Trailer
Plot summary
In a heaven above the clouds, the showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. occupies a home whose doorway recalls the Broadway theater where he staged his Follies, and near him are the afterlives of Shakespeare and P.T. Barnum. He speaks to the audience and guides it along a wall of shadow boxes filled with dolls of the stars he once presented. The audience also sees a stop-motion puppet sequence of one of his show openings, which he narrates. On a balcony he wishes he could mount one more Follies with the performers of the day, and a Higher Power supplies writing material: paper and a long red crayon. He begins with a pink opening number.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ziegfeld Follies (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming the bubble-dance finale for the closing number, the bubble machine broke down and soap solution flooded the soundstage hallways, forcing the number to be restaged and cutting Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer's part of the sequence entirely.
- Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly's tap duel in "The Babbitt and the Bromide" was the only time the two dancers appeared on screen together while both were still in their prime; they would not team up again until 1976's That's Entertainment, Part II.
- Despite earning over $5.3 million combined in North America and abroad, the lavish revue's costs were so high that MGM still recorded a $269,000 loss on the picture.
