The Great Ziegfeld


The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 American musical drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Hunt Stromberg. It stars William Powell as the theatrical impresario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld Jr., Luise Rainer as Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as Billie Burke.
The film, shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Culver City, California in the fall of 1935, is a fictionalized and sanitized tribute to Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and a cinematic adaptation of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies, with highly elaborate costumes, dances and sets. Many of the performers of the theatrical Ziegfeld Follies were cast in the film as themselves, including Fanny Brice and Harriet Hoctor, and the real Billie Burke acted as a supervisor for the film. The "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" set alone was reported to have cost US$220,000, featuring a towering rotating volute of diameter with 175 spiral steps, weighing 100 tons. The music to the film was provided by Walter Donaldson, Irving Berlin, and lyricist Harold Adamson, with choreographed scenes. The extravagant costumes were designed by Adrian, taking some 250 tailors and seamstresses six months to prepare them using of silver sequins and of white ostrich plumes. Over a thousand people were employed in the production of the film, which required 16 reels of film after the cutting.
One of the biggest successes in film in the 1930s and the pride of MGM at the time, it was acclaimed as the greatest musical biography to be made in Hollywood and still remains a standard in musical film making. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture for producer Hunt Stromberg, Best Actress for Luise Rainer, and Best Dance Direction for Seymour Felix, and was nominated for four others.
MGM made two more Ziegfeld films: Ziegfeld Girl, starring James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner, which recycled some footage from The Great Ziegfeld; and Ziegfeld Follies by Vincente Minnelli. In 1951, the studio produced a Technicolor remake of Show Boat, which Ziegfeld had presented as a stage musical.

Plot

The son of a highly respected music professor, Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld Jr. yearns to make his mark in show business. He begins by promoting Eugen Sandow, the "world's strongest man", at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, overcoming the competition of rival Jack Billings and his popular attraction, belly dancer Little Egypt, with savvy marketing.
Ziegfeld returns to his father and young Mary Lou at the Chicago Musical College, and departs to San Francisco, where he and Sandow are deemed frauds for putting on a show in which Sandow faces a lion who falls asleep as soon as it is let out of the cage. Flo travels to England on an ocean liner, where he runs into Billings again who is laughing at a newspaper article denouncing him as a fraud.
Flo discovers that Billings is on his way to sign a contract with beautiful French star Anna Held. Despite losing all his money gambling at Monte Carlo, Flo charms Anna into signing with him instead, pretending that he doesn't know Billings. Anna twice almost sends him away for his rudeness and for being broke, before revealing that she appreciates his honesty. Ziegfeld promises to give her "more publicity than she ever dreams of" and to feature her alongside America's most prominent theatrical performers.
At first, Anna's performance at the Herald Square Theatre is not a success. However, Flo manages to generate publicity by sending 20 gallons of milk to Anna every day for a fictitious milk bath beauty treatment, then refusing to pay the bill. The newspaper stories soon bring the curious to pack his theater, and Ziegfeld introduces eight new performers to back her. Audience members comment on how the milk must make her skin beautiful and the show is a major success. Flo sends Anna flowers and jewelry and a note saying "you were magnificent my wife", and she agrees to marry him, flaunting her new diamonds to her fellow performers.
However, one success is not enough for the showman. He has an idea for an entirely new kind of show featuring a bevy of blondes and brunettes, one that will "glorify" the American girl. The new show, the Ziegfeld Follies, an opulent production filled with beautiful women and highly extravagant costumes and sets, is a smash hit, and is followed by more versions of the Follies.
Ziegfeld tries to make a star out of Audrey Dane, who is plagued with alcoholism, and he lures Fanny Brice from vaudeville, showering both with lavish gifts. He gives stagehand Ray Bolger his break as well. Mary Lou, now a young woman, visits Ziegfeld, who doesn't recognize her initially, and hires her as a dancer.
The new production upsets Anna, who realizes that Flo's world does not revolve around just her, and she becomes envious of the attention he pays to Audrey. She divorces him after walking in on Flo and a drunk Audrey at the wrong moment. Audrey walks out on Flo and the show after an angry confrontation. Broke, Flo borrows money from Billings for a third time for the new show.
Flo meets the red-headed Broadway star Billie Burke and soon marries her. When she hears the news, a heartbroken Anna telephones Flo and pretends to be glad for him. Flo and Billie eventually have a daughter named Patricia.
Flo's new shows are a success, but after a while, the public's taste changes, and people begin to wonder if the times have not passed him by. After a string of negative reviews in the press, Flo overhears three men in a barber's shop saying that he'll "never produce another hit". Stung, he vows to have four hits on Broadway at the same time.
He achieves his goal, with the hits Show Boat, Rio Rita, Whoopee!, and The Three Musketeers, and invests over $1 million of his earnings in the stock market. However, the stock market crash of 1929 bankrupts him, forcing Billie to return to the stage.
Shaken by the reversal of his financial fortunes and the growing popularity of movies over live stage shows, he becomes seriously ill. Billings pays him a friendly visit, and the two men agree to become partners in a new, even grander production of The Ziegfeld Follies. But the reality is that both men are broke and Ziegfeld realizes this. In the final scene in his apartment overlooking the Ziegfeld Theatre, in a half-delirium, he recalls scenes from several of his hits, exclaiming, "I've got to have more steps, higher, higher", before dying in his chair.

Cast

Ziegfeld Girls
  • Wanda Allen
  • Lynn Bailey
  • Monica Bannister
  • Bonnie Bannon
  • Lynn Bari
  • Sheila Browning
  • Edna Callahan
  • Diane Cook
  • Pauline Craig
  • Hester Dean
  • Susan Fleming
  • Virginia Grey
  • Mary Halsey
  • Jeanne Hart
  • Patricia Havens-Monteagle
  • Marcia Healy
  • Mary Lange
  • Toni Lanier
  • Margaret Lyman
  • Frances MacInerney
  • Julie Mooney
  • Pearlie Norton
  • Carlita Orr
  • Claire Owen
  • Wanda Perry
  • Evelyn Randolph
  • Pat Ryan
  • Georgia Spence
  • Venetia Varden
  • Dolly Verner

    Production

Ziegfeld's widow, Billie Burke, was keen to pay off Ziegfeld's debts without filing for bankruptcy, and sold the rights to a biopic of him to Universal Pictures in late 1933. As a result, the film went into the pre-production phase in January 1934. In the early stages of script development, Burke was listed as coauthor with Macguire. Macguire had initially proposed the biographical film to them in the form of a "filmusical entertainment" set in a "theatrical tradition" and William Powell was cast as Ziegfeld. However, by February 1935, Macguire had fallen into disagreement with Universal over financial problems at the studio, and the entire production, including some already constructed sets and musical arrangements, was sold to MGM for US$300,000. As part of the deal however, Universal retained the services of Powell for the classic screwball comedy My Man Godfrey, which was released the same year as The Great Ziegfeld.
The film was shot at MGM Studios in Culver City, California mostly in the latter half of 1935 under a budget of US$1,500,000, produced by Hunt Stromberg. The cost exceeded US$2 million by the end of the production in early 1936, exorbitant for the period, and it was MGM's most expensive film to date after Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The principal cinematography was shot by Oliver T. Marsh, and George J. Folsey and Karl Freund were brought in to shoot the Ziegfeld Roof numbers. Ray June shot the "Melody" number and Merritt B. Gerstad is credited for the Hoctor Ballet.
In the advertising for the film, MGM boasted of the film's ostentatious nature, bragging that it was "SO BIG that only MGM could handle it", with its "countless beauties, trained lions, ponies, dogs and other animals". Busby Berkeley, who had led Warner Brothers to become the leading producer of musicals in Hollywood in the 1930s, was a major influence on the producers which had "glamorous, excessive 1930s cinematic musical numbers". The film also came at a time when producers had begun seeing the economic and cultural importance of the cinematic medium in comparison to theater. Variety notes that the film producers were likely very concerned with the presentation of the film after production was wrapped up, and that the long length of the film at 176 minutes was understandable in that they probably "wanted to preserve as much footage as possible". William S. Gray was responsible for the editing of the film. Over a thousand people were employed in the production, and The Great Ziegfeld required 16 reels of film after the cutting.
By coincidence, Universal's 1936 film version of the Ziegfeld musical "Show Boat", the most faithful of all the film versions of the stage production, was filmed at the same time as The Great Ziegfeld and released in the same year.