Biopic Blogathon: "The Great Ziegfeld"

 

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. 

 

 

Nothing Left to Say: Silence in the Communication Age

            I have always been an advocate of writing as therapy, or at least self-help. I maintain that sorting thoughts and feelings out on paper (or a screen, if you’re a youngster) helps to clarify and organize. I can trace my history of romance through the years by looking through poems and have somehow reached the age where I can no longer recall the subject of some of them (whew!). This method of sorting doesn’t necessarily produce good poems, but it can help to create a functional level of sanity. 

            Lately though, I seem to have less and less need to express my confusion through poetry. I won’t claim a more solid sanity. As we age, the worries do change, and never entirely leave us. Grief becomes an everyday companion, and drops in at the most inappropriate times. The run-up to the holidays this winter was particularly stressful for me, and for no particular reason. We spent a quiet day at home, watching TV and making Duck A La Orange, ultimately following Julia Child’s recipe after viewing a thousand YouTube videos. My Beloved’s children are grown, and having been raised without Christmas for the most part have no great expectations. My niece and nephews are off on their own lives, too. The two little ones in our lives are far, and not yet of the age of anticipation. 

            Yet I found myself mourning Christmases of yore, the ones that seem to glow in MGM Technicolor perfection. I think I know now what my parents were thinking as they went through the Santa Claus motions each year, missing those no longer with us, the slings and arrows too of their own childhoods. We laughed, though. We laughed a lot, and I try to keep laughing, despite all the changes. Those Christmases were not perfect, but they were mine, and they are gone forever. 

            My house is in chaos lately. I have recommitted to completing the million little craft projects I’ve begun before starting any new ones. In one corner are the components of a new pill box fashioned from an Altoids container, in another a recently started baby blanket for an infant due in February. There is always the tablecloth my great-grandmother Harriet made long ago, carefully folded and zipped into a plastic cover. It needs repair, and I’ve rolled that project around my brain for years now. I’ve finally decided on a plan of attack, and hope to have this soft white monkey gone from my list of obligations soon. 

            Poems still happen. Even when I think I might not be writing at all, my files indicate otherwise. I just finished rereading the definitive bio of Anna Held, and started one about Lillian Lorraine, her successor. Work goes on in my head about all the long-term projects. I haven’t touched the memoir in months. I am very anxious to shape that material into something respectable. On the other hand, I’m not too keen on leaping into the mess that was my life in the ‘80s. A sort of aftershock takes hold, and I always need to step back and breath after a while. 

            But the desire to express my feelings about the here and now is dormant as the tiger lilies in our yard. I’ve even made conscious decisions about avoiding subjects in poems, something I’ve rarely done before. I fear that the rise of that editorial voice is a bad sign, artistically. Yet I have neither the inclination or ego to pursue a well-structured poetry career at this point. If I passed away tomorrow, there’s enough of me out there to float around the inter-ethers for a few years. Maybe I’m gathering up steam for another grand project I’ve yet to conceive. In any case, winter’s the time for this kind of stuff. Crochet, craft, cooking have all taken precedence. The pen will be there if I need it. 

Honorable Mentions- Two More ‘Follies’ Poems

After all but completing a second chapter in my ongoing nonfiction project (more on that later, surely), I’ve returned my attention to my Ziegfeld Follies poems. I’ll be doing a presentation of what I have so far at the Omega Institute on the evening of August 20^th. Hopefully, I’ll also have a Power Point presentation, and brief bios for each of the subjects of the poems. I know it’s been a while, so some memories might need a bit of refreshing (ahem).

My focus with this project has been the 1919 edition of the Follies, although for reasons of interest and coherence, the poems have strayed a bit here and there. By 1919, Anna Held, Ziegfeld’s first wife and part of the inspiration for the Follies in the first place, had already passed. Yet, because she is such an integral part of Ziegfeld’s personal and professional life, I’ve included a couple of poems about her and expect to add more. Olive Thomas, by 1919, had long before left Ziegfeld’s show, and side, to become a silent film star, but her enduring presence at the New Amsterdam Theater in the form of a ghost (even to this day) means that a poem or two is required about her as well.

Two Ziegfeld stars were missing from the 1919 edition, otherwise considered the pinnacle of the series. Humorist Will Rogers had also been lured out West to try his luck in films. Silent though they were, Rogers made his presence felt on the big screen, supplementing his appearances eventually with a widely read newspaper column and an easy transition into talkies. If not for his sudden death in 1935, who knows what other razor-sharp insights Rogers might have gifted us with, especially in the War years.

In August of 1919, Fanny Brice gave birth to her first child, a daughter. Obviously this put her out of work for that season, but knowing Brice’s position as a major star in the Ziegfeld universe, this must have been a frustration for both the comedienne and the producer. I knew she and her then-husband Nick Arnstein owned a home on Long Island during those years. I made the leap of assuming that it had been located on the North Shore, where many of the wealthy lived in those days. Thank goodness for Google and my ability to follow a thread! I was even able to obtain a street address, as well as some modern-day photos of the interior and exterior. It is still a private home, well kept and renovated with an eye towards maintains its Victorian charm.

I imagined two scenarios, one of Ziegfeld showing off his new theater to Rogers on a trip back East, and Brice rehearsing on her patio overlooking the Long Island Sound. Both seemed plausible to me, and yet I took a few liberties. I looked up the, and concluded that Rogers certainly could have seen the Ziegfeld Theater close to its opening date. As well, Brice’s home seems to be near enough to the water for her to smell it on a September breeze.

I’ve been a Ziegfeld and vaudeville buff for many years now, but for a while I’d stalled on doing anything creative with the knowledge I’d accumulated. So deep is my awe and respect for these theatrical pioneers that I hesitated, afraid to get the facts wrong, wary of the presumptive tone that dominates so many biographies. Finally, without cracking another book, I leaped in, starting with the stories most repeated. I probably began with Thomas at the New Amsterdam, a hard one to get wrong, but steering clear of the condescending word stuffing that I found in a recent fictionalized account of her life. I’ve got twenty-five pages or so of poems now, and my next step is to comb through the work, making better poetry out of it, and tweaking what facts I can.

I’m not sure how finished any of the poems will be by the time my evening rolls around, but I’ll do my best. My goal is to honor the legend, perpetuate the memories of these remarkable characters, all the while trying to explore their humanity. For many years there was a gap for me. They were old photos, almost always black and white, seemingly from another planet and not just another era. Lately I’ve broken through. This might be where art, the art I can live with, begins.