In the first decades of the twentieth century, Broadway teemed with
showgirls, but only the Ziegfeld Girl has survived in American
popular culture--as a figure of legend, nostalgia, and camp.
Featured in Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s renowned revues, which ran on
Broadway from 1907 to 1931, the Ziegfeld Girl has appeared in her
trademark feather headdresses, parading and posing, occasionally
singing and dancing, in numerous musicals and musical films paying
direct or indirect homage to the intrepid producer and his glorious
Girl. Linda Mizejewski analyzes the Ziegfeld Girl as a cultural
icon and argues that during a time when American national identity
was in flux, Ziegfeld Girls were both products and representations
of a white, upscale, heterosexual national ideal.
Mizejewski traces the Ziegfeld Girl's connections to
turn-of-the-century celebrity culture, black Broadway, the fashion
industry, and the changing sexual and gender identities evident in
mainstream entertainment during the Ziegfeld years. In addition,
she emphasizes how crises of immigration and integration made the
identity and whiteness of the American Girl an urgent issue on
Broadway's revue stages during that era. Although her focus is on
the showgirl as a "type," the analysis is intermingled with
discussions of figures like Anna Held, Fanny Brice, and Bessie
McCoy, the Yama Yama girl, as well as Ziegfeld himself. Finally,
Mizejewski discusses the classic American films that have most
vividly kept this showgirl alive in both popular and camp culture,
including "The Great Ziegfeld," "Ziegfeld Girl," and the Busby
Berkeley musicals that cloned Ziegfeld's showgirls for
decades.
" Ziegfeld Girl" will appeal to scholars and students in American
studies, popular culture, theater and performance studies, film
history, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, and social
history.
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