Catty-corner to our office building sits the Hammer Museum. Within the museum is the Billy Wilder Theater. This was the setting of our event "A Day at the Movies." UCLA's famed Theater, Film and Television Department has a film archive which happens to be the second largest in the US (behind the Library of Congress) and one of the top 10 archives in the world. Our event, comprised of Jan-Christopher Horak speaking about the process of restoring old television and film and showing clips from works they have restored. He would give a brief history of the work and then show the short clips.
We started with some news clips. The first was a recording of Marian Anderson, a black singer, from 1939. Apparently, Mrs. Roosevelt had invited Marian to sing at one of her events but the daughters of the revolution would not allow Ms. Anderson to come through the front of the venue but enter through the servants quarter. Marian refused and Mrs. Roosevelt was so upset she decided to have the concert on the Washington Mall. 30,000 people of mixed races showed up for the event and the clip we watched was the only recording of this historic moment.
This was followed with rare news footage of the Harvey Milk murder. Most of us are familiar with this event, if not, read here. Watching this new footage was intense and makes you realize how the news today is so edited and contrived.
Then we were shown on of their oldest archives, from 1929 of Sol Volinsky, "The Eccentric Entertainer" he played the piano and the violin at the same time!
One of the first color films was called "I want to be Bad", from 1930. This was a two color technicolor with a red and green register. This was a combo to create caucasian skin tones.
One of my favorite clips was a documentary about "Hollywood: City of Celluloid" which showed footage Los Angeles in 1932. No wonder everyone wanted to live here, perfect weather, orange groves, large plots of land and no traffic! I tried to picture myself in LA in the 30's and determined I would have loved it even more than I do now!
This was followed by two classics, a 1939 Betty Boop cartoon of Snow White which featured music from Cab Calloway and a 1933 Laurel & Hardy comedic act called Busy Bodies.
The next 3 clips were also my favorite because they were from old television shows. "The Gene Kelly Show" where he did a duet with then 13 year old Liza Minnelli, "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show" featuring The Everly Brothers and "The Johnny Cash Show" where the man in black sang a duet with Bob Dylan. We learned that most television shows prior to 1958 have been lost because show were live and not recorded. The only way they could be recorded was by setting up a 16 mm camera and recording it off the tv screen.
We ended with the pre-MTV music videos. Apparently in the 1940's for a short time you could watch a "soundie" on a jukebox. These were short recordings in Digibeta. We watched Cab Calloway "Blues in the Night" and Joi Lansing "Web of Love."
The crowd (my coworkers) loved the show! As did I. In fact, watching these old clips put a desire in me to turn back in time and imagine what life was like back in the day. I can't wait to go back to the Billy Wilder Theater to see the full length films they have restored.
Our May Event was such a success! I was so pleased that I decided to not ride the bus that day, put on some Cab Calloway and walked 4 miles home basking in the CA sunshine wondering what it would be like to walk those same streets in the 30's.
Billy Wilder Theater
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