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Poster for The Great Ziegfeld
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Released
1936 · FILM

The Great Ziegfeld

“The Sensation of the Century!”

Directed by
Robert Z Leonard
Written by
William Anthony Mcguire
Runtime
185 min
DramaMusical

Synopsis

At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, sideshow barker Florenz Ziegfeld outmaneuvers his more successful neighbor Billings and also takes his girlfriend. This pattern continues throughout their lives, as Ziegfeld builds and loses multiple fortunes by producing increasingly large and extravagant shows.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 15

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by William S GrayShot by Oliver T Marsh

Box Office

1936 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$4.7M

Budget$2.2M
Worldwide gross$4.7M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Der große Ziegfeldde
  • El gran Ziegfeldes
  • Le Grand Ziegfeldfr
  • Il paradiso delle fanciulleit

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