Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Evolution of a Song: From Second Hand Rose (Brice) to Second Hand Rose (Streisand) to Second Hand Nose (Sherman)



In doing research for our upcoming lectures on The Great Jewish Comedians and The Great Jewish Entertainers, we sometimes find interesting and funny variations on popular and classic comedy routines, jokes, and songs. 
 
The song Second Hand Rose, which most people associate with its performance by Barbra Streisand in the 1968 movie Funny Girl, was first performed by comedian Fanny Brice (Fanny Borach) in the 1921 Ziegfeld Follies.

In playing both versions of the song, we noted one difference. In the original Brice version, there's a line that goes "Even Jakie Cohen he's the man I adore, He had the nerve to tell me he's been married before". But the Streisand version changes Jakie Cohen to Jake the Plumber. Why? Was it to make the character more universal in a nationally distributed movie? We can only guess. The song became fodder for Allan Sherman, who recorded so many parodies of popular songs, and turned it into Second Hand Nose.

Here are all three versions. Enjoy!

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