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Archive: May 2014 (12 Posts)

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

Awopbopaloomop Alopbamboom!

Posted by: Karen Fishman

  Fans may have difficulty imagining Little Richard, the self-professed “King of Rock and Roll” as a struggling newcomer, but in a recording acquired last year Richard registers his surprise at first hearing his hit “Tutti Frutti” on the radio while lying in bed one night, (at about 8 minutes 50 seconds into the interview). …

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Where It All Began: The Paper Print Collection

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The Library’s moving image collections began with a bureaucratic decision. In August 1893, an unnamed employee (but most likely W.K.L. Dickson) of the Thomas Edison Laboratories in West Orange, NJ, where work had been going on for several years to develop motion picture photography, sent sequential frames from various camera tests to the Copyright Office. …

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Play Ball!

Posted by: Karen Fishman

Even during the coldest and darkest days of winter, baseball fans look forward to February, when a glimmer of hope appears as pitchers and catchers report to Spring training.  Baseball fans throughout the world start dreaming of a World Series championship and everyone knows The Void will soon be over. The Recorded Sound Section’s collection …

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The First Television Show Ever Copyrighted…Maybe

Posted by: Mike Mashon

While it’s very easy to identify the oldest surviving motion picture registered for copyright—Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, which I talked about in this post—it’s much trickier pinpointing the oldest copyrighted television program. [I’ll wait here while you do an internet search on “first copyrighted film” and then “first copyrighted tv show.” See what …

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Singing Circuits

Posted by: Bryan Cornell

    In 1915 when Victor records included Henry Dacre’s  “Daisy Bell (A Bicycle Built for Two)” in the above “Songs of the Past” medley (starting at 2:44), the song was likely viewed as something of a sentimental oldie. Two decades earlier, however, the bicycle craze was in full swing and the song was a …

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Copyright Descriptive Records (London After Midnight Edition)

Posted by: Mike Mashon

Although the collections of the NAVCC are rightfully associated with audiovisual content (after all, it’s in our name), we have a tremendous amount of paper records—well in excess of two million items. And for moving images, this documentation really runs the gamut: posters, lobby cards, photographs, festival catalogs, scripts, trade periodicals, press kits, and on …

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Now Playing at the Packard Campus Theater (May 15-17, 2014)

Posted by: Mike Mashon

It’s spring in Culpeper, and our fancy lightly turns to thoughts of monsters. Thursday, May 15 (7:30 p.m.) King Kong (RKO, 1933) Filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), recent discovery Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and his team discover a giant prehistoric ape, dubbed Kong, while searching for locations on an uncharted jungle island. The crew manages …