The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Coney Island’s sideshows had PT Barnum… Monte Carlo’s Ballet Russe had Diagalev… and Broadway had Florenz Ziegfeld Jr, a huckster, a gambler, and a womanizer of exquisite taste who introduced his signature showgirls, brought vaudeville comedians uptown, and staged elaborate productions which made legends of composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern. Ziegfeld’s Follies spanned 25 years and were patterned after the Folies Bergère in Paris where sex and exotica were mixed with topical humor, operettas, and gymnastics. The word Follies derives from the Latin word for “leaves” (foliae), connoting the idea of an outdoor venue, so it was fitting that Flo’s annual Follies were originally staged in the rooftop theaters of Manhattan’s growing skyline.

The life — or should we say legend of Ziegfeld as portrayed by debonair William Powell in The Great Ziegfeld, only four years after his death and with a script closely supervised by his widow Billie Burke (a beloved B’way maven who was forced to go to Hollywood to pay off her husband’s enormous debts in minor character roles like Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz) is given lavish treatment through the lens of an MGM musical in search of a messiah. The number “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” which had become a sort of theme song for the Follies is filmed as a jawdropping multi-tiered rotating staircase that would never fit a Broadway stage much less a Ziegfeld budget! Although winning an Oscar for Dance Direction (Seymour Felix), “A Pretty Girl” (along with another elaborate production number made the same year for Cain and Mabel) seem to be in denial (or perhaps stark defiance) that the country was at the height of the depression. Ziegfeld’s affairs with glamorous women and decades of theatrical triumphs are lauded as the perfect excuse to keep spending money on extravagant and over-costumed musicals. Meanwhile Ziegfeld’s failures and scandals are barely mentioned.

The film sets Ziegfeld’s life in three acts. The first sees him cutting his PR teeth with muscular Sandow, practically sexploiting the lunk-headed strongman to aristocratic ladies. Unlike the film, the real Sandow was a shrewed business man who marketed his muscles through mail-order photos and health aides. Sandow’s lucrative relationship with Ziegfeld abruptly ends in San Francisco with the embarrassment of a drugged lion that Sandow had been hiped to fight.

Seeking a fresh talent to bring home from Europe, Ziegfeld bribed his way into the dressing room of Anna Held (played by Luise Rainer who would win the first of two Best Actress Oscars in a row), an adorable Polish-born coquet with rolling eyes and an 18 inch waist, whose risque lyrics sounded all the more suggestive with her French accent. Held was eager to get away from her debt-ridden gambler husband and estranged daughter locked up in a convent, and agreed to return with Flo to New York for the unheard of fee of $1500 a week to star in his next show. Apparently Held was attracted to risk-taking gamblers as Ziegfeld had to borrow the money to pay her salary and didn’t actually have any show for her to perform in. However, a master of PR stunts Ziegfeld bombed the New York papers with so many tid-bits about Held that she was already a star before they arrived (the plot of Broadway Melody of 1936 uses a similar trick where a B’way gossip columnist invents a French singing sensation who doesn’t actually exist). Held’s debut was critically panned, but curious audiences loved her and she eventually became a millionaire in her own right through several successful shows which featured her with a chorus of lovely models they called the Anna Held Girls — later to become Ziegfeld’s showgirls. It was Anna who suggested the format of the successful Follies, and her continental tastes and ability to ride the line between elegance and sexuality were probably the greatest influences for Ziegfeld. He kept her in the public eye with outrageous stories in the press, but when Held discovered her jewelry had been stolen and Ziegfeld milked it for publicity the police and press concluded Ziegfeld had stolen them himself to pay gambling debts. Anna began banking in Europe far from Ziegfeld’s grasp. Although never legally married, they shared a 13-room apartment at the Ansonia Hotel until Flo moved his favorite tempermental star Lilliane Lorraine (represented as a composite character played by Virginia Bruce) into the apartment upstairs.

The film’s third act introduces Ziegfeld’s second wife Billie Burke as played by Hollywood’s loveliest star Myrna Loy — William Powell and Myrna Loy were already a famous movie couple in The Thin Man detective series. Burke approved of this casting even though she’d originally planned to star as herself, and visited Loy on the set where they were photographed for publicity. Burke worked tirelessly to pay off Ziegfelds debts and always promoted his legacy, despite his many infidelities. The film ends with Ziegfeld imagining a glorious comeback, staging a great Follies in the sky with more showgirls and lavish production numbers than ever! Bizarrely, this idea of Ziegfeld staging a last great Follies from heaven was realized as a sequel of sorts: Ziegfeld Follies. The real ending wasn’t quite so lofty, however. While Burke toiled in Hollywood Ziegfeld held gin-soaked orgies at their Westchester home, and screwed chorus girls on his office desk during afternoon “auditions”.

In real life, as Ziegfeld aged his successes and failures seemed to grow to mythic proportions. The Follies became more successful than ever running at the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway generating profitable national tours year after year. and even as the Follies waned, he had four successful “book” musicals on Broadway, his own theater named after himself, and wielded a colossal $175,000 budgets for his reviews in a day when $25,000 budgets were the norm. Always a gambler who pushed his audience, he brought the Jewess commedian Fannie Bryce up from the Bowery, and featured Bert Williams as the first Black star in his Follies (although there would never be a Black Ziegfeld girl). His final triumph was Showboat a epic musical telling the tragic saga of interracial marriage, wayward gamblers, and drunken showgirls. It stunned audiences into silence on opening night, and Ziegfeld thought it was a failure until critics and audiences praised it as a revolution in American theater. Showboat is credited with becoming the first production to use an interracial cast, and its frank display of racism threading the story is still controversial and unsettling.