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Ziegfeld Girl


ZIEGFELD GIRL
During its golden years, MGM mounted some of the most lavish musicals ever produced and bragged about having "more stars than the heavens" and confirmed this with a lavish 1941 spectacle called Ziegfeld Girl, which actually turned out to be nothing like what I was expecting, but still provided first rate entertainment.

From the turn of the century until the 1930's, Florenz Ziegfeld was an enigmatic Broadway producer who reinvented the New York theater scene with his lavish musical revues that were all based on one primary theme: the glorification of woman as a creature to be worshiped and adored. And because of this, it was the dream of every female show business hopeful to become a Ziegfeld girl, some of whom would actually establish careers after the Ziegfeld Follies, most notably Fanny Brice. This film is a musical melodrama about three young women who become Ziegfeld girls and how this once-in-a-life time show business break altered their lives permanently.

Sheila (Lana Turner) is an ambitious elevator operator from Brooklyn whose head is turned by show business success and finds herself addicted to money, baubles, and booze, which finds her leaving her truck driver boyfriend (James Stewart) in the dust and having her head turned by a slick and wealthy attorney (Ian Hunter); Susan (Judy Garland) is a talented singer who does a vaudeville act with her father (Charles Winninger) but is wracked with guilt when the follies comes calling but doesn't want her father; Sandra (Hedy Lamarr) is the exotic beauty married to a classical violinist (Phillip Dorn) who is having trouble supporting his wife, who is immediately scooped up by the follies, even though Sandra thinks being a Ziegfeld girl is silly nonsense but cannot say no to the money and though still in love with her husband, finds herself attracted to the show's handsome tenor (Tony Martin).

If you're looking for a rehash of Singin in the Rain or The Band Wagon here, you've come to the wrong movie. MGM was a studio that had always displayed a penchant for melodrama as well as musicals and they combined both genres pretty smoothly here, thanks to a solid screenplay by Marguerite Roberts and Sonya Levien that provides some surprisingly well-rounded characters in a well-balanced story that has just the right melodramatic touches and every time the story starts to get a little soapy, we are thrown an elaborate musical number accentuated by stunning costumes and classic Busby Berkeley staging, all under the skillfull directorial hand of Robert Z. Leonard, who respects this melding of separate genres and makes it work.

The cast from MGM's stable of stars totally works...Garland's role is slightly thankless, but her interest in being part of this project should have been of no surprise to anyone who really knew her because one of Garland's biggest issues in her life was to be considered to be pretty and no one was considered more pretty than a Ziegfeld girl. Garland often spoke of wanting to look like Lana Turner and now she was doing scenes with her.
Stewart, fresh off his Oscar win for The Philadelphia Story, brings a lot more to his role than the script provides and few actresses were adored by the camera the way Lamarr was, but the real surprise for me here was Lana Turner, yes, Lana Turner, an actress who usually puts me to sleep. really lights up the screen here in the flashiest role in the film and I have to say that I have never enjoyed Turner onscreen more, and that includes Imitation of Life and Peyton Place.

Musical highlights include Garland's "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", Martin's dreamy rendition of "You Stepped out of a Dream" "Carribean Love Song", "Minnie from Trinidad", and "Mr. Gallagher". The film loses half a bag of popcorn for being in black and white (this lavish production just screamed for color), but lovers of classic cinema will be in heaven here.