Vaudeville and Film, 1895-1915 PDF Download

Author: Robert Clyde Allen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Author: Robert C. Allen (Ph.D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Author: Eileen Bowser
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520085343
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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"The Transformation of Cinema chronicles the history of the American film business from the days of storefront nickelodeons to the premiere of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, complete with full symphony orchestra. Eileen Bowser here redresses the imbalance of the "Griffith did it all" cliché by discussing the efforts of countless lesser-known figures who also helped to create Hollywood and shape the growing film industry. The effect of the surroundings -- the size of the hall; whether the film was shown alone or along with vaudeville entertainment; and the size, quality, and relevance of the musical background -- are all examined for their impact on the filmgoing experience. Bowser documents the emergence of the star system, which set the stage for the classic silent-film era. By 1915 the silent film is seen as a full-fledged art form with its own style and place in the world of business."--Back cover.

Author: James Fisher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153811335X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 691

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Vaudeville, as it is commonly known today, began as a response to scandalous variety performances appealing mostly to adult, male patrons. When former minstrel performer and balladeer Tony Pastor opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York in 1881, he was guided by a mission to provide family-friendly variety shows in hopes of drawing in that portion of the audience – women and children – otherwise inherently excluded from variety bills prior to 1881. There he perfected a framework for family-oriented amusements of the highest obtainable quality and style. Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and the dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on performing artists, managers and agents, theatre facilities, and the terminology central to the history of vaudeville. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about vaudeville.

Author: Christine Bold
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300257058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Uncovering hidden histories of Indigenous performers in vaudeville and in the creation of western modernity and popular culture Drawing from little-known archives, Christine Bold brings to light forgotten histories of Indigenous performers in vaudeville and, by extension, popular culture and modernity. Vaudeville was both a forerunner of modern mass entertainment and a rich site of popular Indigenous performance and notions of Indianness at the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the stories of artists Native to Turtle Island (North America) performing across the continent and around the world, Bold illustrates a network of more than 300 Indigenous and Indigenous-identifying entertainers, from Will Rogers to Go-won-go Mohawk to Princess Chinquilla, who upend vaudeville's received history. These fascinating stories cumulatively reveal vaudeville as a space in which the making of western modernity both denied and relied on living Indigenous presence, and in which Indigenous artists negotiated agency and stereotypes through vaudeville performance.

Author: David Bordwell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134988087
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1338

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'A dense, challenging and important book.' Philip French Observer 'At the very least, this blockbuster is probably the best single volume history of Hollywood we're likely to get for a very long time.' Paul Kerr City Limits 'Persuasively argued, the book is also packed with facts, figures and photographs.' Nigel Andrews Financial Times Acclaimed for their breakthrough approach, Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson analyze the basic conditions of American film-making as a historical institution and consider to what extent Hollywood film production constitutes a systematic enterprise, in both its style and its business operations. Despite differences of director, genre or studio, most Hollywood films operate within a set of shared assumptions about how a film should look and sound. Such assumptions are neither natural nor inevitable; but because classical-style films have been the type most widely seen, they have come to be accepted as the 'norm' of film-making and viewing. The authors show how these classical conventions were formulated and standardized, and how they responded to the arrival of sound, colour, widescreen ratios and stereophonic sound. They argue that each new technological development has served a function within an existing narrational system. The authors also examine how the Hollywood cinema standardized the film-making process itself. They describe how, over the course of its history, Hollywood developed distinct modes of production in a constant search for maximum efficiency, predictability and novelty. Set apart by its combination of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this book is the standard work on the classical Hollywood cinema style of film-making from the silent era to the 1960s. Now available in paperback, it is a 'must' for film students, lecturers and all those seriously interested in the development of the film industry.

Author: Tom Gunning
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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The legendary filmmaker D. W. Griffith directed nearly 200 films during 1908 and 1909, his first years with the Biograph Company. While those one-reel films are a testament to Griffith's inspired genius as a director, they also reflect a fundamental shift in film style from "cheap amusements" to movie storytelling complete with characters and narrative impetus. In this comprehensive historical investigation, drawing on films preserved by the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art, Tom Gunning reveals that the remarkable cinematic changes between 1900 and 1915 were a response to the radical reorganization within the film industry and the evolving role of film in American society. The Motion Picture Patents Company, the newly formed Film Trust, had major economic aspirations. The newly emerging industry's quest for a middle-class audience triggered Griffith's early experiments in film editing and imagery. His unique solutions permanently shaped American narrative film.

Author: John L. Fell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520047587
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Author: Andrew Erdman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801465729
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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In her day, Eva Tanguay (1879-1947) was one of the most famous women in America. Widely known as the "I Don't Care Girl"-named after a song she popularized and her independent, even brazen persona-Tanguay established herself as a vaudeville and musical comedy star in 1904 with the New York City premiere of the show My Lady-and never looked back. Tanguay was, at the height of a long career that stretched until the early 1930s, a trend-setting performer who embodied the emerging ideal of the bold and sexual female entertainer. Whether suggestively singing songs with titles like "It's All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It" and "Go As Far As You Like" or wearing a daring dress made of pennies, she was a precursor to subsequent generations of performers, from Mae West to Madonna and Lady Gaga, who have been both idolized and condemned for simultaneously displaying and playing with blatant displays of female sexuality. In Queen of Vaudeville, Andrew L. Erdman tells Eva Tanguay's remarkable life story with verve. Born into the family of a country doctor in rural Quebec and raised in a New England mill town, Tanguay found a home on the vaudeville stage. Erdman follows the course of her life as she amasses fame and wealth, marries (and divorces) twice, engages in affairs closely followed in the press, declares herself a Christian Scientist, becomes one of the first celebrities to get plastic surgery, loses her fortune following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and receives her last notice, an obituary in Variety. The arc of Tanguay's career follows the history of American popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Tanguay's appeal, so dependent on her physical presence and personal charisma, did not come across in the new media of radio and motion pictures. With nineteen rare or previously unpublished images, Queen of Vaudeville is a dynamic portrait of a dazzling and unjustly forgotten show business star.

Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0415234409
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 824

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Book Description
One-volume reference work on the first twenty-five years of the cinema's international emergence from the early 1890s to the mid-1910s.