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Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, from a screenplay written by William Anthony McGuire, MGM’s lavish, hugely expensive musical bio-pic The Great Ziegfeld premieres at the famed Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. William Powell stars in a semi-fictionalised account of the life and times of the eponymous theatre impresario whose much vaunted song and dance extravaganzas dominated Broadway theaters during the first thirty years of the 20th century. Shot in black & white, and clocking in at a daunting 3 hours, the film's teeming, inticately choreographed cavalcade of showgirls hoofing through grandiose production numbers is deftly paralleled by the showman's heady relationship with the two wives, played by Myrna Loy and Luise Rainer, who basked in some of his reflected glory. The film is a box-office blockbuster, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress for Rainer, and Best Dance Director for Seymour Felix's staging of A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody.
