Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. was born on March 21, 1867, in Chicago, Illinois, into a well-to-do family. His father was a German immigrant who owned the very successful College of Music in Chicago. Flo first displayed his talent for promotion as a child when he sold tickets to the neighborhood kids to see his school of "invisible fish" which turned out to be nothing more than a glass bowl filled with water.
Flo’s father opened a nightclub called The Trocadero in 1893. The club wasn’t doing very well till Flo offered to manage the talent. His first show biz success came when he booked 23 year old strongman Eugene "The Great" Sandow. Flo created quite a stir and a lot of favorable press coverage after he invited several ladies from the audience backstage to examine Sandow’s extraordinary physique. The Trocadero was soon the most popular club in town and Ziegfeld later took Sandow on tour throughout the United States.
Ziegfeld went to Europe to scout for new talent and while in London he met a beautiful café singer named Anna Held. Anna had a sexy French accent and a fantastic figure. He planned to bring her back to America and serve as her manager but Anna suggested to him that he should create a show like the famous Folies-Bergere of Paris; a variety show with lots of scantily clad women.
Flo organized a publicity blitz for Anna, so that by the time they returned from Europe she was already a celebrity. In order to raise money for the show, Ziegfeld had to sell his ownership in it and settle for a salary as a producer.
Ziegfeld's early musical productions enjoyed modest success; more important, he was perfecting his style. In 1906 The Parisian Model featured the beautiful girls and intricate though precise musical numbers that made him famous. That summer he visited Paris, and the Folies-Berge‧re became the model for his annual Ziegfeld Follies. Recognizing that the risqué elements of the Folies would be unacceptable in the United States, Ziegfeld substituted more displays of beautiful girls.
Few realized the future of the Ziegfeld Follies when it first opened in July 1907. Presented on the New York Theater roof, the Follies was an immediate success, and in September Ziegfeld moved it indoors. By 1910 others were beginning to copy his format, but no other revues had the precision, discipline, and homogeneity of the Ziegfeld Follies.
In 1915 Ziegfeld added an important element when he hired Joseph Urban as designer. Urban's sense of spectacle was perfectly suited to the Ziegfeld idea—beautiful girls, intricate numbers, lavish and artistic design. The Ziegfeld pattern was completed with stars: Fannie Brice, Marilyn Miller, Bert Williams, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Gilda Grey, Gallagher and Shean, and Will Rogers were under contract at one time or another. Ziegfeld had a sharp eye for talent. The first Follies had cost only $13, 000 to produce; the preproduction costs of the 1927 Follies totaled nearly $300, 000.
While continuing the Follies, Ziegfeld returned to musical comedy in 1920. Among his hits were Sally (1920), Show Boat and Rio Rita (both 1927), and Bitter Sweet (1929). Ziegfeld abandoned the Follies in 1927; by the time he returned to it in 1931, the magic was gone. He had lost some of his touch, and the mood of the country, deep in the Great Depression, had changed.
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld, Jr. died on July 22, 1932, in Hollywood, California.
Quotations:
"Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody. "
"Beauty, of course, is the most important requirement and the paramount asset of the applicant. "
"How little the public realizes what a girl must go through before she finally appears before the spotlight that is thrown upon the stage. "
In 1897, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and Anna Held, Broadway stage performer and singer, commenced a common-law marriage, but in 1913 they were divorced. On April 11, 1914, he married Billie Burke. They had one child, Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson.
Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress who was famous on Broadway, in early silent film, and subsequently in sound film.
Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson was an American author.
