1945 American musical comedy film
Ziegfeld Follies is a 1945 American musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), primarily directed by Vincente Minnelli, with segments directed by Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, Robert Lewis, and George Sidney, the film's original director before Minnelli took over. Other directors that are claimed to have made uncredited contributions to the film are Merrill Pye, Norman Taurog, and Charles Walters. It stars many MGM leading talents, including Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice (the only member of the ensemble who was a star of the original Follies), Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, James Melton, Victor Moore, William Powell, Red Skelton, and Esther Williams.
Producer Arthur Freed wanted to create a film along the lines of the Ziegfeld Follies Broadway shows, and so the film is composed of a sequence of unrelated lavish musical numbers and comedy sketches. Some of them, such as Pay the Two Dollars, originated in George White's Scandals. Filmed in 1944 and 1945, it was released in 1946 to considerable critical and box-office success.
The film was entered into the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.