Word: ziegfeld
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Died. Nathan Burkan, 56, Rumanian-born expert on copyright and contract law; of acute indigestion; in Great Neck, L. I. Among his clients were Composer Victor Herbert, the late Florenz Ziegfeld, Al Jolson, Gary Cooper, Constance Bennett, Ina Claire, Mrs. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt...
...Monte Carlo, recoups in London by a contract with Anna Held (Luise Rainer) whom he steals from under the nose of his arch rival (Frank Morgan). He gives her a dozen orchids every day, makes her famed for her milk baths, eventually marries her. At this point, The Great Ziegfeld soars from the prose of fictionized biography into the poetry of revue. For 20 minutes, a huge revolving staircase exhibits showgirls, dancers and tableaux while a tenor sings A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody. For fabulous extravagance, this sequence makes the real Ziegfeld Follies look like a burlesque show...
...second half of the picture exhibits in euphemistic style the collapse of Producer Ziegfeld's romance with Anna Held, his meeting with Billie Burke (Myrna Loy), Christmas Day among the home-loving Ziegfelds, including small Patricia and her dolls. Enraged as his stars go off to Hollywood, Ziegfeld goes into a slump. He recoups again, puts four simultaneous hits on Broadway, mortgages their receipts to play the market. When Producer Ziegfeld died in 1932, he was heavily in debt.* In this particular, the picture is historically trustworthy. Its hero is shown expiring in elegant penury, an orchid...
...Great Ziegfeld was in production two years. It lasts three hours, cost $2,000,000 and includes the most ornate sets of its kind ever built. It was written by William Anthony McGuire, author of five shows for Ziegfeld, and directed with monumental opulence by Robert Z. Leonard. In addition to three cinema stars, its cast includes three genuine Ziegfeld celebrities (Fanny Brice, Harriet Hoctor, Ray Bolger) and accurate counterfeits of two others: Buddy Doyle as Eddie Cantor and A. A. Trimble as the late Will Rogers. Trimble is a Cleveland map salesman who, often mistaken for Rogers, was last...
...this, adequately advertised in pre release ballyhoo which was grimly improved when the picture's Manhattan premiere last week coincided with the death of Marilyn Miller, onetime Ziegfeld star, comes under the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer routine. Its result is more surprising. At once biography and able extravaganza, The Great Ziegfeld approximates, more closely than any show he ever produced himself, the Ziegfeldian ideal. Pretentious, packed with hokum and as richly sentimental as an Irving Ber lin lyric, it is, as such, top-notch entertainment...