Mondays | 46 Movies
The late-1920s brought about a new era of Hollywood filmmaking. With the advent of sound movies came the surge of the musical. From Al Jolson’s first notes in The Jazz Singer (1927), music opened a world of untapped possibilities for studios.
Most of the early musicals were revues, with little or no story in place to thread together song-and-dance numbers. Technology progressed at such a rate that the early attempts at musical stories like The Broadway Melody (1929) became dated quickly. While the Ernst Lubitsch films starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier remained popular, the genre was largely considered dead by 1932. To survive, movie musicals needed a true visionary to bring something bold and original to the screen. Enter Busby Berkeley.
William Berkeley Enos was born into a theatrical family on November 29, 1895, in Los Angeles. The nickname “Busby” came from the actress Amy Busby, a friend of Berkeley’s mother Gertrude. Both of Berkeley’s parents were actors, with his father also working as a stage director and his mother touring with the Tim Frawley repertory company. She appeared in silent films during the early days of movie production, as well. Berkeley’s family moved to New York, and he made his stage debut at only five years old. His father died when he was eight, and when Berkeley was an adult, Berkeley enlisted in World War I.
While the battlefield may seem like the farthest thing from musicals, his experiences would prove integral to his later film career. In the service, Berkeley conducted trick parade drills for as many as 1,200 men, which involved complex choreography. He also trained as an aerial observer. The combination of coordinating movements for large numbers of men and viewing action from a high-up perspective would fuse together to become his movie musical signature style.
After the war, he began landing more stage roles, first in touring companies and later on Broadway. From there he started choreographing shows, scoring a major success with “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” produced in 1927, the same year sound came to the movies. This fortuitous timing would take Berkeley back to his hometown of Los Angeles, working for Samuel Goldwyn on Whoopee! (1930). He bounced around Hollywood handling dance sequences for the next couple of years, racking up credits with United Artists, MGM and Universal. He then became contracted at Warner Bros., where he would choreograph the innovative scenes that would cement his legend.
The studio put Berkeley to work immediately, and he was credited for five films in his first year at WB. 42nd Street (1933) came first. With Lloyd Bacon directing and a cast that included Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Una Merkel and Ginger Rogers, a formula was born. It was the ultimate backstage musical, giving the world the classic line, uttered by Warner Baxter, “You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star.” The line could’ve been describing Berkeley’s career in 1933.
With the release of 42nd Street, which included Berkeley’s patented, elaborate sequences of scantily clad women photographed in geometric shapes from overhead, the visual spectacle of his work helped to revive the musical genre. That year he also lent his hand to the classics Footlight Parade (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), the latter of which ended on the stirring “Forgotten Man” number that made a plea for the Depression-affected public of the era.
Berkeley-directed dance sequences were also included in movies like Dames (1934) and Wonder Bar (1934). He began helming entire films, as well, including the quasi-sequels Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936) and Gold Diggers in Paris (1938). He also directed movies such as Fashions of 1934 (1934) and Hollywood Hotel (1937). He bridged into non-musical fare, too, like They Made Me a Criminal (1939).
At the end of the 1930s he left WB for MGM, and he quickly teamed with the young, budding stars Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney for a series of “let’s put on a show” musicals, starting with Babes in Arms (1939) and continuing with Strike Up the Band (1940) and Babes on Broadway (1941).
While large-scale numbers remained his forte, the introduction of the Production Code in 1934 limited the number of riske, female-centric geometric spectacles he once produced. His musical films for MGM, both as choreographer and director-choreographer, more closely followed the pattern of other song-and-dance movies of the time. His work also increasingly featured stars as the highlight of the numbers, as opposed to his almost kaleidoscope images being the focus. Among the highlights of this period were Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and The Gang’s All Here (1943), where he directed Carmen Miranda’s classic song “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat.” He handled the dance numbers for Doris Day’s screen debut, back at Warner Bros., in Romance on the High Seas (1948) and directed Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Esther Williams in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), his final credit as a director.
He would continue to work occasionally on musical sequences into the 1960s, including Two Weeks with Love (1950), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Rose Marie (1954) and his final film as a choreographer, Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962). Following his retirement from screen directing and choreographing, he appeared in the movie The Phynx (1970) and supervised the 1971 Broadway revival of “No, No, Nanette,” where he was reunited with his old Warner Bros. colleague Ruby Keeler. When the camp-style of 1930s output came back into vogue in the late-1960s, Berkeley was tapped to direct a commercial entitled “Cold Diggers of 1969” for the cold medication Contac.
His career was not without controversy. Known for his task-master directing style, Berkeley butted heads with performers over the years, and he was fired from the film Girl Crazy (1943) after clashes with Judy Garland. In 1935 he caused a three-car accident while allegedly driving drunk that left three people dead. After two hung juries and three trials, Berkeley was cleared of wrong-doing. In 1938 he was named in an alienation of affections lawsuit involving the actress Carole Landis. He attempted suicide in 1946 while coping with the death of his mother, and he was also said to be a heavy drinker throughout his life. Berkeley was married six times.
He died of natural causes at the age of 80 on March 14, 1976, in Palm Springs, California.
Speaking about his work, Busby Berkeley said, “In an era of breadlines, depression and wars, I tried to help people get away from all the misery… to turn their minds to something else. I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour.”
