BROADWAY PRODUCER

A Showman.

The son of Dr. Florenz Ziegfeld, who had founded the Chicago Musical College in 1867, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was born in Chicago on 21 March 1867. In 1892, hoping to capitalize on the crowds that would be coming to the city for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Dr. Ziegfeld set up a nightclub in Chicago and sent his twenty-five-year-old son to Europe and New York to find talent. The young scout brought back a Hungarian band, Russian dancers, and the Great Sandow, a German strongman who lifted people and pianos. Sandow was a hit, and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. made $250,000 by managing Sandow's touring act over the next three years. When public fascination with Sandow faded, Ziegfeld moved to New York, where he managed the career of comedian Lew Weber. In 1896 he found a new client, and a wife: Anna Held, a Polishborn singer who was performing in Paris when Ziegfeld discovered her. Ziegfeld told American...