The 1945 musical comedy Ziegfeld Follies was inspired by it's namesake, the Ziegfeld Follies Broadway shows. As such, the film is composed of a sequence of unrelated lavish musical numbers and comedy sketches. Intriguing enough, while the movie prologue simply featured William Powell as Ziegfeld, the opening of the film was meant to start out far more whimsically.
As the film's production company was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, an early concept was to have the film introduced by a stop motion animated puppet of the company's mascot, Leo the Lion. Although cut before release, this outtake footage survives today and can be viewed below:
Stay tuned!