The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 lavish biographical musical drama starring William Powell as legendary Broadway impressario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld Jr. The film follows his rise from a carnival promoter to the creator of the extravagant Ziegfeld Follies, highlighting his theatrical triumphs, financial extremes, and romances with stars like Anna Held and Billie Burke.
Shot at M-G-M studios in Culver City, California in the fall of 1935, the film is a fictionalized and sanitized tribute to Ziegfeld and a cinematic adaptation of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies, with highly elaborate costumes, dances and sets. Many of the performers of the theatrical Ziegfeld Follies were cast in the film as themselves, including Fanny Brice and Harriet Hoctor, and the real Billie Burke acted as a supervisor for the film. One of the biggest successes in film in the 1930s and the pride of MGM at the time, it was acclaimed as the greatest musical biography to be made in Hollywood and still remains a standard in musical film making. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture for producer Hunt Stromberg, Best Actress for Luise Rainer, and Best Dance Direction for Seymour Felix, and was nominated for four others.
The soundtrack is massive: 42 songs and instrumentals from "Jingle Bells" to "Ol' Man River", "Johann Strauss' Tales of the Vienna Woods to "Makin' Whoopee" and everything in between. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
[2 hr 57 min]