Jeffrey Spivak (2)

Quite often film historians (and lots of students/fans) will hold up a creative artist as being singular and one of a kind and unique. Truth to be told, that's most often some sort of exaggeration. Quite often the artist had some sort of predecessor or, often, successor who harkened back to the artist's work. All of that makes the truly unique artist all the more special. One of the reigning members of that small group is the subject of Buzz: namely William Berkeley Enos, known to the film and stage world as Busby Berkeley.
First of all, what position exactly does Berkeley hold in the world of cinema? The first answer to come to mind is that he was a choreographer. True, in the technical sense, but it's revealing that during the mid-1930s, his heyday, when there was an Oscar given out for "dance direction" he was nominated all three years and lost all three years and rightfully so. Those who toiled (and toiled indeed by all accounts) under his professional hand have stated that what he had them do was more akin to military drill practice (something he did indeed do as a drill intructor for the U.S. Army) than traditional choreography. Looking at his dance numbers, one must admit that the camera was really what was dancing. OK, then he was a film maker, right? True enough again, but the several times he directed entire films, mostly not musicals, he ranged from servicable to completely undistinguished. No, his numbers, which almost never had anything to do with the films surrounding them,were short film masterpieces, surreal in a native way, before such a concept was really well known, erotic to a wild degree right under the nose of the censors, imaginative, yet oddly cohesive, in a way that his many imitators, several in his own time, could try to copy.
The other side of all of this is that those gifted with genius can't just turn it on and off and live in the world with "normal" people. That was surely true of Berkeley. To say that he was a mess personally would be both an understatement and stating the obvious. There were many marriages, all but the last drastic failures. There was impossible professional behavior (those who worked with him would tell the tales as if they were war stories and all agreed he was totally lacking in empathy, seeing only the vision in his head). This lead to periods of unemployment and less than optimal opportunities (twice professional nemesis Judy Garland had him fired from her films, the second of which, Annie Get Your Gun, marked a big turndown for both due to its aborted filming). There was lots and lots of drinking. Worst of all, this drinking lead to a vehicular accident wherein Berkeley wiped out most of an innocent California family but got off due to a slick studio-hired lawyer claiming bald and faulty tires were the cause. (If it hadn't been so tragic, the trial would have been a superb black comedy, constantly having to stop and start again as yet another family member died.)
His is a fascinating story and, thankfully, it found its fitting author in Jeffery Spivak. This author really did the work in investigating the life of this great but tumultuous artist. There were a few earlier works concerning Berkeley but they all concentrated on the work (and, admittedly, its all too easy to be seduced by some of the most hypnotic images committed to film, certainly within a Hollywood studio setting). This book tells the story of the man. Is it a pretty or happy story? No, not really, though, happily, he finally seemed to find (or, maybe, settle for) the right woman at the end. The author neither despises nor lionizes the personal Berkeley. Even more importantly, the author examines the professional Berkeley with a minute and accurate eye. He gives wonderful write-ups to Berkeley's triumphant moments but is also equally accurate but sympathetic. (The final insult was his hiring as the supposed director of the early 1970s Broadway revival of No, No, Nannette, featuring the comeback of Berkeley signature star Ruby Keeler. It was soon apparent to everyone, including the then diminished Berkeley, that he was just a figurehead, brought in, like Keeler, to play off the then emerging nostalgia boom.)
This book is a finely crafted balancing act: serious without being grindingly academic, honest without being salacious, adoring the art without basking in the rosy glow of nostalgia (very easy to do since Berkeley's career in film, after working on stage for famed impressario Florenz Ziegfield, from the very late 1920s until the very early 1960s is the stuff of nostalgia). This is an invaluable work of cinematic biography.… (altro)

This was a well done book on film legend, director Busby Berkeley. We see Berkeley's early life and his parent's work on stage and his strong attachment to his mother. His work on Broadway is discussed and then we get into his memorable films - Dames, Gold Diggers of 1935, Hollywood Hotel, For Me and My Gal, Babes on Broadway, and so many others. He was fanatical in his work and I believe the author details this from the quotes by the various people who worked with Berkeley. However, I thought there was too much description of the scenes from the film rather than the how they were done. Most reading this book would be familiar with Berkeley's kaleidoscope shots and I would have liked to have learned more of how they were designed, shot, and other technical tidbits behind them. Berkeley was a self-destructive man - most likely an alcoholic who was responsible for a car accident in which killed several people. The book covers the trials as well as some of the Warner Brothers' stars who testified. Berkeley's later life is also covered as well as his final, happy marriage and move to the Palm Desert area. A good book for anyone interested in films.… (altro)