Synopsis

Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. rises from a sideshow promoter at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to Broadway's leading producer of extravagant musical revues. His career is marked by spectacular successes, financial disasters, and fierce competition with fellow showman Billings. His relationships with Anna Held and Billie Burke parallel his professional rise, while his lavish productions establish the idealized image of the American showgirl.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is a fictionalized and heavily sanitized biography of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., combining episodes from his life with elaborate recreations of his stage spectacles.

• "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" was the production's signature set piece. It used 180 performers, 4,300 yards of rayon silk for the curtains, and reportedly cost $220,000. Much of the sequence was filmed in two exceptionally long takes after weeks of rehearsal.

• Myrna Loy does not appear until approximately two hours and fifteen minutes into the film, despite receiving second billing.

• Pat Nixon, then Patricia Ryan, appears uncredited among the Ziegfeld girls. She later became First Lady of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974.

• The film won three Academy Awards at the 9th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress for Luise Rainer, and Dance Direction for Seymour Felix.

• A.A. Trimble, who plays Will Rogers, was a Cleveland map salesman known locally for impersonating Rogers at civic and social gatherings.

• The film's Broadway-inspired opening credits present the title and principal names in illuminated marquee lettering.