The Great Ziegfeld

The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 American musical biographical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring William Powell as the Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It traces Ziegfeld's rise from carnival-style promotion to the lavish Ziegfeld Follies revues, interweaving roughly two dozen songs and seven production numbers, and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 9th Academy Awards.^{1 • 2}

Production history

The project began at Universal Pictures, which purchased the rights to film the life story of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (1869–1932) from his widow, the actress Billie Burke, in late 1933. William Anthony McGuire, a former protege of Ziegfeld's, served as both screenwriter and producer, and Ziegfeld's eighteen-year-old daughter Patricia helped select showgirls and costumes. Filming was set to begin under Edward Sutherland's direction in late January 1935.¹

By mid-February 1935, after Universal had invested between $225,000 and $250,000, the studio judged the picture too costly for its finances and entered negotiations with MGM. The agreement, finalized on 11 March 1935, moved the production from Universal's San Fernando Valley lot to MGM's Culver City lot, with MGM assuming all further costs and paying Universal $300,000 for costs already incurred plus a settlement for lost revenue. McGuire's screenplay was retained, but Hunt Stromberg replaced him as producer; McGuire received a writer-producer-director position on a future film, which became the 1937 musical Rosalie. MGM also lent William Powell, who had been loaned to Universal for the picture, back to Universal for another film; that loan produced the 1936 comedy My Man Godfrey, for which Powell was nominated for Best Actor.¹

A dispute over the "Ziegfeld Follies" name surfaced during the negotiations, since MGM considered producing annual Follies shows on Broadway and turning them into films; the idea was dropped before the deal closed. In April 1936 the Ziegfeld family sought an injunction against MGM's use of the Ziegfeld name in the title, but the suit was apparently settled out of court, and MGM went on to make two further films using the name, Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946).¹

The "Pretty Girl" number

The film's centerpiece is a production number built on Irving Berlin's "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," a 1919 song that had become Ziegfeld's theme. When producer Hunt Stromberg told studio head Louis B. Mayer that the number would cost $250,000, Mayer's response was "Shoot it!"⁴ A later account puts the cost at about $220,000, with 180 cast members in rehearsals and a shoot lasting several weeks.⁵ The sequence runs roughly seven minutes as a continuous production piece, staged with moving stage sections and rotating spiral sets, and it won the Academy Award for Dance Direction for Seymour Felix.³

Reception and awards

Contemporary critics emphasized the film's scale. The Miami Herald called it likely to be cataloged as "the most sumptuous cinemusical ever produced," and Variety praised Powell's performance as endowing the impersonation "with all the qualities of a great entrepreneur and sentimentalist."⁷ The film was one of the top twenty-five box office hits of 1936.¹

At the 9th Academy Awards, held on 4 March 1937, the film won Best Picture, Best Actress for Luise Rainer (her first of two consecutive awards), and Dance Direction. It was also nominated for Best Direction (Leonard), Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing (William S. Gray), and Best Original Story (McGuire).^{1 • 3} Powell was nominated for Best Actor that year not for this film but for My Man Godfrey; some modern sources speculate the final scene of The Great Ziegfeld was considered too "maudlin" and left a poor final impression of his performance.¹

Later critical opinion has been more divided. Rotten Tomatoes' critics consensus calls the biopic "undeniably stylish" but faults its excessive length, reliance on clichés, and historical inaccuracies; the site records a 71% Tomatometer from 70 reviews.⁸ Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, called it a "lavish, tedious musical biography" and noted that Brice is cut off mid-song in "My Man."⁸

Notes on dates and the subject's biography

Sources disagree on two points. AFI gives Ziegfeld's dates as 1869–1932,¹ while the Harry Ransom Center's biographical sketch states he was born in 1867 in Chicago, the son of the head of the Chicago Musical College.⁹ Release information also varies: AFI lists a 4 September 1936 release date with a Los Angeles premiere on 22 March 1936,¹ Rotten Tomatoes lists an original theatrical release of 8 April 1936,⁸ and The Numbers lists a wide release of 23 March 1936 with a running time of 177 minutes.¹⁰

References

1. The Great Ziegfeld (1936), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. The Great Ziegfeld, Swank Motion Pictures
3. The 9th Academy Awards | 1937, Oscars.org
4. Frank Miller, "The Great Ziegfeld," TCM article, 2003
5. The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Kozak's Classic Cinema
6. The Great Ziegfeld Blu-ray Review, Cinema Sentries, 2024
7. The Great Ziegfeld critic reviews, Metacritic
8. The Great Ziegfeld, Rotten Tomatoes
9. Ziegfeld, Florenz, 1867–1932, Performing Arts Collection PA-00103, Harry Ransom Center
10. The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Numbers

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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