Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

People are voting emotionally.

Fresh and Exciting

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Ziegfeld Girl is comparable to Stage Door, so if you liked one, go ahead and rent the other. Both stories follow a handful of girls who want to make it on the stage and show how they deal with the ups and downs of show business. In this 1941 film, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, and Hedy Lamarr are the three hopefuls, each with their own unique personalities and perspectives. With a huge supporting cast, James Stewart, Jackie Cooper, Tony Martin, Charles Winninger, Edward Everett Horton, Eve Arden, Fay Holden, and Dan Dailey, you're in for a treat if you like star-studded backstage musicals. Movies like Ziegfeld Follies, Words and Music, and Till the Clouds Roll By all cater to that genre, and while it is fun to see a bunch of famous people for five minutes in the same movie, usually the script and story falls a little thin. This one isn't the worst in the world-trust me, I've seen some doozies-so if you want to rent it, it won't hurt you.

If ever a musical cried out for Technicolor, this one is it. If M-G- M wanted to save money, surely they could have done justice to Adrian's sumptuously and bizarrely over-decorated costumes and gowns and Gibbons' sets and Berkeley's choreography by filming these sequences in color and the rest in sepia — the rest doesn't deserve color that's for sure. In fact the rest doesn't even deserve to have been made in the first place. One doesn't expect the surrounding story in a musical to be strong, but this one is particularly weak. Despite the fact that it incorporates three plots, all of them are dull, clichéd and thoroughly unbelievable as well as thoroughly familiar. If ever familiarity bred contempt, this is a good example right here. At least the hoary old showbiz trouper plot with Judy Garland does allow Chas Winninger to strut his stuff (once with Garland and once in a very agreeable duet with Al Shean himself); but as for the Hedy Lamarr husband Philip Dorn, a budding but starving concert violinist, and romantic complications provided by charmless if musically accurate singer Tony Martin, plus the even worse Lana Turner's poor elevator girl who wants Ian Hunter's riches and jilts her humble, truck-driving boyfriend James Stewart, we would be better off without them. All they do is provide an excuse for Lamarr to look wooden-facedly glamorous and Turner to look super- slinky and glamorous (nice photography by Ray June). Although he receives first billing, Jimmy Stewart's role is both small and colorless – despite at least one half-hearted attempt by the screenwriter to pep it up a bit.This is the sort of film that, despite its outrageously long running time, would make a good movie pack — just extract the highlights and the musical numbers and songs to receive quite passable entertainment. True, it's not in color and Berkeley's routines lack the drive, freshness, originality, pace and sheer zip of his Warner Bros work.As it is, however, not one of my favorite musicals. Even a minor Fox musical like "Mother Wore Tights" pours crud all over it. (Dan Dailey is in this one too, but here he neither sings nor dances — he plays a prize fighter complete with cauliflower ear!)

Unless you are a largely uncritical fan of Lamarr, Garland or Turner or of musicals in general, this is not a good film to start with; unlike the zippy, racy, fast-paced films Busby Berkeley did with Warner Brothers in the early 30's (42nd Street, the Gold Diggers films),or the dazzling Technicolor Fox Musicals of the 1940's. this MGM effort suffers from an excess of melodrama and not enough music. MGM ruled musicals in the 1950's with major films like Singin' In Rain and The Bandwagon.Fortunately, Ziegfeld Girl does feature a bang-up, all-out, dazzling fur and feathers number "You Stepped Out Of A Dream" worth the more than two-hour drudgery of largely humorless soap opera, and it's sung by the late Tony Martin, featuring Hedy Lamarr as dazzling as she was ever going to look; unfortunately this number is early in the film, and there's a great deal of angst with Lana Turner hitting the skids as her truck-driving boyfriend (a miscast Jimmy Stewart, looking more than a little uncomfortable), mopes around the edges until she sobers up; This is not a bad film, merely, as frequently happens with MGM, in need of some judicious cutting; Garland is great fun in the "Minnie From Trinidad" number with dancers dangling dozens of bananas as arm decor, and Dan Dailey impressive as a deadbeat boxer; one wishes for more Eve Arden, as always, and one also wishes for the dazzling color of Ziegfeld Follies a few years later.

Here is MGM glitter at it's best. The Ziegfeld Girl gives us three of the top female stars at MGM at the time. For Judy Garland fans, she acquits herself musically with three songs. The adorable "Laugh, I Thought I'd Split My Sides" performed with Charles Winninger at the beginning, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" simply sung beside a piano, and the Busby Berkeley staged "Minnie From Trinidad". Lana Turner had the biggest role of her carrer up to that time, and she is very good in the role of the good girl gone bad. Hedy Lamarr is breathtakingly beautiful in a sympathetic role. Everyone looks gorgeous in the Ziegfeld-style costumes in the elaborate "You Stepped Out Of A Dream" number sung by Tony Martin. Even Eve Arden, who supplies her usual welcome wisecracks, gets to parade down the stairs in a gorgeous Ziegfeld outfit. A beautiful extravaganza with a story that will hold your attention. This storyline has been compared in some other reviews to "Valley of the Dolls", and yes, superficially the story could be compared to that, but it is done so much better here, with the resources of MGM giving plausibility to both story and acting. Nobody did it better than MGM in those days. "You Stepped Out Of A Dream" has to be one of the most beautiful black-and-white musical numbers ever filmed. An eye-filling spectacle.