Mimi Hines dead at 91: Comedian and actress replaced Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl

Mimi Hines’s death was confirmed to People magazine by Mark Sendroff, her longtime attorney who said that “she died peacefully in her home in Las Vegas of natural causes. 

Mimi Hines was born on July 17, 1933 in Vancouver, Canada. She met actor-comic Phil Ford in 1952 whilst they were both working in different nightclubs in Anchorage in Alaska. After Phil Ford’s partner broke her ankle, Mimi Hines filled in for her, she was 19 years old at the time. 

Mimi Hines and Phil Ford not only had a professional relationship but a personal one too as the couple married in 1954. Thanks to an appearance on the Tonight Show back in 1958 when Mimi sang "Till There Was You" from Meredith Willson's The Music Man, which resulted in the host Jack Paar bursting into tears, Hines and Ford went on to become a sought after act.

Mimi Hines and Phil Ford appeared on shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, The David Frost Show and The Hollywood Palace. Mimi Hines also appeared on game shows such as Password, I’ve Got a Secret and It’s Your Bet. 

However, Mimi Hines’s biggest breakthrough role came when she replaced Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice on Broadway in Funny Girl. The role of Fanny Brice was Mimi Hines’s Broadway debut and she played the role from December 1965 until July 1967.

Mimi Hines spoke about her role in Funny Girl with The New York Times and said: “It’s always easier to follow a good actress than a bad one.” Mimi Hines also said: “Miss Streisand is wonderful. [And] there is such a veil of success about Funny Girl that I feel protectively wrapped by it.”

Mimi Hines appeared in productions such as Anything Goes, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Sugar Babies and No, No, Nanette. She also played the role of Rydell High teacher Miss Lynch in Tommy Tunes’s 1994-98 revival of Grease. 

Mimi Hines also appeared in an off-Broadway production of Kander & Ebb’s 70 Girls 70 in 2000. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mimi Hines and Phil “Ford, who died in 2005, were recently awarded a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars, and that ceremony, to be held in the coming months, will now serve as a celebration of her life and career.”