... as someone should have said to Lana Turner before it was too late. Turner plays an elevator (lift in England) operator in what the film coyly calls a 'Fifth Avenue Department Store' and is spotted there (offscreen) by the great Ziggie himself - this may be a backhanded nod to Turner's alleged 'discovery' whilst in Schwab's Drug Store - and before you can say staircase she is a 'Ziegfeld Girl in the same intake as Hedy Lamarr and Judy Garland. This was the second of three films - The Great Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Girl, Ziegfeld Follies - glorifying the Great Mittel Europe Showman and arguably the worst. It's basically a melodrama with a half-hearted score in which top-billed Jimmy Stewart seems miscast as the truck-driver who turns as 'bad' as his girl-friend (Turner) once he realizes her head has been turned by the cliché financier. Turner is actually half decent as the neighborhood gal who abandons True Love for Faux jewellery and most watchable - though there's not enough of her - is Eve Arden, that mistress of the one-liner. Hedy Lamarr supplies the glamor but luckily isn't prevailed upon to act, Judy and Charles Winninger walk through their father-daughter schtick, Tony Martin reminds us just how far short he was of Sinatra or even Dick Haymes and doesn't QUITE ruin the one decent number in the score, You Stepped Out Of A Dream. To add insult to injury MGM shot it in black and white. Try to catch it on TV rather than shelling out for the DVD.
Review of Ziegfeld Girl
