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A History of Photographic Innovations in American Cinematographer (1924-1931)

Published by in Exhibition on April 30th, 2013

The history of cinema is, to a great extent, the history of technical innovation. This year we have seen the end of motion picture film production from Fuji (leaving Kodak the sole producer of celluloid), the compulsory addition of digital projectors to every major theater, and 3D cinema as the new experimental landscape.

A review of the 1924-1931 issues of American Cinematographerin the Media History Digital Library’s Technical Journals Collection serves as a reminder that changes in film technologies have long been greeted with a sophisticated range of excitement and skepticism from industry professionals.

Highlights from 1924 issues include Eastman’s introduction of “at home cinema” with the Cine-Kodak and Kodascope (January), an article from M.P.D.A. President Fred Niblo on slow motion as educational tool (March), and speculation on the future invention of a “camera phone” as conceived by A.S.C. Member Jackson J. Rose (December).

Issues from 1926 present silent film star Richard Barthelmess’ convictions on the need for “good projection” (April), innovations in amateur cinematography (June), and photographic challenges in the first production of a Vitaphone film (September).

The issues from 1931 reflect major changes in cinema technology, production, and presentation, specifically the rise of portable devices, color, and sound.

Notable articles from 1931 include the perks of filming in Mexico by A.S.C. President Hal Mohr (February), a discussion on depth of field in the advent of wide lenses (April), and innovations in the MGM film lab (October).

Long running features of this title include names and photos of members, business announcements, articles on screen definition, and a wealth of product advertisements.

The 1924-1931 issues of American Cinematographer are available for your reading and exploration. Your support and donations to the Media History Digital Library make this open resource possible.

Thank you.

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Photoplay Scans analyzed on Slate Vault

Published by in Uncategorized on April 17th, 2013

Great blog post by Anne Helen Petersen on Slate Vault today: “Judging the ‘Best Figure in Hollywood,’ 1931″. Petersen excavates an unbelievable article from Photoplay and helps put it in historical context.

We love it when scholars use the MHDL collections to teach us something new!

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Magazine of the Week – Radio Mirror (May 1938)

Published by in Uncategorized on April 6th, 2013

In honor of our recent additions to our broadcasting collection, we have selected Radio Mirror (May 1938) as our Magazine of the Week.

The May 1938 issue of Radio Mirror open to the cover story of Benny Goodman's biography.

The cover tantalizes with promises of the first authorized telling of Benny Goodman’s amazing life, and a pictorial story of stars’ babies.

In addition to these features, this issue presents reviews of new works by Fred Allen and Ben Bernie, gossip on radio stars from Martha Raye to Mickey Mouse, the Twenty Questions Quiz, and a story of zombies much different from current tales of the undead flooding our spring entertainment programming. Every issue of Radio Mirror includes the almanac program guide with schedule highlights and descriptions.

The numerous full-page advertisements for cleaning products, deodorant and gum suggest spring (cleaning) was in the air for radio audiences.

This issue is full of gems ready to be opened up, read, and enjoyed.

 

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Radio Days: Our Broadcasting Collection Booms in Size

Published by in News, Newsletter on February 25th, 2013

The Media History Digital Library has always been about more than movies. The national collection of radio and recorded sound is held at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center, and we have been pleased to facilitate access to their collection of classic radio publications that complement their audio collections.

In the 1920s, broadcast radio rapidly evolved from hobbyists to a major cultural phenomenon, influenced by newspapers and motion pictures, while creating its own stars, program formats, and musical styles. Radio had a major impact on American culture during the “classic period” of the 1930s and 1940s, and provided the soundtrack to American’s leisure time during the shift from scripted programming to jukebox, news and talk in the 1950s and 1960s.

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This history is reflected in the collections of the Library of Congress. The magic decade of commercial radio from 1923 to 1933 can be recaptured from the pages of Radio Digest Illustrated. The pictures of early radio sets, ads for an wide variety of radios (as well as batteries and transformers) show the hardware, while the program listings and profiles of stations help recreate the magic of the new technology. Other magazines with program guides include What’s on the Air (1929-1931) and Radio Dial (1931). The new medium was still finding its way in those early days, as shown by the headline in the June 5, 1931 issue of Radio Dial: “Dance Orchestras, Famous Humorist, Boxing Match and Plays are Booked for Your Entertainment This Week.”

The highlight of this online collection is the fan magazine Radio Mirror (later known as Radio and Television Mirror), with issues from the thirty years from 1934 to 1963 that include profiles of the stars, visits to radio and television studios, and program listings. The overlap between media is clear from the covers of the first six issues, featuring President Roosevelt, Ruth Etting, Al Jolson, Jack Pearl, Jessica Dragonette and Kate Smith. The role of radio in World War II is well covered in the 1940s, and by the 1950s the focus shifts to television and a new generation of personalities. The 1955 covers include Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Art Linkletter, Jackie Gleason, and a youthful Betty White.
Radio was most of all a local medium, but detailed information on stations, their ownership and programming has been hard to find. The publishers of The Radio Daily issued a yearbook starting in 1938, and the Library has scanned the first 27 of these Radio Annuals and its successor, the Radio Annual and Television Yearbook. Radio Daily’s competitor Variety published the Variety Radio Directory for four years starting with the 1937-38 season. These 37,000 pages provide a comprehensive record of the radio industry for this period.

Among the highlights of the radio materials from the National Audio Visual Conservation Center:

- “Father Coughlin, the Man Behind the Fighting Priest” in Radio Mirror from June 1934

- “How Swing Music Started” by Robert Benchley – with drawings by Charles Addams in Radio Mirror for June 1938 “I feel particularly fitted to speak on swing music, because I can’t carry a tune either.”

- “My Husband, Al Jolson,” by wife number four in Radio Mirror for December 1947

- “My Mr. Powell and His Mr. Diamond,” a profile of Dick Powell and his radio show Richard Diamond, Private Detective by wife June Allyson

- Color behind-the-scenes photos of Milton Berle and Texaco Star Theater in Radio Mirror for June 1949

- Profile of actor Jack Webb, star of radio’s Dragnet in Radio-TV Mirror for July 1954

- An ad for the “amazing new 1935 super deluxe 16 tube all-wave radio” - only $57.50 in the October 1934 issue of Radio Mirror

- An ad for Karo syrup (Dextrose) from the May 1937 issue of Radio Mirror endorsed by the doctor for the Dionne Quintuplets

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Until now you had to visit the Recorded Sound Reference Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, to conduct research into these materials. Thanks to the work of the National Audio Visual Conservation Center, all of these materials are now available online for free reading and download. We have consolidated all of the links on our Broadcasting Collection page, which also includes Radio Broadcast (1922-1930) and the RCA research publication Radio Age (1942-1957) from the Prelinger Library. At the Media History Digital Library we have a near-complete print run of Radio Daily and Radio-Television Daily, which await funding for digitization. We are a free library and depend on your support and contributions.

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MoMA, Early Film Journals, and Global Cinema

Published by in Newsletter on December 31st, 2012

The Media History Digital Library works with some great libraries to make their materials widely available. We have been fortunate to work with the legendary Museum of Modern Art Library to digitize film-related print materials from its collections. The MoMA holdings were invaluable in helping us fill in gaps in our runs of Photoplay and Moving Picture World, and we also unearthed a variety of lesser known, but fascinating magazines from the silent and early sound era. All of these titles have been added to our website (see especially our recent Global Cinema Collection page).

"Cinea" Cover: Dr. CaligariThe Museum of Modern Art Library have been acquiring books and magazines for 80 years and the collections date back to the earliest days of cinema. In addition to the important American journals and books, there are strong holdings of French, German and Russian journals and books. Many general interest libraries dumped their popular film magazines in favor of microfilm in the 1970s; some of the MoMA materials are stamped with the names of the libraries that gave away their print copies.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Cinema News and Property Gazette (1912, 1913 and scattered issues from the mid-1920s), a British trade journal that emphasizes American films and British cinemas; and several foreign language magazines: Cine-Journal (1908 to 1912), a French trade magazine covering domestic and imported films for the French market; La Cinématographie Française (two thick volumes from 1937) and the Italian-language Cinema (1939-40) published in Rome. There are several important fan magazines: Picture Play (1929 to 1933), with a good mix of celebrity coverage and reviews, and Pictures and the Picturegoer (1915-1916; 1924-1925), a British fan magazine that focused on American stars as much as its US counterparts, but also gives insight into the popularity of British and Continental players.

Among the highlights:
- a 1932 star profile of Asian American actress Anna May Wong in Picture Play
- weekly profiles of London area theaters in Cinema News and Property Gazette
- the 16mm non-theatrical business in 1937 France in La Cinématographie Française
- Exhibitors Trade Review covers opening night on Broadway for Al Jolson in The Singing Fool
- extensive coverage of the London opening of The Birth of a Nation in Pictures and the Picturegoer
- articles by and about Eisenstein and Pudovkin in Experimental Cinema
- photographing and editing the chariot race sequence in the silent film version of Ben-Hur in American Cinematographer
- ads for the major silent comedians in the Motion Pictures News Studio Directories for 1916, 1917 and 1918: Mack Sennett at Keystone, Fatty Arbuckle (and Buster Keaton), and Charlie Chaplin.

For many of these titles we chose a year or two from the Museum’s holdings to help us value each magazine. Depending on demand (and contributions), we could complete scanning of these and many more fan magazines and industry trade journals. We are a free library and depend on your support and contributions.

Happy New Year!

David Pierce and Eric Hoyt

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Henry Jenkins Blog Discussion

Published by in Uncategorized on December 6th, 2012

Check out Henry Jenkins’ blog this week for a discussion among Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Andy Myers, and Eric Hoyt about the MHDL and the affordances of digital technology for media history research.

We have embedded links to Part One and Part Two of this two-part discussion.

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The Complete Moving Picture World, 1907-1919

Published by in Uncategorized on August 6th, 2012

The Media History Digital Library and Domitor are pleased to present a complete digital edition of the first 12 years of Moving Picture World, the key motion picture trade publication that covered the film business during the transformation of the viewing experience from the nickelodeon to the movie palace.

Scanned from the original color magazines, the MHDL’s collection of Moving Picture World begins in 1907 and extends through June 1919. The collection of over 70,000 pages is open access, and each issue is searchable, and free to read and download. The first 18 months are from microfilm and the remainder are scanned from original copies.

These issues contain thousands of film reviews, profiles of executives, directors and stars, advertisements for films and companies that no longer exist. As Annette D’Agostino noted in her Index to Short and Feature Film Reviews in the Moving Picture World, “the importance of these reviews cannot be overstated: they remain our only link to many films of the early cinema, and are a key to understanding the origins of film study.” Highlights of the first decade include articles on lantern slides, the successful (the New York preview screening of The Birth of a Nation) and the unsuccessful (e.g. Gaumont Chronophone), well-designed or lurid advertising, and finally the tenth anniversary issue in 1917 that includes articles signed by industry leaders including Carl Laemmle, Thomas H. Ince, Mack Sennett and Edwin Thanhouser.

Our digital edition of Moving Picture World is the cumulative result of three years of coordination and digitization. Thank you to the collections that provided copies for scanning: Eileen Bowser, Robert S. Birchard, the Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center, and the Museum of Modern Art Library. Funders include Domitor, an anonymous donor (in memory of Carolyn Hauer), Richard Scheckman, and David Sorochty. Additionally, we thank Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Q. David Bowers for sharing their microfilm scans and Andy Myers for reprocessing the files.

Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema, sponsored the completion of the pre-1920 Moving Picture World through a fundraising drive among its members. Domitor’s funds also paid for the digitization of the French magazine Cine-Journal (1908-1912), the US v. MPPC (1912-1913), and more publications that you can find at the MHDL’s Early Cinema page. Thank you to Domitor’s president, Scott Curtis, for initiating the campaign and to all the members who contributed (you can see the full list of names here).

We have access to original copies to complete the run of Moving Picture World through its last issue in 1927, and are hoping to identify the estimated $8,000 it will take to complete scanning from 1919 to 1927.

In the coming months, we look forward to delivering a wealth of silent cinema publications, hundreds of books, and more broadcasting journals. We will also debut our new fulltext search platform. Thank you for everyone who has donated to us via the PayPal link on our homepage. Your contributions help support website hosting, scanning, and shipping. You keep us moving forward.

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Celebrating 25 Years of Photoplay

Published by in Uncategorized on July 16th, 2012

Celebrating 25 Years of Photoplay

The Media History Digital Library is pleased to present a near-complete digital edition of 25 years of Photoplay — the most important fan magazine of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Scanned from the original color magazines, the MHDL's collection of Photoplay begins in 1914 and extends through 1940. The collection is open access, and each issue is searchable, and free to read and download.

Fan magazines documented the lives of movie stars, promoted their films and presented a generally rosy view of the motion picture industry. As Kevin Brownlow noted in The Parade's Gone By, "Photoplay had nothing in common with its present-day counterparts. It was a forthright, hard-hitting, well-balanced and highly entertaining publication, and it was a gold mine of information about the making of pictures." Photoplay was also filled with surprises, from Theodore Dreiser's profile of Mack Sennett to insightful coverage of Charlie Chaplin and articles by Errol Flynn.

Our digital edition of Photoplay is the cumulative result of three years of coordination and digitization — with 24 volumes going online just this month. Thank you to the collections that provided copies for scanning: Karl Thiede, Bruce Long, the Museum of Modern Art Library and the Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center. Funders include Domitor, an anonymous donor (in memory of Carolyn Hauer), Richard Scheckman, and David Sorochty.

In the coming months, we look forward to delivering a wealth of early cinema publications, hundreds of books, and more broadcasting journals. We will also debut our new fulltext search platform. Thank you for everyone who has donated to us via the PayPal link on our homepage. Your contributions help support website hosting, scanning, and shipping. You keep us moving forward.

 

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PCA/ACA Award

Published by in Uncategorized on May 16th, 2012

We were honored last month to receive the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s Award for Best Electronic Reference. Thank you to the PCA/ACA’s awards committee for giving our team this recognition (and four very nice plaques!).

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Presenting the Government & Law Collection

Published by in News on May 2nd, 2012

Inspired by the richness of the U.S. vs. M.P.P.C., we have launched the Government & Law Collection, which charts the interplay between Hollywood, politics, and law. Most of the items in this collection were published by the U.S. Government Printing Office and digitized and sponsored by the Internet Archive. The Government & Law Collection includes extensive documentation relating to the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ infamous investigations into communists in Hollywood. You can also find documents concerning economic regulation, censorship, and juvenile delinquency.

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