An alarm bell rang around midnight on May 21, 1866. The Academy of Music had caught fire. New York firefighters rushed to the scene in an attempt to put out the blaze, but 15 minutes after the first alarm bell rang, the Academy was a lost cause. The firemen scrambled to keep the fire from spreading, but that proved to be a lost cause as well, as adjacent buildings—the University Medical College, the Ihne & Son pianoforte factory, the Dutch Reformed Church, St. James Lutheran Church, and various other buildings—burned.
The First American Musical
The Academy of Music was in the middle of its season. An Italian opera company had just completed Fromental Halévy’s opera “La Juive.” A Parisian ballet troupe had just arrived in New York to perform “La Biche au Bois.” Though the fire had canceled their performance, another opportunity presented itself.The producers of the ballet collaborated with William Wheatley, manager of Niblo’s Garden, a successful theater located on lower Broadway Avenue. The performance, a Faustian melodrama called “The Black Crook,” added the ballet dancers to the show. The New York Herald reported on the show’s impropriety with its scantily clad performers, warning that attendees “determined to gaze on the indecent and dazzling brilliancy of the Black Crook” should “provide themselves with a piece of smoked glass.”
The lure of “indecent and dazzling brilliancy” created a rush to see the show. Not only was “The Black Crook” a success, but it is also considered the first American musical.
A Star-Maker Is Born
The year following the New York fire and the opening of “The Black Crook,” Florenz Ziegfeld was born. Although he probably never came across Whitton’s words, he nonetheless personified them in a career that would move him from the Chicago music scenes to New York City’s theaters.Ziegfeld was born to a German father and a Belgian mother. His father, Florenz Ziegfeld Sr., was an accomplished musician, who had earned his doctorate from Leipzig Conservatory. When the couple arrived in America, they settled in Chicago, where he founded the Chicago Musical Academy in 1867—the same year his son was born. Four years after he founded the school, it too fell victim to fire in one of America’s most destructive disasters—the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Nonetheless, the school was moved to Chicago’s Central Music Hall.
Beauty as an Attraction
The German strongman, Eugen Sandow, had taken Britain by storm with his onstage physical exploits. With a body seemingly sculpted from stone, Sandow had transported the world back to the “Grecian ideal.” Ziegfeld convinced the bodybuilder to join him in Chicago with the promise of mass success. The “Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles” did not disappoint. Sandow and the nightclub profited immensely, and young Ziegfeld had discovered his calling. Human beauty was to be the centerpiece of his shows.
Once the Exposition ended, Ziegfeld and Sandow toured the country for the next two years before amicably parting ways. While touring, Ziegfeld had not only learned the knack of choosing the right talent and scheduling the right venues, but also how to market his shows and manipulate potential audiences.
A Working Match
In 1895, he sailed to London in search of a beautiful female actress who could star in his production of the musical comedy “A Parlor Match.” He discovered the beautiful and talented Anna Held, who was currently under contract with the French “Folies Bergere.” Just as he had done with Sandow, Ziegfeld convinced her to return to America with him. Held agreed, Ziegfeld paid off her contract ($1,500), and the two sailed to America. Ziegfeld put his marketing prowess to work and by the time their ship reached the harbor, Held’s image was in every major newspaper.“A Parlor Match” was an instant success; beauty, again, paid off. Held’s beauty was one draw; Ziegfeld’s marketing, however, created a stir. Ziegfeld added to Held’s allure by claiming she took daily milk baths. With Ziegfeld’s marketing and Held’s growing fame, “A Parlor Match” took to the road, which enhanced Held’s celebrity status and Ziegfeld’s profits.
‘Ziegfeld’s Follies’
Ziegfeld heartily agreed and began making plans to create an American “Folies Bergere.” He began searching for the most beautiful women in America, interviewing thousands. Along with exceptional beauty, the young women had to possess the ability to dance and, preferably, sing. They would become known as his chorus girls.Broadway was experiencing immense competition as shows were becoming more and more lavish. Ziegfeld pitched his idea to production team Marc Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger. Klaw and Erlanger agreed to finance Ziegfeld’s “Follies.” Ziegfeld then contacted Broadway’s most successful director, Julian Mitchell, to direct and also to help create the show.
Ziegfeld chose the less than elegant “Jardin de Paris” as the theater location for what would eventually become known as the “Ziegfeld Follies.”
The first performances were called the “Follies of 1907.” Ziegfeld had not anticipated the performances to be such a rousing success, but apparently his marketing schemes outperformed even his expectations. It was during this week in history, on July 8, 1907, that Ziegfeld presented the first of his “Follies” on the rooftop theater of “The Jardin de Paris.”
Ziegfeld professed that the very idea behind his show was to “glorify the American girl.” He did not fall short of his intended goal. The shows entertained audiences with top performers, popular songs, and the singing and dancing by, as Ziegfeld advertised, “the most beautiful women in the world.” In 1911, Ziegfeld officially placed his name on the production.
The “Ziegfeld Follies” would dominate the Broadway scene for 20 years, with Ziegfeld and Mitchell defining the Broadway musical, and Mitchell, through his work with the “Follies,” establishing a new form of Broadway show called the “production number.”
The Shrewd Manager
In her 1961 book “The Ziegfeld Follies,” writer Marjorie Farnsworth noted that Ziegfeld had a special touch when it came to intertwining talent, beauty, music, entertainment, and the sensual desire of human nature.“First, Ziegfeld knew the subtle line between desire and lust, between good taste and vulgarity, and never crossed it,” she wrote. “Second, the exhibitionism which was part of his private life was not contrived. It was an integral part of him, part of the personality mechanism that made him what he was: a gambler who had an almost childish irresponsibility toward the value of money and an equally childish conviction that he could always get some more when he wanted it. Most of the time he was astonishingly right. And finally, he had a sense of showmanship and of female beauty that was the despair of his competitors.”
Or more simply, as Joseph Whitton suggested, he was a “shrewd” manager who was willing to “show their shrewdness by accommodating [the playgoer].”
A few years after Ziegfeld died in 1932, the film “The Great Ziegfeld” was released, winning the Oscar for the 1937 Best Picture. A decade after that film, the film “Ziegfeld Follies” came out, showcasing some of the “most beautiful women in the world” and starring some of the most talented stars in Hollywood, including Lena Horne, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly. The world of stage and film, thanks to the “Ziegfeld Follies,” would never be the same.
