HOLLYWOOD HOTEL: Busby's distinctive trademark checks out

Question: When is a Busby Berkeley film not a Busby Berkeley film?
Answer: When he directs the entire picture.
Berkeley made his reputation in the early 1930s as the innovative choreographer and director of spectacular and complex dance routines in a number of now classic Warner Brothers musicals, including '42nd Street', 'Gold Diggers of 1933' and 'Footlight Parade.' Having proved himself more than adept at directing the dance sequences the obvious next career move was directing the entire picture.

I don't claim to be an expert on the Berkeley directing oeuvre but it does appear from consulting IMDB that the bulk of the movies he directed were of a musical persuasion, so it's not as if he decided that having conquered the art film choreography he wanted to move on and explore other genres of storytelling. Given that,  and the fact that his name was so closely associated with this particular style of movie-making, why on earth did he abandon his cinematic trademark in HOLLYWOOD HOTEL?!
Without a sequence featuring dozens of scantily clad dancers moving in unison and shot from above, below and other imaginative angles, all we're left with is a very average piece of entertainment which could have been helmed by any number of directors on the Warners payroll. It's competent but anonymous.
The story opens promisingly enough with a rousing rendition of 'Hooray for Hollywood!' by Johnnie Davis and Frances Langford, accompanied by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra all performing while standing in a convoy of open top cars being driven to St Louis airport to see off saxophone player Ronnie Bowers (Dick Powell) who's signed a 10 week contract with a Hollywood studio. The song is now so closely identified with Hollywood it's kind of weird to realise that for audiences watching this film in 1937 this was a brand new tune.
In retrospect it was both a great and a really bad idea to open the film with such a fantastically infectious and instantly hummable tune. On the plus side it makes the audience feel upbeat and optimistic about the entertainment value of the story about to unfold, but the big risk is that it sets up expectations that are going to be very difficult to fulfill. Sad to report that those expectations do remain mostly unfulfilled as Powell and Rosemary Lane warble their way through a succession of unmemorable and ever more treacly songs while falling in love and struggling for cinematic success in the City of Angels.
In a part Powell had played a dozen times already for Warner Brothers, he manages to keep it fresh despite the material he's given to sing, but the two female leads are a definite drag on the proceedings. Real life (and almost identical) sisters Lola and Rosemary Lane are neither talented nor attractive enough (imagine a less appealing Norma Shearer) to be completely convincing, while Hugh Herbert as the comic relief is saddled with routines that look like rejects from the scripts of every other Warner Brothers musical he made with Powell earlier in the 1930s.
HOLLYWOOD HOTEL is very much in keeping with  the 1930s era Warner Brothers' philosophy of telling stories 'ripped from today's headlines.' While these most often focused on social and economic problems afflicting the USA (the rise of the gangster was a particular favorite) HOLLYWOOD HOTEL taps into the dream shared by millions of ordinary cinema going Americans of being plucked from obscurity to find fame and fortune as one of the god-like stars they worshiped at the altar of the silver screen each week.

But at the same time as it indulges their fantasy the film also hints at the considerably more grim reality of a film industry which chewed up and spat out the vast majority of starry eyed youngsters from the sticks who arrived in Los Angeles by the busload every week. As Ronnie's experience makes clear, this is a fickle business run by smooth talking hucksters whose only interest is in making a fast buck. It's a message given extra credibility by the presence of legendary gossip columnist Louella Parsons (playing herself with all the woodeness of a California Redwood) who takes a brief moment out from a life of hobnobbing with the stars to caution against acting on the dream and heading west on a Greyhound bus.
The idea is sound it's just the execution that's lacking.HOLLYWOOD HOTEL could have been so much more had Warners only insisted on a trademark Busby Berkeley routine in this Busby Berkeley directed movie. Perhaps then we'd all be humming 'Hooray for Hollywood Hotel' today instead.