"The 'Follies' was at first a diversion for swells staged in one of the roof garden theaters atop the big Broadway palaces. Drawing on already popular forms—burlesque, vaudeville, the topical revues of Paris—Ziegfeld recombined elements of each to give a racing new pulse to the variety format. The resulting product 'essentialized the musical’s past while creating its future,' Mordden writes. And the impresario’s worship of talent was excelled only by his admiration for beautiful women: Ziegfeld’s obsessive attention to lubricious detail raised the art of scanty dressing to new heights."
In The New York Times, Charles Isherwood reviews Ethan Mordden's Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business.
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