SteynOnline - HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

Song of the week - HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

"It was written for a 1938 film called Hollywood Hotel, an otherwise forgotten picture that marked the end of the Warner Brothers/Busby Berkeley extravaganzas that had begun a mere half-decade earlier with 42nd Street. The Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers series at RKO had left the Berkeley style of overhead shots of thousands of extras in geometric patterns looking rather clunky, and dehumanizing in their formation choreography - Nurembergesque, as later critics would charge. Still, Buzz Berkeley was game for one last go-round ..."