Yesterday I posted five hours of radio programming of a local Washington DC station in 1939. I find these non-dramatic radio broadcasts particularly evocative of the era and the above is no exception. It’s a broadcast from 1943 that aired on Christmas Eve as a Christmas special for those home
This is a pretty nutty find. It’s close to six hours of a normal broadcast day on a local Washington D.C. radio station, WJSV, on September 21, 1939. In other words, if you were a housewife sitting around your house and put your radio on in the background and left
Here is one of the most delightful time-travel videos provided by YouTube artist and film-restoration expert NASS, who finds black and white documentary footage of old urban areas, colorizes them, adds a period sound bed of traffic and pedestrian noises and slows the frame rate down slightly, thus giving it
When the Singer Sewing Machine factory decided to build their own office tower in 1907, they chose to do so with a bang. It was the tallest office building ever constructed and the technology involved in running the place was state-of-the-art early 20th century stuff. Alas, it’s life span was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C51apJhZX4 The Savoy-Plaza, one of New York City’s most elegant and legendary hotels, stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th street, currently the site of the General Motors Building. This fabulously grand Beaux-Arts pile was designed by McKim Meade and White and opened in 1907. Less than 60
As the dreaded day of the impending catastrophe known as the 2024 election approaches, I thought it would be appropriate and sobering to take a brief look back at the Hollywood Ten, a group of filmmakers who were tried, convicted and imprisoned for having been members of the Communist Party
In yesterday’s post featuring documentary footage of Hollywood and environs in 1928, we saw views of a number of long defunct studios. Chief among them was the legendary and beloved Hal Roach Studios, home of Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charley Chase and others. The studio was in Culver City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG0rnd-m3CU Here is a fascinating travelogue reel showing Hollywood and environs in 1928 (not 1929 as the YouTube poster has labeled it). I date it as late summer/early winter ’28 as the two movies we see advertised, ‘Four Rooms’ and ‘The Man Who Laughs’, were released in August and November
I often post the videos of the YouTube artist known as NASS, who specializes in colorizing old urban documentary footage, slowing the frame rate down to make them feel more realistic and adding an appropriate bed of sound. Here’s one that I somehow missed–it was posted a year ago. We
Not many people realize that sound film existed well before the advent of ‘The Jazz Singer’ in 1927 and one of the pioneers of early experimental sound film was of course Thomas Edison. In 1913, the Edison Company made talking pictures using a sound-on-cylinder system called The Kinetophone. These pioneering