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A Post-Screening Conversation on “Call Northside 777”

James Stewart in “Call Northside 777” (1948)

For New York film fans, CUNY TV’s long-running City Cinematheque is a much-loved treasure-house of world cinema, screening everything from Buster Keaton comedies to Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Orson Welles in The Third Man.

In October, I’ll join City Cinematheque host Jerry Carlson for a discussion of Call Northside 777, a gritty 1948 “docu-noir” starring James Stewart and Lee J. Cobb.

Adapted from a real-life chain of events, Call Northside 777 is the story of a wrongful murder conviction, a mother determined to free her son, and a skeptical but intrepid reporter who chases the story through Chicago’s working-class Polish neighborhoods.

One of several postwar movies to be shot largely on location, Call Northside 777 took advantage of the faster film stocks, lighter cameras, and portable sound equipment developed for filming in World War II.

Previewing the film, I was surprised at how resonant it remains, and how beautifully it captures the late 1940s. At that point, the inclusive vision of America that was so crucial for winning the war—and so evident in Soundies—was still in play, but the McCarthy Era was quickly approaching.

The film and conversation will air during the first two weekends in October on CUNY TV in NYC, as part of a 4-film series on “Post-War Anxiety in American Film (1945-1950).”

After the premiere, the post-screening conversation will be uploaded to the CUNY City Cinematheque YouTube channel (and, for a week, to the City Cinematheque home page).

For your screening pleasure, a good print of Call Northside 777 is also available on YouTube.

Here are the air dates on CUNY TV:

PREMIERE: Friday, October 4 at 9:30 p.m.

Saturday, October 5 at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, October 6 at 9:30 p.m.

Friday, October 11 at 12 midnight

Saturday, October 12 at 12 midnight

Sunday, October 13 at 12 midnight

CUNY TV is broadcast in NYC on channel 25.3 and available via cable on Spectrum and Optimum, channel 75; RCN, channel 77; and Verizon FiOS, channel 30.

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No Dimes Needed! This Sunday, the Panoram Is Rolling at MoMI–And I’ll Be There for the Q & A

Last month I wrote about the Museum of the Moving Image, their new Panoram machine, and the Soundies screening exhibition “Coin-Operated Treasures: Black-Cast Soundies from the Astoria Studio.“

The Panoram came with an 8-film reel of Soundies. And not even the MoMI folks have seen them all yet.

This Sunday, July 21, at 1 p.m., the full 8-film reel will screen on the Panoram–exactly the way people watched Soundies in the 1940s. At 3 minutes apiece, the whole program should take about 25 minutes or so.

I’ll be on hand with MoMI curator Barbara Miller for a post-Panoram conversation and audience Q & A. And an impromptu book signing for Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time.

We don’t know for sure that the reel will include one of Dorothy Dandridge’s Soundies, seen here in A Zoot Suit (1941). But I certainly hope so.

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A Ritrovato Thumbs Up for “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection”

A renowned international film festival just had its 38th annual edition, and Soundies were there.

Organized by the Cineteca di Bologna, a  global film preservation powerhouse, Il Cinema Ritrovato presented some 500 films on six screens, including massive open-air programs in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore.

Ritrovato’s Blu-ray & DVD Awards celebrate old movies, restorations, and rediscoveries in home video formats. This year, close to 40 releases competed in categories like “Best Boxed Set,” “Best Single Film Release,” and “Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film.” Members of the jury also designated specific titles as their “Personal Choice.”

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection was the “Personal Choice” of Spanish critic and film historian Miguel María Franco, a former director of the Spanish Film Archive. His rationale was brief and to the point: “A wonderful collection of rarely seen films about American popular music.” 

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This Thursday, A Conversation in Chelsea

Still from Ina Archer, “Black Black Moonlight: A Minstrel Show,” 2024 (Courtesy Microscope Gallery)

If you’ve seen the DVD set Soundies: The Ultimate Collection, you’ll know my colleague Ina Archer, who did several of the on-camera intros.

Ina’s exhibition, Ina Archer: To Deceive the Eye, is now on view at Microscope Gallery in Chelsea. It’s a knockout–and the New York Times says so. 

“Other Black artists, like Adrian Piper and Arthur Jafa, have made works extracted from Hollywood archives,” critic Martha Schwendener wrote. “What Archer brings is a canny sense of the bewitching potential of celluloid. Manipulating the archive into an art object, she seduces you into watching — and staring at — the appalling ways racism has manifested in cinema.”

This Thursday evening, July 11, at 7 p.m., Ina and I will be at the gallery for a conversation about her art—including her paradoxically beautiful works on paper and two moving-image works, “Black Black Moonlight: A Minstrel Show” (2024) and “Trompe l’Oeil: Black Leader” (2023).

It should be a lively conversation! If you’re not able to attend in person, the gallery is live-streaming the event. Details on the talk and the exhibition here.

Hope to see you at Microscope this Thursday at 7.

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A Panoram for Astoria

The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, is right next door to Eastern Services Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), where many early New York Soundies were shot in 1941. So it’s especially fitting that MoMI has acquired a working Panoram machine, complete with a reel of Soundies.

To celebrate, the museum is presenting “Coin-Operated Treasures: Black-Cast Soundies from the Astoria Studio,” a continuously running program of selected Soundies, shown on big-screen video in the museum’s Amphitheater Gallery.

The lineup includes Soundies by Fats Waller, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and more. And the Panoram will get a workout too, running 16mm Soundies in scheduled presentations.

To celebrate, here’s a Kino Lorber clip of one of the Soundies on the video schedule: The Charioteers (and some fabulous dancers) doing “Swing for Sale” (1941). 

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A Soundies Win for KJZZ

 

This past September, reporter Jill Ryan at KJZZ, the NPR station in Phoenix, AZ, did a wonderful story on Soundies, with a focus on Black performers.

In her story Ryan paid special attention to the Moore brothers—Oscar Moore, guitarist in Nat King Cole’s trio, and Johnny Moore, leader of Johnny Moore’s 3 Blazers—who grew up in Phoenix.

Along with interviewing me, Ryan spoke with my colleagues on the Kino Lorber project, “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection”: artist and media archivist Ina Archer of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Soundies archivist and scholar Mark Cantor.

On Wednesday, Ryan’s story won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound.

Congratulations to Jill and to KJZZ. Listen to the story, read more about it, and watch a couple of the Soundies here.

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On NPR’s “Fresh Air,” a Segment on “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection”

While I was out watching the eclipse today, NPR’s “Fresh Air” was reviewing “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection.”

Thanks to music critic Lloyd Schwartz for a warmly descriptive, beautifully produced 9-minute segment on the 4-disc video set, which I curated for Kino Lorber and the Library of Congress.

The piece includes luxuriously long audio clips from the Fats Waller Soundie “Ain’t Misbehavin'” (1941), Walter Liberace in “Tiger Rag” (1943), Gene Krupa, Roy Eldridge, and Anita O’Day in “Let Me Off Uptown” (1942), and Dorothy Dandridge and Paul White in more than a minute of “A Zoot Suit” (1942).

“Soundies were a short-lived phenomenon that bridged the chronological gap between radio and television,” Schwartz says. “But they presented a surprisingly complex image of American life.”

“Curator Susan Delson arranges this collection into a variety of social activities, especially dancing and the war effort,” Schwartz says, “and categories of music, including such bizarre hybrids as ‘The Hula Rhumba’ and ‘Cowboy Calypso.’ Most Soundies were made with white performers,” he notes, “but Delson readjusts the balance so that almost a quarter of the Soundies here feature Black performers.”

Soundies, he adds, “were largely ignored by Hollywood’s strict Production Code, so some of them are delightfully raunchy.”

You can listen to the full “Fresh Air” Soundies segment here.

 

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Soundies at the Orphan Film Symposium

Courtesy Orphan Film Symposium, NYU

In April, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria is hosting the 14th edition of the Orphan Film Symposium—and Soundies will be there.

On Saturday, April 13, I’ll present a short Soundies program on this year’s symposium theme of “Work and Play”—six films that combine performance, play, work, and music in unexpected ways.

It’s part of the 2:45 p.m. “Soundworks” program, which also features presentations on DeVry Cine-Tone Films of the late 1920s, the Black-owned Pyramid Pictures Corporation of the early 1920s, and the enigmatically titled “Leo Roars!”

The Orphan Film Symposium kicks off with a reception and screening on Wednesday evening, April 10. Programs run from 9:30 or 10 a.m. into the evening on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 11-13.

More details: https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/

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Wrapping Up the Year with A Soundies Clip-a-thon

Just in time for the holidays, we celebrate another terrific year for Soundies with clips from some of my favorites, courtesy of Kino Lorber and Soundies: The Ultimate Collection.

First up: Day, Dawn, and Dusk in Rigoletto (1945).

The Three Heat Waves in Operatin’ Rhythm (1943).

A teenage Doris Day in Is It Love or Is It Conscription?  (1941).

And Dorothy Dandridge and Paul White in A Zoot Suit (1942).

You can find these Soundies–and about 195 more–in the 4-disc video set Soundies: The Ultimate Collection. For more about the videos, see the page on this website. And you can read the rave reviews here.

For ordering, there’s a deep discount on Amazon… and a discount at Kino Lorber too.

Happy Soundies hoidays to all! and warm good wishes for the new year.

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2 New Reviews for “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection”

More than three months into its release, the “Soundies: The Ultimate Collection” continues to rack up reviews and coverage.

This week brings a full-page story by Russ Tarby in The Syncopated Times and a review by film maven Laura Grieve on her blog “Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings.”

In his article, Tarby singles out a number of individual Soundies performers, especially Black musicians like Duke Ellington, Dorothy Dandridge, Nat King Cole, the Delta Rhythm Boys, and John Shadrack Horace & Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers in “Along the Navajo Trail.” 

But his greatest enthusiasm goes to a more obscure performer. “It’s  the lesser-known hillbilly combo, Redd Harper and the Sells, that really stands out thanks to British-born actress Florence Gill,” Tarby writes. “While band members sporting fake beards crank out ‘There’s a Hole in the Old Oaken Bucket’ on guitar, concertina, and tea kettle, an elderly Florence steals the show by clucking like a chicken. Her fowl imitation is so realistic that she often appeared as a hen in Disney cartoons. Unforgettable!”

For Grieve, the entire set is “absolutely stupendous,” with “many hours of watching, reading, and listening enjoyment.” And, she notes, “along with watching the movies, the programs can also simply be listened to. It’s a movie or a music jukebox, as one prefers!”

You’ll find the online version of Russ Tarby’s article here.

And Laura’s blog post here.