Buzz - The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley was an innovator in movie musicals. His bigger-is-better choreography included battalions of chorus girls clad in costumes made of coins, swimming pools stocked with bathing beauties, even dozens of dancing pianos. He shot many of his scenes from overhead cameras and, after World War II, he employed a hovering helicopter.
Berkeley’s song and dance numbers stood out from the movies that contained them. They were bright, kitschy islands rising from a sea of swill, often as not. Some of his best routines bordered on surreal.
As biographer Jeffrey Spivak writes in Buzz, Berkeley came from a theatrical family whose parents discouraged him from entering show biz. Spivak repeats the legend that Berkeley’s imagination was shaped by his service in World War I. While commanding six artillery batteries on the Western Front, he became bored with the standard marching drill and implemented bespoke marching orders for each battery, their members opening and closing ranks in perfect formation.
After the war, he pursued stage acting, rose to directing and according to Spivak was thrust into choreography more by chance than design. When movies began to sing and talk, Hollywood went shopping for theater directors and Berkeley carved a niche. With his first film, Whoopee! (1930), he startled everyone by insisting on shooting an elaborate dance scene with one camera rather than assemble the sequence in the editing room. That single camera was, Spivak writes, “an extension of his mind’s eye.”
Berkeley is best remembered for flashy scenes from 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) but continued working regularly into the early 1950s. While generous with praise, Spivak doesn’t ignore the downside to Berkeley’s drillmaster methods. Avoidable accidents occurred on his sets, including serious injury to one of his stars, Esther Williams. “Buzz’s crassness to his performers was often manifested while actually shooting,” Spivak writes.
Berkeley’ career languished after 1953 but Spivak offers no definitive explanations. Health problems, drinking problems, bad timing all may have played a role. Was it also ageism—or had the age of dancing chorus girls passed? In his final years Berkeley benefitted from many nostalgic accolades as audiences looked back and the first generation of film historians began their work.
Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley is published by University Press of Kentucky
