Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen

Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen PDF

Author: Susan Delson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0253058554

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In the 1940s, folks at bars and restaurants would gather around a Panoram movie machine to watch three-minute films called Soundies, precursors to today's music videos. This history was all but forgotten until the digital era brought Soundies to phones and computer screens—including a YouTube clip starring a 102-year-old Harlem dancer watching her younger self perform in Soundies. In Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, Susan Delson takes a deeper look at these fascinating films by focusing on the role of Black performers in this little-known genre. She highlights the women performers, like Dorothy Dandridge, who helped shape Soundies, while offering an intimate look at icons of the age, such as Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. Using previously unknown archival materials—including letters, corporate memos, and courtroom testimony—to trace the precarious path of Soundies, Delson presents an incisive pop-culture snapshot of race relations during and just after World War II. Perfect for readers interested in film, American history, the World War II era, and Black entertainment history, Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen and its companion video website (susandelson.com) bring the important contributions of these Black artists into the spotlight once again.

Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen

Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen PDF

Author: Susan Delson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0253058562

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In the 1940s, folks at bars and restaurants would gather around a Panoram movie machine to watch three-minute films called Soundies, precursors to today's music videos. This history was all but forgotten until the digital era brought Soundies to phones and computer screens—including a YouTube clip starring a 102-year-old Harlem dancer watching her younger self perform in Soundies. In Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, Susan Delson takes a deeper look at these fascinating films by focusing on the role of Black performers in this little-known genre. She highlights the women performers, like Dorothy Dandridge, who helped shape Soundies, while offering an intimate look at icons of the age, such as Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. Using previously unknown archival materials—including letters, corporate memos, and courtroom testimony—to trace the precarious path of Soundies, Delson presents an incisive pop-culture snapshot of race relations during and just after World War II. Perfect for readers interested in film, American history, the World War II era, and Black entertainment history, Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen and its companion video website (susandelson.com) bring the important contributions of these Black artists into the spotlight once again.

Dudley Murphy, Hollywood Wild Card

Dudley Murphy, Hollywood Wild Card PDF

Author: Susan Delson

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780816646548

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Follows the life of Hollywood's first independent filmmaker known for "The Emperor Jones" and "Ballet mâecanique."

The Soundies

The Soundies PDF

Author: Mark Cantor

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2023-04-19

Total Pages: 2077

ISBN-13: 1476646422

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The 1940s saw a brief audacious experiment in mass entertainment: a jukebox with a screen. Patrons could insert a dime, then listen to and watch such popular entertainers as Nat "King" Cole, Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway or Les Paul. A number of companies offered these tuneful delights, but the most successful was the Mills Novelty Company and its three-minute musical shorts called Soundies. This book is a complete filmography of 1,880 Soundies: the musicians heard and seen on screen, recording and filming dates, arrangers, soloists, dancers, entertainment trade reviews and more. Additional filmographies cover more than 80 subjects produced by other companies. There are 125 photos taken on film sets, along with advertising images and production documents. More than 75 interviews narrate the firsthand experiences and recollections of Soundies directors and participants. Forty years before MTV, the Soundies were there for those who loved the popular music of the 1940s. This was truly "music for the eyes."

Music Production

Music Production PDF

Author: Michael Zager

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-12

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1538128519

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In an age when the recording industry is undergoing its most radical change in over half a century, the guidance of a skilled music producer is quickly becoming indispensable for producing a great recording. Music Production: A Manual for Producers, Composers, Arrangers, and Students, Third Edition serves as a comprehensive road map for navigating the continuous transformations in the music industry and music production technologies. From dissecting compositions to understanding studio technologies, from coaching vocalists and instrumentalists to arranging and orchestration, from musicianship to marketing, advertising, and promotion, Michael Zager takes us on a tour of the world of music production and the recording industry, helping students and professionals keep pace with this rapidly changing profession. This third edition features: New interviews with eminent industry professionals Updated information on current trends in producing popular music and the impacts of the Music Modernization Act Additional material on video game music End-of-chapter assignments for course usage An instructor’s manual is available. Please email [email protected].

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei PDF

Author: Ai Weiwei

Publisher: Prestel Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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This title looks at Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's 'Circle of Heads', his twelve large bronze animal heads depicting the ancient Chinese zodiac.

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

Am I My Brother's Keeper? PDF

Author: Adriana Villavicencio

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2021-05-18

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781682536216

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Am I My Brother's Keeper? provides a powerful cautionary tale about the challenges involved in enacting large-scale educational change. The book, chronicling the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), a four-year study focused on improving the educational outcomes of 15,000 Black and Latinx males in New York City public high schools, covers what worked, what didn't, and what we can learn from the experience. The ESI model, a precursor to President Obama's My Brother's Keeper, highlights the ways that school districts can embed educational equity into the principles and policies that guide their work with students, in contrast to implementing stand-alone initiatives that may come and go. Through the voices of students, teachers, and administrators, the book informs the implementation of other large-scale district-community partnerships designed to improve opportunities and outcomes for young people who have systematically been denied both. Most critically, the book provides policy, practice, and research recommendations to inform the next generation of work with this student population. As sustained protests across the United States call attention to the ravages of systemic racism, Am I My Brother's Keeper? highlights concrete steps that school districts can take to confront racist structures and support young people of color.

Blackbird

Blackbird PDF

Author: Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published:

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0271096292

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Intersecting Aesthetics

Intersecting Aesthetics PDF

Author: Charlene Regester

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2023-12-15

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1496848861

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Contributions by Cynthia Baron, Elizabeth Binggeli, Kimberly Nichele Brown, Priscilla Layne, Eric Pierson, Charlene Regester, Ellen C. Scott, Tanya L. Shields, and Judith E. Smith Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness illuminates cultural and material trends that shaped Black film adaptations during the twentieth century. Contributors to this collection reveal how Black literary and filmic texts are sites of negotiation between dominant and resistant perspectives. Their work ultimately explores the effects racial perspectives have on film adaptations and how race-inflected cultural norms have influenced studio and independent film depictions. Several chapters analyze how self-censorship and industry censorship affect Black writing and the adaptations of Black stories in early to mid-twentieth-century America. Using archival material, contributors demonstrate the ways commercial obstacles have led Black writers and white-dominated studios to mask Black experiences. Other chapters document instances in which Black writers and directors navigate cultural norms and material realities to realize their visions in literary works, independent films, and studio productions. Through uncovering patterns in Black film adaptations, Intersecting Aesthetics reveals themes, aesthetic strategies, and cultural dynamics that rightfully belong to accounts of film adaptation. The volume considers travelogue and autobiography sources along with the fiction of Black authors H. G. de Lisser, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, and Walter Mosley. Contributors examine independent films The Love Wanga (1936) and The Devil’s Daughter (1939); Melvin Van Peebles's first feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967); and the Senegalese film Karmen Geï (2001). They also explore studio-era films In This Our Life (1942), The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Lydia Bailey (1952), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954) and post-studio films The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft (1971), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).

Land of a Thousand Balconies

Land of a Thousand Balconies PDF

Author: Jack Stevenson

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781900486231

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Most books about B-movies are straight-forward genre guides, biographies or encyclopaedias. Not this one. In addition to chapters on film showmen, gimmicks and cult films, Land of a Thousand Balconies documents those incidents and unusual film happenings which author Jack Stevenson has -- over the past fifteen years -- been privy to in his various capacities as show organiser, tour arranger, festival jury member and projectionist-for-hire. Land of a Thousand Balconies also focuses on movie theatres and renegade exhibition spaces, lamenting on the disappearing 'sense of place' that is such an integral part of the movie-going experience. Here the reader is invited to tour a diversity of venues -- from the notorious old grindhouses of San Francisco, the home-made store-front cinemas of Seattle and NY, through to the underground film clubs of Europe. Book jacket.