After directing parades as a lieutenant during WWI, Busby Berkeley returned stateside to work with Florenz Ziegfeld on Broadway. The stage led to films when Eddie Cantor (another Ziegfeld protégé) suggested that Berkeley choreograph the dance routines for Samuel Goldwyn's saucy Whoopee (1930). Although he began his career with Goldwyn (the pre-Code Cantor vehicles are incredibly racy-who could resist the ditty, "Bend Down, Sister!" sung by a chorine of scantily-clad bakers), Berkeley's career skyrocketed when he moved to Warner Bros. Conceived during the depths of the Great Depression, films such as 42nd Street (1933) and the Gold Diggers series, offered a salve to moviegoers eager for uplift. Berkeley delivered in ways unforeseen: using his single-camera technique, he careened in and out of the showgirls' legs but also took time to give each of them a close-up. They were all beautiful, why shouldn't the audience look at them, he conceded, indeed, why not look at hundreds of them? Thinking primarily of the men in the audience, Berkeley appealed to biographer Martin Rubin's idea of the "seraglio effect": by placing women in no-men-allowed environments-locker rooms, dorms, changing rooms-the women could be free of inhibition, penetrated only by the viewer's gaze.

Featured Works:

Palmy Days (Edward Sutherland, 1931); Kiki (Sam Taylor, 1931); Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932); Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933); Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933, pictured); 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933); 40 Little Mothers (Busby Berkeley, 1940); Ziegfield Girl (Robert Z. Leonard, 1941); The Gang's All Here (Busby Berkeley, 1943); Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn LeRoy, 1952)

Program information:

Sex and the Single Girl: The Escapades of Busby Berkeley

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