Film
The Great Ziegfeld
Three lavish hours tracing Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld from carnival hustler to the man who put chorus girls on pedestals and called it art. Big MGM production numbers, a career-making Luise Rainer performance, and the sense of watching old Hollywood spend money like it owed nobody anything. For patient classic-film lovers who enjoy spectacle as much as story.
If you liked this
Yankee Doodle Dandy1942
Cagney's electric, Oscar-winning turn as George M. Cohan gives you the same showbiz-rise arc with more energy and a tighter runtime — patriotic, sentimental, and genuinely thrilling on its feet.
But The flag-waving sincerity is thick, and it's more hagiography than Ziegfeld even manages to be.
Funny Girl1968
Fanny Brice, a supporting player here, gets her own showcase with Streisand's star-making performance — a direct answer to Ziegfeld from the other side of the footlights.
But Streisand's belting style and the film's theatrical staginess won't suit everyone's taste in musicals.
A Star Is Born1954
Judy Garland at her most devastating, in a showbiz melodrama that understands fame's cruelty as sharply as Ziegfeld understands its glamour.
But It's emotionally heavier and sadder than anything in Ziegfeld's champagne-and-feathers world.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Fosse/Verdon2019
Same subject — a real-life impresario building his legend on the backs of the women he loved and staged — told sixty years later without the varnish.
A limited series that does to Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon what this film does to Ziegfeld — chronicling a genius showman, his muses, and the cost of turning women into spectacle, but with all the ugliness modern television refuses to soften.
But It's frank about addiction and exploitation in ways the 1936 film never dared be — no golden glow here.
More like this (8)
42nd Street1933
The backstage-musical template in its rawest, snappiest form — Busby Berkeley numbers, wisecracking chorus girls, and the Depression-era hustle behind the curtain.
But Pre-Code brashness and choppy pacing may feel abrupt after Ziegfeld's stately sprawl.
All About Eve1950
Swap the music for daggers — this is theater-world ambition at its most vicious, with dialogue so sharp it still cuts.
But No spectacle, no songs — pure talk, which is a very different pleasure than Ziegfeld's visual excess.
Gypsy1962
Rosalind Russell's monstrous stage mother pushes the showbiz-dream theme to its most uncomfortable, unforgettable extreme.
But It's darker and angrier than Ziegfeld's fond, forgiving portrait of its own impresario.
Show Boat1951no page yet
Ziegfeld actually produced the original Broadway show — this Technicolor adaptation carries his fingerprints in every glittering, sentimental number.
But The plot creaks and some racial material dates badly, even in this softened studio version.
Meet Me in St. Louis1944
Same MGM machine, same appetite for gorgeous excess, turned toward a warmer, cozier family story with Garland in her prime.
But It trades Ziegfeld's ambition and scale for nostalgia — a much gentler, lower-stakes watch.
Moulin Rouge!2001
A modern, hyperactive descendant of the same showman's-spectacle DNA — nightclub glamour, tragic romance, and a director as drunk on excess as Ziegfeld was.
But The jukebox-musical remixing and frantic editing are a world away from Ziegfeld's stately classicism.
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages1916no page yet
Ziegfeld's staircases full of chorus girls are direct descendants of Griffith's Babylonian sets — both films are really about the urge to build spectacle bigger than anyone asked for.
D.W. Griffith's silent epic invented the very idea of scale-as-spectacle that Ziegfeld's cast-of-hundreds numbers inherit — vast sets, thousands of extras, showmanship as ambition itself.
But Silent, sprawling, and structurally strange, it demands real patience and a tolerance for melodrama of its era.
Showgirls1995
Both films sell the same fantasy — a woman transformed into spectacle by an ambitious impresario — but one gilds it and the other rips the gilding off.
The trashy, X-rated flip side of Ziegfeld's glittering showgirl mythology — same Vegas dream of stardom through spectacle, minus every ounce of MGM dignity.
But It's gleefully sleazy and campy on purpose, tonally the polar opposite of Ziegfeld's classy nostalgia.
People
Cast
William PowellFlorenz 'Flo' Ziegfeld Jr.
Myrna LoyBillie Burke
Luise RainerAnna Held
Frank MorganBillings
Fanny BriceFannie Brice
Virginia BruceAudrey Dane
Reginald OwenSampston
Ray BolgerRay Bolger
Ernest CossartSidney
Joseph CawthornDr. Ziegfeld
Nat PendletonSandow
Dennis MorganStage Singer in "Pretty Girl" Number
Directing
- Robert Z. LeonardDirector
Writing
- William Anthony McGuireScreenplay
Production
- Hunt StrombergProducer