Editing Busby Berkeley (section)

===Early years===
During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including hits such as ''[[A Connecticut Yankee (musical)|A Connecticut Yankee]]''. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the dancing skills of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the larger and better-regimented on Broadway.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Buzz : the life and art of Busby Berkeley|last=Spivak|first=Jeffrey|date=2011|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=9780813126449|location=Lexington|oclc=703155214}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Showstoppers : Busby Berkeley and the tradition of spectacle|last=Rubin|first=Martin|date=1993|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=0231080549|location=New York|oclc=26930276}}</ref>

His earliest film work was in [[Samuel Goldwyn]]'s [[Eddie Cantor]] musicals, where he began developing such techniques as a "parade of faces" (individualizing each chorus girl with a loving close-up), and moving his dancers all over the stage (and often beyond) in as many kaleidoscopic patterns as possible.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/mar/23/busby-berkeley-dance-42nd-street-choreography-film-musicals|title=A kaleidoscope of legs: Busby Berkeley's flamboyant dance fantasies|last=Mackrell|first=Judith|date=March 23, 2017|work=The Guardian|access-date=December 10, 2018|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Berkeley's top shot technique (the kaleidoscope again, this time shot from overhead) appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 [[Universal Pictures|Universal]] film ''[[Night World (movie)|Night World]]'' (where he choreographed the number "Who's Your Little Who-Zis?").