Pettin' In the Park (Bad Boy!)

Busby Berkeley Box Set to be released in March 2006. Fans of elaborate overhead shots and dozens of dancers repeating the same step over and over, rejoice!

No, seriously, I love Berkeley, but he was not (as the article itself mentions) much of a choreographer in any technical sense. His Broadway work, on shows like Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee, was reportedly much like his movie work, just a lot of repeated stepping in unison. What made him special was his ability to come up with design concepts for dances and his skill at using the camera to photograph a dance -- not the actual dancing.

Berkeley's post-WB masterpiece, The Gang's All Here -- the only Fox musical that is as garish, gaudy and glorious as Fox's overripe Technicolor photography -- isn't on DVD yet, but Fox is launching a series of musicals on DVD, and The Gang's All Here's trailer is included as an extra on one of the first releases, suggesting that it's planned for release sometime next year.