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.
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