FULL ZIEGFELD FOLLIES Musical-Film USA 1945 Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Ziegfeld Follies   
• Composer: various  
• Libretto: various  
• Venue & Opera Company: Studio USA  
• Recorded: 1945
• Type: Movie
• Singers: Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, James Melton, Marion Bell
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra:
• Stage Director: Vincent Minelli  
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)  
• Date Published: 1945  
• Format: DVD
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  Ziegfeld Follies is a 1945 American musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), primarily directed by Vincente Minnelli, with segments directed by Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, Robert Lewis, and George Sidney, the film’s original director before Minnelli took over. Other directors that are claimed to have made uncredited contributions to the film are Merrill Pye, Norman Taurog, and Charles Walters.It stars many MGM leading talents, including Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice (the only member of the ensemble who was a star of the original Follies), Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, James Melton, Victor Moore, William Powell, Red Skelton, and Esther Williams.

  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. Some of them, such as Pay the Two Dollars, originated in George White’s Scandals. Filmed in 1944 and 1945, it was released in 1946 to considerable critical and box-office success.

  The film was entered into the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.

  Plot
  After a long Overture, the movie opens with the camera panning over a Heaven somewhere beyond the clouds. The residences of great showmen gone to their eternal reward are shown: Shakespeare, whose home looks like the Globe Theater; P.T.Barnum, whose residence in the afterlife resembles a circus Big Top; and Florenz Ziegfeld, whose home’s entrance is reminiscent of the theater where he staged the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway.

  Talking to the audience, Ziegfeld guides the viewers along a wall with three-dimensional paintings or shadow boxes containing dolls that look like the stars he cast in his productions over the years and the audiences who attended them. The film dissolves into a stop-motion puppet sequence (performed by Bunin’s Puppets) as Ziegfeld provides a voice-over describing the opening of one of his shows and his subsequent successes.

  He steps out onto a balcony, musing how he wishes he could stage just one more Follies, with current and past stars in the cast. A Higher Power responds to his request for writing material, and a long red crayon and a sheet of paper appear. Ziegfeld begins to write. He would open with a pink number, and to introduce the whole thing, his old friend, Fred Astaire. Cut to Astaire’s introduction and the song, “Here’s to the Beautiful Girls.” The picture never returns to Flo Ziegfeld’s Heavenly apartment. After “Beauty” comes “The End”, followed by the then-standard notice “To families and friends of Servicemen and Women…” that films are provided to combat areas around the world, concluding with several minutes of Exit Music.

  Cast
  In order of appearance, including the titles of their episodes. Character names are rarely provided in the film. There are no end credits identifying roles and performers.

  William Powell as Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. “reprising his role in The Great Ziegfeld”
  Fred Astaire as himself
  Lucille Ball as herself in “Here’s to the Ladies”
  Cyd Charisse as Ballerina in “Here’s to the Ladies”
  Virginia O’Brien as herself singing “Bring on Those Wonderful Men”
  Esther Williams as herself in “ A Water Ballet”
  Keenan Wynn as the caller in “Number Please”
  James Melton as Alfredo in “Traviata”—Singing Libiamo ne’ lieti calici.
  Marion Bell as Violetta in “Traviata”—Singing Libiamo ne’ lieti calici.
  Victor Moore as Lawyer’s Client in “Pay the Two Dollars”
  Edward Arnold as Lawyer in “Pay the Two Dollars”
  Fred Astaire as a jewel thief, in “A Dance Story— This Heart of Mine”
  Lucille Bremer as lovely aristocrat in “This Heart of Mine”
  Fanny Brice as Norma Edelman in “A Sweepstakes Ticket”
  Hume Cronyn as Monty Edelman in “A Sweepstakes Ticket”
  William Frawley as Mr. Martin, the Landlord, in “A Sweepstakes Ticket”
  Lena Horne in a Caribbean bar in “Love”
  Red Skelton in “When Television Comes” portraying two characters on the Guzzler’s Gin Program: poet J. Newton Numbskull, and the unfortunate man who does the ads.
  Fred Astaire as man in black in “A dramatic pantomime: Limehouse Blues”
  Lucille Bremer as the woman in yellow in “A dramatic pantomime: Limehouse Blues”
  Judy Garland as the lady in “A Great Lady Has an Interview”
  Fred Astaire as man in “The Babbitt and the Bromide”
  Gene Kelly as man in “The Babbitt and the Bromide”
  Kathryn Grayson as herself, singing “Beauty”
  Cyd Charisse as Ballerina in “Beauty”

  Quoted from Wikipedia

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