THE BUSBY BERKELEY COLLECTION (Warner Bros. 1933 - 1937) Warner Home Video
The term ‘genius’ gets bandied about so much these
days it is in danger of losing all original meaning. In its purest form, ‘genius’ is ascribed to someone of
exceptional intellect or creativity. But rarely does a genius possess strengths
in both areas. In art it is sometimes difficult to label a genius as such –
particularly if the abilities in question appear so extraordinary they register
in the public consciousness as avant-garde or ahead of their time. The latter
generally doesn’t win a lot of points with the critics either. And genius can
sometimes miss its mark with the paying public too; particularly in the collaborative
medium of film where credit and creativity are compartmentalized as components
of the creative assembly line. In Hollywood, today’s genius can quickly become
tomorrow’s has-been; a precarious seesaw balanced on the public’s insatiable
need to see something new – something different – something ‘entertaining’ all
the time. As such, one of the hallmarks of a true creative genius is staying
power. What is quite fashionable today may fall out of favor tomorrow. But if
it is truly imbued with that spark of…well…genius,
then, it isn’t likely to be forgotten, even if it occasionally gets set aside.
It may also be lampooned or even mocked – the cheapest forms of flattery. It
most certainly will be copied, though arguably never duplicated. But in the end,
genius never dies: revisited, not simply for nostalgia’s sake, but for an
innate fascination and the perennially renewable pleasures it provides.
Movie lovers
label this intangible quality as ‘magic’. But there really is no word to
quantify what the images of Busby Berkeley have given to us over the
generations. From 1930 to 1962 Berkeley dazzled with his confounding geometric
kaleidoscopes. During his own time, Berkeley saw his reputation spectacularly
rise and almost as dramatically crumble, only to be resurrected in the late seventies.
By then, Berkeley had garnered new fans and a newfound respect from both the
industry and students studying his work in film schools. More recently, homages
to Berkeley have appeared in everything from commercials for Daisy sour cream,
The Gap and Old Navy to Disney’s Beauty
and The Beast (1991). In fact, his style is so easily identifiable at a
glance, anyone attempting to emulate it is forced to reference it as having a
Berkeley-esque quality. Even the American Thesaurus of Slang has identified Berkeley’s
name as synonymous with ‘any elaborate
dance number.’ All of this lovable nonsense came to Berkeley at a very
exacting price. Frequent co-star, Dick Powell once commented, “Buz usually works in sweats…and sweats!”
And indeed, Berkeley toiled with an almost religious fervor to achieve his art.
And art, it irrefutably remains.
Not bad for an
uneducated, brash New Yorker whose stint as a drill sergeant in the army during
WWI would become the inspiration for his second career as a much sought-after
Broadway and Hollywood choreographer. Berkeley’s approach to dance had very
little to do with the dancer as artiste. Some of his harshest critics would
also argue it had absolutely nothing to do with dance - period. But it had
everything to do with the utilization of a dancer’s entire body, often as a
mere cog in a great wheel, performing perfunctory movements, requiring more
athleticism than terpsichorean finesse.
Over the years, some have argued Berkeley had absolutely no talent at
all, just a self-indulgent thirst for industrialized absurdity, making machinery
out of the human form; his camera doing most of the work, his maneuvering
minions, just that – never achieving a level of individuality on those
endlessly rotating platforms and rising staircases to nowhere.
But Busby
Berkeley never professed himself as a great choreographer. He had even less
interest in extolling the virtues of a dancer’s fluidity and form. No, that was
not the point at all – except, perhaps in Lullaby
of Broadway from Gold Diggers of
1935. Here, Berkeley allowed his dancers to be more than chess pieces
infinitely moved around his gigantic erector set. In a routine that can still stop the show,
Berkeley gave us a tragi-love story within a song with astonishing precision in
the art of ‘hoofing’. A musical number by Busby Berkeley is really all about
Berkeley’s fascination with form in lieu of content. His numbers are big –
gargantuan, in fact – and mind-bogglingly intricate. One marvels, for example,
at the endless rows of billowy hula-hooped skirts and neon-tubing employed
during the staging of The Shadow Waltz
from Gold Diggers of 1933; the way sixty
young women, clutching art deco Stradivariuses, suddenly come together to form
one monumentally massive violin before dissolving into an fluttery army,
endlessly mirrored against impossibly pristine poured-glass and mirror floors.
The Shadow Waltz is perhaps the most perfect
musical number ever executed on celluloid. Most definitely it remains the one to
which Berkeley’s iconography is forever linked. If it all looks effortless – it
wasn’t. Dancers endured repeated shock from the short-circuiting battery packs
hidden beneath their skirts to power the neon-lit violins. And shooting was
interrupted by a sizable earthquake. But in the end, nothing could prevent
Berkeley from getting his vision up on the screen. The Shadow Waltz also exemplifies Berkeley’s way of getting ‘into’
a musical sequence. Start off with a great Harry Warren/Al Dubin song sung by
Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. Cleverly move in on one dancer, then two; then, a
whole army doing exactly the same thing, the ensemble photographed from every
conceivable angle; all of it in service to Berkeley’s dream-like surrealism.
Other studios,
most notably, MGM – and occasionally Paramount – tried to mimic Berkeley’s
style. In fact, MGM quickly snatched up Berkeley’s contract after Warner
dropped him from their roster in 1940. But MGM’s glamour and attention paid to
its stars never entirely meshed with Berkeley’s vision of the dancer as ‘extra’.
In retrospect, his contributions at MGM are radically different from his work
at Warner Bros. Worse, Berkeley’s penchant for inspiring wrath among MGM’s
roster of enviable talent only seemed to exacerbate his chronic alcoholism. Judy Garland, as example, famously began as an
ardent supporter of Berkeley’s talent, but wound up despising his fanaticism
for ‘energy’ - always more energy – on the set of Girl Crazy (1943); their fourth collaborative effort in the popular
Mickey Rooney/Garland musicals that effectively led to Berkeley being replaced
as director by Norman Taurog. Garland’s own chronic addiction to pills might
have played a part in their mutual frustrations. In fact, Garland suffered a
‘nervous breakdown’ while shooting the penultimate ‘I Got Rhythm’ finale. But Berkeley damn near killed Esther
Williams during the staging of his grand water-skiing aquacade in Easy to Love (1953), so engrossed in
‘getting the shot’ that his speed boat narrowly missed clipping Williams’ water
ski that would have sent America’s mermaid head first plummeting into the
boat’s wildly spinning outboard. “Buz always used to get his best ideas in
the bathtub,” Williams later explained, “…in
a tub at two a.m. with a stiff drink in one hand and a telephone in the
other…and he’d wake you up out of a dead sleep to say, ‘hey, I’ve got an idea’
at which point you just had to rub your eyes and use a pillow to prop yourself
up and listen, because most of what he came up with was damn good.”
Today, Busby
Berkeley is primarily known, beloved, occasionally reviled, but most often
revered for the ten short years he spent on the Warner back lot. He has been
earmarked in the annals of Hollywood history for two trends; the aforementioned
geometric placement of his dancers, and, for his equally famed and oft copied
overhead crane shot. “Buz would take his
viewfinder high up on a platform in the rafters and be concentrating so hard on
getting the angle just right he’d have to be tied with a rope around his waist,
because a couple a times he almost fell off,” Mickey Rooney explained.
“Everything was in service to that shot,” Ruby Keeler concurred, “Buz would say ‘stand here’ and I’d stand
there. He’s say, ‘do this’ and I’d do it. He wanted things just right for the
camera and that’s all that mattered. How you looked in relation to the shot…but
I adored that man. He was truly gifted.” The Berkeley style is as much an
exercise in the proficient micromanagement of a multitude of chorines as a
genuine sense of finding the collective in the individual through Berkeley’s
stunning use of highly stylized camera movements. Much more than superficial
flights into fancy – at the heart of each frothy confection remains a semisweet
center of conformity bordering on the fascistic – a ‘parade of faces’ oddly
alike and indistinguishable.
In the early
years, Berkeley’s legacy was precariously perched. As a dance director he was restricted
to training dancers and staging routines. The film’s director – not Berkeley –
chose the camera angles; Berkeley’s contributions further blunted by an
editor’s decision as to what made it into the final cut. Berkeley wanted total
control over this process and was granted it by Samuel Goldwyn for 1931’s Flying High – something of a last-ditch
effort to revitalize the Hollywood musical. Berkeley’s numbers for Flying High were brilliant, but the
movie was not a success. Next came The
Kid From Spain (1932), an Eddy Cantor vehicle where Berkeley planned for a revolving
platform to showcase his chorines. “I
don’t want them to revolve,” Goldwyn reportedly told Berkeley during
rehearsals, “Do it the way it is now and
if you must revolve them do it at some other studio.” Berkeley begrudgingly
agreed. He also took Goldwyn’s advice to heart, moonlighting over at Warner
Brothers. Although The Kid from Spain
was a solid hit, from this moment on, Berkeley quietly vowed to someday have
his girls revolve.
After Berkeley
began scoring one hit after another over at Warner Brothers, Goldwyn attempted
– unsuccessfully – to suspend Berkeley’s release from his contract – claiming he
still owed him two pictures. In the meantime, Mervyn LeRoy, who was a close
personal friend and successful director at Warner Brothers urged Berkeley to
stay on in Hollywood, offering to put in a good word for him with WB’s
production chief, Darryl F. Zanuck. Berkeley was reluctant. Musicals had
fizzled all too quickly with the dawn of sound. As a genre they were now
considered passé. Even before his career had begun, it appeared to be over. But
Zanuck had an idea for a ‘new’ kind of musical; the backstage drama with songs.
The result was 42nd Street
(1933). Zanuck’s timing could not have been better. Regrettably, LeRoy, who had
been slated to direct the movie, came down with acute tonsillitis and had to
withdraw. Zanuck’s replacement was Lloyd Bacon, a no-nonsense contract director
whose style was not unlike W.S. Van Dyke’s over at MGM – namely, he shot quick
and cheaply. It didn’t hurt the film, as 42nd
Street straddles two genres; the musical and the ‘ripped from the headlines’ melodrama that was Warner’s bread and
butter. The amalgamation of these two styles bode well for the finished product.
More important to Berkeley, he was largely left to his own accord, shooting
with a second unit at Warner’s Sunset Studios while Bacon made the rest of the
movie on six sound stages at First National.
Berkeley committed
three numbers to 42nd Street;
the chirpy ‘Shuffle Off To Buffalo’,
the energetic ‘Young and Healthy’ and
the grandiose moving tableau to gaudy, bawdy urban excess – the finale ‘42nd Street’. Viewed today, only the latter two are
memorable, imbued with Berkeley’s spark of ingenuity. In hindsight, ‘Young and Healthy’ clearly illustrates
where Berkeley’s future endeavors would reside. Begun with a crooning Dick
Powell, the number evolves from one beautiful girl (16-year-old Toby Wing, ravishing
in white fox fur and slinky, bare-back gown) into two, then four, then quite
suddenly a sequined militia of nearly carbon-copied blonde bombshells, flanked
by male ushers. The dancers mount a spinning platform, marching,
strutting and even jogging in unison, counterclockwise to the movement of the
floor beneath their feet. It is a stunning effect, creating motion within
motion, the whole spectacle strangely caught in pace and ‘in place’ with the
final shot photographed between silk-stocking legs in high heel shoes: Powell
and Wing, blissfully smiling into the camera.
For 42nd Street’s finale,
Berkeley uses his camera to pan over a recreated stage-bound street scene,
showcasing the various scamps, tramps and other spurious characters populating
his faux New York landscape. Peering into various brownstone apartment windows
we see a barber at work, a crap shoot in progress, and, a foiled rape. Ruby
Keeler, who would become the other mainstay during Berkeley’s tenure at Warner
Bros., appears in straight skirt with oversized buttons and a slit up the
leg. The relatively realistic set parts
down the middle and Keeler makes her way up a gigantic staircase to nowhere, a
small army of male dancers with their backs turned to the camera, carrying
blacked out/life-sized placards as they ascend on either side. Only when the
stairs have been completely filled does this troop turn around, and then, to
conceal their own identities behind the placards, made to resemble towering
replicas of the New York City skyline.
42nd Street was a colossal
hit. Berkeley and composers, Harry Warren and Al Dubin all received 7-year
contracts as a result. Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler became the reigning musical
sweethearts of Berkeley’s subsequent excursions into sweet escapism at Warner
Bros. In November, the studio announced they were giving their most valuable
player ‘time off’ to raid the various chorus lines and sign 60 dancers to a
long-term contract. Berkeley gave a puff piece interview to the press where he
laid out ‘the rules’ each chorine was expected to follow if she should wish to
keep her job. This rather silly roster of edicts included daily regimented outdoor
exercise, three square meals a day (at least one consisting of steak or chop)
and a glass of orange juice, minimum make-up (NO mascara), and, no high heel
shoes while rehearsing. Berkeley’s $1,500 weekly salary made him one of the
highest paid ‘stars’ on the Warner back lot, although much of this profit was
eaten up by Berkeley’s alimony.
For his next
feature, Gold Diggers of 1933,
Berkeley’s extravagance was given exceptionally free reign and he proved that,
left to his own devices – and vices – he could concoct some of the most
breathtaking feats of undiluted escapism yet seen in the movies. Warren and Dubin kick off the film with a
true oddity of the Depression era, ‘We’re
In The Money’ - sung by a sassy Ginger Rogers bedecked in a glittery mass
of faux coins. The song suggests an end to hard times, despite the fact the
Great Depression was at its zenith in 1933. Berkeley employs slow-motion and
skewed camera angles; Rogers and her chorines flouncing rather haplessly about
the art deco proscenium before being interrupted in their rehearsal by bill
collectors. This number is but a prelude to two of Berkeley’s most thrilling
confections. ‘Pettin’ In The Park’
features a pint-sized and slightly perverse Billy Barty skulking around a lady’s
changing room after an impromptu thunderstorm has chased everyone from the art
deco park inside. The girls completely undress as Barty leers on. The number is
impressive not only for its execution but also for its sidestepping of the
newly instituted Production Code that absolutely forbade sexual explicitness of
any kind on the screen. Yet, Berkeley manages to get up close and personal with
his female chorines, shooting from angles that go right up their stocking legs from
ankle to inner thigh, and later, by concealing their naked forms behind the
flimsiest of translucent screens.
If the number
remains slightly risqué, even by today’s standards, Berkeley’s other memorable
contribution ‘The Shadow Waltz’ is
anything but, and one of the undisputed highlights to emerge from
Depression-era Hollywood; the chorines redressed in tri-hooped billowy satin
white skirts, coddling neon-lit violins. Midway through shooting this
elephantine production number the studio was rocked by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake
whose epicenter in Long Beach rattled Burbank to its core. The set was plunged
into darkness and several of the dancers were injured by falling debris.
Berkeley, thirty feet up in the rafters at the time, clung perilously to his
rigging while encouraging the frightened dancers to remain where they were
until the gigantic bay doors could be pried open to allow in the natural light.
Thankfully,
damage to the set and the studio were minimal – a minor miracle, even if it
delayed shooting by a few days, in order to assess structural damage. When the
company did reassemble, Berkeley dove headstrong into the film’s penultimate
number, Remember My Forgotten Man,
featuring Joan Blondell talking her way with considerable emotion through a
great Warren/Dubin song that squarely addresses the unemployed and
down-trodden. The song is an uncharacteristically potent social commentary -
pure Berkeley’s vision of it, no less so; the foreground cluttered with hungry,
panged, expressionless eyes; the backdrop, a fascinating bridgework of soldiers
proudly marching across a rainbow-like proscenium as Blondell passionately
implores the audience to never forget the men who made sacrifices for freedom. At a time when movies in general, and
musicals in particular, all but ignored the nation’s woes, choosing instead to
divert audience’s anxieties with escapist fluff and nonsense, Berkeley brought
the Depression front and center, and, to a fevered pitch – boldly, concretely
and with immeasurable artistic flair making it the focus of his narrative.
Assessing Gold Diggers of 1933 for the Los
Angeles Record, critic Relma Morin astutely surmised that “it’s a dazzling, eye-paralyzing, ear-tickling creation that makes all
other musicals look like a Delancey Street peep show. The star of the picture
is a gentleman who does not appear in it. Busby Berkeley, the geometrically-minded
lad…has done a perfectly amazing job!” Jack Warner too was most impressed
by Berkeley’s innovations – less so when the front office informed him that his
star director had ordered studio craftsmen to cut holes in the ceiling of the
sound stage to accommodate his ever-increasing need to rise higher and higher
into the rafters. For Berkeley’s next endeavor, Footlight Parade (1933) he was given James Cagney – numero uno ‘hot
stuff’ at Warner Bros. Cagney had begun life as a dancer, before being
relegated to playing gangsters in the movies. But he proved every bit up to the
challenge of high-stepping in Footlight
Parade. Yet, in hindsight there seems a curious disconnect between this
film and Berkeley’s two aforementioned efforts, Cagney’s presence, so
formidable, it forced Berkeley to concoct more intimate numbers to showcase his
male star.
Even so, Berkeley
could not resist indulging his creative verve on two mammoth set pieces; the
first, at least in hindsight, foreshadowing the MGM career of Esther Williams a
full eleven years before it came to pass. ‘By
A Waterfall’ is perhaps the most lyrical water ballet ever put on film.
Undeniably, it remains one of the most intricate and, for its time, was the
most expensive production number in Berkeley’s career. It begins in a faux forest setting, the show
within a show starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell serenading each other with a
few bars of another sublime Harry Warren/Al Dubin melody. Powell falls asleep
on the grassy knoll and Keeler disappears behind a rock to disrobe. Now, she
dives into a gargantuan pool near a paper mache grotto, complete with
waterslides and fifty swimmers bedecked in spangled one-piece bathing suits and
matching skull caps. For the next ten minutes, Berkeley repeatedly dazzles us
with one memorable sequence after the next, the swimmers retreating to an art
deco pool, before rising as water sprites atop a massive revolving fountain.
Berkeley compounds this mesmerizing spectacle by shooting the fountain girls
from every conceivable angle; his overhead symmetry revealing a fetishistic
conglomeration of scissor-kicking legs.
At one point, Berkeley provides a startling overview of the pool,
illuminated from within only, the swimmers in silhouette spreading from a hub
to create baffling rotations of amoeba-esque geometric patterns, locking ankles
around each other’s necks as a cylindrical human chain in perfectly-formed
concentric circles beneath the water.
The other
outstanding moment in Footlight Parade
is Shanghai Lil’ – a spirited buck
and wing performed in a brothel between Keeler (dressed in silks as a Chinese
concubine) and Cagney as an American sailor who departs for the streets where a
small army of marching soldiers evoke the U.S. military’s might and its heroes.
These give way to a series of placards that form a gigantic head shot of
President Franklin Roosevelt. In some ways, Footlight Parade marks a definite period to the first half of
Berkeley’s preeminence at the studio, his subsequent efforts becoming
variations on formulas already patented and perfected in these three movies.
After staging production numbers for the musical short, Plane Nuts and loan out to RKO for the feature film, Roman Scandals, Berkeley was primed to
have his first creative misfire. It came to him in Wonder Bar (1934). ‘Going to
Heaven on a Mule’ remains a grossly prejudicial representation of the black
race – even for its time – the cliché of the simpleton ‘darkie’ – hapless and leering - exploited ad nauseam. It is
exceptionally difficult to reconcile this queer and unflattering portrait with
Berkeley’s otherwise Teflon-coated reputation as an arbitrator of ‘good taste’.
But there it is.
Mercifully, Wonder Bar also features one of
Berkeley’s most heartbreakingly gorgeous dream sequences, ‘Don’t Say Goodnight’ – an intimate pas deux between stars, Delores
Del Rio and Ricardo Cortez. The sequence begins in an art deco and
silver-leaved forest with an artificial wind loosely tugging at Del Rio’s gown
and hair. This dissolves into a sublime white-pillared and chiffon velvet
temple where gargantuan rotating mirrors reflect the image of sixty dancers,
multiplying their procession into an infinite backdrop of kaleidoscopic
patterns. The effect is uncanny; the
real dancers indistinguishable from their mirror images, the walls constantly pivoting
to reveal an ever so slightly different angle to the action, thus creating the
illusion hundreds – even thousands – are partaking of this moment. Berkeley worked out the camera angles down to
a finite science, using miniatures to ensure neither he nor the camera operator
would be seen in any of the reflections. By placing his camera ever so cleverly
in just the right position, facing one of the white pillars and, with the
camera operator lying on his back in a trench dug just below floor level, both
remained virtually invisible.
Wonder Bar may very well have created the impetus for more
stringent reinforcement of the newly instituted Production Code of Ethics. For
it tested the boundaries of what was then considered ‘indecent’ behavior; beginning with its reference to a boudoir as
being more like ‘a playground’ and suggestive
nods to homosexuality and sadomasochism. At the start of the movie a man and
woman are seen dancing inside an ultra-chic nightclub presided over by Master
of Ceremonies, Al Jolson. From the peripheries of the frame an effete gentleman
approaches, tapping the woman on the shoulder and inquiring if he might cut in.
When the woman receptively agrees, the man takes her partner around the waist
and dances off with him instead. Leering at the spectacle, Jolson slyly
comments “Boys will be boys.” Wonder Bar also featured a tango
between Ricardo Cortez and Delores Del Rio in which he repeatedly assaults her
with a bull whip as part of the act. The moment is capped off by Del Rio, whose
character is in love with Cortez’s man-about-town but has since discovered his
gross infidelity with other women, mortally stabbing him. The audience assumes
this is part of the act and applauds its daring, even as Cortez slinks off into
the wings to die. Del Rio’s scorned murderess is never brought to justice.
Berkeley topped
out the year with one minor programmer (Fashions
of 1934, for which he staged a feather and harp spectacle to Warren and
Dubin’s sublime, Spin A Little Web of
Dreams) and a towering achievement - Dames,
featuring three memorable excursions into Berkeley-ana – the whimsical The Girl at the Ironing Board, the
lyrical ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ and
a confounding finale built around the title song. In the first, Joan Blondell
imagines a romance between the various clothes drying on her laundry line. The
number is a good counter-reference to ‘Shuffle
Off To Buffalo’ from 42nd
Street; occasionally coy and cloying, but notable for its technical prowess
and Blondell’s way with the lyric. Berkeley, however, is on full display in ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ – the film’s
love ballad, co-starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, rekindling fond memories
of their pas deux in The Shadow Waltz. Berkeley reasoned if the public adored one
Ruby Keeler they would go positively gaga over an army of Ruby Keelers; logic
so absurd it proved equally as sound, the floor and platforms suddenly rising
in rotating art deco Ferris wheels with each dancer eerily resembling the star.
These likenesses rush Keeler on all sides, flipping their skirts to form a
gigantic placard of Keeler’s face with its left eye opening like the gun barrel
trademark from the James Bond franchise to reveal the real Ruby Keeler in full
form, rising to the surface.
Initially
budgeted at $15,000, Berkeley was able to cajole producer, Hal B. Wallis into
giving him $40,000 to perfect his vision. Earlier, Wallis had denied Berkeley’s
request for $50,000 and 250 chorines saying, “We have been warned not to have this kind of number and I personally
will not approve anything of this kind.” Nevertheless, it was increasingly
a challenge to disagree with Berkeley’s judgment. After all, his pictures were
making a lot of money. For the finale of
Dames, Berkeley instituted his most
lavish series of kaleidoscopic imagery to date; his chorines decked in black
tights and flouncy white blouses, flying into the camera lens with a black ball
in their hands, casting these orbs downward into the center of a gathered crowd
who seemed to explode on cue into a variety of geometric patterns. Once again,
the effect was an ingenious reverse shot; the girls individually lowered away
from the camera rather than towards it, the film sped up to suggest more forward-thrusting
jet propulsion.
Gold Diggers of 1935 brought Berkeley back into his own
for two spectacular sequences; The Words
Are In My Heart’ and the iconic
Lullaby of Broadway – eleven minutes of titillating taps to tell the
tragedy of a beloved Broadway baby. Better still, Berkeley was assigned to
direct the entire film and proved (as though proof were required) he knew his
way around melodrama and comedy as well as the music. Still, it is for the
numbers that Berkeley undeniably remains in his element. The Words Are in My Heart features fifty-six sparkling white baby
grand pianos, complete with corresponding female pianists in gossamer gowns,
fluttering around the ever-moving set. Berkeley employed a bit of slo-mo
trickery for the finale of this number, as the pianos are seen coming together
from all corners of the stage to form one gigantic rectangle. Once again, this
sequence was actually photographed in reverse; the pianos actually being split
apart by invisible tow lines and men cloaked in black, crouching to conceal
them from the camera’s view, the film printed in reverse to achieve the
opposite result.
For Lullaby of Broadway, Berkeley endeavored
to tell a mini-movie within his film; the tale of a Broadway gadabout played by
Wini Shaw who parties all night and sleeps all day. Returning home from another
night’s carousing, Ms. Shaw falls into a deep sleep. In her dreams she meets up
with paramour, Dick Powell at an implausibly swank and multi-tiered nightclub,
the female and male dancers challenging one another to a spirited tap routine
that culminates with Ms. Shaw inadvertently being knocked from a balcony to her
death; a rather gruesome end – particularly for a musical – but still one of
the iconic exemplars of tap-dancing precision ever put on film. The expenditure
of time and effort Berkeley gave Gold
Diggers of 1935 physically wore him down – that, and his increasing
dependency on alcohol.
The studio took
little notice of this ‘exhaustion’ but did not relieve Berkeley of his
directorial duties on In Caliente
(1935); perhaps the least distinguished of Berkeley’s Warner musicals. Berkeley
staged ‘The Lady In Red’ – a
tango-esque routine with comedian Edward Everett Horton and a bevy of beauties.
Although the film reunited Berkeley with Latin superstar, Delores Del Rio
neither seems particularly engaged with the material. The film did respectable
business. But its failure to out-gross Gold
Diggers of 1935 signaled to the studio brass that perhaps Berkeley’s
popularity had begun to cool. By 1937’s Varsity
Show Berkeley found his supremacy at Warner Brothers repeatedly challenged.
Indeed, in the intervening period he was given only a modest programmer to
direct, I Live For Love, before
assigned to create musical sequences for William Keighley’s Stars Over Broadway (both in 1935).
Arguably, Berkeley’s
absence from the screen had more to do with his near fatal car wreck and
incarceration for vehicular manslaughter than any downturn in his popularity.
Berkeley’s attorney judiciously rallied support for his client in the court
room. But only after two lengthy trials ended in hung juries, and a third had
already begun in earnest, were the charges finally dropped. Berkeley was
acquitted of any wrong doing. Alas, Berkeley’s conscience bore the brunt of
responsibility. He became reclusive and severely depressed. But then came Varsity Show; a lavish affair concocted along the lines of Good News – a 1927 Broadway smash Warner
Bros desperately wanted to produce as a movie but to which it did not own the
rights. Varsity Show has Fred Waring and his glee club Pennsylvanians to
recommend it. It also cast Dick Powell in a familiar role. Alas, Jack Warner
was dissatisfied with Berkeley’s final cut. At 121 minutes, Varsity Show ran considerably longer
than most Warner movies of its vintage – certainly much longer than any musical
the studio had produced to date. After tepid previews, Warner ordered the
footage cut down to a scant 98 minutes - foreshortening Berkeley’s lavishly
staged finale.
Berkeley was on
very familiar ground in Gold Diggers of
1937, staging the lavish ‘All’s Fair
In Love And War’ – a rousing march that gave audiences a chance to see what
a real military parade might look like if staged by the master. Dick Powell and
Joan Blondell face off in what can accurately be described as the first
musicalized ‘battle of the sexes’ – boys
against the girls, each dressed in their best and prepared to duke it out, if
only making love were not more appealing. Berkeley pulled out ever cliché and
metaphor for this spectacular number. Told he would have to cut back on
expenses, Berkeley ordered only one thing built for this gargantuan finale: a shiny
black poured glass and mirror floor. After a brief interlude, the various male/female
couplings share a seat on oversized white rocking chairs. After that, Berkeley
relies almost exclusively on his dancers, decked in brilliant white-on-white
uniforms and carrying various implements – bugles, bayonets, flags – to charge
the screen, marching back and forth and from side to side in seemingly endless
alignment. By now, the formula to a Berkeley musical sequence was not only
ensconced – but predictable. Despite the ever-evolving glamor of his execution,
the plots were so transparent the box office was beginning to reflect it.
Berkeley’s next
effort – Hollywood Hotel (1937) was
a fluff piece about a musician (Dick Powell) who becomes a big sensation in the
movies. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It also featured Ronald Reagan
and a cameo from noted gossip columnist, Louella Parsons playing – what else? - herself. Heavily laden with largely forgettable songs
– and one true treasure, Hooray for
Hollywood (an anthem on par with ‘That’s
Entertainment!’ and There’s No
Business Like Show Business) - Hollywood
Hotel is a compendium of musical performances by the likes of Powell, Louis
Prima, Francis Langford and Rosemary Lane – all of them ably assisted by Benny
Goodman and his orchestra. Nevertheless, it remains a revue-styled turnip,
loosely strung together by the most threadbare of plots. Regrettably, it also
leaves Berkeley with very little room to exercise his imagination. Viewed alongside Berkeley’s other creative
efforts, Hollywood Hotel really is a
‘distant’ rather than ‘kissing’ cousin.
The time had
come for a change. Thus, Berkeley bid farewell to the Warner musical with Roy
Enright’s Gold Diggers in Paris
(1938); by far the most restrained installment in the franchise. If nothing else, it illustrates that together
with Harry Warren and Al Dubin, Berkeley had lost none of his touch to concoct
memorable and creative production numbers. The opening credits use stock
footage to plump out the movie’s opulence, the titles appearing over outtakes
from Spin A Little Web of Dreams –
re-orchestrated with an arrangement of Gold
Diggers in Paris’ penultimate number, The
Latin Quarter. Forced to economize, Berkeley nevertheless found innovative
ways of taking his modest chorines and multiplying their effect through
lighting and shadows. Gold Diggers in Paris is also blessed
by radio sensation cum movie star, Rudi Vallee’s breezy presence and stylish
rendering of the aforementioned, as well as the movie’s other memorable tune, ‘I Want To Go Back to Bali’. The song
acts as bookends to the story, first as a nightclub sequence sung by Vallee,
and later as its splendid farewell in which all of the principals partake. By the time Berkeley staged ‘The Latin Quarter’ Warner Bros. had
already decided it was time to retire their once popular backstage series. For
this finale, Rosemary Lane climbs a ladder into Vallee’s Parisian atelier as
part of a stage show. There, he is painting headshots of women who miraculously
come to life. We dissolve into a characteristic can-can, shot
uncharacteristically by Berkeley using deep focus and shadows on a severe bias
to mask the fact his request for 100 chorines had been vetoed by less than
half. Only 30 are ever featured in a single shot; the number concluding with Rudi
Vallee and Lane atop an oversized naval officer’s cap, reprising, ‘I Wanna Go Back To Bali’.
Warner Home
Video’s 9-film compendium, The Busby
Berkeley Collection, reunites some of the master’s best work in one box set.
There is really no point in deconstructing plots on a picture by picture basis.
All are suspiciously alike: excursions into the cynical backstage backstabbing
of Broadway divas and their rich, but naïve sugar daddies (most regularly
played to perfection by Joan Blondell and Guy Kibbee); the ingénue and dapper
leading man (most habitually Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell), each discovering love
and tenderness before the curtain goes up. Featured in this box set are 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, 1935, 1937, and, …in Paris,
along with Hollywood Hotel, Footlight Parade, Dames, and, Varsity Show.
Warner Home Video has done a fine job cleaning
up these 70+ year-old films for DVD; although it seems sacrilege to discover
only 42nd Street has made
the leap to hi-def Blu-ray as yet. Uniformly, picture quality is excellent,
with 42nd Street marginally
etching out the competition; it’s grain slightly more resolved and sporting
exquisite black levels. Fine detail is impressive for standard DVD. But the
outcry should be heard over at the Warner Archive to get more Berkeley magic
debuted in 1080p. Permit us to champion this cause – loudly!
Several of these
classic musicals are derived from 35mm prints – the original camera negatives
long ago deteriorated beyond repair. Occasionally, dupes have also been
incorporated with less than perfect video quality as the direct result.
Overall, there is absolutely nothing to complain about here. Given their
vintage, lack of proper archival care over the years, and the ravages of age,
these movies look amazingly sharp and pristine. The audio across all is mono,
impressively remastered at an adequate listening level. Warner Home Video has
jam-packed these discs with a stunning array of extras – some ‘newly’ produced;
others, vintage examples of the studio system hard at work. In addition to
several featurettes on Busby Berkeley – exploring both the man and his sense of
style, we also get copious nods to Harry Warren, the making of 42nd Street, the Gold Diggers franchise, Footlight Parade and Dames, plus a barrage of vintage WB
cartoon shorts, gag reels and theatrical trailers.
Warner Home
Video caps off the excess with The Busby
Berkeley Disc: originally released on LaserDisc in 1989 and covering
virtually all of the master’s musical moments except for Wonder Bar’s ‘Going To Heaven
on A Mule’. Regrettably, none of these numbers have been restored since
1989. The audio/video quality is, frankly, weak – riddled with age-related
damage and a considerable amount of chroma bleeding. Not good! Should have been
better! Finally, it is important to note that Warner Home Video previously
released all of the films in this collection as two separate box sets. No
content has been added to this re-amalgamated compendium. So, if you already
own the other sets there really is no point to acquiring this one. Bottom line:
Busby Berkeley was a genius – period. While this set omits Fashions of 1934 and Wonder
Bar (both readily available from the Warner Archive as single disc/bare
bones offerings) the examples of Berkeley’s legacy collected together herein
are spellbinding reminders of a sort of lyrical exquisiteness that, for a few
short years, set a standard for the Hollywood musical unlikely to be rivaled,
much less so surpassed. Enjoy these movies for what they are – plot-thin, pure
escapist fantasy: entertainment with a capital ‘E’.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4 (overall)
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5 (overall)
EXTRAS
3.5
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