On Sunday and Monday I watched the 3 hour marathon that is the 1936 film
The Great Ziegfeld. I taped this one off TCM a few days ago as I knew it co-starred William Powell and Myrna Loy, and I was pretty keen to see more of both now that I'm out of
Thin Man films. I was also actually very curious about the historical figure Florenz Ziegfeld who brought into being the
Ziegfeld Follies and pioneered much of the modern showmanship of American big theater and the now lost art of "glorifying the American girl".
Top that off with some famously complicated technical numbers, and what wasn't there to want to see?
Well,again, the movie is three hours.
That doesn't mean it doesn't cruise along at a good clip, but, you know, block off three hours of your life for an absolutely stunning visual treat, the kind they quit making around the late 1950's.
One of the great lost commodities of the early 20th Century, a phrase that probably rings familiar but you aren't sure why, is Ziegfeld Girl. Lifting his idea from Paris revues, Florenz Ziegfeld filled his shows with dozens of young women to dance and sing in a fashion that would be imitated in Hollywood musicals for years in huge chorus productions that, today, I suppose, is mostly associated with Busby Berkeley films.
What's amazing is how many names were once Ziegfeld girls, including Barbara Stanwyck, Norma Shearer, Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, Louise Brooks and countless more.
The movie spanned Ziegfeld's adult life, from carnival barker at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to his death in the early 1930's. The movie bills itself as tracking the "romances" of Ziegfeld, and it does, at that, politely skirting around any shenanigans. Less politely poking fun at is mismanagement of money. Powell is actually pretty great, and if you've got the time to kill, it's not a bad way to spend your time.