Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business - Hardcover

Mordden, Ethan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312375433 ISBN 13: 9780312375430

Publisher: St Martin's Press, 2008

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312375433
• ISBN 13: 9780312375430
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352