Glorifier's End

As it must to all men, Death came last week to Florenz Ziegfeld, 63, master showman. Stricken with bronchial pneumonia, he had gone west to recover, planning to stage his Follies in Los Angeles during the Olympic Games. In Hollywood he had a relapse. After .his physicians had thought him out of danger his heart gave way, he gasped twice, died before his wife and daughter could get to him from a nearby cinema studio. His mother, dying in Chicago, was not told of his death.

Broadway knew "Flo" Ziegfeld for his temperament, his lavishness, his lack of humor, his publicity-madness. Broadway liked him nonetheless. Since the 1890's his short figure, his broad, pink face, thick nose and sharp eyes had been familiar to theatregoers. But he never let the public forget that his father had founded the Chicago Musical College, that his second job --his first was with Buffalo Bill's show-- was that of manager of the college. In 1892 he went to Europe to get orchestras for the Chicago World's Fair. On their failing, he went to New York. There in 1893 he found "the most perfect human being I had ever seen"--Eugene Sandow, the strong man. New York had laughed at Sandow. Ziegfeld took him to Chicago, cleared as high as $30,000 per week exhibiting him after he had inveigled Mrs. George Pullman and Mrs. Potter Palmer into feeling his muscles. After Sandow his "most perfect human beings" were all women.

He had heard Anna Held sing "won't you come and play wiz me?" in England. He invited her to New York and in 1896 put her into his first theatrical production A Parlour Match. For twelve years she played in one after another mildly daring show of his, became America's foremost showgirl and Mrs. Ziegfeld.

Showman Ziegfeld remembered reading that a famed French beauty bathed in asses' milk. He ordered gallons of milk sent to Actress Held's apartment, waited. The milk company sued him; newshawks asked the reason for so huge a bill. Ziegfeld exhibited to them smiling Anna neckdeep in a milk-filled bath tub. That and her wasp-waist made her famous. He divorced her in 1912. She died in 1918, crippled by her corsets.

In 1913 he saw Actress Billie Burke at a masquerade party with Somerset Maugham. Ziegfeld was dressed as a tramp. He rushed home, changed to full dress, sprayed himself with perfume. Actress Burke liked the perfume. He courted her quietly, with Grant's Tomb their usual rendezvous. On the day that Lefty Louis, one of the murderers of Herman Rosenthal, was executed, alert newsmen discovered that Showman Ziegfeld had married Actress Burke in Hoboken. They shared the front page with Lefty Louis.

In 1906 he went to Europe, won a million dollars at Monte Carlo and saw the Folies Bergere. The first Ziegfeld Follies appeared in 1907-08. Critic Percy Hammond called it "a loud & leering orgy of indelicacy & suggestiveness." Subsequent Follies helped to make Ziegfeld a millionaire, "glorified" a succession of beautiful women,* including Justine Johnstone, Olive Thomas, Marilyn Miller (he called hers "the most beautiful form in the world"), Yvonne Taylor ("she wore the most beautiful tights"), Mae Murray, Lilyan Tashman, Ina Claire, Billie Dove, Mary Hay, Nita Naldi, Marion Davies, Peggy Hopkins Joyce. He was responsible for the fame of Will Rogers, Bert Williams, William Claude Fields, Eddie Cantor, Jack Donahue.

He claimed that Frankie Bailey had the most beautiful form of the oldtime beauties. Someone told him King Edward VII preferred May Yohe. "So?" said Ziegfeld. "Well, King Edward was no judge."

He was famed for lavender shirts, long telegrams, long-distance telephone calls, frequent unreasonableness. He sent a long complaining telegram to Fannie Brice because she left his Follies a month before she was to have a baby. He owned six custard-colored Rolls-Royces, hunted in Canada with five Indian guides, traveled in a private railroad car, kept a private barber and a succession of private chefs. His favorite food was terrapin. Pressagents complained because he telephoned them at 7 a. m. When a big news story broke the day he sailed for Europe, his name failed to appear on the first page. He wired his pressagent: "Sorry you sneaked me out of New York."

Central City's Camille

Perched on a mountainside 20 mi. from Denver is the old mining town of Central City (pop. 570). Last week Central City saw more excitement than it had known since the gold rush. Editor G. M. Laird cleaned his presses, published a special edition of the Register-Call. Tourists bought rusty miners' tools as souvenirs, posed for tintypes, stopped for drinks at a resurrected saloon. Bustled women and men in ancient beavers crowded the narrow street in front of Central City's opera house, watched Frederic McFarlane present the keys of the house to Chancellor Frederick Maurice Hunter of the University of Denver. Then they all filed inside to see woebegone Actress Lillian Gish perform in the sad, sad story of Camille.

Central City's opera house was opened in 1878 when the town was a roaring mining centre. It soon became known as the finest theatre west of the Mississippi. Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Fanny Ward, Rose Coghlan played there. So did Actress Gish, as a child. When Central City's boom days were over the theatre was closed. Lately the University of Denver decided to use it for annual play festivals, of which last week's was the first. Patrons paid for hard hickory chairs. Director Robert Edmond Jones designed a stage setting lighted by old oil lamps. Composer Macklin Marrow wrote special music for the performance. For first-night and succeeding audiences Actress Gish displayed her famed wanness, made patrons sniffle during the death scene.

*In 1914 a pressagent quoted Showman Ziegfeld: "Women glorify gowns and certain gowns can glorify certain girls."

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