Mimi Hines (born July 17, 1933) is a Canadian 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.
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. 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 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.
She played at Feinstein's at the Regency in New York City. She appeared with the Los Angeles Pops Orchestra and starred in national tours of Sugar Babies and Nite Club Confidential and on a recorded salute to Johnny Mercer called Mostly Mercer. She toured the world for a year in the title role of Hello, Dolly! and starred in productions of A Majority of One and Can-Can in Florida and in revues featuring the songs of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, How Do You Keep the Music Playing? in Los Angeles, as well as the songs of Rodgers and Hart titled This Funny World at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the songs of Jerry Herman at the Schoenberg Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
Hines appeared as Mrs. Latimer on the television program Frasier and returned to Broadway in 1994 for the Tommy Tune production of Grease, in which she appeared as Miss Lynch. She also co-starred in the off-Broadway revival of Kander and Ebb's 70, Girls, 70, with Jane Powell, Charlotte Rae and Helen Gallagher, and was a guest in the final week of The Rosie O'Donnell Show.
She co-starred in 2002 as Sister Mary Amnesia in the National Tour of the 20th Anniversary production of Nunsense, along with Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Lee Meriwether and Darlene Love. She also co-starred as Sister Mary Amnesia in the National Tour of the 20th Anniversary production of Nunsense, along with Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Lee Meriwether and Darlene Love and starred in And Then She Wrote at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs with Peter Marshall and Christine Andreas. Most recently, she starred in The Full Monty at the Maltz Theatre in Jupiter. She performed for L.A.'s reprise, as Letitia Primrose in On The Twentieth Century, and in 2005 as Berthe in Pippin. In 2007, Hines starred in the City Center Encores! production of Follies.
It has been nearly two decades since Broadway's second and longest-running Funny Girl appeared in a New York cabaret and on the very night of her 80th birthday, she returned for one show only to celebrate. The stars came out on Wednesday, July 17 2013 to see Mimi Hines at Broadway's nightclub, 54 Below. Among those in attendance were "Late Show with David Letterman" bandleader Paul Shaffer, from TV's "The Nanny" and "Happily Divorced" start Fran Drescher, and Broadway favorite Lee Roy Reams (The Producers, 42nd Street, Beauty and the Beast) and Tony Award winners Donna McKechnie (A Chorus Line, Company) , Faith Prince (Annie, Guys and Dolls) and Liliane Montevecchi (Nine).
The program included her favourites from her 60+ years in the theatre and nightclubs, including "Till There Was You" (the song that elevated her and her late partner, Phil Ford, to fame based on their performance of it on "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar), "Who Can I Turn To?" (recreating the highlight of her performance as Cocky, the Anthony Newley role, in the tour of Roar of the Greasepaint, "Pink Taffeta Sample Size Ten" (given to her by Cy Coleman before he cut it from Sweet Charity), "Liaisons" (reprising her recent performance as Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs, "My Shining Hour" (from Mostly Mercer) and of course, several songs from Funny G.
(Edited from Wikipedia & The Lambs. Inc)