Notable Feet: Busby Berkeley Sets the Stage
Webster’s dictionary defines choreography as “The art of creating and arranging dances or ballets,” and the choreographer as someone who specializes in choreography. If choreography is the “art of dancing,” then a specialist would have some dance training. But when twentieth-century American film was spreading its wings artistically and financially, a choreographer could be someone who simply advised and organized the dancers in a movie. Who actually created the dance steps is a foggy question with a nonspecific answer. In the case of Hollywood movie musical pioneer, Busby Berkeley (1895-1976), his military training and acting background qualified him to ‘choreograph’ and eventually direct some of film’s landmark musicals even though he never had formal dance instruction.
Everyone is the sum of their collective experiences. What, how and where you live eventually influence your work and choices. Berkeley’s journey from military school to Broadway to Hollywood appears unrelated on the surface, but as any dancer will attest, the discipline required in the studio and theatre feels as rigorous as the military. Berkeley lived an artistically disciplined life and portrayed the strict code of “the show must go on” in his work. He learned fortitude from his parents, who were professional actors, from military school and during World War I where he employed his theatre background directing parade drills for the U.S. Army. Service as an aerial observer with the Air Corps undoubtedly influenced his later film career.
Wini Shaw and Dick Powell star in Busby Berkeley's "lullaby of Broadway" number in Gold Diggers of 1935
In Hollywood, Berkeley expanded beyond his Broadway stage boundaries. His audience was no longer limited to the straight-on view of the stage. Innovative camera angles of dancers in kaleidoscope-like formations filmed from above cemented his reputation as a cutting edge director. Berkeley always used only one camera, and choreographed its movements as much or more than the placement of the dancers, to invent stimulating theatrical experience which audiences salivated over. At a time of scarcity during the Great Depression and World War II, Berkeley productions provided parched movie-goers with glimpses of lush and lavish expense as his cameras panned across rows and rows of shapely women’s legs and miles and miles of come-hither smiles.
Berkeley knew phenomenal success with his formula for the “backstage musical” filled with dramatic angst and titillating musical numbers. Some of his biggest hits include "Gold Diggers of 1935," "42nd Street" and "Footlight Parade." He directed the biggest names on Hollywood contracts: Ruby Keeler, Fred Astaire and Dick Powell, to name a very few. He is credited with many firsts in the movie business: unique camera work, among the few to direct and choreograph, and reigniting Hollywood’s interest in dance. He hired scores of dancers during the Depression, keeping them fed and working; he also set the stage for decades of dance on the screen and eventually television.
Berkeley suffered many personal difficulties. He married unsuccessfully several times and was involved in a drunken driving accident where two people were killed. Acquitted of the charges in that incident, alcoholism continued to plague him. Berkeley’s stories and style proved, however, that audiences loved to see dancing in the movies, thereby creating a whole new genre of work for dancers and director/choreographers for decades to come.