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The 1968 film Funny Girl starred Barbara Streisand in the part of Fanny Brice, vaudeville comedienne, radio and film star. Not an imaginary character, Fanny was the longtime star of the Ziegfeld Follies and of the radio comedy Baby Snooks. She also made several films, including, in 1938, Everybody Sing in which she plays a Russian immigrant who pretends to have been a star in Moscow. She gets her chance to demonstrate her talents when working as a housekeeper for a theatrical family in need of a good show.

In this clip Fanny, auditioning for a part in the new show, does a musical number that must have been much like those that she did in the Follies. You will immediately recognize the young Judy Garland, who plays the part of the stage struck daughter of the theatrical parents. Born in New York in 1891, of Hungarian Jewish parents, Brice speaks and sings with a Yiddish accent, which she uses for humorous effect. Her dancing is studiedly awkward in this piece as she describes herself as a “tvinkle toes.”

Judy Garland sang The Trolly Song in the 1944 movie Meet Me In St. Louis and it became one of her standard performance pieces. Here Judy sings it as a duet with Mel Torme “the velvet fog” one of the great vocal improvisers of jazz.

Written by Harold Arlen and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg for the film “Wizard of Oz,” “Over the Rainbow” is one of the most covered songs in popular music. I’ve even heard Ian Tyson sing it. It is the number one song on the “Songs of the Century” list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America

Here is seventeen year old Judy Garland, in the film, singing the song that was nearly cut for slowing down the action. “Over the Rainbow” won an Oscar for best original song in 1939.