Wealth & Money Quote by Florenz Ziegfeld

Ziegfeld is confessing the quiet heresy at the heart of show business: laughter is a market signal, not a moral verdict. The man who engineered the Ziegfeld Follies - a precision machine for glamour and mass delight - admits that a huge portion of what he sold as hilarious left him cold. It lands because it inverts the usual mythology of the impresario as tastemaker. He is, instead, a broker. His authority comes from receipts and shrieks, not from personal taste.

The intent is partly defensive, partly diagnostic. By stressing what he paid and what the audience did, he frames comedy as labor with measurable output. If the crowd howls, the act works, even if the producer doesn't "get it". That phrase matters: "couldn't understand why" isn't just taste; it's estrangement. Ziegfeld is recognizing that humor is code - class, region, ethnicity, slang, timing - and that the code shifts faster than any one person can keep up with. His job was to anticipate the public, not mirror it.

Subtext: the producer is both powerful and irrelevant. He can hire, fire, and bankroll, yet the ultimate editor is the room. In early 20th-century vaudeville and revue culture, comedy was a volatile mix of broad physicality, topical references, and social caricature; what killed with a paying crowd might feel crude, baffling, or simply alien from the wings. Ziegfeld's candor also flatters the audience: you're the expert on what you find funny. In an industry built on illusion, that's a bracingly unromantic truth.