The Great Ziegfeld

The 1936 Best Picture Oscar winner was The Great Ziegfeld, a lavish, three-hour-long musical spectacle about the life of the theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. It was an MGM film directed by Robert Z. Leonard, and was a smash hit at the box office. The win was somewhat controversial, though, as even then there were negative opinions about the film.

To be fair, this film does not date well. It belongs to a different era, much like Ziegfeld himself. It's all about excess, with huge sets, garish costumes, and lots of showgirls. It's length is also inhuman for a picture of this type, and I'll admit I watched it in two different stretches.

However, I didn't hate it. I think most of the credit for that has to go to William Powell as Ziegfeld. Powell was at the top of his form in the mid-thirties, and in 1936 alone starred in a Thin Man sequel, My Man Godfrey, and Libeled Lady. He played Ziegfeld as a smooth operator, who got his start in the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as the producer of a sideshow attraction, Sandow, the world's strongest man. He was engaged in a rivalry and friendship with Frank Morgan (later the Wizard of Oz), and Ziegfeld always won, managing to snatch Morgan's dates, his valet, and his talent.

This is all a lot of fun. Ziegfeld was also a man who lived on the margin, frequently broke but almost always with another card up his sleeve. When he stole French singer Anna Held out from under Morgan's nose, he didn't have any money to pay her, but smooth-talked her into signing with him. Later, she would become his wife. Held was played by Luise Rainer, who would win the Oscar for her performance. Today's audiences would probably find her melodramatic excesses tedious, but she probably won the award for a scene in which she calls Ziegfeld on the phone to congratulate him on his new marriage to his second wife, Billie Burke. As she's congratulating him she's weeping for her loss, and it is said that audiences cried along with her.

Burke was played by Powell's Thin Man partner Myrna Loy, and it was with Burke's permission that the film was made (Burke herself was best known as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz). Ziegfeld was wiped out by the stock market crash of '29 and died shortly thereafter. Also playing themselves in the film are Ray Bolger (another Oz connection), Will Rogers and Fannie Brice, who were all performers in Ziegfeld's Follies.