Word: ziegfeld
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...groomed aristocrats. This leads to some of the worst and the best moments of the evening. The worst: Phil Gabrielli is competent but ridiculous as suave Jewish gambler Nick Arristein. He plays him like Cyril Ritchard dipping his pinky finger into something icky. John Cook as theatrical entrepreneur Flo Ziegfeld tries hard but is equally unlikely. The best: a Ziegfeld production number called "His Love Makes Me Beautiful." Eight deadpanning preppies running around with sequined mirrors create an infinitely better satire of a Follies extravaganza than a hundred would-be Eddie Cantors-the Busby Berkeley approach taken by the movie...
...cynical businessman was explaining why 42nd Street is difficult to clean up, much as it needs sanitizing. The analogy is apt for a cowpath that became one of the world's most famous streets. Forty-second was once the grandest lady of the theater. Florenz Ziegfeld produced his Follies at the New Amsterdam Theater. Gertrude Lawrence, Bea Lillie and Will Rogers were stars of the street, and at the Liberty Theater there was music by George Gershwin, danced to and sung by Fred Astaire. Now it is a center for pornography, perversion and prostitution...
...fond and durable memories: the gum-chewing philosopher of humor, the man of homely common sense that somehow added up to uncommon wisdom. Out of it he fashioned not one, but a half-dozen careers-rodeo bronco rider, walk-on humorist (before the phrase had even been invented), Ziegfeld Follies headliner, movie star, radio commentator, newspaper columnist -a one-man galaxy of talent. He lives again on the stage of Washington, D.C.'s Ford Theatre in a gifted recreation by James Whitmore in a show appropriately titled Will Rogers' U.S.A...
Died. Billie Burke, 85, widow of Florenz Ziegfeld, herself a renowned stage and screen star; in Los Angeles. Red-haired and blue-eyed, she reigned as a Broadway beauty through the early 1900s, drawing homage from Mark Twain and Enrico Caruso before capturing Flo Ziegfeld as her husband. Her fame came from her skill as a comedienne in the years after 1930, when she appeared as a flibbertigibbet in scores of plays (Her Master's Voice, Mrs. January and Mr. X) and movies (Topper, The Wizard of Oz, Hi Diddle Diddle). "Oh," she once wrote, "that sad and bewildering...
...offered a chance at burlesque. "I was tired of starving so I grabbed it," said Gypsy. By the time she was 17, she was a headliner for Billy Minsky, and went on to display her 5-ft. 9½-in. figure in a succession of top billings: Ziegfeld's Follies, George White's Scandals, Billy Rose's Casino de Paree. Damon Runyon admired her and Walter Winchell spotlighted her in his column. After seeing her gracefully dispense with her clothing, Jean Cocteau exclaimed "How vital!" She "retired" in 1937 to become an author (The G-String Murders...