Figure 4.11 In 1996, Kodak introduced cameras for the Advanced Photo System that carried instructions to photo finishing equipment. (Reprinted with permission from Eastman Kodak Company.)
mother, mother, and daughter together for a three-generation portrait, closing gaps in a photograph of relatives to make the scene cozier, or eliminating braces on teeth be- fore the orthodontist could. A divorced woman popped her ex-husband's image out of a family portrait. And a boy named Brian got a poster of himself perched atop a movie marquee advertising the Monty Python
movie, The Life of Brian.
The old adage that the camera never lies can have few remaining adherents. Mod- ern photography can certainly lie. In the 1920s, a few newspaper editors combined pictures into composographs, which brought images of people from different photo- graphs together in close proximity. The pictures were outright fakes, visual lies.
Publishers justified using them because they sold newspapers. At times, these dis- tortions had political value. Enough voters were deceived during the McCarthy era of the 1950s to defeat liberal Senator Millard Tydings for re-election after he was shown standing beside Communist leader Earl Browder, an event that never happened.
But the old manipulation of still pictures was crude compared with digital imaging.
Computer software for digital retouching shifted the pyramids at Giza to improve the
Figure 4.12 Photojournalism can convey powerful emotions, but the strongest pictures bring a public outcry such as attended this picture of the execution of Ruth Judd. The photographer strapped a tiny camera to his ankle.
framing of a National Geographic cover in
1982. An expert explained:
With the new technology we can enhance colors or change them, eliminate details, add or delete figures, alter the composition and lighting effects, combine any number of images, and literally move mountains, or at least the Eiffel Thwer, as one magazine did to improve a cover design. TV Guide didn't even stop at decapitation—it placed Oprah Winfrey's head on Ann Margaret's body!"
Holograms
Work continued on practical, affordable holography, a two-dimensional photo- graphic system that produces three-dimen- sional photographs using laser beams. A
Figure 4.13 About 1960 Wisconsin Senator Alexander Wiley sent out this composograph of three separate pictures as a Christmas card.
(Courtesy State Historical Society of Wisconsin.)
hologram can appear to extend deep into the wall on which the picture is hanging or it can seem to extend outward into a room so viewers carefully walk around what is not actually there. Holograms have a number of scientific uses. They can also be found on magazine covers and on museum walls. The first of the Star Wars films con- tained a hologram appearance by "Princess Leia," the heroine, who delivered a "mailed"
ENTERTAINMENT 123
message to a spaceship. If, one day, motion holography can be delivered to the home as television pictures, there is little doubt about its acceptance. Tb view a video holo- gram would be more like looking through a window at the street outside than like watching TV.
From its beginnings, photography has given people information, entertainment, and aesthetic pleasure.
As a tool of journalism, photographs de- livered information that words alone could not. The eyes of starving African children with flies hovering about helped launch cargo planes. The pained eyes of brutalized Bosnian women shook Western nations into action. The eyes of baby harp seals just before the fur hunter's club crashed down led to a halt to the slaughter. As a tool of medicine, photography has helped to im- prove our health. As a tool of science, it has transformed what is unknown to what is known.
At the same time, we have derived en- joyment from still pictures in mass media, notably magazines, and from motion pic- tures. And if the first expensive tool of communication we purchase is not our own camera, it will likely be the second or third. Photography also enables us to share memories over a family photo album or pause alone for a reflective moment in a busy day with a photo in a wallet. The command "Smile!" carries a lot of meaning.
Movies Mil Stories
Movie audiences loved stories. France's George Melies, who had run a magic show, produced the first openly fiction films.
Modern audiences enjoy A Trip to the Moon, as a whimsical introduction to the history of space flight. Melies was among the first to stretch the film from less than one minute to an entire reel of 10 to 15 minutes length.
Nickelodeons
Exhibitors strung a few of these brief films together in random fashion as a program.
In this way the nickelodeon began, its name reflecting the price of admission. The first nickelodeon opened in Pittsburgh in 1904. Within a year, 2,500 were operating, selling 200,000 tickets a day by 1907. Nick-
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124 A HISTORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION
Figure 4.14 A movie theatre about 1920 advertising its spectacle. (Courtesy State Historical Society of Wisconsin.)
elodeons popped up in every corner of the land, gaudy and brightly lit, sometimes with a barker out front aided by a loud phonograph to fill up the house.
The nickel theaters attracted shoppers with tired feet, office workers on their lunch hour, unaccompanied women for whom a movie theater was a safe and gen- erally respectable place to go. Victorian middle class morality limited entertain- ment for women. For them, the cinema had a particular appeal.
More than any other entertainment form, the cinema opened up a space—a social space as well as a perceptual experiential horizon—in women's lives... Married women would drop into a movie theater on their way home from a shopping trip, a pleasure indulged in just as much by women of the more affluent classes. School- girls fill the theaters during much of the af- ternoon, before returning to the folds of familial discipline. And young working women would find in the cinema an hour of
diversion after work, as well as an opportu- nity to meet men.3°
Nickelodeons brought in packs of "smudgy urchins,"' couples looking for a dark place for their dates, and entire working class families including their squalling babies.
The cinema brought affordable entertain- ment to the poor, who had neither the dis- posable income nor the time for other paid amusements, but only the white poor, for blacks were usually barred from nickelo- deons.
Most of the early comedies borrowed their characters, if not their plots, from vaude- ville skits. As in vaudeville, ethnic and ra- cial parodies were prevalent, with dim-witted Irish servants blowing them- selves up trying to light the stove or taking off their clothes when asked to serve the salad "undressed"; unscrupulous Jewish merchants in full beards and long black coats cheating their customers, and blacks behaving like children—cakewalking, grin-
ENTERTAINMENT 125
ning, shooting craps, stealing chickens, and eating watermelon... 32
Customers sometimes packed in from morning to night, one show after another, seven days a week. They streamed out of one nickelodeon into another, beguiled by the barkers, the flashing lights, and the colorful posters outside until their endur- ance or their pockets were drained. Be- tween shows, the nickelodeon owners sent their relatives up and down the aisle selling snacks and soda pop. In some theaters, the attendants squirted the air with a solution to mask the foul air, which did nothing about the pestilential germs that city in- spectors worried about. To keep up with demand for new movies, exhibitors changed the bill daily, or even twice a day.
The nickels rattled down like hailstones as workingmen and their families crowded into the lobbies, overflowed in long patient lines on the street. Inside the program lasted from twenty minutes to an hour: a brief melodrama or chase; a comedy; a news picture or travel picture; a glimpse of dancers or acrobats. Between films the pro- jectionist inserted "hand-colored" slides of popular songs, the pianist pounded out the melodies, and the whole audience sang...
"Waltz Me Around Again, Willie."... Far too often, in the middle of a picture, the projec- tionist inserted a slide reading, "One Minute, Please!" This indicated a break in the film, or trouble with the machine. Every- one began stamping in unison. If the neces- sary repair required a little time, there were slides advertising the stores of local trades- men, and announcing future programs. The audience, impatient for a renewal of illu- sion, whistled and shouted. Youngsters car- rying trays piled with peanuts, candy, popcorn and soda-pop rushed up and down the aisles, crying their wares. Presently the machine resumed its sputtering, and the screen came alive again. There was a ripple of applause, a fluttering sigh of content- ment. Then silence, broken by the crackling of peanut shells and popcorn, the whimper- ing of a frightened child. In the fetid dark- ness, tired men and women forgot the hardships of poverty. For this was happi- ness. This was the Promised Land.33 A writer of the times observed:
Opposite the barren school yard was the ar- caded entrance to the Nickelodeon, finished in white stucco, with the ticket seller throned in a chariot drawn by an elephant trimmed with red, white and blue lights...
Here were groups of working girls—now happy "summer girls"—because they had left the grime, ugliness, and dejection of their factories behind them, and were fresh- ened and revived by doing what they liked to do.34
Fear of Revolutionary Ideas
The wealthy classes did not frequent the nickelodeons, but from their ranks came expressions of worry that uneducated workingmen and women were being fed revolutionary ideas. Suggestions were made that the content of the nickelodeons be regulated, censored, or even sup-
pressed. Some of these suggestions came from saloon owners who were losing cus- tomers, managers of vaudeville houses, and ministers who saw their congregations sharply diminished. In time, the nickelode- ons would indeed be put out of business, but only by better quality theaters and bet- ter shows.
As long as there was no alternative to the nickel theaters, customers were content to squeeze themselves into darkened, airless storefronts to watch 15- to twenty-minute shows with seven- or eight-minute fea- tures.35
After about a decade, as the appeal of mo- tion pictures expanded beyond the poorer classes to be enthusiastically embraced by middle-class Americans, the nickelodeons, the store fronts, the backs of the arcades, and the circus tents gave way to theaters built for movie watching, and later to a considerably grander architecture, movie palaces. In summertime, the blessings of air conditioning drew in patrons.
As feature films took hold, it became obvious that nickelodeons and small movie theaters could no longer depend upon in- come from a rapid turnover of audiences who came for a string of short films. The audiences liked the longer feature films.
126 A HISTORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION
The solution was much larger theaters that could seat audiences of many hundreds or even several thousand. The first movie pal- ace, the Strand Theater on Broadway, opened its doors in 1914 and was an imme- diate success. It could seat almost 3,000 patrons at a time. Once again, the public decided the direction that a medium of communication would take. Within two years, approximately 21,000 newly built or extensively remodeled theaters were com- pleted. Downtown in large cities, the more ornate motion picture showplaces featured orchestra pits, pipe organs, and plaster Byz- antine architecture. They were designed to attract middle class patrons who were be- ginning to go to motion pictures, but would not enter dingy, crowded nickelodeons.
Film exchanges, instead of selling films to exhibitors, rented them. In time, as the industry matured, distribution centers and chain owners would dominate the mom- and-pop beginnings of film exhibition.
Movie theater chains with hundreds of out- lets either contracted with studios or had the same corporate ownership, guarantee- ing both a steady supply of product and dependable distribution. Warner Bros.
films opened in a Warner Bros. theater in every large city, Paramount films at a Para- mount, MGM films at a Loew's theater.
A Market for Simple Stories
The movie-going public had enough prob- lems of their own. They liked escape into fantasy. Reality in the form of actuality film was not what they entered the darkened theater to see. Eventually, the public would express its preference for color and sound, for these added even more pleasure to an evening of going out to the movies. And always, the actors.
Never in history has the public been so avid for information about mortals who earn a living by posturing... The sheer magnitude of this adoration invites awe. Each day mil- lions of men, women, and children sit in the windowless temples of the screen to commune with their vicarious friends and lovers.36
In 1903, director-photographer Edwin Por- ter made The Great 'IYain Robbery, the first memorable story film and the first to utilize film editing to establish relationships. In eight minutes, bandits hold up a mail train, a posse is formed, they chase after the ban- dits, a shoot-out follows, and the bandits are wiped out. For the first time, too, the camera moved with the action, indoors and out.
Excited audiences lined up to get in and demanded more. Moviemakers listened.
Figure 4.15
The Great Train Robbery introduces cutting to advance the narrative. Film
makers discovered that audiences loved stories.
(Courtesy State Historical Society of Wisconsin.)
A lot of ticket buyers were poor and had little formal education. Many immigrants were illiterate in the English language. Rea- sonably, they wanted to see what they could understand. The burlesque tradition, particularly pratfall comedy, filled the bill nicely. So did simple stories of adventure and romance that everyone could enjoy.
Literates in the audience read the subtitles to those sitting nearby. People willingly plunked down their hard-earned coins for visual comedy and stories.
Audiences sometimes wanted more than excitement and romance. They wanted a chance to laugh. Fred Ott's Sneeze (1893), an early Edison film for the Kine- toscopes, began a long tradition of film comedy. Under the guiding hand of Mack Sennett, slapstick grew from its limited roots in burlesque to an art form. The Key- stone Kops' nonsensical appearance and incompetence allowed people to laugh at a social institution that was anything but hu- morous. For immigrants from many coun- tries, regarding the policeman as a figure of fun must have been strange indeed.
In the slapstick comedies, danger was constant and hairbreadth escapes were common, but no one died and no one was even seriously hurt. Settings were realistic, but the realism was exaggerated to absurd- ity by fast-motion film, ridiculous props, split-second timing, and incongruous film
ENTERTAINMENT 127
cutting. When the screen comic hero's automobile missed the oncoming locomo- tive by inches, the audience suspended be- lief and laughed. Sennett, the director, was followed by silent film actors who took the comic art to yet greater heights. Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and, above the rest, Charlie Chaplin blended slapstick with pa- thos. His meld of mirth, romance, and sad- ness created one of the classic characters of any age and culture, the little tramp, in such films as The Kid, The Gold Rush, and City Lights.
The Actors
As usual, the customers had something to say about what they were paying to see.
Audiences showed by their ticket pur- chases an attachment for certain actors and actresses. The result was Hollywood's crea- tion of a star system early in the history of the motion picture. Moviegoers, it turned out, identified with the characters looming so large on the screen.
The first screen actors were people who appeared in front of the camera only be- cause they were not busy working behind it. Wives, friends, visitors took a turn. When stage actors began arriving at the new movie studios to look for work, they were given acting jobs, but not the publicity they expected, because studio owners were Figure 4.16
Immigrants loved seeing the Keystone Kops. Where many
of them came from, policemen were nothing to
laugh at. (Courtesy State Historical Society of
Wisconsin.)
128 A HISTORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION
afraid this would lead to demands for better pay. This situation soon changed. Theater owners reported to producers that audi- ences looked forward to seeing familiar faces. Word raced through town that the actor or actress who had appeared in such- and-such a role could be seen again at the Bijou in a new motion picture. That meant ticket sales.
In 1914, Charlie Chaplin was being paid
$125 a week. By 1915, he was getting
$10,000 a week plus $150,000 for signing the contract. By 1916, Mary Pickford was getting $10,000 a week plus half the profits of her pictures. For the business they brought in, they were worth every penny.
In the darkened movie houses, the fans could feel close to the famous actors who looked out at them in close-ups. For at least a short time, the moviegoer could displace whatever existed in his or her life with mediated pleasure. That experience has never gone out of our lives.
Moviegoers wanted formula films that did not vary much from one comedy to the next, one cowboy western to the next. Most of all, they wanted happy endings. The popular melodrama easily made the transi- tion from stage to screen. The hero dashed up at the last minute to save the tied-down heroine from the oncoming train, then turned to thrash the villain. Film cuts kept the pacing and mood, and fades kept the story line from scene to scene. It was cer- tainly better than raising and lowering a stage curtain. Real locomotives and spin- ning circular lumber saws enhanced the sense of reality better than the cardboard imitations of the stage. The melodrama and outdoor filming were clearly made for each other.
Adolph Zukor spent $35,000 to bring to the United States in 1912 a film made in France, Sarah Bernhardt's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth. He charged $1 a ticket, an unheard of price, and rented a major thea- ter. Zukor, who created Paramount Pic- tures, has been called the father of the feature film. He once said, "The public is never wrong."
Assembly Line Production
The melodrama evolved into the romantic drama with The Birth of a Nation (1915), a feature film nearly three hours long. Direc- tor D.W. Griffith's manipulation of long, medium, and close-up shots, pacing, and optical effects, plus his choice of locations and his attention to actors' movements set new standards for the motion picture. He insisted on close-ups of actors despite pro- tests from studio executives that audiences wanted to see the actors from head to toe and would not accept "half an actor." Start- ing with The Birth of a Nation film would have a visual language that the public would understand, a language to which it would respond. Although a silent film, The Birth of a Nation had the accompaniment of live music, anything from a 70-piece sym- phony orchestra to a single piano playing a musical score written for the film.
The new possibilities of the movie camera (especially in the early days before sound) tempted movie makers to exploit the pecu- liar capacity of the movie screen to depict what could not have been physically repre- sented on the stage. The first great box- office success...was D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which attracted millions by its ex- pansive battle scenes, its torrential action, and its close-ups of the faces of leering vil- lains and of dead soldiers. This was the first movie ever shown in the White House.
After seeing it, President Wilson is said to have remarked, "It is like writing history with lightning."37
The Birth of a Nation was also a racially biased movie, portraying blacks in cartoon- ish ways as vicious and inferior, while hold- ing up as noble the white-sheeted Ku Klux Klan. It created considerable public anger, including protest marches and complaints by prominent citizens, but this only in- creased its popularity at the box office. It was probably the first "must see" film. As for black movie patrons, their feelings were of little concern because they were not welcome in movie theaters. They were, in the South, either barred outright or directed to balconies reserved for them, and in the