Mimi Hines, a powerful singer and live-wire comedian who etched her name in Broadway lore as the replacement for Barbra Streisand in the original production of “Funny Girl,” died on Oct. 21 at her home in Las Vegas. She was 91.
Her death was confirmed by her lawyer and friend Mark Sendroff.
A “mischievous sprite,” as The New York Times once called her, the diminutive Ms. Hines brought an outsize energy to her work, whether she was dishing out one-liners in nightclubs as half of a comedy-and-song duo, Ford & Hines, with her husband, Phil Ford, or delivering showstopping numbers to packed houses on Broadway.
During her peak in the 1950s and ’60s, journalists often noted her elfin quality and her distinctive facial features — cleft chin, deep dimples and wide, toothy grin — which she was not shy about using as a comic prop.
When Mike Wallace interviewed her and Mr. Ford in 1961, he informed her that a newspaper writer had recently described her as “two buck teeth and a carload of talent.”
“That’s not true,” she responded. “My whole mouth is buck.”
Ms. Hines and Mr. Ford got their first big break in 1958 on “The Tonight Show,” which at the time was hosted by Jack Paar. It was the first of several “Tonight” appearances they would make over the years. Her rendition of the song “Till There Was You” from “The Music Man” moved Mr. Paar to tears.
“It was a magic night on TV,” Ms. Hines said in a 1963 interview with The Prince Herald Daily Tribune of Saskatchewan. “They say 12 million people saw it.” They also appeared on several episodes of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” as well as on many other variety and talk shows.
A far bigger triumph loomed in 1965, when she was chosen to replace Ms. Streisand in the landmark musical “Funny Girl,” about the early days of the Broadway and radio star Fanny Brice’s career. Mr. Ford, too, joined the cast, as Fanny’s mentor, Eddie Ryan.
She knew she had enormous shoes to fill. But Ms. Hines was unafraid to make the role her own.
“I’m learning the role as if somebody just handed me the script,” she said in an interview with The Times published weeks before her debut that December. “But I suppose the shading will be different, since I will be projecting my own personality.”
Her star turn earned glowing reviews from many critics. Leonard Harris of The New York World-Telegram and The Sun wrote that “she moved the show along with as much drive as her predecessor did, perhaps more.”
“She wailed the ballads,” he added, “belted the up-tempo tunes and put the comedy in the hip pockets of every outfit in her opulent wardrobe.”
Mimi Hines was born Shirley Saborne in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 17, 1933, to Lillian Hines, a professional dancer, and Eugene Saborne. Her father split with her mother when she was an infant.
Descended from a long line of performers — including her grandmother Elizabeth Hines, who once sang at the London Palladium — she took to music at an early age. By the time she was 12 she was singing in nightclubs, having lied about her age.
In 1952, when she was 18, she was hired for an extended run at a nightclub called the Silver Slipper in Anchorage, Alaska, lured by a hefty paycheck of $275 a week (more than $3,000 in. today’s money). Mr. Ford, a former vaudeville comedian in his early 30s, was performing at a different venue and met her one night at a club called the Last Chance — “Sardi’s North,” as he joked in the Wallace interview — where local entertainers hung out after their sets.
The Silver Slipper folded soon after they met, and Ms. Hines joined Mr. Ford’s act. They married two years later, and by the late 1950s were touring the country and playing marquee venues like the Copacabana and the Empire Room at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, where the likes of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald also performed.
Their 1964 pilot for a sitcom called “Mimi,” about a couple who own a resort hotel, was not picked up. But Broadway was soon to beckon.
Ms. Hines’s run in “Funny Girl” lasted 18 months, after which she joined touring companies of “I Do! I Do!,” “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and “Sugar Babies.” With a voice that could “belt or coo in a dusky alto or shimmering soprano,” as Variety once put it, she also cut multiple albums in the 1960s. In 1967, she and Mr. Ford squared off against each other on the game show “Password.”
The couple divorced in 1972 but continued to perform together at times, including an early-1990s production of “Hello, Dolly!” that toured the country with Ms. Hines in the lead role. The former spouses shared one bus, the crew another.
Ms. Hines continued on for years as a solo act on the club circuit, as well as appearing in numerous theatrical productions. She returned to Broadway in 1994 as the English teacher Miss Lynch in the Tommy Tune production of “Grease.”
Mr. Ford died in 2005. No immediate family members survive.
Despite her varied accomplishments, Ms. Hines’s role in “Funny Girl” looms largest in her legacy. For her, it marked the realization of a longtime dream.
“Phil and I have aimed for Broadway since we first heard of it,” she told The Times in 1965. “Everything else has been like a detour.”
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