BERKELEY, BUSBY

Busby Berkeley (November 29, 1895–March 14, 1976), innovative stage and film choreographer and director, was born William Berkeley Enos in Los Angeles into a theatrical family (his father was a director; his mother an actress). After graduating in 1914 from Mohegan Lake Military Academy, Berkeley worked at various jobs, and during World War I he became an "entertainment officer" with the U.S. military in France. During the 1920s he became a successful, well-known stage dance director, working on over twenty musicals.

In 1930 Berkeley went to Hollywood at the behest of independent film producer Sam Goldwyn for whom he successfully choreographed various musicals. He also worked for other producers. Between 1933 and 1939 Berkeley was employed by Warner Brothers, primarily as a dance director whose efforts were strikingly innovative and exciting, and in the main deservedly well received. He also directed various features, some of them not musicals, such as the melodrama They Made Me a Criminal (1938), for which he garnered a mixed reception.

Berkeley, especially in his Warner's musicals, which benefited much from the studio's technical excellence, produced an exciting, intriguing blend of sophistication, precision, and vulgarity. For film critic David Thomson, Berkeley's dance sequences in films such as Footlight Parade (1933), Dames (1934), and Gold Diggers in Paris (1938) demonstrated that he was "a lyricist of eroticism." Bevies of beautiful, scantily clad girls performing in military precision in lavish settings resulted in beguiling almost shameless images. His work must be seen to be appreciated. Berkeley developed exciting new techniques of filming in order to achieve the effects that he wanted: his cameras operated directly above the action. What became known as "the Berkeley top shot" allowed daring angled shots and stunning rhythmic patterns. His films understandably appealed to weary Depression-era audiences. He was also capable of injecting social realism into his dance fantasies as in the biting "Forgotten Men" sequence in Gold Diggers of 1933.

Berkeley moved to MGM in 1939, his initial stay there ending in 1943 with the camp classic The Gang's All Here. Subsequently he picked up occasional feature film directing jobs, the last being MGM's Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), and continued to stage musical numbers until the mid-1950s. His last significant contributions were spectacular water ballets in two MGM films of Esther Williams, the swimmer/actress. He died in Palm Springs, California, in 1976.

BERKELEY, BUSBY

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