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Glorifying the American Girl More at IMDbPro »

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19 reviews in total

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14 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
The film is a recorded history., 16 January 1999

Author: WCFIELDS from Baltimore, Md

This film may be a bit creaky, but still it is very satisfying to watch. I DID NOT need the fast forward button. To see a filmed performance of a probably pared down Ziegfield Show was an enjoyable experience overall. The music and the dance scenes were excellently executed and are a treat. Many of the principals had very limited film exposure afterwards, especially Mary Eaton and Dan Healy The specialties by Cantor and Vallee were also good, But, it was a pure thrill to see Helen Morgan singing, "What Wouldn't I Do for That Man"!!

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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
A glimpse into the 20's plus a decent story as well, 1 July 2001

Author: Craig Smith (csmith13@woh.rr.com) from Toledo, Ohio

There are two levels to this film. First is your chance to get a glimpse of history. You get to see an example (brief) of what one of the Ziegfeld Follies was. In the process of that you get a chance to hear and see Rudy Vallee and Helen Morgan sing, and see one of Eddie Cantor's skits. You also get a feel for the pomp and extravagance of the follies. What a difference to today's entertainment. In a sense, the folllies were a preview of what became the variety shows on television. And, those shows are gone too. And the movie catches how interested the general public was when a show opened. There was no tv in 1929 so radio went on the air describing all of the people who were attending the opening.

The second level is a fairly decent and interesting story. A story of a young woman who wanted to achieve success. And, in her drive for that success, we see the life she leaves behind and the effect that has on people as she drives forward. Part of that drive comes from her mother who wanted to be a part of that success. It is interesting how she also tries to drive Mary Eaton into making the decisions that she wants made and how she tries to manipulate those decisions. The movie does get across that there is a price to pay for success.

An interesting movie and worth seeing for a glimpse into the late 20's.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Gramopohone exrav-org-ganza, 9 February 2006

Author: ptb-8 from Australia

I would give this colossal and fascinating time capsule musical a 9 for entertainment value and a 2 for the DVD quality. I was so keen to see every frame of this film, having already goggled at THE SHOW OF SHOWS and Broadway MELODY OF 1929...but the DVD I found has the final reels hacked about and urrrggghhhh NOT in the 2 color Technicolor that I was drooling about expecting. I could faintly see the B&W rendition but I knew it was in color so I was really irritated with the DVD people for releasing this great and amazing film in such a chopped and pale way. Prior to the grand finale, the rest of the film is quite interesting as a story and compelling for the visuals and clunky sound of real people and normal city life in the 20s. Sub leads Olive Shea and Edward Crandell are actually more interesting than the lead, Marilyn Miller, and the gorgeous fashions, street scenes, department store settings etc kept me fascinated. I am so keen to see this film properly with the color scenes. as a production and a vintage musical it is extraordinary and beautiful..so please check out the quality and the completeness of the finale before you purchase. If anyone has a good copy to share, complete and with color scenes they can contact me via the message boards on this site. I am so keen to see it properly...and so should you be if you really love sumptuous 20s life on film. Early in the film there is a wonderful outdoor picnic with a stage show...like a delicious 1929 picnic version of '"This Is Our Once A Year Day" from PAJAMA GAME of 1958. Just charming!

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9 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Interesting story, phenominal presentation., 26 April 2004
Author: Rich Drezen (Drezzilla)

The opening sequence of the picture is quite a sight to see, the way it was edited, the positioning of the sets and actors featured in the opening, and to top it all off, a few short clips from Ziegfeld's best known music from his best known music numbers (including "A Pretty Girl is like a Melody"). The rest is for all of you to see. It is available from Alpha Video and maybe a few public-domain distributors (do not expect to find it on DVD, it is a fairly rare film and I was lucky to get mine). The scenes that were shot in Technicolor are somewhat visible if you squint real, real hard. This is a 75 year old picture we're talking about here, it's amazing how much footage of Technicolor has survived since then, because there is so little of it. I originally purchased this picture to see what it's Technicolor sequences look like. I was very suprised though with how it turned out to be. Whoever did the choreography for this picture was a genius because the dancing is very well done. Adding it to your collection (whether or not you chose to do so) will certainly be worth your money.

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8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Early Backstage Musical, 15 February 2005

Author: Ron Oliver (revilorest@juno.com) from Forest Ranch, CA

While the Ziegfeld Follies is GLORIFYING THE American GIRL, one young lady sacrifices love for success.

This antique musical, produced under the personal supervision of Florenz Ziegfeld for Paramount Studios, is another backstage melodrama (a very popular genre at the time) about finding happiness through fame and success on the stage. Like so many other pictures of the era, it revels in Talk & Music; unfortunately, the sound quality is generally poor, making much of the dialogue & lyrics rather hard to decipher.

The representation of Ziegfeld's lavish production numbers is interesting in a historical context, and would be more pleasing to the eye if the original Technicolor footage still survived. Celebrated dancer Ted Shawn was responsible for the ballet numbers, while Irving Berlin supplied some of the music. A careful attention to the soundtrack will disclose the use of old standard tunes in the soundtrack: "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody," "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," "Side By Side" & "Blue Skies."

The regular cast is made up of long-forgotten performers who still give the material their best efforts: Mary Eaton plays the dancer looking for fame in the Follies; Dan Healy is her rapacious but talented partner. Edward Crandall is Miss Eaton's doe-eyed department store boyfriend; Olive Shea plays the salesgirl who loves him desperately. Sarah Edwards has a few good moments as Miss Eaton's crocodilian mother.

Ziegfeld brought in three big stars to liven things up during the movie's final lap. Regrettably, Rudy Vallee's rendition of his hit "Vagabond Lover" is both wooden & unintelligible. Perched on a piano, Helen Morgan is equally difficult to understand, but her personality still comes through in her rendition of a torch song. Hyperactive Eddie Cantor comes off best of all during a boisterous sketch about a Jewish haberdasher.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
A star is born, 29 September 2007

Author: Gary170459 from Derby, UK

Yes, tastes have certainly changed since Ziegfeld's time. Driven by technological improvement and boredom with all things nice this kind of lavish entertainment has gradually been replaced with arty and cheap realism where producers compete to grind the audience's minds into the dirt. Give me honest fantasy anyday!

It's just a story about a woman who unwittingly throws her boyfriend away in her pursuit for fame as a dancer. She enters into a pact with the Devil in the form of a two bit hoofer – she makes it into a Ziegfeld show, he has 5 years contractual sponging off her ahead of him. There's plenty of singing and dancing before the main show, none of it very good but all of it wonderful to watch. The version I saw was in b&w throughout although it's pretty obvious which bits are meant to be in colour, and it ran 94 minutes suggesting it wasn't from the 1950's TV print. A lot of silent films have been restored and preserved but most early talkies have been left to rot away, the soundtrack here has partially returned to blast and crackle and the photography is uneven suggesting a patchwork quilt of available segments has been assembled over the years – so concentration is often needed! I hope the remastered version hasn't got these flaws - but at least every word was clearly enunciated for the benefit of the microphone box. Favourite bits: The ambulance weaving through the streets of New York; the one and only Helen Morgan torch singing What Wouldn't I Do For That Man; the dreamy There Must Be Someone Waiting For Me; the stately and sumptuous sets and costumes of the show itself; even Rudy Vallee singing Vagabond Dreams - rather dully to be sure. I've always liked Eddie Cantor – especially singing, but imho his Jewish tailors shop sketch went on a couple of minutes too long.

So, a nice unassuming film with some spectacular moments and some great songs – well worth watching for people like me who can enjoy it through the ravages of time for what it was: nothing heavy, just (fairly) innocent entertainment.

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7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
For Ziegfeld research it's a must!, 7 April 2007

Author: holly from NYC

For Ziegfeld research it's a must, and you get to see many of Ziegfeld's stars perform, but the sound is poor and there isn't a whole lot of conflict to drive the plot....

As a woman, it's nice to hear Mary Eaton speak frankly to her boyfriend (a dreamy Edward Crandall) about wanting to live a little and see what she can do before settling down and raising children. He's hurt, but not petulant or insulting (like every boyfriend/husband in ZIEGFELD GIRL and THE DOLLY SISTERS). He does wait for her and seems genuinely supportive of her success, before eventually settling for girl-next-door Gloria Shea -- who actually is treated pretty badly by the film, abandoned and hit by a car! Eaton discovers her boyfriend's moved on just as she goes out for the finale in the Follies, and you see the emotions hit her as she struggles under the weight of an enormous headpiece that cascades around her like a fountain.... OK, so it's not exactly heartbreak, but at least she doesn't die of alcohol poisoning or get slapped around like in the exploitational ZIEGFELD GIRL.

The production numbers are tame by Hollywood standards, and we wait the whole film to finally see one of Flo's evolving stage contraptions. Most of the numbers are arranged in tableau including a gorgeous "painting" of a mermaid being pulled from the sea in a fisherman's net as the Pope and neoclassical figures stand by. Tableaux don't make interesting cinema, but I was happy to see some man flesh in these scenes too as nearly nude males (like Johnny Weissmuller here) were apparently excised from the later interpretations of Ziggy's stagework -- ironic since Ziegfeld had his first success displaying the muscular Sandow, so you know he wasn't shy about it.

Eddie Cantor has an overly long vaudeville scene as a Jewish tailor, but is actually funnier in a brief exchange with a haughty showgirl, Rudy Vallee might have been a somebody back then but he sure doesn't show it here. Helen Morgan sings her signature torch song from atop a piano (a schtick she invented by necessity as she was too short to be seen in many music halls). She is excellent in the film APPLAUSE which also came out in 1929 where she played an aging showgirl trying to keep her daughter out of theater life, but unfortunately her performance here suffers from the antique recording.

Ted Shawn is the imaginative choreographer who arranges the dancers as exotic animals, graceful swans, and nouveau beauties clutching glass globes. Shawn would create the Jacob's Pillow dance festival and was instrumental in forming a uniquely American branch of Modern Dance.

There's a lot of history here, and the opening montage is almost Fritz Lang-esquire, but I wouldn't try to show the whole film to any of my friends. The film quality is terribly uneaven, suggesting inconsistent filmstock. Silent footage from a premier was spliced in so we can get a glimpse of Ziegfeld and Billie Burke, as well as other Broadway dignitaries of the age. It's a tragedy the technicolor scenes are lost (at least, not a part of the Alpha Video release). All-in-all it's not a bad film, the pre-code heroine isn't "punished" for having career ambitions but she experiences some bumps and bruises along the way (by her selfish mother and an unscrupulous manager). She loses the cute guy but he comes to congratulate her when she stars in the show and that seems like a fair compromise; much better than the plots that would slap down any woman who dared to have her own goals in later films.

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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
when music was music, 12 October 2007

Author: kidboots from Australia

Marilyn Miller was NOT the star of this film. Marilyn Miller was a beautiful TALL, leggy showgirl who was Broadway's brightest star of the 20s. She was in "Sally", "Sunny" - she also filmed them in 1929 and 1930.

The star of "Glorifying the American Girl" was Mary Eaton. Mary Eaton was picked by Ziegfeld in the 20s to be the successor to Marilyn Miller (because Miss Miller was getting uppity.) She replaced Miss Miller in "Kid Boots" with Eddie Cantor.

Mary Eaton, in my opinion, couldn't hold a candle to Marilyn Miller. I think Mary Eaton was showcased far better in "The Cocoanuts" (1929).

I loved this film because this is my era - I feel so at home watching musicals and movies from the late 20s, early 30s - the songs are so catchy.

I loved the start as it showed girls from all over America walking to Broadway and instantly went into Mary Eaton singing "No Foolin'". I also liked Olive Shea - I was glad when she got her "Buddy" -she seemed quite a natural actress. I didn't particularly like Mary Eaton - she didn't seem very starry eyed - she came across as tough and jaded.

Helen Morgan's song I loved but I also thought Eddie Cantor's skit went on far too long.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Enjoy the innocence of it all, as well as Eddy Cantor and Helen Morgan, 30 January 2008

Author: Terrell-4 from San Antonio, Texas

We should encourage each other to smile indulgently at the antics and musical tastes of our great-grandparents. After all, our own great-grandchildren will soon enough be doing the same to us. In Glorifying the American Girl, the story of Gloria Hughes' ambition to be a musical star is appliquéd onto the Broadway extravaganza of a Florenz Ziegfeld show. We get songs, dances, fabulous costumes, show girls, ukulele plucking, comedy skits, a near-fatal accident, lechery, tearful farewells, love lost and love found and, of course, a big finale where Gloria's success is tempered only by the sadness of a love too long delayed, yet still made satisfying by the happiness of her two best friends. In other words, there's much to snicker about...just don't take your own all-too-soon-to-be-dated enthusiasms too seriously.

Briefly, Gloria (Mary Eaton) works with Buddy (Edward Crandall) and Barbara (Gloria Shea) at Heiman's Department store. Buddy plays piano while Gloria sings the latest songs so that customers will buy the sheet music. Barbara is a clerk. Buddy loves Gloria. Barbara loves Buddy. Gloria thinks she loves Buddy. When Danny Miller (Dan Healy), part of the song and dance team, Miller and Mooney, fires his latest Mooney at the company picnic, he spots Gloria dancing. Before long Gloria has left Heiman's and become the replacement Mooney. While Buddy pines for Gloria and Barbara pines for Buddy, Miller and Gloria travel the country with their act. They're spotted by a scout working for Florenz Ziegfeld and arrive in New York with big hopes and big dreams. It doesn't work out. But Gloria fights for a chance to show her stuff and lands a spot in the show. Danny, who is something of a lech as well as a good dancer, hangs around because of a contract he had Gloria sign. Now opening night approaches. But wait. Barbara has been hit by a taxi and is in critical condition. Buddy realizes he loves Barbara. Gloria goes on with the show. In a miracle of careless editing, Buddy and Barbara are in their seats, part of the happy, applauding audience as Gloria, learning at the last minute that Buddy and Barbara are wed, achieves fame.

What makes all this dated nonsense watchable is the innocence of the acting, the songs and dances, and, during the last third of the movie, the Ziegfeld Follies on stage. The Follies were lush, fabulous variety shows. We have an odd tableau that features nuns, a bishop, scantily clad girls and half naked chorus boys probably doing something religiously questionable; there's Helen Morgan sitting on a piano telling us another sad story in song about her man; here's Rudy Vallee singing to us that he's just a vagabond lover looking for the girl in his vagabond dreams; front and center are high-kicking chorines with none of the self- conscious angst of A Chorus Line; they just keep slapping the leather to the floor. And just before Gloria's big starring number, here's Eddy Cantor with an associate and a stooge doing a long comedy bit about a customer unfortunate enough to enter the tailor shop where Cantor works. While Vallee looks much like the self-satisfied, dirty old man he turned into, Helen Morgan is great. She could deliver a torch song like few before or since. And Eddie Cantor gives all us aging youngsters a chance to see what made him such a big star in vaudeville and on Broadway. The humor is ethnic (e.g., broad and Jewish), the timing is perfect and the routine keeps building. I don't know who his stooge was or the fellow who played Cantor's boss, but they were first-rate second bananas.

This movie was supposed to have had the Ziegfeld Follies sequences shot in Technicolor. Perhaps somewhere there is a VHS or DVD version that reflects this. Most copies I've heard of have just been slapped together as cheaply as possible with no color and, often, with a lot of chopping. In the version I have, Barbara's auto accident, Buddy's promise of love, their marriage and then their being seated in the audience while Gloria triumphs is cut and edited incomprehensibly. The movie is in the public domain and looks every bit of it. Perhaps not much of a loss, but it would have been good to have seen Morgan and Cantor under better circumstances.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Restored by UCLA to 98% of its "Glory.", 31 October 2007

Author: mk4 from Long Beach, CA

If you want to catch a viewing of this film in nearly all of its "Glory" -- 2-Strip Technicolor and all--simply get on a plane to Los Angeles and taxi over to the UCLA Film Archives in Westwood. Oh...you'll have to make an appointment well in advance...for "Scholarly and/or Academic Pursuits Only"...for a private screening, as this film resides in the vault. It is rarely screened, except for Film Preservation Retrospectives... or is occasionally loaned out to "your town"...if you happen to live in NY State, or Australia, or Europe. All versions on VHS or DVD are poorly duped dupe-of-a-dupe copies of badly battered eminent domain prints, but unfortunately, that's all there is "out there" until UCLA decides to release their terrific library of 2-Strip Technicolor films onto the world some day! For a couple of swell Technicolor scenes of the film's finale, I suggest that you visit the sensational, stupendous, colossal "Vitaphone Varieties" website run by Jeff Cohen at vitaphone.blogspot.com/.

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