12/25/2023 0 Comments Footlight parade dvd![]() (A sixth DVD, "The Busby Berkeley Disc," ditches the stories in favor of a cavalcade of 20 musical numbers. Watching them now, in pristine condition, we find them to be – well, invigorating and startling. Warner Home Video has packaged five of these musicals into The Busby Berkeley Collection. Geometrically kaleidoscopic dance direction, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. Eons later we take Berkeley’s style for granted, but it must have appeared invigorating and startling in 1933, when his first major film – "42nd Street" – was released. Berkeley was a former Broadway hoofer, who had been featured with Ray Bolger in Rodgers and Hart’s 1928 Present Arms! (Busby was the “sentimental sap” who introduced the song “You Took Advantage of Me.”) He arrived in Hollywood soon enough. Six years after "The Jazz Singer," the Warners - producing a backstage musical with songs – saw fit to hire one Busby Berkeley as dance director. (Movie musicals still make periodic, and sometimes quixotic, comebacks.) The brothers Warner, who brought us "The Jazz Singer" – Hollywood’s first talking picture and first movie musical – recognized that there was gold to be made in song-and-dancers they also, apparently, realized that musicals were the most respectable way to give the audience near-naked girls (or, to borrow the title of a popular Warner musical, dames).
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