Mimi Hines, the pleasant Canadian-born actress, singer and comic who stepped in for Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice within the authentic Broadway manufacturing of Humorous Lady, has died. She was 91.
Hines died Monday of pure causes at her residence in Las Vegas, her buddy and legal professional Mark Sendroff informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Hines was married to late actor-comic Phil Ford from 1954 till their 1972 divorce, and as “Ford and Hines,” they’d a thriving nightclub act that was featured on selection/discuss packages like Jack Paar’s The Tonight Present.
In her Broadway debut, Hines starred in Humorous Lady from December 1965 by way of its last efficiency in July 1967. When she obtained the gig, she informed The New York Occasions — who described her as a “mischievous sprite” — that she was not nervous.
“It’s at all times simpler to observe a superb actress than a nasty one,” she stated. “Miss Streisand is great. [And] there’s such a veil of success about Humorous Lady that I really feel protectively wrapped by it.”
Watch her carry out “The Music That Makes Me Dance” from Humorous Lady right here.
After that, Hines starred in touring corporations of I Do! I Do!, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Hey, Dolly! and in such productions of Something Goes, By no means Too Late, The Pajama Sport, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, No, No, Nanette and Sugar Infants.
And for Tommy Tune’s 1994-98 revival of Grease, she performed Rydell Excessive trainer Miss Lynch.
Mimi Hines and Phil Ford in 1967.
Oscar Abolafia/Everett Assortment
Hines was born in Vancouver on July 17, 1933, and began performing in golf equipment when she was 12. Whereas singing on the highway, she first met Ford in 1952 at a membership referred to as the Final Probability in Anchorage, Alaska; they married two years later and fashioned an act that toured everywhere in the U.S. and Europe.
The couple made fairly the impression in August 1958 throughout their first look on The Tonight Present — she sang “Until There Was You” from The Music Man on that — and so they returned usually to carry out for Paar. Quickly, they have been displaying up on The Garry Moore Present, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Present, The Merv Griffin Present and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Present.
She and Ford filmed a pilot for a TV present in 1964 that may have starred them as staffers at a well being resort referred to as The Backyard of Eden, however the present was not greenlighted.
For Humorous Lady, her then-husband joined her within the solid to play Eddie Ryan, Brice’s mentor. The present was an enormous success.
In 2000, she starred alongside Jane Powell, Charlotte Rae and Helen Gallagher in an off-Broadway manufacturing of Kander & Ebb’s 70 Women 70.
Hines additionally recorded albums — her first one was launched in 1958 — and acted on TV sequence together with Frasier and Love, American Type.
She and Ford, who died in 2005, have been lately awarded a star on the Palm Springs Stroll of Stars, and that ceremony, to be held within the coming months, will now function a celebration of her life and profession.
Hines has no survivors however leaves behind “a legion of followers,” Sendroff stated.
