The Girls Of 'funny Girl'

This month in New York, just a few blocks from where it all began four and a half years ago, Columbia Pictures world-premieres its long-heralded film adaptation of the hit musical Funny Girl. The poignant story of comedienne-singer Fanny Brice's ill-fated love for gambler Nicky Arnstein and her subsequent rise to fame in the Twenties, Funny Girl combines the potent talents of Omar Sharif and super-songbird Barbra Streisand in a screen-debut replay of her star-making role on Broadway. In addition to the much-publicized kissing scene between the ancestrally incompatible stars, much of Funny Girl 's footage is devoted to the lavish stage spectaculars that were the trademark of Florenz Ziegfeld, whose Follies made Miss Brice an international star. Producer Ray Stark (who just happens to be married to Miss Brice's daughter, Frances) and director William Wyler--trying his hand at a musical for the first time--have created a stunning celluloid version of the Follies; in keeping with Ziegfeld's own specifications, Funny Girl's chorines are as statuesque and as extravagantly endowed as were their predecessors in the original line-up. In this exclusive Playboy pictorial, the glamorous girls of Funny Girl reveal themselves as more than capable of making the Twenties roar once again.