Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle

The first major analyses of Busby Berkeley's career on stage and screen. Showstoppers emphasizes his relationship to a colorful, somewhat disreputable tradition of American popular entertainment: that of P.T Barnum, minstrel shows, vaudeville, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, burlesque, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Rubin shows how Berkeley absorbed the declining theatrical tradition during his years as a Broadway dance director and then transferred it to the new genre of the early movie musical. With lively prose and engaging photographs, Showstoppers explores new ways of looking at Busby Berkeley, at the musical genre, and at individual film.

Martin Rubin was Film Program Director of New York Cultural Center and an Associate Director of the San Francisco Film Festival. He has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, Wright State University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. His articles on film have appeared in the Villiage Voice, Movie, Film Comment, Persistence of Vision, and Velvet Light Trap.