Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

Three girls get a chance to being new Ziegfeld girls. Elevator girl Sheila Regan (Lana Turner) with boyfriend Gilbert Young (James Stewart) finds herself pursued by a millionaire. Susan Gallagher (Judy Garland) has to abandon her vaudeville act with her father. Sandra Kolter (Hedy Lamarr) is a mystery woman from overseas.The cast is filled with legendary names. That alone makes this an interesting movie. Each girl's story is compelling to some extent. At least, it's interesting to watch the legendary beauties. The least interesting is the actual Ziegfeld Follies. It's only a line of beauties walking down the stairs in costumes. The song and dance for the three is mostly walking around. It's not much of a song and dance play. Judy Garland doing vaudeville with her show business father is far more interesting. Of course, she is perfectly comfortable with that. Lana Turner gets to play opposite Jimmy Stewart and has the juicier story. Hedy Lamarr has the least compelling story which ends with simply walking away. All in all, it's a great star watch and a functional musical.

Having previously watched this film in the early part of this century, I have to admit right away that when I just saw this again right now that I forgot much of what happened in it other than Judy Garland's numbers and her story as well as Lana Turner's. Both of them give fine performances about rising to fame in the Ziegfeld Follies while Hedy Lamarr was okay with what she did here though her story isn't given as much attention which was just as well. Top-billed Jimmy Stewart was also good as Ms. Turner's on-and-off boyfriend who ends up doing something illegal in order to be in the same social strata as her. Oh, and I loved that number Charles Winninger and Al Shean did near the end in which they did a song complete with funny jokes. Mr. Shean, by the way, was a relative of the Marx Brothers. So on that note, I highly recommend Ziegfeld Girl. P.S. The reason I reviewed this just now was because since I've been commenting on the Our Gang series-and individual films outside of that featuring at least one player from there-in chronological order, this was next on the list as Jackie Cooper here played Ms. Turner's brother and Judy's boyfriend. He did okay with what he had here. Oh, and Stewart joined the military after completing this. When he returned to Hollywood five years later, his next film would be my all-time favorite, It's a Wonderful Life...

I don't know if it was the gathering dusk outside, or the feeling of contentment that crept through me, or maybe the fact that I just couldn't move my butt out of the chair, but while I was watching "Ziegfeld Girl" I went into a trance. I became aware of it while Judy was doing that silly, delightful Caribbean number near the end. When she was lifted way up in the air by all those long bamboo poles brandished by hunky guys a "wow!" dropped from my lips. As much as I chuckled at the outlandishly tacky costumes in the musical sequences and the inherent Hollywood goofiness of it all I was totally captivated. The story - three young women (Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr) dream of making it big on Broadway. The musical numbers - Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. Nothing new or original here. Yet as the movie unfolds it becomes clear that this is no musical comedy, but a darker look at the forces that shape the lives of the three women, particularly Lana Turner's character. This is Turner's movie, and she is dazzling. I couldn't take my eyes off her. James Stewart's portrayal of her shunned boy friend, a punk who can't betray his heart no matter how hard he tries, is a pleasant surprise. Eve Arden is on hand doing her usual shtick as a hard-bitten showgirl displaying her bracelets like wearable trophies.Edward Everett Horton plays Noble Sage, a theatre man who has seen it all. His early prediction of the three paths open to showgirls has the eerie feeling of a seer looking into a crystal ball. Judy achieves success and the big time, Hedy gets the white picket fence, and Lana is doomed to self-destruct. Her slide into alcoholism is presented with astonishing detail and clarity. Her maid, subtly portrayed as a woman of questionable breeding, is her chief enabler. Lana Turner, young, beautiful and shiny, is touching as a woman who compromises everything but tenaciously holds onto the little flame that is her own true self. The movie becomes more dark and strange in the final sequence, which cross-cuts between Lana's last descent down the theatre's grand staircase and the extravagant dream-like number before a starry sky on-stage where hushed, dirge-like poetry bemoaning the final curtain call floats ominously outward. It has an unexpected touch of grand guignol, it's melodramatic to the hilt, and I loved it. Staircases, the movie's predominant motif and dramatic device, serve the story well. Whenever Lana Turner got on one I held my breath. "Ziegfeld Girl" has been criticized for not being in colour. I can't imagine it, and wouldn't want it, in anything other than its beautiful black-and-white tonalities.

I am a sucker for those all-star movies of classic Hollywood. Where the whole studio would appear in a single movie. A lot of times the talent is merely used to make a cameo appearance in the movie. I enjoy those appearances as well, but a movie that uses the talent effectively in great roles is really a gem of celluloid. One such movie that uses all of the stars in great roles is Ziegfeld Girl (1941).Set in the 1920s, the film tells the parallel stories of three women who become performers in the renowned Broadway show the Ziegfeld Follies. It was intended to be a 1938 sequel to the 1936 hit The Great Ziegfeld, and even recycled some footage from the earlier film - however the movie underwent many changes in its plot before it was released.The story here follows three young women who get into the Ziegfeld chorus line.Lana Turner is an elevator operator in a department store who is seen by the showman and hired by his right hand man (Edward Everett Horton). She is seeing a truck driver (Jimmy Stewart). Turner likes the more lucrative and glamorous lifestyle she is entering (especialy the relationship she picks up with wealthy Ian Hunter). Stewart gradually gets disgusted by the change in her, and turns to "easy, big money" of his own - working as a driver and lieutenant of a bootlegger.The second follows Hedy Lamarr, the wife of violinist Philip Dorn. Dorn has been struggling (with the help of friend Felix Bressart) to get into public notice as a great classical violinist. While accompanying him to an audition for a violinist at the New Amsterdam Theater, Lamarr is hired for the chorus. Dorn does not want his wife to be a possible sex object for lascivious males. When Hedy refuses to give up a good job, Dorn walks out on her (although he keeps an eye on her career and relationships, especially with the male singer star of the show Tony Martin).Finally we see Judy acting with her father Charles Winninger at a vaudeville theater in Harlem (this is about 1920 or so). He is "Pop" Gallagher, a tried-and-true old vaudeville comedian and song and dance man. Judy is hired also for the chorus (the one failure of the plot: Judy is still an adorable young woman like "Dorothy" in the Wizard Of Oz, but is outclassed by Turner and Lamarr or even fellow chorus girl Eve Arden as a statuesque looker), but we see her pushed onto Horton and show director Paul Kelly as a singer by Turner and Lamarr. But her singing is not how Winninger trained her, and he feels he has to let her go off on her own. Instead he meets an old friend, Al Shean (here playing himself), and they go off into the vaudeville hinterlands to perfect an act together.Judy Garland had the best numbers with the sentimental "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" and the bouncy "Minnie From Trinidad", but Tony Martin nearly stole the show with his signature number "You Stepped Out Of A Dream". The story of the three Ziegfeld hopefuls was interesting and compelling. One of the girls gained fame being a Ziegfeld girl, one Ziegfeld girl decided that family was her best bet, and one Ziegfeld girl went down the wrong path to self-destruction. Everything about this movie I enjoyed, and it a shame that this film is not remembered more. Florence Ziegfeld sure could put on a show, and even a movie about him was no different...