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Musicals & The Arts
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looney tunes • giant • great songwriter • tapdance • warner brothers • spectacle • tapdancing • cartoonish • geometric • the great american songbook • pop standard • kaleidoscopic • pop standards • creative genius
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Biography
William Berkeley Enos, 29 November 1895, Los Angeles, California, USA, d. 14 March 1976, Palm Springs, California, USA. A legendary choreographer and director, renowned for his innovative work on the ‘Depression Era’ musical films of the 30s. Stories abound about him building a monorail along which the camera travelled at the most unusual angles, and his habit of cutting a hole in the studio roof just so that he could get that one special shot. Although Berkeley’s mother was an actress and he appeared in a number of minor stage productions as a youngster, he had no formal theatrical training and attended the Mohegan Lake Military Academy near New York before working in a shoe factory for three years. After a brief spell in the US Army in 1917, Berkeley took small roles in a number of plays and musicals before taking up directing in the early 20s. For most of the decade he served primarily as a dance director on Broadway shows such as Holka Polka, A...
Read the Full Biography of Busby Berkeley
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