Monday, April 3 | 3 Films
“I’m afraid you’ll have to see it; it really can’t be described.”
Dance director Busby Berkeley tells this to a young woman visiting the set of the film Dames (1934) in the fictional short, And She Learned About Dames (1934). Berkeley is right: Many of his numbers can’t be described with words and must be seen.
Today, the name Berkeley is synonymous with musical numbers that resemble surreal artwork. Songs written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin were often performed by hundreds of beautiful girls forming kaleidoscope-like geometric shapes.
Berkeley’s innovative musical numbers were amazing when they were first seen on the screen with films like 42nd Street (1933), and his dance direction still holds up today 90 years later. His work continues to be mimicked and referenced in films like Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), which spoofs Dames to Hail Caesar! (2016), which mimics the Esther Williams film, Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).
Often dubbed a choreographer, Berkeley was a dance director who never had formal dance training. Much of his formational precisian and moving young women in eye-catching patterns are thanks to a military background where he led parade drills.
“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,” Busby Berkeley is quoted by his biographer.
And while he made moviegoers happy with fanciful imagery in the 1930s, Berkeley also saved the movie musical. With the dawn of sound, filmmakers floundered as they tried to stage musical numbers, often filming too far from the stage to distinguish dancers. Berkeley energized the movie musical with a new way of staging and advanced technological innovations in filmmaking.
“He was one of the most creative individuals in Hollywood, maybe the only true genius I ever worked with,” actress, and swimmer Esther Williams wrote in her autobiography. Williams worked on two films with Berkeley at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer towards the end of his career.
While Berkeley worked with several major Hollywood studios throughout his career, he was best known for his work at Warner Bros. His first film with Warner Bros. was 42nd Street, and it left him not only with a hit on his hands, but patents for inventions that he created to exhibit his elaborate numbers.
The first was a revolving stage. Used in the number “Young and Healthy,” Berkeley applied for a patent for a stage where “two lines of performers are made to pass each other without apparent movement on their part,” according to Berkeley’s biographer, Jeffrey Spivak.
Berkeley also said he created a “monorail” system, which simplified the camera booms, allowing the camera to make vertical and horizontal movements that could move faster.
“It was actually two rails, way up high in the rafters. Then they [studio technicians] put a rigging that went straight down, just like a frame rigging, and the camera car went up and down the side of that rigging,” said Berkeley, quoted by Spivak.
Berkeley transformed filmmaking and revitalized the movie musical with hit after hit film for Warner Bros., making a name for himself as a "cinematerpsichorean" — a term Warner Bros. created about Berkeley in a press release.
Musical triumph
Advertised as Warner Bros.’s “fifth musical triumph,” Berkeley’s work in Dames includes some of his most iconic imagery that may outdo Salvador Dalí in surrealism.
In the short And She Learned About Dames, actor Lyle Talbot asks Berkeley if his musical numbers will be able to exceed his other pictures.
“I don’t like to make any promises, but I really think this picture will top anything we’ve ever done,” Berkeley said in the short. And he may be right.
The film stars the unofficial stock company of Warner Bros. musical comedies: Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts and Hugh Herbert. Dames was Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler’s fourth film pairing. The film follows Horace P. Hemingway (Kibbee) as he goes to see his wife’s wealthy cousin, Ezra Ounce (Herbert). Ounce is prepared to give the Hemingway family $10 million if Hemingway creates a moral society with him. Unbeknownst to Hemingway, his daughter Barbara (Keeler) is in love with her thirteenth cousin, Jimmy (Powell). Jimmy is pursuing a show business career, which doesn’t align with Ounce’s morals. However, when Hemingway is blackmailed by showgirl Mabel (Blondell), who sneaks into his railway train compartment and demands that he backs Jimmy’s show on Broadway. The performance within the film is where Berkeley comes in.
The film was made after the success of Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) when producer Hal Wallis wanted Berkeley to create more of the same. Dames includes two impressive musical numbers with incredible camera work.
The song “I Only Have Eyes for You” was written by Warren and Dubin for the film and was introduced to the public, set to Berkeley’s dance direction. In the film, the song is a dedication to actress Ruby Keeler. As Powell croons to Keeler, the scenery mimics the lyrics. For example, the two are standing on a crowded city street. As Powell sings, “Maybe millions of people go by, but they all disappear from view,” all of the extras surrounding the two fades away, and only Powell and Keeler remain.
When the couple gets on a subway, Powell looks around at the ads on the wall. Each girl in the advertisements become Keeler. Powell and Keeler doze off on the subway, making for a transition into the dream that continues with “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
The scene transforms into a dark stage with giant cutouts of Keeler’s face bobbing on the floor. Soon, it is revealed that girls in ruffled white dresses are dancing behind the cut-out images. Each girl looks vaguely like Keeler as they hold their skirts, swaying back and forth on a rotating stage. In the center of the set is a Ferris wheel-like structure which holds Berkeley girls. Then the camera zooms in on the real Keeler. Then, all the girls sit with their skirts around them. Their skirts are then lifted, and each has a puzzle piece-like image that is held up to create a large picture of Ruby Keeler’s face. The camera zooms closer into the image until right over Keeler’s eye. The pupil opens, and Keeler is raised on an elevator-like structure out of the eye image. Keeler walks across the stage (which is a picture of her face) and poses in a large frame, which is turned by a chorus girl, becoming a mirror. The mirror then turns, showing Keeler and Powell asleep on the train, bringing the audience out of the dream and back to reality.
“The climax of ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ shows us the most intense example of Berkeley’s ability to keep shifting our frame of reference. It’s like pulling the rug out from under us. It’s these types of sequences that he’s putting our eyeballs on a rollercoaster. It’s really exhilarating,” said film historian and author Martin Rubin in the 2006 documentary short Busby Berkeley's Kaleidoscopic Eyes.
Berkeley was only budgeted to have 36 performers at $15,000 for the “I Only Have Eyes for You” number, but Berkeley fought for more. Producer Hal Wallis finally relented and gave $40,000 and the Ferris wheel for the number. Art department chief Frank Murphy designed the sets. Most of the machinery was built at local ironworks, according to Spivak.
The number is immediately followed by the title number “Dames,” where Berkeley puts his signature kaleidoscope effects to use. Dick Powell sings “Dames” as a producer, and the song follows newly hired showgirls for a production. A story unfolds as the girls wake up, get ready to head to work and arrive at the theater — but in a magical way.
As the girls arise, they run across the beds, falling on their stomachs with a close-up of their faces—a signature of Berkeley’s was close-ups on pretty girls. Clever transitions portray morning tasks: a girl in the bubble bath puts a powder puff up to the camera. Girls at dressing tables sit as if they are getting ready in the mirror, but two dancers act like mirror images of each other. Then one turns and sprays the camera with perfume. The “perfume” is then wiped off by a stage worker cleaning a window, showing the showgirls arriving at the theater.
After the girls are in the theater, the scene changes to rows of women with white tops, headdresses, and black tights, opening and closing their arms and legs to make geometric shapes. The girls then stand in a line, jumping their feet out. As the camera pans between their legs, each girl bends over for an upside-down close-up. The girls then stand in a large clump, and a single girl is propelled toward the camera for a close-up. The final girl carries a balloon, which falls into the middle of the group of girls, transitioning them into a flower-like shape and continuing into kaleidoscope-shapes as they bend their legs and arms.
At the end of the number, the girls all pose and the shot subtly changes into a still image that Dick Powell puts his face through singing the final part of the number.
As Berkeley said, it really can’t be described. It has to be seen.
“Berkeley had a great sense of humor, but he worked us to the bone,” Joan Blondell is quoted by Spivak. “It was even worse for his girls. I don’t think they ever had any time off.”
Ostrich feather dreams
Another project in 1934 for Berkeley was less of a musical, but he still arranges girls in unique visuals. Much of Fashions of 1934 (1934) is a posh comedy starring William Powell and Bette Davis. Powell plays con man Sherwood Nash who connects with fashion designer Lynn Mason (Davis). Together, they try to make money in the fashion industry by plagiarizing fashion designs. Part of their scam is promoting ostrich feathers, which is where Berkeley comes in.
In a show to promote ostrich feather fashions, Verree Teasdale opens a seven-minute-long musical number singing the song “Spin a Little Web of Dreams.” Behind Teasdale, the camera pans to a shopgirl sewing amongst a mound of feathers. The girl dozes off, transitioning us to Berkeley’s “web of dreams.”
The scene transitions to young women playing human harps with jewels for strings, and girls are posed on the end of the harps. Then the scene transitions to Berkeley girls holding large ostrich feather fans. The fans take the signature kaleidoscope effect as the feathers hide the girls and turn in a circle. The number is capped with an impressive visual of girls riding a Viking-like boat using ostrich fans as ores. The “water” for the boat is a billowing sheet. Berkeley drilled holes in the floor and pumped air through the holes to give the effect of waves and wind, according to Spivak. The dream ends when the young woman wakes up.
For the number, Berkeley sought 200 girls and 400 ostrich plumes. The estimated cost for the feathers alone was $10,000, according to the Fashions of 1934 pressbook.
Military precision
The “Gold Diggers” film series had been on the screen since 1929, telling stories of young women chasing rich men. A fifth installment was brought to the screen in 1936. In Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), the film follows insurance salesman Rosmer Peak (Dick Powell), who sells a major life insurance policy to wealthy J. J. Hobart (Victor Moore). Peak is helped along the way by his girlfriend, Norma Perry (Joan Blondell). Little does Peak know, but Hobart is generally known as being unwell, and the insurance policy is a ploy to fund a stage show.
The show is where Berkeley is brought in and uses some of his military background. Before his film career, Berkeley served in World War I, and after the end of the war, he created large scale-drills in the Army, according to Rubin. This military background is evident in much of his dance direction.
“It wasn’t about dance training. What he had was his military background which gave him the sense of precision and a sense of visual imagination that no one else had,” said musical theater and film historian John Kenrick in Busby Berkeley's Kaleidoscopic Eyes.
This is especially evident in the film Gold Diggers of 1937 in the “All’s Fair in Love and War” musical number, which includes marching Berkeley girls and allusions to World War I. With this film and the number, Berkeley faced budget cuts when producer Wallis refused to fund expensive sets. To which Berkeley replied, “All right, don’t give me any set. Just give me a black floor and a black cyclorama. If you give me 50 boys and 50 girls, I’ll do the number,” according to Spivak.
The number opens with a close-up of Dick Powell dressed in all white against all black set around him. Joan Blondell, Lee Dixon and Rosalind Marquis appear from behind Powell, singing with him.
Next, the scene transitions to couples in multiple rocking chairs singing. Then Lee Dixon tap dances alone on a 20-foot rocking chair. The rocking chair blows up, and the pieces fall, forming a cannon that shoots bombs toward the audience. When the bombs explode, they take the form of a close-up of beautiful girls wearing World War I helmets. The military scene continues as the Berkeley girls (and Joan Blondell) are in foxholes, one side labeled “No Man’s Land” and the other “No Woman’s Land” with men. As the two battle it out, the girls spray perfume, and the men surrender as the two foxholes move together, and the groups kiss in the middle.
The waving flags of surrender transition into a close-up of Blondell’s skirt, leading a marching formation that harkens to Berkeley’s background. Each woman is carrying a flag. Berkeley films from a long shot where you see the rotating flags from a distance, forming a kaleidoscope effect.
While Gold Diggers of 1937 has other musical numbers, none are as spectacular as “All is Fair in Love and War.”
“He was a wild man. He had to be,” Blondell said of Berkeley. “He was fabulous and strict. He had to be. I always liked Buzz very much.”
