All next week, Cinefamily in Los Angeles will be screening a brand new 35mm print of Busby Berkeley’s kaleidoscopic 1943 extravaganza, The Gang’s All Here:

It’s the most hyper-saturated Technicolor musical of the 1940s, it’s the picture featuring the legendary Carmen Miranda “Tutti Frutti” banana number, it’s the camp classic that launched a thousand drag queens — and it’s one of Hollywood’s most gleeful slices of vintage war propaganda ever. It’s The Gang’s All Here, legendary director/choregorapher Busby Berkeley’s most purely kooky on-screen effort, and one amazing good time out at the movies. Plot, schmott — it’s all about the the geometric conflagrations of chorus girls, the dancing, the singing, the oversized psychedelic fruit, the charmingly overt suggestions to invest in war bonds, and the unbelievable.

Screenings start tonight and run through next Monday. Get tickets at Cinefamily.

Below, Carmen Miranda’s mind-boggling “Tutti Frutti” production number from The Gang’s All Here.
 

 
70 years before Lady Gaga, there was Carmen Miranda. In this wild and wonderful clip form The Gangs All Here, Carmen sings her signature tune ‘The Lady In The Tutti Frutti Hat’.

The Gangs All Here was made in 1943 and was Busby Berkeley’s first color film and, like in all of his films, he held nothing back. The colors, choreography and Carmen Miranda all come together in a surreal spectacle. Wow!