Busby Berkeley


Busby Berkeley

c.1935
Born November 29, 1895(1895-11-29)
Los Angeles, California U.S.
Died March 14, 1976 (aged 80)
Palm Springs, California U.S.
Occupation film director, choreographer
Years active 1925–1951

Busby Berkeley (November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976), born William Berkeley Enos in Los Angeles, California, was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer.

Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeley's quintessential works used legions of showgirls and props as fantastic elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances. He started as a theatrical director, just as many other movie directors. Unlike many at the time, he felt that a camera should be allowed mobility, and he framed shots carefully from unusual angles to allow movie audiences to see things from perspectives that the theatrical stage never could provide. This is why he played an enormous role in establishing the movie musical as a category in its own right.


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Career

He made his stage debut at five, acting in the company of his performing family. During World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant, where he learned the intricacies of drilling and disciplining large groups of people. During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the terpsichorean skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway. The only way they'd get any larger was if Berkeley moved to films, and he did when 'talkies' arrived.

The “By A Waterfall” production number from Footlight Parade (1933) made use of one of the largest soundstages ever built, constructed especially by Warner Bros. to film Berkeley's creations.

His earliest movie jobs were on Samuel Goldwyn's Eddie Cantor musicals, where he began developing such techniques as a “parade of faces” (individualizing each chorus girl with a loving close-up), and moving his dancers all over the stage (and often beyond) in as many kaleidoscopic patterns as possible. Berkeley's legendary top shot technique (the kaleidoscope again, this time shot from overhead) appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 Universal programmer Night World. His numbers were known for starting out in the realm of the stage, but quickly exceeding this space by moving into a time and place that could only be cinematic, only to return to shots of an applauding audience and the fall of a curtain. As choreographer, Berkeley was allowed a certain degree of independence in his direction of musical numbers, and they were often markedly distinct from (and sometimes in contrast to) the narrative sections of the films. The numbers he choreographed were mostly upbeat and focused on decoration as opposed to substance; one exception to this is the number “Remember My Forgotten Man” from Gold Diggers of 1933, which dealt with the treatment of soldiers in a post-World War I Depression.

Berkeley's popularity with an entertainment-hungry Great Depression audience was secured when he choreographed four musicals back-to-back for Warner Bros.: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, the aforementioned Gold Diggers of 1933 and Fashions of 1934, as well as In Caliente and Wonder Bar with Dolores del Rio. Berkeley's innovative and often sexually-charged dance numbers have been analyzed at length by cinema scholars. In particular, the numbers have been critiqued for their display (and some say exploitation) of the female form as seen through the “male gaze”, and for their depiction of collectivism (as opposed to traditionally American rugged individualism) in the spirit of Roosevelt's New Deal. Berkeley always denied any deep significance to his work, arguing that his main professional goals were to constantly top himself and to never repeat his past accomplishments.

As the outsized musicals in which Berkeley specialized became passé, he turned to straight directing, begging Warner Brothers to give him a chance at drama. The result was 1939's They Made Me a Criminal, one of John Garfield's best films. Berkeley's drive for perfection led to a number of well-publicized run-ins with MGM stars such as Judy Garland. In 1943, he was removed as director of Girl Crazy because of disagreements with Garland, although the lavish musical number "I Got Rhythm", which he directed, remained in the picture.[1]

His next stop was at 20th Century-Fox for 1943's The Gang's All Here, in which Berkeley choreographed Carmen Miranda's outrageous “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” number. The film made money, but Berkeley and the Fox brass disagreed over budget matters. Berkeley returned to MGM in the late 1940s, where among many other accomplishments he conceived the Technicolor finales for the studio's Esther Williams films. Berkeley's final film as choreographer was MGM's Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962).

A typical Busby Berkeley geometrical arrangement of dancers, from Dames (1934)

Personal life

In private life, Berkeley was as flamboyant as his work. He went through seven wives, an alienation of affections lawsuit involving a prominent movie queen, and a fatal car accident which resulted in his being tried and acquitted of second degree murder. In the late 1960s, the camp craze brought the Berkeley musicals back to the forefront. He toured the college and lecture circuit, and even directed a 1930s-style cold medication commercial, complete with a top shot of a dancing clock. In his 75th year, Busby Berkeley returned to Broadway to direct a successful revival of No No Nanette, starring his old Warner Brothers colleague and “42nd Street” star Ruby Keeler.

Berkeley died in Palm Springs, California at the age of 80 from natural causes.[2]

In popular culture

  • On The Jackie Gleason Show, an hour-long comedy-variety program which ran on the American CBS television network from 1966 to 1970, the June Taylor Dancers often provided dances which created Busby Berkeley-like patterns—shown with an overhead camera—only on a much smaller scale.
  • The "Miss Piggy's Fantasy" musical number from The Great Muppet Caper (1981) involving Miss Piggy and a number of chorus girls is directly influenced by the aesthetic.
  • The music video for the Take That single, "Shine" was inspired by the work of Busby Berkeley.
  • The music video for the Chemical Brothers song "Let Forever Be" features Berkeley-style choreographies.
  • The "Be Our Guest" sequence from Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast movie was inspired by the work of Busby Berkley
  • The ending sequence of the film Jackass Number Two, in which the actors spoof a highly-stylized dance number, is based largely on Busby Berkeley's work.
  • In the film Blazing Saddles, Dom DeLuise plays a cameo role as effeminate film director/choreographer Buddy Bizarre, who is filming a number similar to those made by Busby Berkeley.
  • The new "Bonds Kaledioscope" clothing advertisement is influenced by Busby Berkeley's style.
  • In the British 2006 film Confetti in which three couples compete to have the most original wedding to win a house, one couple have a Hollywood Musicals themed wedding based on the films of Busby Berkeley.
  • In "Hollywood Babble On II", an issue of Shade, The Changing Man, the opening sequence is "just like a Busby Berkeley movie" except all of the performers are plucked from their "ordinary folk" activities and thus unsynchronized until they are all devoured by a shark they fail to jump.
  • In the animated short, "Harvey Krumpet," the lead character is mesmerized by a Busby Berkley television show when he first gets to the United States.
  • Icelandic singer Björk's infamous swan dress at the 2001 Academy Awards was supposedly inspired by Berkeley's musicals.[3]

Selected works

Notes

  1. ^ Hugh Fordin, The World of Entertainment: The Freed Unit at MGM, 1975
  2. ^ Johns, Howard, (2004). Palm Springs Confidential: Playground of the Stars. Fort Lee, New Jersey: Barricade Books. ISBN 1569802971
  3. ^ Brockes, Emma. "The Emma Brockes interview: Björk". The Guardian, 13 February 2006.

External links

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