THOSE LOVELY FOLLIES

Evening Star, Issue 19841, 14 April 1928, Page 18

THOSE LOVELY FOLLIES

Floronz Zicgfeld, impressario of the Ziegfeld Follies in New York—lainous for their beauty the world over—grew' expansive recently when telling how Ins “ beauties ” were picked for his revues. “ Some chaps arc under the impression that anyone can stage a revue by going to a beauty competition at Atlantic City and picking a mob of girls. It’s a joke! , “Mob selections are always a lailuro when one is in quest of beautiful girls. The best ones don’t have to go into mobs, and you never find them there. Selections Irom photographs are even more hopeless. The prettiest girls often take the worst photographs, and almost any girl by trying olteu enough can get a pretty photograph of herself. Grace, magnetism, and personality are necessary (lor the show girl), and those qualities do not show usually in photographs. “Once chorus girls used to receive 20dol a week. Now they get 10U (roughly, £20).” Asked what eventually became ot his “Follies,” Ziegfeld said:— “Many marry, and marry well. A great many of them go into the movies, and a lot of them go to hell. Jho ones who use the stage as a medium for gold digging do nut last long, but if they keep aw.ay from dissipation and late hours they can keep their beauty for a long time, and make a good tiling out of the business.” Ziegfeld was the first American producer to exploit the nude on the stage. It was in tableaux reproducing famous paintings in life poses. He asserts that his figures were never absolutely undraped, nor were the paintings chosen to exploit the nude alone. “Nowadays,” he says, “ the orgies of nakedness that some producers stage make one ashamed of ever having had , anything to do with revues.”