Focus on the 20s - Entertainment. Music, newsreels, films, stunts and other forms of entertainment from the 1920s.
DO NOT USE Opening Titles and stills of families gathered by radios in their homes.
Wide MS vaudevillian entertainer EDDIE CANTOR performing a high-spirited song & dance number (natural audio, musical accompaniment).
Excellent MS famed African-American musical (ragtime, jazz) act NOBLE SISSLE and EUBIE BLAKE (Sissle and Blake, The Dixie Duo) performing the jazz song "Affectionate Dan."
TLS/MSs behind the scenes filmmaking, directors shouting directions through megaphone, cameramen handcranking cameras, actors milling about set while lighting crew move lights.
DO NOT USE Excerpt from unknown slapstick comedy: wide-eyed director wearing glasses & Gatsby hat gets out of chair, running from set upon noticing a lion loose on the set, causing mass hysteria, calamity & hilarity; nice shot of lion leaping toward camera; chaos as lions run up stairs, leap over bar counter or through window; lion claws at closed door; silly shots of man wrestling with "lion" behind counter while trying to phone for help.
DO NOT USE Excerpts from "Don Juan" (1926), starring Mary Astor & swashbuckling John Barrymore; swordfight, passionate kiss.
DO NOT USE Still montage of theater marquees and publicity stills of 1920s Hollywood stars.
Excellent MSs of a daring newsreel cameraman being strapped onto the back of a biplane for exclusive aerial photos; air to air shots of biplane in flight, intrepid cameraman strapped to plane. Plane says Daugherty on side, perhaps a reference to early aviator Earl S. Daugherty; great CU pilot smiling in cockpit while doing loop-the-loop, taking his hands off the yoke; some nauseating subjective POV views of the New York City skyline. MS young man swinging hand over hand on steel beam high over city. Funny MSs white man bending steel rod with his left arm & teeth.
DO NOT USE stills
MS President CALVIN COOLIDGE speaking about the revolutionary marriage of sound & motion pictures: "This invention is faster nowadays than ever before. He who keep abreast of it would have no time to do more than note its accomplishments & marvel at them. So let me admit that in helping to make the amazing record which is to be produced of this scene, I have only the most general idea of what it is mechanically & scientifically that is being done. But I am sure that a photofilm of this scene is to be produced, combining a record for both the eye & the ear, a record that may be described as a speaking, moving picture." Great MS Governor of New York AL SMITH (Alfred Smith) singing the Gay 90s song "The Bowery" from "A Trip to Chinatown"; Governor Al Smith gets the crowd to join in, all singing amusedly (natural audio).
DO NOT USE Still montage of old songbook covers.