Directed by Vincente Minelli, “Ziegfeld Follies” gives audiences a taste of what the original “Ziegfeld Follies” were like. You get to see Fanny Brice as a comedian and not a singer, but the best segment is at the end, “The Babbit and the Bromide” which pairs Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly together to the music of George and Ira Gershwin. For many, this film will be like a nostalgic slice of stage and cinematic history but that slice includes blackface (stop-motion puppet) and yellowface.
By 1945, the theatrical revue called the Ziegfeld Follies were mostly over. The original run was 1907 to 1931. The Follies did come back in 1934, 1936 and 1943 and even 1957. But Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. would be dead (22 July 1932). The Chicago-born Ziegfeld was inspired by the Follies Bergère in Paris. The film takes the audience up into the clouds, past two residences. The first resembles the Globe Theatre and has the nameplate “Shakespeare.” The second resembles a big top circus and the nameplate identifies it as the resting place of P.T. Barnum. Then we get to a Broadway theater, the home of Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell, 1892-1984). Addressing the audience, Ziegfeld shows the audience ornately framed dioramas which contain dolls resembling the stars he worked with in his Follies, saying:
“Toys. Children play with the dreams of tomorrow and old men play with memories of yesterday.”
The camera draws in on the crudely modeled dolls as we return to the Broadway of 1907, where with “no taxes, no bills and no competitors,” we see opening night portrayed with stop-motion animation. All of New York’s rich and famous (the hoi polloi) are there, including “Mrs. Astor in her beautiful carriage with her famous horse.” This is an old phrase meaning to be a flashy dresser. At the time, Mrs. Astor’s horse was more famous than Ziegfeld, he explains.
Ziegfeld also mentions Diamond Jim Brady (1856-1917), who has an attractive young lady with him in a car. This is likely actress/operetta singer Lillian Russell
- Lillian Russell (1861-1922)
- Lillian Russell (1860-1922) Revisited: The Amazing Life Of A “Scandalous” Operetta Diva
There’s a high-kicking, scantily clad line of “Anna Held hour glass girls” which in no way tells us the story of Anna Held (1873-1918) who was a Polish-born entertainer. Other people mentioned include actress/dancer Marilyn Miller (1898-1936), Fanny Brice (1891-1951), humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) and Eddie Cantor (1892-1964). There are two stop-motion animation segments that have not aged well.
- Fanny Brice: “I’m an Indian” performed with Brice in a stereotypical Native American fringed dress.
- Eddie Cantor: “If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie)” performed in blackface.
While the film claims, “The world will never forget the Ziegfeld Follies” that might not be true today. In the film, we return to live-action as Ziegfeld begins writing his final show, noting that his friend Fred Astaire would have nice things to say about him. From there, the film moves into Ziegfeld’s Follies.
Fred Astaire says:
What can I say about Ziegfeld? Well, I can only tell you that as long as there’s a dance, a song, a musical show, and it’s good, somewhere around or in it is Ziegfeld. He never cared so much about villains, plots, stories. The follies never had a story. The Ziegfeld Follies was itself a story of an era. If it was gay, bright, beautifulThat’s how Ziggy wanted it. Oh, I almost forgot. The girls. Ziggy was a specialist at glorifying girls. That’s one of the most important things about the Follies.
Astaire then sings, “Here’s to the Girls” (by Roger Edens and Arthur Freed) and does a short solo dance paired with Cyd Charisse (1922-2008) with girls in silver heels and pink feathered headwear dance in various formation including a carousel with women seated on real white horses. You’ll also get to see a very serious Lucille Ball cracking a whip to tame eight chorus girls dressed as panthers. Virginia O’Brien (1919-2001) spoofs the pink-feathered dancers singing, “Bring on Those Wonderful Men.” Among those men, she mentions:
- Van Johnson (1916-2008)
- Fred MacMurray (1908-1991)
- Mischa Auer (1905-1967)
- (Clark) Gable (1901-1960)
- (Robert) Taylor (1911-1969)
Skits
In “Number Please,” Keenan Wynn (1916-1986) portrays a man using a public telephone (Plaza 5-5597 ) trying to call someone, but having problems getting a connection through the various unseen operators.
“Pay the Two Dollars” was a skit originally created by Willie and Eugene Howard for “George White’s Scandals of 1931” about a man who is arrested for spitting on the floor in the subway car and although he wants to pay the fine of $2, his lawyer friend insists that they can challenge and win the case. Originally the Howards portrayed the two people. Willie (1883-1949) and Eugene (1880-1965) were in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. Eugene retired in 1940. Here the defendant is played by Victor Moore (1876-1962) and the attorney is played by Edward Arnold (1890- 1956). Arnold had played Diamond Jim Brady in the 1940 film “Lillian Russell” and in the 1935 film “Diamond Jim.” He was also Juror #10 in “Twelve Angry Men” (1954).
Red Skelton plays J. Newton Numbskull in “When Television Comes,” advertising Guzzler’s Gin as “a nice smooth drink” but it’s hardly that. People familiar with older TV and radio programs will recognize Skelton (1913-1997) as the host of a national TV and radio shows between 1937 and 1971, notably “The Red Skelton Show.”
In this film, Fanny Brice doesn’t sing, but she does perform in the skit “The Sweepstakes Ticket” with Hume Cronyn (1911-2003) playing her husband and William Frawley (1887-1966), playing their landlord. Because rent was due, the husband handed over the sweepstakes ticket to make up for the shortfall, but the wife learns this was the winning ticket worth much more than their rent. The husband and wife attempt to retrieve the ticket from their landlord. Frawley is probably best known for play Fred Mertz in the “I Love Lucy” TV series (1951-1957).
Dance Numbers
Before synchronized swimming became an Olympic sport, Inglewood, California-born Esther Williams (1921-2013) was Hollywood mermaid and the queen of the surf. This former competitive swimmer has a choreographed number, “A Water Ballet,” which shows her mostly swimming underwater in a white one-piece bathing suit.
Met lyric tenor James Melton (1904-1961) and Marion Bell (1919-1997) sing “Traviata” in costumes designed by Sharaff with Dance direction by Eugene Loring. The gowns are gorgeous and worth a look to anyone who wants inspiration for garden-themed ballroom full-skirted full-length gowns. Bell was Fiona MacLaren in the original Broadway cast of Lerner and Loewe’s 1947 “Brigadoon.”
Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer perform a dance story to “This Heart of Mine” by Harry Warren and Arthur Freed in which Astaire portrays a jewel thief who cleverly crashes an elegant ballroom with bejeweled ladies and meets and seduces Bremer’s character. As with his previous number, the choreography uses rotating floors as well as treadmills. The two were also paired together in the 1945 disastrous “Yolanda and the Thief,” also directed by Minnelli. Astaire would later play a thief (Alistair Mundy) and the father of a thief (Alexander Mundy, played by Robert Wagner) in the TV series, “It Takes a Thief” (1968-1970).
African Americans are represented when the scene switches to an all African American cast somewhere in tropical climes for Lena Horne (1917-2010) singing “Love” by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. This, of course, isn’t the only moment of diversity since Jewish Americans are represented by Brice. While Horne’s segment does emphasize some stereotypes, it doesn’t feature blackface.
The Fred Astaire number “Limehouse Blues,” on the other hand, features Astaire in yellow face. He’s a poor laborer in love with a Chinese woman (Bremer in yellowface). He wants to get her a fan to show his affection and in a dream sequence, he courts her, but in reality, the story has a tragic ending. There are so many cringe-worth aspects of the Oriental motifs here. This song premiered in 1921 in a West End revue and is supposed to be about the pre-World War II Limehouse district, the Chinatown in London. The song was first associated with Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952). Lawrence portrayed a Chinese prostitute in a Limehouse brothel. You can see Julie Andrews in yellowface for the Gertrude Lawrence bio-pic 1968 “Star!” (also known as “Those Were the Happy Times”).
Lawrence was in the original Broadway cast of the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II 1951 musical “The King and I” opposite Yul Brynner. Both Lawrence and Brynner won Tony Awards and Brynner would go on to star in the movie version and win an Academy Award for Best Actor.
The original lyrics of “Limehouse Blues”:
[Verse]
- In Limehouse
- Where yellow chinkies love to play
- In Limehouse
- Where you can hear those blues all day
- And they seem all around
- Like a long long sigh
- Queer sob sound
- Oh Honey Lamb they seem to cry
[Refrain]
- Oh! Limehouse kid
- Oh! Oh! Oh! Limehouse kid
- Going the way that the rest of them did
- Poor broken blossom and nobody’s child
- Haunting and taunting you’re just kind of wild
- Oh! Oh! Oh! Limehouse blues
- I’ve the real Limehouse blues
- Learned from Chinkies those sad China blues
- Rings on your fingers and tears for your crown
- That is the story of old Chinatown.
[Verse]
- Oh Dearie
- Right here in orange blossom land
- I’m weary
- ‘Cause no one seems to understand
- And those weird China blues
- Never go away
- Sad mad blues
- For all the while they seem to say
In the film “Ziegfeld Follies,” the first verse is skipped and in the refrain, the word “chinkies” is replaced by “willow.” Yet the dance number has almost nothing to do with traditions of Chinese dance.
As an unfortunate side note, the song remains popular. For stills of those performances, see below.
- Gertrude Lawrence: “Limehouse Blues“
- Julie Andrews: “Limehouse Blues“
- Liza Minnelli: “Limehouse Blues“
- Cher: “Limehouse Blues“
In “The Great Lady Has an Interview” (written by Kay Thompson and Roger Edens), Judy Garland plays a movie star who wants to be cast in Oscar-bait instead of sexy roles (‘do my acting with my torso” and “I’d like to be a pin up girl and a cheesecake girl, too” ). she tells the reporters that her next film will be a bio-pic about the inventor of the safety pin, the fictional Madame Crematante. This is a fun number, but Garland doesn’t have the smolder.
The highlight of the film for dance fans is “The Babbit and the Bromide” skit which pairs Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly together to the music of George and Ira Gershwin. This is the only time the two danced together during their heyday.
“Ziegfeld Follies” premiered on 13 August 1945 in Boston. From there it was screened in Pittsburgh (26 August 1945) and then in New York City the next year (22 March 1946). It was finally released nationwide on 8 April 1946. The film has wonderful examples of choreography and costumes as well as brief looks at some actors early in their careers and Fanny Brice toward the end of hers.
Here’s a yellowface “Limehouse Blues” gallery.
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