Berkeley Busby - Buzz: the life and art of Busby Berkeley

Screen Classics

Screen Classics is a series of critical biographies, film histories, and analytical studies focusing on neglected filmmakers and important screen artists and subjects, from the era of silent cinema to the golden age of Hollywood to the international generation of today. Books in the Screen Classics series are intended for scholars and general readers alike. The contributing authors are established figures in their respective fields. This series also serves the purpose of advancing scholarship on film personalities and themes with ties to Kentucky.

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Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel

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Gene D. Phillips

Claude Rains: An Actors Voice

David J. Skal with Jessica Rains

Buzz

The Life and Art of
Busby Berkeley

Jeffrey Spivak

Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey Spivak

Published by The University Press of Kentucky scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spivak, Jeffrey, 1956

Buzz: the life and art of Busby Berkeley/Jeffrey Spivak.

p. cm. (Screen classics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-2643-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)

1. Berkeley, Busby, 18951976. 2. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited StatesBiography. 3. ChoreographersUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

PN1998. A3B4885 2010

791.430233092dc22

[B] 2010031653

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To Alysa

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

I am eternally grateful for the help, support, and advice of the following contributors, who made the writing of Busby Berkeleys life story a pleasurable experience:

Joe Franklin, for his witty Buzz Berkeley anecdotes and for putting me in touch with Hollywood personages hes known.

Sybil Jason, for her personal recollections of working with Buzz. His story is balanced and fair thanks in part to Miss Jasons first-person account.

Carol Jones, Program Director of the Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens, for my personal tour of the magnificent Beaux-Arts mansion once owned by Buzz.

Miles Kreuger, President of the Institute of the American Musical, for his erudition, advice, and passionate adherence to truth.

Michael Kutza, founder and Artistic Director of the Chicago International Film Festival, for relaying humorous anecdotes of Berkeley and Ruby Keeler when they were feted at the festival.

Sandra Joy Lee, Curator, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, and Jonathon Auxier, Curator, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, for providing me access to the hundreds of files in the Berkeley archive.

Patrick McGilligan, the best mentor a biographer could ever ask for.

Susan Murray, my editor, whose suggestions and improvements were invaluable.

Teresa Neff, whose great-great-aunt was Nellie Gertrude Berkeley, for supplying me with the Berkeley family tree.

Dr. Shirley Radlove, for her cheerleading and heartfelt encouragement.

Debbie Reynolds, for clarifying some dim memories of Buzz and singing to me the little ditty quoted in .

Jonathan Rosenbaum, for setting the record straight about a Busby Berkeley rumor I heard.

Donald Saddler, for his memories of a sad, somewhat dejected Buzz during No, No Nanette.

Leila Salisbury, for her support of and excitement about a Busby Berkeley biography during its earliest stages.

Rosalie Spivak, always there for me, always.

The staff at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for graciously aiding me in my research.

The staff at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, for their help in obtaining rare Berkeley items.

The staff at the UCLA archives, for arranging screenings of rarely seen Berkeley interviews.

The staff at the Warren-Newport Public Library in Gurnee, Illinois, for their tremendous help with the hundreds of interlibrary loans I always needed at a moments notice.

John Russell Taylor, for his amusing Berkeley anecdotes.

Joel and Carol Walner, for their long-standing friendship and kindness.

Marc Wanamaker, for providing Buzzs memoirs.

Anne Dean Watkins, acquisitions editor at the University Press of Kentucky, and her staff, for their belief that Busby Berkeleys life story needed to be told.

Frank and Dale Zirbel, for their never-flagging support and without whom this book would not have been written.

Professionally, he used only half of his birth name. His real name, disjointed and clumsy, contained both parental surnames and tributes to a famous actor friend and a part-time soubrette. Contrastingly, his stage name was pleasing, rhyming, and alliteratively euphonious. Saying it out loud evokes scores of platinum, pulchritudinous chorines arranged in geometric, eye-appealing configurations. The name, a lowercase noun in The American Thesaurus of Slang, is defined as any elaborate dance number.

Busby Berkeley was the premier dance director of motion pictures. His originality and sharply defined style brought him professional acclaim and financial reward. He saved a studio from bankruptcy and a doomed genre from senescence. Just dont call him a choreographer. According to Buzz, his liberally used nickname bestowed by friends and colleagues, choreographers were defined with artists like Agnes de Mille. Buzz Berkeley wasnt interested in dance steps and didnt know a buck and wing from a shuffle and riffle. He defined dance-directing. Ascending a makeshift dumbwaiter twenty feet or higher above a cavernous soundstage, he peered into his large eyepiece and maneuvered his ensemble and his camera to the formations of his minds eye as he dance-directed.