1936: The Great Ziegfeld (2024)

Jack Billings: Florenz Ziegfeld’s up one day and down the next. If he got $10,000 tomorrow, he’d spend it on the girl he happened to like tomorrow night. You wouldn’t want to waste your time meeting a fellow like that.

Little Egypt: Oh, not if I met him on the right night. – The Great Ziegfeld

I know that the “job” I have assigned myself in writing this blog is not particularly hard (watch movie, write about movie, return movie to Netflix), but tackling a three hour musical bio-pic about an early twentieth century Broadway producer is rather daunting. That said, I found The Great Ziegfeld, the 1936 Best Picture, to be an exciting and often delightful film in a “classic Hollywood” sort of way. The biography presented here is much sanitized from what I imagine Florenz Ziegfeld’s (yes that was his real name!) life must have actually been like, but there’s a lot to enjoy here from some classic 1930s extravagant musical productions to a charming performance by William Powell as the title character.

The story starts at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair when young promoter Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., is about to lose his shirt trying to promote a strongman at the fair’s midway. Ziegfeld turns his fortunes around when he hits on the idea of selling the strongman’s sexuality to the audience, letting woman touch the big man’s muscles (his arm muscles you pervs!) in order to draw a crowd. Soon Ziegfeld and his muscleman are touring the country until a rigged fight between the strongman and a lion drives Ziegfeld into the first of his many bouts of bankruptcy.

Ziegfeld next travels to Europe, where he steals French singing sensation Anna Held (Best Actress winner Luise Rainer) from under the nose of his rival promoter, Jack Billings (Anthony Daniels). When Held’s singing alone doesn’t draw a crowd, Ziegfeld invents the modern image of celebrity-addicted diva by claiming Held bathes in gallons of milk daily (he even orders the milk and refuses to pay the bill to get headlines). The two fall in love and are married. Ever restless, Ziegfeld then creates the renowned Ziegfeld Follies, a revue show of various musical numbers and talent acts, that becomes his most successful legacy. Along the way, Held catches Ziggy making eyes to another singing star, the Lindsay Lohan-esque Audrey Dane, and leaves him. Ziegfeld remarries, this time to famous actress, Billie Burke (frequent Powell love interest Myrna Loy). Ziegfeld makes and loses several fortunes before the Great Depression finally wipes his out one time too many. Planning a comeback despite the odds, Ziegfeld dies a classic overly-dramatic death: showgirls dancing in his head while he mutters “Make the stairs higher” his constant mantra throughout the film (it refers to his concern that the show be visible and enjoyable to even the people in the cheap seats.)

There is a lot I liked about this movie. The Ziegfeld character is always happy and likeable. I liked the young Ziegfeld’s antics as he conned and lies his way to success (in one notable scene, when his strongman is losing publicity to a planned lion vs. bear fight, he starts lodging complaints with the SPCA!). His underhanded methods get whitewashed and outright forgotten as the movie progresses (he does very little scheming in the second half), which is too bad. A movie built entirely around a huckster can be a lot of fun. The musical productions are also very good, particularly the nearly nine minute “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” a continuous tracking shot that follows the music and dancers up a towering staircase (the scene cost two hundred thousand dollars to shoot, much more than Ziegfeld’s actual productions).

The movie is not without its flaws. As noted, a lot of Ziegfeld’s darker side is only hinted at. His womanizing is reduced to a misunderstanding with a drunken Dane and a lot of the seedy underbelly of the entertainment world is outright ignored (there’s no crushing poverty or casting couches to be found here). I think a remake of the film using today’s eyes and a more honest account of Ziegfeld’s life could be pretty enjoyable. This modernized account could also tackle the uncomfortable blackface performances. The movie’s pacing is a little bizarre. Despite being a musical, there are no music production sequences until nearly an hour in the film and probably 80 percent of the musical sequences take place in the second hour. (This is not one of those musicals where characters break out in song in everyday life. The musical numbers are all part of theater performances within the movie.)

That’s Fanny Brice, you disrespectful punks

Finally the movie has a lot of cameos from people who were probably big names in 1936 but are kind of obscure today. I imagine movie goers must have been like “Holy Shit! That’s Fanny Brice!” when the musical comedienne appears on screen but today’s audience (except for Barbara Streisand aficionados) are probably more likely to ask “Who the hell is Fanny Brice?”

I don’t imagine everyone watching today would enjoy or could tolerate The Great Ziegfeld, but personally this movie exceeded my expectations and in my mind ended up being a pretty good biography.

This entry was posted on November 25, 2012 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags 1930s.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1936: The Great Ziegfeld (2024)
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