Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway

Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway PDF Author: Eve Golden
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813128733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
" Anna Held (1870?-1918), a petite woman with an hourglass figure, was America's most popular musical comedy star during the two decades preceding World War I. In the colorful world of New York theater during La Belle Époque, she epitomized everything that was glamorous, sophisticated, and suggestive about turn-of-the-century Broadway. Overcoming an impoverished life as an orphan to become a music-hall star in Paris, Held rocketed to fame in America. From 1896 to 1910, she starred in hit after hit and quickly replaced Lillian Russell as the darling of the theatrical world. The first wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Held was the brains and inspiration behind his Follies and shared his knack for publicity. Together, they brought the Paris scene to New York, complete with lavish costumes and sets and a chorus of stunningly beautiful women, dubbed ""The Anna Held Girls."" While Held was known for a champagne giggle as well as for her million-dollar bank account, there was a darker side to her life. She concealed her Jewish background and her daughter from a previous marriage. She suffered through her two husbands' gambling problems and Ziegfeld's blatant affairs with showgirls. With the outbreak of fighting in Europe, Held returned to France to support the war effort. She entertained troops and delivered medical supplies, and she was once briefly captured by the German army. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway reveals one of the most remarkable women in the history of theatrical entertainment. With access to previously unseen family records and photographs, Eve Golden has uncovered the details of an extraordinary woman in the vibrant world of 1900s New York.

Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway

Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway PDF Author: Eve Golden
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813128733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
" Anna Held (1870?-1918), a petite woman with an hourglass figure, was America's most popular musical comedy star during the two decades preceding World War I. In the colorful world of New York theater during La Belle Époque, she epitomized everything that was glamorous, sophisticated, and suggestive about turn-of-the-century Broadway. Overcoming an impoverished life as an orphan to become a music-hall star in Paris, Held rocketed to fame in America. From 1896 to 1910, she starred in hit after hit and quickly replaced Lillian Russell as the darling of the theatrical world. The first wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Held was the brains and inspiration behind his Follies and shared his knack for publicity. Together, they brought the Paris scene to New York, complete with lavish costumes and sets and a chorus of stunningly beautiful women, dubbed ""The Anna Held Girls."" While Held was known for a champagne giggle as well as for her million-dollar bank account, there was a darker side to her life. She concealed her Jewish background and her daughter from a previous marriage. She suffered through her two husbands' gambling problems and Ziegfeld's blatant affairs with showgirls. With the outbreak of fighting in Europe, Held returned to France to support the war effort. She entertained troops and delivered medical supplies, and she was once briefly captured by the German army. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway reveals one of the most remarkable women in the history of theatrical entertainment. With access to previously unseen family records and photographs, Eve Golden has uncovered the details of an extraordinary woman in the vibrant world of 1900s New York.

Anna Held and Flo Ziegfeld

Anna Held and Flo Ziegfeld PDF Author: Anna Held
Publisher: Exposition Pressof Florida
ISBN: 9780682493093
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description


Ziegfeld

Ziegfeld PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429951524
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Any girl who twists her hat will be fired! – Florenz Ziegfeld And no Ziegfeld girl ever did as she made her way down the gala stairways of the Ziegfeld Follies in some of the most astonishing spectacles the American theatergoing public ever witnessed. When Florenz Ziegfeld started in theater, it was flea circus, operetta and sideshow all rolled into one. When he left it, the glamorous world of "show-biz" had been created. Though many know him as the man who "glorified the American girl," his first real star attraction was the bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, who flexed his muscles and thrilled the society matrons who came backstage to squeeze his biceps. His lesson learned with Sandow, Ziegfeld went on to present Anna Held, the naughty French sensation, who became the first Mrs. Ziegfeld. He was one of the first impresarios to mix headliners of different ethnic backgrounds, and literally the earliest proponent of mixed-race casting. The stars he showcased and, in some cases, created have become legends: Billie Burke (who also became his wife), elfin Marilyn Miller, cowboy Will Rogers, Bert Williams, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor and, last but not least, neighborhood diva Fanny Brice. A man of voracious sexual appetites when it came to beautiful women, Ziegfeld knew what he wanted and what others would want as well. From that passion, the Ziegfeld Girl was born. Elaborately bejeweled, they wore little more than a smile as they glided through eye-popping tableaux that were the highlight of the Follies, presented almost every year from 1907 to 1931. Ziegfeld's reputation and power, however, went beyond the stage of the Follies as he produced a number of other musicals, among them the ground-breaking Show Boat. In Ziegfeld: The Man Who Created Show Business, Ethan Mordden recreates the lost world of the Follies, a place of long-vanished beauty masterminded by one of the most inventive, ruthless, street-smart and exacting men ever to fill a theatre on the Great White Way : Florenz Ziegfeld.

Ziegfeld and His Follies

Ziegfeld and His Follies PDF Author: Cynthia Brideson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813160901
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this definitive biography, Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson offer a comprehensive look at both the life and legacy of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Drawing on a wide range of sources, they provide a lively and well-rounded account of Ziegfeld as a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lover, and an alternately ruthless and benevolent employer. Lavishly illustrated, this is an intimate and in-depth portrait of a figure who profoundly changed American entertainment.

Ziegfeld Follies Paper Dolls

Ziegfeld Follies Paper Dolls PDF Author: Tom Tierney
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 9780486248110
Category : Clothing and dress
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This sparkling collection spotlights nine of the shows' fabulous stars plus Flo Ziegfeld himself in 29 costumes. Includes Anna Held, Billie Burke, Fanny Brice with costumes by Erte, John Harkrider, more."

With A Feather On My Nose

With A Feather On My Nose PDF Author: Billie Burke
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786256126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
The popular comedienne’s account of her theatrical career and her married life with Florenz Ziegfeld. This is the life story of an actress, a beautiful redheaded actress who lived and played in a glittering era now gone but fondly remembered. Although she attained moments of great fame and happiness, she never knew security. Like her father, the well-known clown, she went through life with a feather on her nose.—Print Ed.

Gardens of Stone

Gardens of Stone PDF Author: Alexandra Kathryn Mosca
Publisher: America Through Time
ISBN: 9781635000108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Get Book Here

Book Description
"They are found in tiny parcels of land squeezed among Manhattan buildings and in large rolling tracts of land in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. New York City's cemeteries carry on the ancient tradition of memorializing the dead with monuments, from plain gray markers to imposing crypts. Whatever their size, they tell the story of the city's evolution--its triumphs, tragedies, and setbacks--as it became a global capital ... [This book] takes you on a walk through these memorial parks, guiding you through works of art cast in stone, from small solitary monuments to some of the country's most grand mausoleums"--Page 4 of cover.

Ziegfeld Girl

Ziegfeld Girl PDF Author: Linda Mizejewski
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822323235
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
A study of the iconographic significance of the Ziegfeld girl in twentieth-century American conceptions of sexuality, race, class, and consumerism.

The Ziegfelds' Girl

The Ziegfelds' Girl PDF Author: Patricia Ziegfeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Devil's Playground

The Devil's Playground PDF Author: James Traub
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307432130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the 1990s. First, Traub gives us the great impresarios, wits, tunesmiths, newspaper columnists, and nocturnal creatures who shaped Times Square over the century since the place first got its name: Oscar Hammerstein, Florenz Ziegfeld, George S. Kaufman, Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, and “the Queen of the Nightclubs,” Texas Guinan; bards like A. J. Liebling, Joe Mitchell, and the Beats, who celebrated the drug dealers and pimps of 42nd Street. He describes Times Square’s notorious collapse into pathology and the fierce debates over how best to restore it to life. Traub then goes on to scrutinize today’s Times Square as no author has yet done. He writes about the new 42nd Street, the giant Toys “R” Us store with its flashing Ferris wheel, the new world of corporate theater, and the sex shops trying to leave their history behind. More than sixty years ago, Liebling called Times Square “the heart of the world”—not just the center of the world, though this crossroads in Midtown Manhattan was indeed that, but its heart. From the dawn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, Times Square was the whirling dynamo of American popular culture and, increasingly, an urban sanctuary for the eccentric and the untamed. The name itself became emblematic of the tremendous life force of cities everywhere. Today, Times Square is once again an awe-inspiring place, but the dark and strange corners have been filled with blazing light. The most famous street character on Broadway, “the Naked Cowboy,” has his own website, and Toys “R” Us calls its flagship store in Times Square “the toy center of the universe.” For the giant entertainment corporations that have moved to this safe, clean, and self-consciously gaudy spot, Times Square is still very much the center of the world. But is it still the heart?