ELEANOR POWELL PRE-PUBLICITY | ZIEGFELD GIRL (ca. 1938) Oversized photo

[Los Angeles]: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, [ca. 1938]. Vintage original 10 x 13″ (25 x 32 cm.) sepia-tinted double weight glossy silver gelatin photo. Some creasing near bottom right corner, near fine.

In pre-production soon after The Great Ziegfeld won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Ziegfeld Girl went through numerous script and casting revisions between early-1938 and late-1940. When Eleanor Powell posed for this fashion photo, which emphasized what the original attached blurb comments as her wearing a hat with a pirate sweep, she would next be seen in Ziegfeld Girl.

Luise Rainer, Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan and Virginia Bruce were also promoted as being cast, but the “new” girls at MGM were the final stars when the film went into production in late-1940: Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr.

An interesting artifact in the production of a big MGM musical. Photo coded MG 80592.