LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES
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Year Published: 1949
Format: 16mm
Description: One of a series of short subjects made in 1949 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "Let's Go to the Movies" provides a brisk, Hollywood-centric gloss of early narrative film history, coupled with brief glimpses "behind the scenes" of major studio productions. A curtain opens on an Academy Awards Ceremony with an " Oscar " statuette on the stage (0:10). Title: "Members of the Motion Picture Industry present Let’s Go to the Movies" (0:13). A movie studio "backlot" with false tenement building fronts, actors in costumes, a film crew and stage sets (0:23). An Edison Kinetoscope. An early hand-cranked motorcar. Crossfade to automobiles of the 1910’s, 1920’s (0:41). Silent film clips: Mary Pickford "In the Hills of Old Kentucky" (1:00). A sign advertises "Raff & Gammen’s Entertainment Arcade." POV looking into a penny arcade Kinetoscope. Clip: Charlie Chaplin falls off a chair in "Easy Street" (1:16). A hand-cranked film projector. A queue of women in hats at a nickelodeon. A slide: "Ladies Please Remove Your Hats" (1:36). A scene from Edwin Porter’s "The Great Train Robbery" (1:48). A clip from D.W. Griffith’s racist film, "The Birth of a Nation," as adapted from "The Clansman" (1:57). Newsreel intertitle: "President Roosevelt Advocates Big Stick Policy." An audience cheers the appearance of Teddy Roosevelt. An Edison cylinder, a lightbulb, an oscilloscope and 35mm motion picture film. A man speaks into a microphone. A recording is mastered on a lathe (2:09). Title: "1927" over an offensive clip of Al Jolson singing "Mammy" in blackface, from "The Jazz Singer" (2:23). "1929" over John Barrymore as Richard III in "Show of Shows", a Warner Brothers musical revue (3:13). "1929" over "Philharmonic Orchestra." French horns, piano (3:44). The Campus Theatre at Vermont Ave. and Santa Monica Boulevard, advertises "Key Largo'' and a Walt Disney cartoon (4:03). The Esquire Theatre on Fairfax Ave, (now Canter’s Deli) advertises a Beatrice Lilie double feature. The Hawaii Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. A billboard for Danny Kaye in "El Lechero," aka "Wonder Man" (4:07). Gaumont studios in France. An Italian Poster for "Bambi." The Art Deco Nichigeki Theater in the Yurakucho district of Tokyo, Japan. The Moulin Rouge Cinema. The Cinema Marignan, now the Gaumont Champs-Elysees, in Paris (4:14). Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Ave. The El Capitan, The Hollywood First National Building. The Broadway, a bowling alley, The Hollywood Post Office (4:31). Inside a scenery shop. Ironing a costume. Applying makeup recording foley sound effects. A prop warehouse. An editing suite with rewinds, splicers (4:41). A backlot from above. A soundstage. A spotlight. A working set. A sound recording console (5:14). Mitchell type 35mm motion picture camera in a blimp for dissipating sound (5:26). Developing film prints. Editors unspool 35mm film into trim bins. Frame-by-frame analysis of rodeo footage (5:29) on a Moviola. A full bin of exposed 35mm nitrate cellulose film (6:07). African-American workers on a cotton plantation. Bales of cotton are shipped and processed into cellulose. Chemically treating the filmstrips. A banquet table of silverware (6:14). Montage: Lumber and plaster. A scenic designer sculpts a statue. Buckets of white paint. A spotlight rotates. A foundry and steam engines. Chemists in a laboratory with beakers and microscopes. 1940s automobiles in Hollywood (7:00). An artist produces an ad for Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. Elderly women inspect nitrate prints under a sign: "No Smoking." Film shipping canisters (7:51). The Santa Anita Theater marquee advertises "Deep Waters" and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." Another cinema marquee: "My Son, My Son" and "International Lady." The Gilmore Theater, showing "The Noose Hangs High." The Monica plays "Hazard" and "River Lady." The Ermine has "That Lady in Ermine" and "King of the Gamblers" (8:05). 35mm film reels spin to life on a Moviola. Inside a film lab (8:17). Staged scenes: A cinema proprietor speaks with patrons. A distributor checks schedules. A screenwriter at a desk with a typewriter and an Oscar. A producer watches as another man writes for him. An art director. A director in a folding chair. A cameraman (8:41). A shot from "Notorious." A sound recordist. An orchestra (8:30). End titles (9:03).
Complete Record:
Transcription
[Music] [Applause] [Applause] this is the first of a series of motion pictures about motion pictures how they began how they are made and the people who make and show them it all started less than 60 years ago when their prospects were so poor that thomas edison would not spend 150 dollars to protect the foreign rights of his kinetoscope the movies like the automobile grew up in the 20th century but where the automobile is tangible and real the movies are light and shadow people first saw them in a penny arcade where they appeared as a series of cards flipped in rapid succession to simulate motion then a continuous projection machine was made and the nickelodeon was born people could now gather in groups to view drama and the great events of [Music] history [Music] early research imprisoned a man's voice on a cylinder of wax further research in the field of electronics transmitted sound into audible impulses and then in 1927 pictures found their voice my strings are tangled around [Music] me mammy i'm coming i hope i didn't make you wait [Music] baby i'm coming oh god i hope i'm not late mary don't you know me it's a little crazy i walk a million miles [Music] so that which grieves my heart and wet my cheeks with artificial tears and frame my face to all occasions can i do this and cannot get a crown further off i'll pluck it down [Music] today 20 years later the movies are played in more than 80 000 theaters throughout the world people say it in 150 different languages and dialects but it all means the same thing let's go to the movies the greatest medium for entertainment the world has ever known to most people the movies in their theaters mean hollywood hollywood california usa the city that is not a city only a post office branch of los angeles where 30 000 specialists working in 272 separate arts and crafts sciences and trades make the movies working as a team to put their ideas into pictures [Music] the end product of their labor is a continuous piece of film about an inch and a half wide and almost two miles long containing approximately 150 000 still pictures or frames the reason these pictures seem to move is because of the fact that they can be flashed on the screen at the rate of 90 feet per minute like this film is silver-coated cellulose cellulose is a byproduct of cotton and there wouldn't be any movies if millions of bales of cotton weren't grown each and every year in our southern states that cotton is shipped all over the country in order to go through a process like this from cotton to cellulose to a thin sheet of celluloid then silver is used to sensitize the film [Music] the film industry uses more silver from our western states each year than is needed to plate all of the knives and forks and spoons that are used in this country but cotton and silver are only the beginning it takes a lot of other things to make the movies it takes lumber and plaster it takes paint electric power and all of the varied products of the gigantic factory that is american it takes science a lot of american know-how constant tinkering in the laboratories in rochester schenectady and wilmington experimenting with the mysteries of electronics continual research people constantly working to improve the qualities of photography and the reproduction of sound it takes a lot of people most of whom have never even seen hollywood people working in publicity advertising and exploitation in distribution arranging dates and schedules inspecting repairing and servicing film in exchanges from where it is shipped to thousands of theaters most of which are independently owned these people are working for your entertainment making it possible for you to say let's go to the movies there are so many interesting facets to its arts and crafts and sciences but each one takes a separate film to tell part of the story in succeeding films we will tell you about the exhibitor the distributor the screenwriter the producer the art director the director the cameraman the actor the sound man the music director the film editor and all the other people who work in the motion picture industry making it possible for you to say let's go to the movies you
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