Goldwyn Follies (1938)

Ziegfeld’s Follies has a little bit of everything and something for everyone (except plot). The good thing about a follies is that they showcase a variety of talent, each to their best, and then move along before a singer has to dance or a dancer has to act…. Best of all, a pretty girl can just stand there and be beautiful while elaborate scenery and costume swirl around her like an animated tableau.

When Ziegfeld lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929, he closed a successful run of Eddie Cantor’s Whoopie and sold it to Samuel Goldwyn for much needed cash. Ziegfeld’s elaborate staging was left intact and he got producer credit, making everyone happy and turning a profit. Several more Cantor vehicles would be passed from Ziegfeld to Goldwyn, Broadway to Hollywood, so after Ziegfeld’s death Goldwyn had as much right as anyone to try creating his own Follies.

Looking for what he called “Class”, Goldwyn enticed an exciting couple who’d made their fame on the London Stage in On Your Toes: the exotic Vera Zorina of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and her soon-to-be husband choreographer George Balanchine. Zorina was born in Berlin, a ballet prodigy by the age of 4, but picked the Slavic sounding name out of a list when she joined Ballet Russe and learned to speak Russian to seem more exotic. She couldn’t really act and had no experience in comedy, not much of a sunny Hollywood beauty either. Her real talents were on the stage as a dancer where her athletic body and a sort of aloof intensity said everything.

In Goldwyn Follies, Zorina stars as Olga an exotic diva (what a stretch). she sums up her motivation for one love scene as “I love him, I love myself. I got it.” Somewhere between Greta Garbo and Pola Negri her persona scares most of the production crew including producer Adolphe Menjou who fears her many demands might be overture to love. “You never take me out to dinner!” she whines. “And I am SOO hungry!” In between dance numbers she berates co-star Phil Baker for being in her scene, kisses all three of the Ritz Brothers by dipping them backwards in her arms so she’s on top, and falls madly in love with Charlie McCarthy the wooden alter-ego of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

But the showpieces of the film are the two dance numbers staged and choreographed by Balanchine. The first is an update of Romeo and Juliet where ballerinas in tutus fence with tap dancers on the streets of Verona, and the star-crossed lovers finally get a happy ending when their families reconcile and everyone dances together happily ever after (!). In the second piece Zorina emerges from beneath a pool as a golden water nymph and is enticed to perform for the entertainment of fearful but curious admirers. The ballet is modern. Mythic. Fantastic. Exquisite…. As if Zeus has disapproved of his nymph’s playmates, a great wind storm sweeps away the mortals and Zorina sadly returns to her pond.

This ballet inspired the Dance of the Hours sequence in Disney’s Fantasia where Hyacinth the Hippo emerges from a similar pond, before a corps of elephants is blown away on the wind.