The wondrous story of 'Funny Girl' Isobel Lennart

I've always loved movie posters. Recently I came across a lovely original insert poster for the 1962 'Two for the Seesaw' and saw the screenwriter was Isobel Lennart, whom I had never even heard of.

Movie posters, what is it about them? Well, it my case it most certainly isn’t just about reliving how I felt when watching this movie or that. I used to own a ton of posters of films I had never seen, frankly, I just loved the artwork!

Curiously, over the course of decades, I bought them, collected them, sold them, gave them away (and had a bunch of them disappear on me from my New York pad while I was away, sigh) … long story short. Today I just occasionally pick up this and that because it still love the artform that seems to be a rarity these days when most posters are photographic. Give me Bob Peak any day! Here just some of his iconic movie poster artwork:

Pardon the brief movie poster excursion and now let’s get to Isobel Lennart, who’s best known for having written the book of the Broadway musical Funny Girl. Come to think of it, guess who did the movie poster for the Funny Girl movie - Bob Peak! Here it is:

Where was I - Bob Peak - Funny Girl - Isobel Lennart! You know how hard a racket the Hollywood movie business was in the early days - not that it’s easy now, mind you. But then it most definitely was, for the most part, a male-dominated business. Producers, directors, writers - men, men and more men. There were a few women, for sure - but far and few between. And the marvelous Leigh Brackett, who gave us brilliant films like The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo, only managed to make first contact with Howard Hawks because he automatically assumed that ‘Leigh’ was a guy.

Amazingly, Isobel Lennart’s first experience with the movie world was working in the mail room for MGM in New York. When she attempted to organize a union, she got fired. She moved to L.A. in 1937 and got a job as a secretary at first, then by 1941 as a script-girl and in 1942 she had her first break, writing the script for The Affairs of Martha. And that’s what she got what, at that time, most writers in Hollywood would have been aspiring for - a full-time gig with a studio. In her case it was MGM, the very studio that had fired her way back in New York.

One of the darker aspects of Hollywood, and of Lennart’s life - was the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee. She was one of the writers who agreed to testify. As a former member of the Communist Party, she name twenty-one people as former party members. This mean that her name was removed from the black list and she, unlike many others, was allowed to continue writing script after script.

Lennart was most definitely at home in the movies and screenplays were her preferred format. And so it may come as no surprise that Funny Girl was first written as a screenplay. I don’t recall who, but someone suggested that it should be a musical and she wrote the book for it - it was her first musical and she clearly wasn’t at home with any of it. Years later she remarked on this, saying that she regard that time as the most horrible experience of her life. “Writing the libretto for a musical (this was my first) is the best way to lose your sanity, your judgment and your teeth. (I lost one, so I should know.)”

Well, despite some libretto shortcomings, Funny Girl was incredibly successful and when it came time to turn the musical into a film, Lennart delivered. Funny Girl was the highest-grossing film of 1968 and Lennart received the Writers Guild of America award for Best Written Musical. Isobel Lennart’s life was triumphant in many ways and 1968 most certainly saw her at the peak of craft and success. Just three years later, her life was cut short. On January 26, 1971, the New York Times reported:

On January 26, 1971, the New York Times reported:

“Isobel Lennart, award‐winning writer of the book and screenplay for the Broadway musical and film “Funny Girl,” died today of injuries suffered in a traffic accident.

The 55‐year‐old author, nominated three times for an Academy Award, won the Writers Guild of America Laurel Award for writing achievement in 1966. She was honored for her screenplay of “Love Me or Leave Me.” She was injured in a car truck collision in heavy fog near here this morning and died a short time later in a hospital. Her husband, John Harding, the actor, also was injured.

Miss Lennart, born in Brooklyn on May 18, 1915, first drew attention writing Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer films, and then turned to the stage. While “Funny Girl”—the musical that brought the Hollywood limelight to bear on Barbra Streisand — was one of hers, there were others on which her reputation was more soundly based.

Of Danny Kaye's film, “Merry Andrew,” for which she wrote the book, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times: “Put Mr. Kaye in a circus and you just about have a show.” Another of Miss Lennart's screen credits was “Anchors Aweigh,” a popular musical with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, seen many times of late on television. Recent films included “Fitzwilly,” “Two for the Seesaw,” “Please Don't Eat the Daisies,” “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” and “The Sundowners.”

For many years Miss Lennart and her husband operated the Stage Society Theater in Los Angeles. She was a member of the Writers Guild and had served on the Writers Guild Council since 1946.”

I guess it can be said that, over the course of Isobel Lennart’s life, quite a few people tried to rain on her parade … if you know Funny Girl, then you know what’s coming. Yes, Isobel Lennart most certainly staked her claim and proudly proclaimed: