Eagle Feathers #259 – Busby

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

William Berkeley Enos was born in Los Angeles on November 29, 1895, to thespian parents. His father was an actor, and his mother was an actress and choreographer. Upon his father’s death, he was placed in boarding schools, the longest being a five-year run at the Mohegan Lake Military Academy in Peekskill, New York. After graduation, he worked at a shoe company for three years in Athol, Massachusetts.

In 1917 with America in World War I, his call to serve was instilled by his Mohegan Lake training, and he enlisted in the Army at Fort Banks in Winthrop, Massachusetts, before going to France. As a young Lieutenant, he was attached to the 312th Field Artillery Battalion, composed of six batteries and 1,200 men. He supervised close order allied drills and formations for French and American soldiers.

He was a natural at this and masterfully exercised troops in circles, columns, grids, and parades with once commanding a trick drill with 1,200 soldiers in silent maneuvers. Volunteering as an Army Air Corps spotter, he observed and reported panoramic troop movements and fighting patterns from high elevations. The knowledge he gained from this would serve him well in his after-military life.

Vaudeville in America was an early 20th century entertainment where popular specialty acts, such as comedy, slapstick, pantomime, and song and dance acts were featured. In 1915, vaudeville shows at the Somerville Theatre were the stock trade of the burgeoning Somerville Players and other song and dance troopers.

One of the players who danced across her floor was Ray Bolger who was remembered for his roles in Babes in Toyland, April in Paris, The Great Ziegfeld and most of all as the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Others who graced her stage were Tallulah Bankhead, a budding young Marlon Brando and Francis X. Bushman who was known as the King of Movies until Clark Gable.

All but forgotten on the early Somerville Stage hit parade is Busby Berkeley who both acted and directed in Somerville. Some say his nickname came from his birth and others say it came from his early work with the Somerville Players.

After his time in Somerville, he brought his Army geometric formations, Air Corps kaleidoscopic patterns and his choreographic genius to the Broadway stage and Hollywood screen. This was in the form of our greatest elaborate dancing-girl extravaganzas and also swim spectaculars with Esther Williams.

Busby was a soldier turned film maker. He invented the monorail camera and created his own imaginative techniques such as the birds-eye camera prospective which put holes in the ceiling for overhead shots.

For decades he was called the King of Dance but never took a lesson. It seems fitting that his forty-five-year career on the stage began at the Somerville Theatre opposite College Avenue, the road to Tufts University, and ended in the 1962 movie Jumbo.