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RADIO STARS
SHE DEFIED
OUT of New York's Ghetto there n n i
has come one of the most amaz / D L
ing women in puhlic life. She has lived through depths of despair and M U L H O humiliation that rarely come to a mortal. She has risen to incredihle heights. She has hunted love, found it, and then fought to hold it. She has lost love, lost her man, lost all reason for living. Her name is Fannie Brice.
1 wonder if some hint of all this doesn't get into her voice when she sings and talks on the Chase & Sanhorn Tea program. I wonder if you've felt these things without actually knowing them.
She has seen so much more of life than most of us — since that day when, at thirteen, she quit school to go to work. Her first job: picture her at thirteen, gawky, skinny, behind the counter of a candy store. But canny in the tradesman way of her race. Her first exploit was (listen to this!) : the owner of that store had a big stock of one-cent candy sticks. They were old, stale, no one would buy them. Fannie took each one-cent stick, broke it into sixteen pieces and wrapped each piece separately. Putting them into the window, she painted a sign that said "Sixteen pieces for one cent." Before night, all the candy was sold.
She was never one to walk away from a challenge. To her, her first meeting with Nicky Arnstein (to jump a bit ahead of our story) was just that. She was already a glittering Ziegfeld star. Nicky appeared to be a polished man of the world, educated, cultured, with fastidious tastes. So different from the men of the burlesque theatre from which she had recently graduated. So different from her own crowd. At first, she was fascinated, and then deeply in love. She was completely happy.
3(1
AND LLAND
Fannie was so ready to love, so eager to give herself. Always, romance had been like a fairy story to her. And this was Prince Charming himself. There could be no mistake. The rumors about Arnstein that her friends whispered were rejected blindly. Rumors that he had been arrested in London, Paris, Monte Carlo, that he was an ex-Sing Sing convict.
FANNIE told herself that she was wise and a woman of the world. One previous experience had taught her much. It had been casual, a chorus girl's night out. His name was White and he was a barber. Their marriage lasted a day. But this was different. It was real.
So they — Fannie and Nicky — were married. That was in 1919.
In 1927, she divorced him. Those years between . . . they saw her heart broken and torn by such trials and accusations and slanderous assaults on her reputation that she was driven to desperation.
But first, I want you to know how she became strong so that you may understand her better in her dark hours.
From the first, she loved the theatre. Her race has given us most of our great comedians. Footlights drew her like a magnet. To Frank Keeney's theatre at first, on Bolton Street in Brooklyn. She was just a kid.
It was amateur night. Two newsboy friends were going to compete for the $5.00 first prize. By making a dress for a neighbor's child, she had earned the quarter admission. But when she arrived, all the quarter seats were taken. She went to the stage door and said she was one of the entrants. It was her plan to leave before her turn came. But someone pushed her from the wings.