Earl Carroll, the troubadour of the nude and the most notorious connoisseur of female flesh in the history of show business, is the great Broadway showman Florenz Ziegfeld’s only real competition on The Great White Way until he suffers a nervous breakdown and goes bankrupt, only to reinvent himself in the burgeoning Hollywood.

SYNOPSIS:

Funny Girl meets Chicago. Big Broadway song and dance routines. A love story. Incredible music. Big name Broadway stars of the 20s and 30s (W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, Milton Berle). Some of the greatest songs ever came out of Earl Carroll Broadway shows (I Gotta’ Right to Sing the Blues). Wonderful light shows. Incredible costuming. Ostrich feather dresses. Peacock feather fans deftly handled by naked Carroll dance girls to tease and please, conceal but not reveal resulted in a criminal obscenity charge . Carroll beat the rap, striking a blow against obscenity. He was not so lucky with his next criminal charge, perjury over a prohibition violation. He had no choice. The bootlegger he got Champagne from would have seen to it that Earl took a bath in the the east River in a cement overcoat. He was humiliated Suffered a nervous breakdown on the prison train. He came back only to go bankrupt during the depression. Having lost his Broadway theatre to arch rival Florenz Ziegfield and sold off everything he owned to pay the rent Paramount Pictures swooped in and bought the movie rights to one of his Broadway shows. Earl reinvented himself in Hollywood making movies, but theatre was his first love. In 1938 he built the Earl Carroll Dinner Theatre on Sunset. It became a second home to Hollywood stars and moguls and is now a historic landmark with plans for restoration to its original grandeur. BUT Broadway was his real true love. Returning to Broadway for a new show, United Flight 624 crashed in the coal fields of northeastern PA, not far from Carroll’s boyhood home.