In a radical departure from my usual method, I did a tremendous amount of research for GHOST LIGHT, my collection of poems inspired by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919. I’ve collected a vast number of books on the Follies, including autobiographies by Ziegfeld’s wife Billie Burke, daughter Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson, and the last Ziegfeld “Girl” Doris Eaton Travis. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. passed away in 1932, and the bulk of his legacy was on the stage, ephemeral and lost to future generations. There were, however, a few movies made while many who’d seen a Follies in person were still here to share their memories.
Released just four years after his death, The Great Ziegfeld, (1936) was an early MGM extravaganza purporting to tell the story of Ziegfeld himself, his rise from humble beginnings in Chicago to Broadway’s greatest showman. Burke was left with a great deal of debt after Ziegfeld died, and part of her efforts to pay them off included selling the rights to his life story. Ever the keeper of the flame, she also served as a “technical consultant” on the film, which may account for some of the alterations and inaccuracies throughout.
The script, written by Ziegfeld veteran William Anthony McGuire, transforms Ziegfeld’s life itself into a grand theatrical production. We first meet Flo at the great Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, carnival barker extraordinaire. We also meet his lifelong frenemy, “Billings,” played with grace and humor by Frank Morgan. Billings is an amalgamation of several rivals Flo encountered throughout his career, a good-natured foil who softens over the years, coming around to recognizing Flo’s gift for spectacular theater, if not sound economics. Billings secures loans for Flo on several occasions, standing in for the many financial backers needed to keep the Follies afloat. Billings is a white-washed version of the competition, and so be it. The movie is about Flo, and to bring in too many professional conflicts would make an already complicated life even more so.
An incurable philanderer during his lifetime, Flo is amusingly portrayed in the film as a hopeless romantic. He falls deeply in love with cabaret star Anna Held after they meet in London, and brings her to New York. Luis Rainer’s portrayal of Anna won her the first of two back-to-back Best Actress Oscars, but the flighty, wounded mademoiselle we meet here is, I suspect, far from the real Anna Held’s character. Born in Poland of Jewish parents, Held’s family immigrated to Paris where she got her start in Jewish theater. Her relationship with Flo was as much about business as pleasure. The famous phone call after Anna discovers Flo’s marriage to Billie Burke makes for great drama, but Held did not die of a broken heart. It was multiple myeloma, a blood disease almost as untreatable now as then.
Billie Burke had been the toast of both the London and New York stages for almost twenty years when she met Flo at a New Year’s Eve party (Playwright Somerset Maugham was her escort that night, by the way, and not the ever-present Billings). Their romance did indeed progress in obscure places such as Grant’s Tomb. Burke’s then-producer Charles Frohman was vehemently opposed to the union. The two still managed to sneak off between a matinee and an evening show to marry in New Jersey in 1914, where the officiate confused their identities, calling Flo “Billie,” and vice versa. This is the kind of stuff you can’t make up, but somehow is often omitted from a movie.
Burke was, by her own account in a couple of delightful autobiographies, a passionate, mercurial partner who kept Flo on his toes as much as any of his other “leading ladies.” Myrna Loy’s portrayal of her in The Great Ziegfeld seems rather lackluster by comparison, but we forget that, besides being a consultant, Burke’s star was still rising in the film world. She and the producers must have realized that Ziegfeld was the real star here, and as portrayed by William Powell, would charm the crowds and the ticket buyers her coffers sorely needed. Burke never appeared in his Follies, but he produced several dramas for her on Broadway, none of which was successful. Notoriously, Dorothy Parker’s negative review of Caesar’s Wife, led to Mrs. Parker’s dismissal from Vanity Fair’s staff in 1919.
The Great Ziegfeld was the fourth pairing of William Powell and Myna Loy, whose most memorable films together remain the Thin Man series. With Burke so closely involved with the production, there was surely a strong desire on her part to paint a rosy picture of her and Flo’s courtship and marriage. However, the fact that Flo’s reputation regarding women was so well known that the character of “Audrey Dane” was included at all, a clear amalgamation of several of Flo’s most notorious dalliances, belies that portrait of a well-meaning but easily misled rascal. It’s notable that Marilyn Miller, portrayed here as “Sally Manners,” is seen as a fresh-faced juvenile on the brink of success. Miller, too, had a passionate relationship with Ziegfeld, and at the time of production was very much alive. A threat of lawsuit, and the studio’s lowball salary offer, led to her part being greatly diminished. She passed away in April of 1936, at the young age of 37.
Berkeley Crest, the home Burke opened up to Ziegfeld after their marriage, was anything but serene. It became a menagerie of animals, actors, and other maddening souls. They clung to the property to the bitter end, Flo leaving only after he was too ill and bankrupt to manage it on his own. Billie had already started working steadily in motion pictures on the West Coast, and was soon to establish the character of the ditsy redheaded matron that, aside from Glinda the Good Witch, she is best remembered for. Flo died in a hospital in Los Angeles, not as the film portrays in a seedy apartment overlooking Broadway, with the ever-faithful Sidney the only remaining vestige of his past glory.
The movie is long and extravagant, and in that way much like one of Ziegfeld’s legendary Follies. It is a film of its time however, an overblown fable with historical inaccuracies woven in to appease all sides. Even its most famous production number, “A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody,” a giant, spinning wedding cake of showgirls and satin, is a far cry from the song’s original staging in that 1919 Follies. It was originally an understated affair, with tenor John Steel singing each verse, each recalling a different classical composer, as one by one a handful of Ziegfeld Girls crossed the stage. The Follies was about variety and texture, a true review where comedy, music, and beauty were balanced to create a memorable event each night. Perhaps the greatest irony is that the film is in black and white, despite all the money spent on its creation. This above all is perhaps the greatest flaw in a purported homage to the life and glorious creations of a true Broadway artist.
