Florenz Ziegfeld was a legendary Broadway impresario known for his lavish Follies productions featuring beautiful showgirls. His shows emphasized glamour, beauty, and spectacle and helped popularize revealing costumes. His long-running Ziegfeld Follies featured talents like comedienne Fanny Brice and black performer Bert Williams, breaking racial barriers. Composer Jerome Kern also contributed greatly to Broadway during this era, writing sentimental and romantic songs for shows that helped establish an American style of musical theater.

1. THE 301
Chapters 9 & 10 – Florenz Ziegfeld, Jerome Kern

2. Florenz Ziegfeld
(1867-1932)
• Show business legend!
• Primarily remembered for his Follies
• “The amazing invisible fish”
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• First to offer a star performer a
percentage of the box office
• Even negative controversy could sell
tickets

3. Anna Held: Ziegfeld’s
Wife?
• The Parisian Model – first
production to feature the sexy-
but-respectable production
numbers that became Ziegfeld’s
professional trademark
• Anna lived as Florenz’s wife, but
no evidence has ever been found
to prove they were actually
married
• A Folies Bergère star, she first
suggested a revue modeled on
the Parisian version

4. The Follies of the Day (1907)
→ The Ziegfeld Follies (1911)
• Ziegfeld was inventive in his use of the
female chorus: the Follies chorus dressed and
behaved like ladies, providing a classy, unified
element
• Beautiful girls, spectacular production values,
clean comedy – what’s not to love?
• In Ziegfeld’s eyes, beauty was talent enough!
• The “Ziegfeld walk” – headdresses were so
elaborate, a chorus girl had to develop a special
way to walking to cross the stage
• Men loved the ongoing parade of feminine
beauty; women loved the fashions worn

5. Bert Williams
• Ziegfeld hired black musical comedy star
Bert Williams for the 1910 Follies. When
several white cast members threatened to
walk out rather than share the stage with a
Negro, Ziegfeld replied that he could do the
show without any of them, but not without
Williams.
• Williams still added blackface to his
natural coloring, thereby portraying the all-
suffering everyman that people of all races
could identify with.

6. Fanny Brice
• Ziegfeld introduced the most famous female comedy star of her time,
Fanny Brice.
• Born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the daughter of Jewish Eastern
European immigrants – she was the first Jewish American entertainer to
attain stardom while using her ethnicity. She made fun of growing up in a
Jewish neighborhood.
• Barbra Streisand – another famous Jewish American entertainer – played
Fanny Brice in the 1968 movie Funny Girl.

7. Ziegfeld’s
Scandals and
Vanities
• Ziegfeld noticed that many of
his customers were looking for
more entertainment at nightclubs
after attending a Follies show – so
he initiated a show called The
Midnight Frolics on the rooftop of
the same theatre! After seeing
the Follies, patrons took an
elevator (a new element) to
continue the show in a more
intimate setting.
• TECH ASPECT – tables
surrounded a thrust stage that
could be mechanically pulled
back to create a dance floor.

8. Ziegfeld’s Contribution to Musical Theatre
• Showmanship based on taking risks – he had taste and flair, raising the
bar for Broadway
• Elevated the place of the showgirl in Broadway entertainment, giving
them glamour and dignity
• Glorified the American comic, making them show biz legends
• Refined production values
• The last Ziegfeld girl died at the age of 106 in 2010 – here she is pictured
at bottom in her teens, above second from left, shortly before her death

9. Jerome Kern and American
Ascendance (1914-1919)

10. Jerome Kern (1885-1945)
• His songs combined forthright
sentiment with refined romance – this
became Broadway’s future!
• His lyrics had the easy flow of
conversation and still sound fresh today
• He found a new way of expression
human emotion in song

11. The Princess Theatre
and its contribution to
successful shows
• It was intimate – a more natural style of
performing was possible
• First series of musicals set in NYC
• Every element ORGANIC – developing naturally
from story and character
• “Hard-won simplicity”
• Earliest American musical comedies so well-written
that they can still entertain today
• Princess musicals inspired a generation of
songwriters: Rodgers, Gershwin, Porter
• Sustained delight for a full 2.5 hours

12. Irving Berlin
(again) and World
War I
• When Berlin was 28, he was
drafted into the US Army
(1916) – because of his show
biz background, he was
assigned to raise $35K to build
a visitor's center, and he was
assigned a team of <300 newly-
drafted show biz pros
• Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1917)
soon moved from the army
camp to Broadway! No women
in the army, so all roles played
by men in drag
• Most famous song: Oh, how
I hate to get up in the morning!