The first major analyses of Busby Berkeley's career on stage and screen. Showstoppers emphasizes his relationship to a colorful, somewhat disreputable tradition of American popular entertainment: that of P.T Barnum, minstrel shows, vaudeville, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, burlesque, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Rubin shows how Berkeley absorbed the declining theatrical tradition during his years as a Broadway dance director and then transferred it to the new genre of the early movie musical. With lively prose and engaging photographs, Showstoppers explores new ways of looking at Busby Berkeley, at the musical genre, and at individual film.
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978-0-231-08054-5 (9780231080545)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Martin Rubin was Film Program Director of New York Cultural Center and an Associate Director of the San Francisco Film Festival. He has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, Wright State University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. His articles on film have appeared in the Villiage Voice, Movie, Film Comment, Persistence of Vision, and Velvet Light Trap.
Introduction: Berkeley and the Berkeleyesque Part 1. Berkeleyesque Traditions 1. Roots: From Barnum to Ziegfeld Integration and the Musical Aggregate Forms The Black Crook Spectacle Forms Revue Forms 2. The Backstage Format Evolution of the Backstage Musical An "Impossible" Genre Space and Discourse Berkeley vs. Sandrich The Importance of Excess The DeMillesque Spectacularization of the Camera Part 2. Berkeleyesque Theater 3. Berkeley on Broadway Apprenticeship: Operettas and Obscurity (1925-1927) Breakthrough: A Connecticut Yankee (1927) Spectacle: Earl Carroll Vanities of 1928 Fluidity: Good Boy (1928) Broadway and "42nd Street" Revue International (1930) 4. Broadway Before Berkeley Specific Antecedents Objectification of the Feminine Evolution of the Chorus Line Part 3. Berkeleysque Cinema 5. An Introductory Outline of Berkeley's Film Career Phases and Variables Studio Collaborators Stylistic and Structural Contexts 6. Early Period (1930-1933) The Early Film Musical and the Berkeleyesque The Cantor Comedies Whoopee! (1930) Palmy Days (1931) The Kid from Spain (1932) Roman Scandals (1933) 7. Classic Warner Bros. Period (1933-1934) Advantages of the Warner Bros. Musical 42nd Street (1933) Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) Deprived Women, Forgotten Men Footlight Parade (1933) Paradigm Parade Dames (1934) 8. Later Warner Bros. Period (1935-1939) A Genre in Transition Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936) Hollywood Hotel (1937) 9. MGM Period (1939-1943) From Warners to Metro Broadway Serenade (1939) The Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Trilogy" Babes in Arms (1939) Strike Up the Band (1940) Lady Be Good (1941) For Me and My Gal (1942) Girl Crazy (1943) 10. Fox Period (1943) The Gang's All Here (1943) and the Fox Musical Garish Delirium Eccentric Editing A Musical Turned Inside Out "What If?" 11. Late Period (1949-1954, 1962) Simplification Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) Call Me Mister (1951) Two Tickets to Broadway (1951) Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) Rose Marie (1954) Jumbo (1962) and the Elephants' Graveyard Conclusion
