Dance crazy!

A couple of years ago, when the first boxed set of Busby Berkeley movies came out from Warner Home Video, I told a 30-something colleague how excited I was about having such classics as 42ND STREET, DAMES, and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 on DVD. Her reaction: "Busy Bee? Who's he?" That has become a running joke between us now, but it does show how much danger Berkeley's reputation may be in.

Though he did direct some movies, mostly rather dismal B-comedies and melodramas, he's a crucial figure in Hollywood history as a choreographer and visual director of musical numbers. Before he came along, most dance numbers in films were simply shot front and center on a stage. Berkeley freed the camera to roam about the stage, zooming in on dancers' faces and between their legs; he expanded the "stage" of a theater or nightclub to be as huge as he needed it to be, though the camera always returned to "realism" at the end of the song. He made the overhead shot of dancers as a human kaleidoscope a movie musical cliche. He retired in the 50's, but lived long enough to see his production numbers rediscovered by a new generation in the 70's as mind-bending, quasi-psychedelic experiences.

Though the best of his movies were in a 2006 boxed set, Warners has just released a second volume featuring four more films in which he was involved. Two of the movies are from the Gold Diggers series, formulaic comedies featuring chorus girls looking for rich sugar daddies while working in shows that are threatened with financial and artistic troubles. Most of the these movies have Dick Powell as a young pup of a songwriter (or actor or singer, or, in the 1937 edition, an insurance salesman) who gets romantically entangled with a leading lady like Ruby Keeler or Joan Blondell.

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 is good fun and ends with a typical Berkeley blockbuster, "All's Fair in Love and War," which features chorus lines of men shooting their guns at chorus lines of women who fight back with perfume atomizers. The look of the number, matching many of his 30's spectacles, is all rich, glossy blacks and glowing whites, and every so often, there is a shot that makes you scratch your head and wonder how the hell he did it in the pre-digital fx age (here, seen at right, it's dancers twirling large flags in full circles, in total disregard for the floor they must certainly be standing on but that seems not to be there). The less said about PARIS (with Rudy Vallee instead of Powell), the better, though parts of it are still fun.

The real gem in this collection is HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, an amusing satire of movie folks and their ways. Powell is a sax player with Benny Goodman (whose band does an amazing, though unfortunately shortened, version of "Sing, Sing, Sing") who wins a talent contest and heads to Hollywood with hopes of being a star. He winds up as a waiter at a drive-in restaurant before he is picked to dub in songs for an non-singing star (Alan Mowbray). There's also an obnoxious actress, very well played by Lola Lane (pictured below; think Ann Sheridan in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER) and her sweet-natured look-alike (real-life sister Rosemary Lane). One lovely scene takes place one evening in an empty Hollywood Bowl, there's a cute communal musical number at the drive-in restaurant, and a couple of fairly elaborate musical numbers, but I have to say that the best song is right at the beginning: "Hooray for Hollywood," led off by novelty jazz singer Johnnie Davis.

The fourth film, VARSITY SHOW, is a cute "let's put on a show" musical, with college students, feeling oppressed by a fuddy-duddy professor, getting some help with their annual talent show from alumnus Dick Powell, now a Broadway producer struggling to get his career back on track. Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians appear along with two Lane sisters (this time, Rosemary and Priscilla). It's quite watchable, even if no one looks college age, and no single production number really stands out. Each disc has the usual generous Warners extras, mostly cartoons and short subjects. The GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 disc has a particularly interesting extra: two scenes from the very first Gold Diggers movie, 1929's GOLD DIGGERS OF BROADWAY, which a considered a lost film (some sound and film elements remain). One of the numbers is "Tip Toe Through the Tulips," which, though not done by Berkeley, has a wild moment when gigantic vases with tulips appear among the dancers. I recommend this set, but be sure to get the first volume as well.