Mimi Hines

Mimi Hines (born July 17, 1933) is a Canadian actress, singer, and comedian, best known for her appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show and her work on Broadway. She succeeded Barbra Streisand in the original production of Funny Girl. Life and career Hines was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and resides in the United States. She worked for a time in Anchorage, Alaska, where she met comedian Phil Ford in 1952 while they were working at different night clubs. They married in 1954 and divorced in 1972. On August 28, 1958, she and Ford appeared on The Tonight Show for the first time. Hines sang "Till There Was You". In a later stand-up routine on The Tonight Show, she portrayed the NBC peacock. In 1959 she sang several of the numbers on the Esquivel-Ray Martin Christmas song collaboration, The Merriest of Pops (RCA Victor). In 1964, Hines and Ford filmed a pilot episode for a potential sitcom, Mimi, that would have starred the two as owners of a resort hotel, but the series was not picked up for airing. In 1966, Hines succeeded Barbra Streisand on Broadway in Funny Girl, performing the role for eighteen months, after which she starred in touring companies of I Do! I Do! and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, as well as productions of Anything Goes, Never Too Late, The Pajama Game, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, No, No, Nanette and Sugar.