The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

The Great Ziegfeld won the award for Best Picture of 1936, and it's pretty typical of the kind of musicals that were being made at the time. There are some very elaborate sequences here, with hundreds of people singing and dancing and performing, but much of the movie (too much of it) is really about the life of theater impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, played by William Powell. When the movie showcases some of his more famous shows and performers, it soars. When it deals with the man's personal life, it really drags. The Great Ziegfeld clocks in at almost three hours long, and by the end of it, you'll feel like you have lived his entire life with him.

Much of the early part of the film deals with Ziegfeld's attempts to sign Anna Held, a singer who had achieved fame in Europe. He and a rival talent agent (played by Frank Morgan, better known as the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz) want to bring her to the United States and make her a star. Ziegfeld wins, of course, and not only brings Held to America but falls in love with and marries her. Held is played by Luise Rainer in the first of her back-to-back Best Actress roles. I cannot imagine how she won. She's competent, certainly, but she plays the part with such a thick accent that I had to keep rewinding to figure out what she was saying. Subtitles might have helped enormously. I know she is perhaps best known for her telephone call to Florenz congratulating him on his new marriage, but she doesn't bring anything to that scene or to the part that almost any actress couldn't have brought. One of the great puzzles of Academy history continues.

The latter part of the film is mostly concerned with Ziegfeld's financial ups and downs. He would make lots of money on a show and then spend it all putting on another, more expensive one. He never seemed to save any money; if he had it, he spent it on something. While there is a sense of just how dire his circumstances became during the depression, the film follows true MGM fashion in showing people still dressing as immaculately and stylishly as ever, despite their lack of money. This part of the movie also covers Ziegfield's marriage to another of his stars, Billie Burke, played by Myrna Loy. (As an aside, Burke herself was also in The Wizard of Oz; she's Glinda the Good Witch.) Loy and Powell have an obvious chemistry, which would suit them well throughout the Thin Man movies and their other collaborations.

You would probably enjoy this film more if you fast forwarded through the "human interaction" to the production numbers. "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" is the most remarkable, with its turning staircase and various dance numbers and dozens of beautiful showgirls. I also like Ray Bolger (another Wizard of Oz veteran, hmm...) and his work in "She's a Follies Girl." That sequence does more with strings and balloons than you would think imaginable, and there's a segmented moving set that has to be seen to be believed. I don't think a description would do it justice.

And, finally, you should see the sequences with Fannie Brice, a real Ziegfeld star. She sings three numbers here (well, parts of three numbers), including her signature song "My Man." She's funny and talented and quite different from the way Barbra Streisand portrays her in Funny Girl or Funny Lady. My favorite line in the film is when Ziegfeld tries to re-dress her as a street urchin instead of a glamorous lady for one of her numbers. Fannie's crack: "Even in burlesque, I was middle class."