After enlisting in the army during WWI, Berkeley found himself conducting trick parade drills for as many as 1200 men and training as an aerial observer -- two experiences that clearly shaped his approach to dance on film. After the war Berkeley worked in the theater, acting in and choreographing some numbers for touring musicals. His reputation grew steadily, and in 1928 he choreographed five Broadway shows, a considerable accomplishment for a man who had seriously studied neither choreography nor dance.
Berkeley's substantial success on Broadway led in 1930 to the opportunity to work in Hollywood on the newest movie genre, the film musical, then in its first flush of popularity after the recent arrival of sound. Sam Goldwyn hired him to direct the musical sequences of WHOOPEE! (1930), starring Eddie Cantor. In one sequence, Berkeley filmed the Goldwyn Girls, deployed in symmetrical fashion, from overhead -- a technique that would become perhaps his most famous trademark.
Berkeley worked on several other musicals for MGM before settling in at Warner Bros. for seven years in 1933. His most famous Warner films included 42ND STREET (1933), GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933) and DAMES (1934). When he returned to MGM in 1939, Berkeley demonstrated that good musicals could be made with smaller budgets, but the development of the integrated dramatic musical left little room for his bravura approach. Berkeley doubled as director and choreographer on some of his films, and even directed the occasional dramatic feature, as with THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL (1939), starring John Garfield.
The plots of Berkeley's musicals usually serve as little more than narrative pretexts for the the dance numbers, in which the camera soars through space, achieving a variety of startling surrealist effects. He choreographed dancing skyscrapers in 42ND STREET and 56 white pianos in GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935. In SMALL TOWN GIRL (1953) only the arms and instruments of an orchestra are visible through the floors and walls.
Berkeley's choreography is also notable for its humorous and voyeuristic eroticism. GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 opens with chorines, including a young Ginger Rogers, singing "We're in the Money" clad in nothing but large coins -- a striking image of women as objects of exchange within a patriarchal society, and thus a metaphorical reinforcement of the film's central theme. The "Pettin' in the Park" number from the same movie features Dick Powell using a can opener to gain access to Ruby Keeler's metal-clad body. The famous sequence from THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1943), featuring Carmen Miranda ("The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat") and a line of chorus girls waving giant bananas, may be the essential Berkeley sequence; it combines his surreal visual style with an overblown Freudian symbolism that prefigures the sensibility of Camp.
There is an almost cubist element to Berkeley's penchant for breaking up the physical world into aesthetically pleasing, abstract visual patterns -- as in the giant jigsaw puzzle of Ruby Keeler's face carried by the chorines in the "I Only Have Eyes for You" number in DAMES. Berkeley's greatest achievement was that, in an era dominated by the illusionist style of the classical Hollywood film, he attempted to free the camera from the mere recording of surface reality.
Nominated for Dance Direction 1935: GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935 "The Words Are in My Heart"
Nominated for Dance Direction 1936: GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 "Love and War"
Nominated for Dance Direction 1937: VARSITY SHOW "The Finale"
3 nominations