Well Deserved Praise

Truly Dreadful Film

Please don't spend money on this.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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.

"Gloriously vulgar," says the book "The MGM Story," and that's as good a description as any of this enormous MGM musical, directed (rather anonymously) by Robert Z. Leonard, who had helmed "The Great Ziegfeld," with musical numbers--which, typically for him, could never be contained on an actual stage--by Busby Berkeley. Though set in the 1920s, when the Follies reigned, the costumes are thoroughly 1941, and the songs--including Roger Edens' "Minnie from Trinidad," which could never have been a Twenties tune--sound thoroughly contemporary. It's a long film by 1941 MGM standards, and that's to contain acres of story about three Ziegfeld girls: the nice one (Garland) who loves her dad and limits her romantic life to chaste chocolate malts with Jackie Cooper; the glamorous one (Lamarr) who's mooning over Philip Dorn while considering an affair with Tony Martin, who's married to Rose Hobart, who has one nice scene; and the weak, fast-living one (Turner), who drinks her way to the bottom. Her boyfriend, Jimmy Stewart, is oddly cast, in a sort of Cagney role; he's fine, but the fistfights and Brooklynite dese-dem-dose readings don't fit him that well. Capable character actors loom everywhere, from Ian Hunter to Charles Winninger to Eve Arden, the dialog's crisp and idiomatic, and the MGM morality--good things happen to good people, essentially--is amusingly pronounced. Not a great flick by any means, but a prime example of what lavish, diverting mass entertainment looked like in 1941.

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...

My title comes from a famous sarcastic quote of Hedy Lamarr on the formula for being glamorous.Unfortunately, she doesn't do a whole lot more in this film, while serving as part of the abundant eye candy. While making this film by day, she was doing much more important things in her spare time. She was working on her premier invention: a frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio-controlled torpedo guidance system, which she hoped would be her most important contribution to the war effort. Unfortunately, the US Navy decided to shelve it until many years later, after her patent rights ran out. It has since become the basis of much of present high tech communication devices! Born Hedwig Kiesler, in Vienna, she was signed by Louis B. Mayer while on route from London to NYC, as she was trying to escape her very controlling older husband and the dark cloud of Nazism. He changed her name to Lamarr in remembrance of the early, but self-destructive, sensational film and dance star of the 'roaring' 20s: Barbara La Marr. Like Hedy, Barbara had frequently been promoted as 'the most beautiful woman in the world'. Mayer hoped to convince the American public that Hedy deserved her European reputation as such. Many swallowed his build up, but I've never been impressed that she is unique. Fortunately, Hedy lacked Barbara's destructive addictions. However, her film career was not all that busy nor distinguished. I only remember her in her much later role as Delilah, and as Clark Gable's extramarital temptation in "Boomtown". Lana Turner's character, as a gorgeous Ziegfeld girl who becomes an alcoholic and ends up on skid row, presumably dying of her abusive addictions soon after the curtain closes, can be thought of as a stand in for Barbara La Marr's life.What a waste to have cast Dan Dailey simply as a tipsy sleazy prize fighter looking to prey upon a down and out Lana! Although signed by MGM in 1940 after an early career in vaudeville and Broadway musicals, he was mostly cast in supporting non-musical roles, even in musicals such as the present film, and often by other studios.It wasn't until after the war, that Fox picked him up and immediately cast him as the lead with Betty Grable in their highest grossing film of the year "Mother Wore Tights" He became Betty's favorite costar, having the most similar background and talents. He also costarred in a number of other musicals in the early 50s without Betty.Charles Winninger, who plays Judy Garland's aging vaudeville father and musical coach, was an even more accomplished ex-vaudeville and Broadway player, of the previous generation. He had played in the real Ziegfeld follies. His most famous Broadway role(and in the '36 film) was 'Cap't Andy' in "Showboat".He most often played humorous/cantankerous old men, sometimes with a bit of his musical talent thrown in, as in this film and in the later Tchnicolor "Broadway Rhythm". You are perhaps most likely to remember him in his humorous role as 'Pop' Frake, with his prize pig, in the 1945 Rogers and Hammerstein musical "State Fair". But, I most like his role in the musical comedy "Pot O'Gold", also released in '41, and also costarring Jimmy Stewart.There are 3 lavish Busby Berkeley-directed musical productions,all of which include a segment of a parade of girls in various bizarrely-ornamented outlandish costumes. These productions, especially, cry out for Technicolor filming. Stingy MGM could have filmed just these production segments in color. Afterall, the first part of "The Wizard of Oz" was filmed in B&W!..Tony Martin has a singing segment in each stage production, and sings even more beautifully than in other films I've seen. ... The long Trinidad-themed production was actually composed of several segments, including a bizarre fashion show, a Spanish dance, and Tony singing, before getting to Judy's best effort at mimicking Fox's new Latin sensation:Carmen Miranda, in her "Minnie from Trinidad" number. She is hoisted up and down by a bevy of men, on a platform supported by a spoke-like cluster of long wooden poles, and backed by many dancers in fancy Trinidad costumes... Large spiral staircases are featured in parts of the 2 other productions, giving the impression of descent from or accent to heaven. In the finale, this illusion is enhanced by a dark starry background. This last scene was recycled from the previous "The Great Ziegfeld" and the spiral structure looks remarkably like the one in the finale of " 'Til the Clouds Roll By", made a few years later.The screenplay is mostly fun in the first half, with Lana and Hedy looking their most ravishing. But Jimmy Stewart, Lana and Dan Dailey often imparted a depressing, sinister, cast to the second half, as Lana's character gradually descends into material greed, alcoholism, skid row, and near death. For a good detailed account of the screen play , I suggest the review entitled "Waiter, a stack of wheats for the lady". On the whole, this is another Judy Garland movie.