Adeles and Mollys, Lucilles and Pollys, you'll find them all in the Ziegfeld Follies Andre Previn in an interview about the MGM musicals said that orchestrator Conrad Salinger could take a mundane tune and make it sound like Debussy or Ravel. Nowhere is that more evident than in his sublime background music for the two big dance numbers in this show, This Heart Of Mine, and Limehouse Blues, both starring Fred Astaire and the somewhat forgotten Lucille Bremer (a protege of producer Arthur Freed).
With the most numbers in the film (4), Astaire is more or less the star of Ziegfeld Follies, a plotless revue that features William Powell as Ziegfeld, in heaven, dreaming up a new Ziegfeld Follies using the talent of the MGM studio. Why not?
Yet, what this film could have been, vs what it is, begs a question as old as talking pictures. Was there ever really a great all-star revue produced by any of the studios?
MGM went all out and originally made a very long film that was cut after previews. One of Astaire's numbers was deleted, as was a number based on The Gershwin song, Liza,, starring dancer Avon Long and Lena Horne (who didn't sing a note, baffling preview audiences). James Melton, the Metropolitan Opera star, had several numbers, but ended up with just one in the finished film.
Of the segments left to us, for my money, the musical numbers are the best things about the movie, and the comedy segments, a mixed bag. Fanny Brice stars in one, which she had performed on stage in the final Ziegfeld Follies . Edward Arnold and Victor Moore perform Pay The Two Dollars, Keenan Wynn does a telephone routine originally done onstage by Fred Allen (that probably was funnier with Allen), and Red Skelton does his Guzzler's Gin routine, which is hilarious.
In the musical department, Judy Garland's spoof of a Greer Garson-like star is sophisticated fun. Lena Horne singing "Love", Kathryn Grayson performing "Beauty", bits by Lucille Ball, Cyd Charisse, and Virginia O'Brien, a dance number starring Astaire and Gene Kelly, an Esther William water ballet, and the aforementioned Astaire-Bremer numbers, are other highlights.
This Heart Of Mine is a story-dance about a jewel thief who arrives at a big party to steal the necklace of a beautiful woman. With its revolving stages, strange, antler-like trees, and red, white, blue, and black design, it's a sumptuous visual delight. Limehouse Blues is a superbly atmospheric number that's possibly an homage Griffith's silent classic, Broken Blossoms, with the normally exuberant Fred playing a character part (the counterpart, in a way, to Richard Barthelmess's young Chinese man in the Griffith film), quiet, humble, but exuding emotion. In Chinoiserie style, with bookend scenes filmed on sets left over from The Picture Of Dorian Gray, this might be the first dream ballet ever seen in an MGM musical.
Though there are dry or mundane parts, all in all, Ziegfeld Follies, with its wonderful moments, largely due to the genius of MGM's Vincente Minnelli, with major contributions from Robert Alton, Charles Walters, Eugene Loring, and George Sidney, among others, gives you a lot of bang for the buck.