Ziegfeld Follies

In 1893, a local Chicago music teacher, Florenz Ziegfeld became music director for the World's Fair and sent his son, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. to Europe to seek out talent for the fair. In what might have been a harbinger of Ziegfeld's approach, he failed to return with any musical talent of note but did round up a man he touted as the "world's strongest" and exhibited him in flesh colored tights (eeeeeeoooow!). From this rather ignominious beginning, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. established a genre of entertainment that changed the world of stage performance and popular music. A very complex man; a showman and promoter, Ziegfeld ruthlessly exploited women over the course of his career, yet at the same time was a passionate defender of civil rights. In his early follies, Ziegfeld employed Bert Williams, the first and most successful black performer on vaudeville. Ziegfeld defended Williams against the racism of others and even once threatened to move out of his apartment building when the doorman refused entry to Williams who was coming to Ziegfeld's home for dinner. Ziegfeld brought us stars like Fanny Brice, Anna Held and Eddie Cantor. Some of America's greatest composers wrote music and productions for Ziegfeld to stage; Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, Jimmy Monaco, The Norworths, William Jerome and many others had a hand in the music. Yet, in spite of all this music and performance, Ziegfeld himself was not a musician, not a singer, not a songwriter. He was a promoter, the musical stage's Barnum whose main stock in trade was women, beautiful women, scantily clad, sometimes nude and plenty of them.