, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, No, No, Nanette and Sugar Babies.
And for Tommy Tune’s 1994-98 revival of Grease, she played Rydell High teacher Miss Lynch.
Hines was born in Vancouver on July 17, 1933, and started performing in clubs when she was 12. While singing on the road, she first met Ford in 1952 at a club called the Last Chance in Anchorage, Alaska; they married two years later and formed an act that toured all over the U.S. and Europe.
The couple made quite the impression in August 1958 during their first appearance on The Tonight Show — she sang “Till There Was You” from The Music Man on that — and they returned often to perform for Paar. Soon, they were showing up on The Garry Moore Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
She and Ford filmed a pilot for a TV show in 1964 that would have starred them as staffers at a health resort called The Garden of Eden, but the show was not greenlighted.
For Funny Girl, her then-husband joined her in the cast to play Eddie Ryan, Brice’s mentor. The show was a huge success.
In 2000, she starred alongside Jane Powell, Charlotte Rae and Helen Gallagher in an off-Broadway production of Kander & Ebb’s 70 Girls 70.
Hines also recorded albums — her first one was released in 1958 — and acted on TV series including Frasier and Love, American Style.
She and Ford, who died in 2005, were recently awarded a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars, and that ceremony, to be held in the coming months, will now serve as a celebration of her life and career.
Hines has no survivors but leaves behind “a legion of fans,” Sendroff said.
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