Busby Berkeley Number



All the big, splashy musical numbers with elaborate sets and precise, fancy choreography came largely from the mind of one man. He basically brought the Rule of Cool to musical theater.

Busby Berkeley was a former theater actor who served in World War I as an artillery lieutenant. There, he learned how to get large groups of people to move in sync. This helped him when he went to Broadway and set up some of the most elaborate dancing numbers in the history of theater, with only Florenz Ziegfeld coming close. When he went to film, he topped even that, thanks to cameras being able to shoot where people couldn't sit, using more Chorus Girls than could ever fit on an ordinary stage. (In 1971 he was once again credited on Broadway for choreographing the revival of No, No, Nanette, but this was In Name Only.)

One of his trademarks was to drill a hole in the ceiling to take direct shots of the dancers from above (before Orson Welles made the camera lower with a hole in the floor) while they moved in intricate patterns.

But that's just some of the crazy things he did. Watching his numbers is a visual treat, even for those not into musicals.

Naturally, today, musicals are likely to have homages to him, especially in Disney Acid Sequences.

There's a subset of Busby Berkeley Numbers that could be called "Esther Williams Numbers" for their most famous star (info at The Other Wiki): scenes done in pools, featuring wonderful examples of synchronized swimming.

Films featuring original Busby Berkeley numbers

 * Whoopee! (1930), Berkeley's first film
 * 42nd Street
 * Gold Diggers of 1933, Gold Diggers of 1935, Gold Diggers of 1937
 * Footlight Parade
 * Dames
 * The Gang's All Here
 * Million Dollar Mermaid (Berkeley only worked on two Esther Williams films; this is one of them.)

Advertising

 * The "Whopperettes" ad campaign Burger King started with Super Bowl XL was clearly inspired by Busby Berkeley.
 * The 1970 Great American Soups ad (created by Stan Freberg) featured a vaguely Busby Berkeley-ish number performed by Ann Miller (a top tap dancer) as a housewife telling her returning husband what kind of soup was at home. The ad proved to be very popular and increased sales of soup, but not Great American Soups soup. People bought rival Campbell's Soup instead.

Film

 * "Too Marvelous For Words" from Ready, Willing and Able had Ruby Keeler and Lee Dixon dancing on the keys of a giant typewriter with the legs of sixteen Chorus Girls typing out the lyrics. Oddly enough, Warner Bros. didn't get Busby Berkeley to do this movie.
 * Mel Brooks seems to be a fan of Berkeley's work:
 * In the "Springtime For Hitler" number in The Producers, dancers march in a formation resembling a swastika (but overhead, like the typical Berkeley shot).
 * The stage production (and the newer film) of The Producers even uses a rear wall of mirrors to display the top angle of the dance number, replicating the overhead camera shot.
 * Part of "The Inquisition" song from History of the World Part 1.
 * And, of course, in Blazing Saddles, one of the sets they break into is rehearsing one of these.
 * The "Miss Piggy" number from The Great Muppet Caper, with the titular pig as the lead performer, is a take on the Esther Williams Number.
 * Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost has several dance sequences, but No Strings (I'm Fancy Free) stands out as another Esther Williams Number.
 * "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish", from The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. Especially strange, as it involves dolphins.
 * Willie's "Anything Goes" floor show in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which of course wouldn't work as an actual floor show).
 * The Big Lebowski has a bowling-themed number like this as one of The Dude's dream sequences, which not only references choreography from specific dances, but also Berkeley's distinctive editing style as well.
 * Ken Russell's MGM adaptation of the Broadway musical The Boy Friend contains a number of elaborate production numbers that homage Berkeley's work, including from-above shots of synchronized circular choreography.
 * The Robin Williams movie Toys features one of these involving a squadron of mechanical tanks.
 * Believe it or not, High School Musical 3, particularly "I Want It All" - which actually makes sense: Sharpay and Ryan Evans rule the theatre club and share a dream of becoming Broadway stars.
 * High School Musical 2 has a shot in "Fabulous" that also homages Busby Berkeley dance maneuvers.
 * In the film version of Annie, the whole "Let's Go To The Movies" scene with the ushers and Chorus Girls is pure Berkeley.
 * The ending of Jackass: Number Two, which involved the cast getting dispatched in various ways.
 * The Movie of The Pirates of Penzance briefly shows the policemen in one of these near the end of "Go, Ye Heroes!".
 * Singin' in the Rain had the somewhat more low-key number "Beautiful Girl", which nevertheless featured a flock of Chorus Girls who follow and then form rings around the lead male singer in an overhead shot at the end of the number, following a mini fashion show within the song (featuring some truly ridiculous roaring 20's looks), all of which had nothing to do with the plot.
 * The Pool Scene of Caddyshack begins with one of these, a successfully absurd synchronized swimming sequence.
 * During the "Augustus Gloop" song in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, several Oompa Loompas dive into the chocolate lake Berkeley-style and then are seen from overhead creating synchronized patterns around the chocolate pipe.
 * In the The Wind in the Willows claymation film, the ducks do this during the "Ducks Ditty" song.
 * Naturally, the "Star-Spangled Man" sequence in Captain America: The First Avenger runs on this, complete with dancing showgirls, tanks that shoot red-white-blue confetti, and choreographed Hitler punching.

Live-Action TV

 * The Scrubs' Musical Episode.
 * Harry Solomon performed one in a Dream Sequence in 3rd Rock from the Sun.
 * In the Get Smart revival movie The Nude Bomb, Maxwell Smart and the villain make two separate armies of clones of each other and have a battle that includes an injoke of an overhead shot of them fighting in a Busby Berkeley formation.
 * In an episode of the TV series, Max is pushing a baby carriage containing a MacGuffin when he and numerous other agents start switching around their carriages in Berkeley formation.
 * The closing ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics featured, near the end of the telecast, a parade of everything stereotypically Canadian set to a jazzy air of "The Maple Leaf Forever", that the American anchor specifically called "Busby Berkeley meets Canadia." With dancing mounties, giant hockey players and flying moose.
 * There were a few Sesame Street shorts featuring chorus girls doing Busby Berkeley Numbers while teaching the kids at home about numbers.
 * One of them was written to be like a Busby Berkeley number, although the visual elements weren't present. The song was a subtle musical theatre parody called "I Just Adore Four," sung by Big Bird first as a solo, but then by the second chorus becomes a splashy showbizzy number with the assistance of the Tarnish Brothers. The album "The Count Counts" said it came from The Musical "Two Plus Two," but in reality it was the splashy opening to a Sesame Street episode called "The Number Four Show."
 * In one run of the newscasting game in Whose Line Is It Anyway, Ryan Stiles' role is that he's always wanted to star in a Busby Berkeley musical. The audience is then treated to a dance inspired by the forecast of "sunny days ahead", which includes an overhead shot of Ryan doing snow-angel and running-in-place motions while lying on the floor.

Music

 * The Chemical Brothers' music video, directed by Michel Gondry, for Let Forever Be. Probably the only Busby Berkeley Number to involve a drumming hobo.
 * The video for "I Heard a Rumour" by Bananarama.
 * Pulp's "This Is Hardcore" video.
 * The Red Hot Chili Peppers' video for "Aeroplane".
 * The Magnetic Fields' song "Busby Berkeley Dreams"
 * Take That's music video for Shine is a three minute long homage/parody of his work.

Theatre

 * "Busby Berkeley" is the name of an improvised theatre game in which the participants are to improvise a dance number in which they must move symmetrically without looking at each other directly. This troper assures you that it's as hard as it sounds.
 * Cirque Du Soleil's "O", which has a giant pool serving as its stage, features several transitions with Esther Williams-style synchronized swimming.
 * The choreography for "Dirty Laundry" from The Witches of Eastwick deliberately invoked Berkeley's style.
 * In a rare case of cross cultural osmosis, the traditional "Thousand Handed Goddess" dance routine from China draws a lot from this trope.
 * In The Drowsy Chaperone, the Man in Chair refers to "The Bride's Lament" number as "a little Busby Berkeley, a little Jane Goodall".
 * The infamous Kickline in the annual Princeton Triangle Club show.

Western Animation

 * The Swan Princess, at the ball.
 * "Be Our Guest", from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast.
 * The "Food, Glorious Food" number in Ice Age: The Meltdown.
 * The last part of the final stanza of "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", from The Lion King, is intended to invoke a Busby Berkeley Number, even if the visual elements aren't there.
 * Agreed. The "animal tower" especially is reminiscent of this part of "By A Waterfall".
 * The Non Sequitur Scene with the frogs in The Brave Little Toaster.
 * In the Musical Episode of Batman the Brave And The Bold, a group of Atlanteans do this while under the sway of the Music Meister. It's part of a hypnosis-induced Crowd Song that essentially the entire planet is performing.
 * The My Little Pony pilot Special "Rescue at Midnight Castle" (AKA "Firefly's Adventure") features one of these performed by the Sea Ponies.
 * My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has done one or two, such as "Art of the Dress".
 * Family Guy Have one of these every series or two, usually in their "Road To..." episodes, and one regarding the benefits of marijuana in episode "420".
 * And their opening credits sequence, though it's by necessity a pretty short example.
 * The opening credits of Rio.
 * Shaun the Sheep has elements of it.