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Forty-Second Street
Warner Brothers' stellar cast is featured on the original sheet music cover for "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me" from 42nd Street (1933). This backstage saga rekindled America's interest in musical films.

Busby Berkeley built a reputation as dance director for numerous Broadway shows and early sound films. But he reshaped his career and the future of musical cinema when he staged the dance sequences for Warner Brothers' backstage saga Forty-Second Street (1933). This surprise hit established several show business plot clichés –

• The hard-nosed Broadway director literally dying for a new hit.

• The egotistical star who breaks an ankle, making way for . . .

• The chorus girl who takes over the star's role on opening night and (what else?) triumphs.

The score had no more than four songs by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin, but they did the trick. Delighted audiences packed theatres nationwide. A $400,000 gamble, 42nd Street earned millions in its initial release. 

Warner Brothers put Berkeley to work on a series of lavish musicals. He perfected the still-embryonic technique of synchronizing the filmed image to a pre-recorded musical soundtrack. As a result, microphones were not needed during the filming of musical sequences, and cameras no longer needed to be imprisoned in sound-proof casings. For the first time since the silent era, fluid camera motion and intricate editing were possible.

The Berkley Style
Berkeley realized that screen choreography involved the placement and movement of the camera as well as the dancers. Instead of filming numbers from fixed angles, he set his cameras into motion on custom built booms and monorails – if necessary, cutting through the studio roof to get the right shot. Sweeping views of geometrically arranged dancers moving in unison became Berkeley's trademark, delighting a nation desperate for cinematic distraction from the Great Depression. Sometimes erotic, sometimes vulgar, the best of Berkeley's inventive images still dazzle viewers today.

The original sheet music cover to "By a Waterfall" from Footlight Parade (1933) uses Busby Berkley's splashy staging of that number as background art.

Berkeley often showcased the talents of Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. Likeable rather than glamorous, they were the perfect "boy/girl next door" combination. The Berkeley-Warner films also featured wonderful songs by Harry Warren, Al Dubin, Richard Whiting, and Johnny Mercer. Not designed to advance character or plot, the best of these songs were almost always stand-alone showpieces –

• 42nd Street - "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," "Young and Healthy"

• Footlight Parade (1933) - "By a Waterfall," "Honeymoon Hotel"

• The Gold Diggers of 1933 - "We’re In the Money"

• The Gold Diggers of 1935 - "Lullaby of Broadway"

• Hollywood Hotel (1937) - "Hooray for Hollywood"

Although Berkeley's musical sequences remained inventive, his formulaic backstage plots grew predictable. When the popularity of his films faded, Berkeley left Warner Brothers for a long (if less stellar) career at MGM.

But a uniquely American style had been set in the film musical, one that owed little to the Broadway model. "Lullaby of Broadway" for instance, is pure film and pure Hollywood: visually, in its real-life montage; physically, in its cavernous nightclub; musically, in its seedy populist jive; and ideologically, in its horrified fascination with New York nightlife.
- Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Musical (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 88.

After the Waterfall
Berkeley's later work at MGM was commercially successful but not as memorable, and he knew it. His abusive treatment of Judy Garland and other performers eroded his reputation. Personal instability drove Berkeley into alcoholism and attempted suicide. He continued working as a screen choreographer, but faded into relative obscurity in the early 1960s.

Then Berkeley enjoyed a surprising renaissance as his films were rediscovered in a series of retrospectives. Hailed by historians and film buffs, he became a popular presence at universities and on TV talk shows. He served as production supervisor for the smash hit 1971 Broadway revival of No, No Nanette starring Ruby Keeler. Whatever his personal demons, Berkeley's 1930s musicals remain cultural landmarks, cementing his place in cinematic history.

The Production Code
When a series of off-screen scandals inspired an anti-Hollywood backlash in the early 1920s, the major studios joined forces and hired Will Hays to restore the industry's reputation. This alumni of President Harding's corrupt administration surprised everyone by taking his job seriously. Hays forced a number of superficial changes in the film industry, then settled into the background. When the advent of sound film brought a new uproar over Hollywood's increasing use of sexual innuendo, Hays instituted the 1930 Production Code.

Along with forbidding nudity and profanity, this code included a long list of rules that now seem laughable. A few examples --

• Screen kisses had to be close-mouthed and were limited to six seconds.
• Whenever two characters embraced, at least one of them had to keep one foot on the floor.
• No plot would present evil "alluringly."
• A man and woman could not be seen sharing one bed -- even if married.
• Seduction could not be the subject of comedy.
• Such words as "broad," "pregnant" and "hold your hat" were prohibited.
• In fact, anything Hays deemed "unnecessary" could be forbidden.

For several years, most film makers ignored or resisted the code. Then the Catholic Church formed a nationwide Legion of Decency to force studio compliance. Spurred on by this, Hays appointed Joseph I. Breen to stringently administer the production code. A devout Catholic, blatant anti-Semite (he referred to Jews as "the scum of the earth") and homophobe, Breen set out to reform the content of Hollywood films with unflinching zeal. By 1934, all American films conformed to the code.

The Production Code Administration took part in the writing, filming and post editing of every Hollywood project from 1934 though the mid-1960s, so the code had a major impact on screen musicals. Sex and adultery were not acceptable as comic subjects. Aside from flesh becoming less visible, the sort of witty naughtiness championed by director Ernst Lubitsch was banished. The post-code films of bold performers like Mae West were simply were not the same.

The studios had to find new, creative ways to bring sex to the screen in covert, code-friendly forms. For example, RKO discovered a duo that made the whole world want to dance "cheek to cheek."

Next: Film 1930s - Part III