Ziegfeld Follies (film)

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This article is about the film. For the Ziegfeld Follies Broadway shows, see Ziegfeld Follies.
Ziegfeld Follies

Ziegfeld Follies movie poster
Directed by Roy Del Ruth and Vincente Minnelli
Produced by Arthur Freed
Starring Fred Astaire
Lucille Ball
Lucille Bremer
Fanny Brice
Judy Garland
Gene Kelly
Distributed by MGM
Release date(s) February 18, 1946 (U.S. release)
Running time 110 min.
Language English
IMDb profile

Ziegfeld Follies (MGM) is a 1946 Hollywood musical comedy film, directed by Roy Del Ruth and Vincente Minnelli, starring many of MGM leading talents, including Fred Astaire, Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Victor Moore, William Powell, Red Skelton , and Esther Williams. It also featured Fanny Brice, the only cast member to have actually starred in the original Ziegfeld Follies.

Producer Arthur Freed wanted to create a film along the lines of the Ziegfeld Follies Broadway shows and so the film is composed of a sequence of unrelated lavish musical numbers and comedy sketches. Although produced in 1944-45, it was released in 1946, to considerable critical and box-office success.

[edit] Key songs/dance routines

Dance director was Robert Alton, Astaire's second-most-frequent choreographic collaborator after Hermes Pan. All of Astaire's numbers were directed by Vincente Minnelli.

  • Here's To The Girls/Bring On The Wonderful Men: by Roger Edens and Arthur Freed. Sung by Astaire with a short solo dance by Cyd Charisse, followed by Lucille Ball cracking a whip over eight chorus-girl panthers.
  • This Heart Of Mine: Classic standard by Harry Warren and Arthur Freed and written specially for Astaire who sings it to Bremer and then leads her in a superb, opulent and extravagantly romantic dance of seduction and power-play. The choreography expertly integrates rotating floors, concealed treadmills and swirling dance motifs.
  • Love: Another standard, this time by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, magnificently sung by Lena Horne in an unfortunate, racially stereotyped setting.
  • Limehouse Blues: Conceived as a "dramatic pantomime" with Astaire as a proud but poverty-stricken Chinese labourer whose infatuation with the unattainable Bremer leads to tragedy. The atmospherically shot story serves as bookends for a rather unsatisfactory dream ballet inspired by Chinese dance motifs.
  • The Great Lady Has An Interview: Written by Kay Thompson originally for Greer Garson (she turned it down). Judy Garland spoofs a Broadway leading lady (a la Tallulah Bankhead or Gertrude Lawrence) giving an interview to dancing reporters about "her next picture": a bio-pic of Madame Cremantante (the "inventor of the safety pin"). Originally to be directed by Garland's friend Charles Walters, Vincente Minnelli ended up directing the sequence (the two were dating at the time), and Walters was reassigned as choreographer.
  • The Babbitt And The Bromide: Astaire and Kelly team up in a now-classic comedy song and dance challenge in three sections, to music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. All choreography was by Astaire (third section) and Kelly (sections one and two). In spite of efforts by Freed and Minnelli, the two would not partner again on film until That's Entertainment, Part II in 1976.
  • There's Beauty Everywhere: Originally filmed as a balletic finale with tenor James Melton singing and Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Lucille Bremer dancing in a melange of soap bubbles. But when the bubble machine malfunctioned (leaving only a fragment of the number filmed) and the formula flowed into the hallways of the soundstage, the number had to be restaged. Kathryn Grayson replaced Melton and Astaire and Bremer were cut out altogether. Segments of the "bubble dance" with Charisse remain in the final film.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

John Mueller: Astaire Dancing - The Musical Films of Fred Astaire, Knopf 1985, ISBN 0-394-51654-0

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