The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 American musical drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Hunt Stromberg. It stars William Powell as the theatrical impresario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld, Jr., Luise Rainer as Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as Billie Burke. The film, shot at MGM Studios in Culver City, California in the fall of 1935, is a fictionalized tribute to Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and a cinematic adaption of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies, with highly elaborate costumes, dances and sets. Many of the performers of the theatrical Ziegfeld Follies were cast in the film as themselves, including Fanny Brice and Harriet Hoctor, and the real Billie Burke acted as a supervisor for the film.

The screenplay by William Anthony McGuire was a "novelty" to many audiences who were familiar with the theatrical Broadway shows of the follies. The script, although fictionalized with embellishments needed for the motion picture, did show some accuracies in the life of Ziegfeld. Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times said of the script: "What William Anthony McGuire has attempted in his screen play, and with general success, is to encompass not merely the fantastic personal history of Ziegfeld but the cross-sectional story of the development of the Follies, the Midnight Frolic on the New Amsterdam Roof and the other theatrical enterprises floated under the Glorifier's aegis during a span of about forty years. The two biographies--of the man and of his creations--are, naturally, inseparable; but both have been told with such wealth of detail and circumstance (real and imaginative) that even the three-hour film narrative is fragmentary and, in some places, confused." Although it has some accuracies, The Great Ziegfeld takes many key liberties with Ziegfeld's life and the history of the Follies, resulting in many inaccuracies. The earlier scenes with Sandow, the milk bath advertising scenario, and many other sequences including several of the dramatic ups and downs of the film were fictional. George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was never featured in the Follies, and the number "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" was written for the 1919 Follies, not the first edition of the revue, as shown in the film. Ray Bolger was never cast in a "Follies" show, and although she was born in the U.S, Billie Burke grew up in England and spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent throughout her life; Loy who portrays her clearly has an American accent in the film. In the film, the last few lines of the song "Ol' Man River" (from Show Boat) are sung by what sounds like a tenor, while the song was intended for bass Paul Robeson and sung in the original production by bass-baritone Jules Bledsoe. Further, the screenplay also gives the impression that the successful original production of Show Boat, which Ziegfeld produced, closed because of the Great Depression. In fact Show Boat ended its original 1927 run in the spring of 1929 and the stock market crash did not occur until October of that year. It was the 1932 revival of the show (also produced by Ziegfeld shortly before his death), not the original production, that was affected by the Depression. In real life, Ziegfeld did not die in his room at the Hotel Warwick (not mentioned) which stood in front of the Ziegfeld Theatre; he actually died in Los Angeles and had not even spent his last years in New York. However, McGuire did capture a number of Ziegfeld's traits, such as sending telegrams to people even in close proximity, his belief that elephants were a symbol of good luck, his exquisite taste in costumes and design, and perfectionism over his productions, especially lighting and rostrum pedestaling. McGuire's script, now in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, is dated September 21, 1935, probably the date when it was finalized. CANNOTANSWER

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