Watched: 04/01/2025
Format: TCM
Viewing: First
Directors: Robert Z. Leonard, Busby Berkeley
Increasingly lost to time is the impact Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. had on American culture of the 20th century. A showman, theatrical empresario, producer, promoter and more, Ziegfeld is most famous for his Ziegfeld Follies, a series of extravagant Broadway shows that ran from around 1907 to his death in the 1930's. Much of what we thought of as a stage full of beautiful young women that flooded musicals in the 1930's and 1940's and gave Busby Berkeley (credited here) a career was Hollywood tinkering with the shows Ziegfeld had staged, based on French revues. He managed to employ folks like Irving Berlin, WC Fields, Will Rogers and many, many more.
Had Ziegfeld not passed when he did, it's likely he would have expanded into Hollywood in a more serious manner (he was already there and died in Hollywood in 1932), bringing his sensibilities to the big screen.
He was credited with creating "The Glorification of the American Girl", both featuring and populating shows with large choruses of female performers. But he featured acts of all kinds, and shows to this day are based within the Ziegfeld Follies (see the currently running Funny Girl). He was also not afraid to push into the risque, and folks knew what they were getting. You can find all sorts of interesting photos online looking for Ziegfeld girls.
In what is a star-studded flick - the movie follows three girls/ women who enter into the Follies. Like the Schwab's Pharmacy story, Ziegfeld - never seen in this movie! And treated a bit like that Wizard Judy Garland had previously tangled with - would pluck girls out of their mundane lives by finding them behind perfume counters, working in elevators, etc... A bit of instant wish-fulfillment if you caught the right guy's eye (which is kind of a nightmare, but in an era in which women's career options were limited, and many Ziegfeld girls married well, it's not nothing).