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James Fisher
GARY A GALO(EDITOR)
Living Era (Sanctuary Records Group Limited) CD AJA 5619.
The Ziegfeld Follies , an annual revue conceived by producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (1867-1932) as a merging of American vaudeville and the French Folies-Bergère under the guiding precept of ''Glorifying the American Girl,'' dominated popular entertainment between 1907 and 1931, a period in which Ziegfeld produced twenty-two editions of his Follies . Along with other revues and musical comedies, including A Parlor Match (1896), which introduced his first wife, French singer Anna Held, to New York audiences, Sally (1920), Kid Boots (1926), the landmark musical drama Show Boat (1927), and the definitive Eddie Cantor vehicle, Whoopee (1928), Ziegfeld's Follies and his Midnight Frolic , a revue staged on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre and featuring Follies stars, made Ziegfeld's name synonymous with creativity and taste on the popular stage. Anyone who may have actually seen a Ziegfeld production has long-since passed from the scene, but the Ziegfeld name has endured and achieved iconic status in part through films bearing his name (although produced after his death) such as the Academy Award-winning (and highly fictional) screen biography The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and the subsequent ''revue'' film Ziegfeld Follies (1946), as well as innumerable screen biographies of popular entertainers who worked in the Ziegfeld-dominated era between 1900 and 1930.
In Living Era's single-disc compilation The Ziegfeld Follies , which brings together vintage recordings by a range of Follies stars, listeners are provided a welcome reminder of the songs, comedy, and personalities to emerge from the Follies . Missing, of course, are the visual elements. This is a significant loss given the importance of the lavish stage and costume designs, not to mention the glorified Follies girls, to the enduring success of the Follies , but this generally well-selected sampling provides a wholly pleasing, if necessarily incomplete, audio introduction. Considering the era of the Follies , a surprisingly large number of available recordings of the stars and songs from the various editions survive. Most of the important Ziegfeld stars are featured (a few in more than one track) and although many of these recordings have been frequently anthologized (and several of the stars...