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Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business

Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business

by EthanMordden (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2008

    $10.36
Synopsis

When Florenz Ziegfeld started in theatre, it was flea circus and sideshow rolled into one. When he left, the glamorous world of 'show-biz' had been created. From the muscle man Sandow , to the songbird Anna Held , Ziegfeld learned that a big star filled seats and he hired them all for his Follies - Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers, Bert Williams, Eddie Cantor and Fanny Brice among them. A man of voracious sexual appetites, Ziegfeld's ardour created the Ziegfeld Girl. Head-dressed and bejewelled, they wore little more than a smile when gliding down the steps of the most eye-popping evenings theatregoers had ever seen. His power, though, went beyond the Follies as he produced a number of landmark shows, including Kern and Hammerstein's seminal Showboat. In Ziegfeld , Mordden recreates the lost world of the Follies , a place filled with a glamour that no longer exists, masterminded by one of the most inventive and exacting men ever to fill a Broadway stage: Florenz Ziegfeld.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 352
 Publisher: St Martins Press
Published: 02 Dec 2008
ISBN 10: 0312375433
ISBN 13: 9780312375430

Media Reviews
[Ethan Mordden possesses] the kind of long view and deep investigation that almost no writer has previously brought to bear on the [history of the Broadway stage]. --Jesse Greene, The New York Times.. .engaging...This book is as much history as biography. Ziegfeld's personal life is consistently blank, but Mordden fills his pages with cast lists of every single Follies, with mini-biographies of every star and comic [and] an extensive history of Show Boat, which Ziegfeld produced... -- Washington Post Ethan Mordden offers a wealth of detail to illustrate how Ziegfeld left his stamp on every aspect of his productions...this fabled history is made fresh again by Mr. Mordden...as a look back at the beginnings of today's show-business world, Ziegfeld is invaluable. -- Wall Street Journal In his meticulously researched and detailed portrait of the ultimate Rialto manager-producer, Mordden recalls with equal parts snark and smarts Ziegfeld's life and shows...Mordden captures the glamour, the seduction of the stage and, of course, the women who seduced both audiences -- and Ziegfeld himself -- through their beauty and talent. -- Variety Praise for All that Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway, 1919-1959 Ethan Mordden, the almost absurdly prolific theatrical chronicler, has compiled a serious and engaging history. Mordden's evocation of the glory days of drama is a handsome reminder--the next best thing, as they say, to being there. --The Washington Post Book World Erudite, but casual and conversational, and full of fresh perceptions, Mordden is a charmingly insightful raconteur who condenses 40 years' worth of opening nights into a single engrossing montage. -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) [A] witty, compulsively readable style and knack for finding the right figures to focus on in each era. Mordden is a master at revealing the web of aesthetic and business connections just beneath the surface of developments. -- Booklis
Author Bio
Ethan Mordden has written extensively for The New Yorker and The New York Times. Besides non-fiction on theatre, music, and film, he is the author of the Buddies cycle of short stories. The stories, adapted for the stage by Scott Edward Smith as Buddies, played an engagement at the Celebration Theater in Los Angeles. His most recent novel is The Jewcatcher, a savage black-comic fantasy on life in Nazi Germany.