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Posted by: Mike Mashon
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall that the most famous reindeer of all was the creation of a Montgomery Ward copywriter? And did you know we have that celebrity reindeer’s first appearance on film, in a version rarely seen before? In …
Posted in: Christmas, Film/Video, Motion Pictures, National Film Registry
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is guest post by Jenny Paxson, Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus and the Packard Campus Theater programmer for December. We finish 2014 with a quartet of wonderful holiday films, and as a special added attraction, here’s the trailer for Remember the Night, which will close out the calendar Saturday at 7:30 pm. …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Kelly Chisholm, a Processing Technician in the Moving Image Section. Yesterday I mentioned the J. Fred MacDonald Collection; it is a collection of 40,000+ reels that many of my colleagues in the Moving Image Section have spent a good percentage of our time working on over the last …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures
Posted by: Mike Mashon
In the varied universe of educational films–titles like Facts on Film, which we’ve featured on “Now See Hear!”–few have achieved a wider cultural resonance than the 1947 Coronet Films classic Are You Popular? It’s pretty much the epitome of the type of “social guidance” film that to modern audiences can seem unintentionally hilarious in their …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures
Posted by: Mike Mashon
She remembers the “hot packs”–towels soaked in boiling water, wrung out, then wrapped around her legs. She remembers the blisters. She remembers the endless hours of physical therapy, the manipulation of her limbs, especially her right leg, the one affected by polio. She also remembers the kindness of her doctors and nurses, the friendships she …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Like any right-minded individual, I rejoiced in the return of baseball to the Nation’s Capital in 2005 and have certainly reveled in the Washington Nationals’ fabulous 2014 season. Exciting as it has been (the post All-Star Game surge, Jordan Zimmermann’s no-hitter on the last day of the season, the eager anticipation of post-season glory), I …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures
Posted by: Mike Mashon
This is the story of a film about a radio show, produced by a sponsor hoping that people who saw the film would be encouraged to listen to the radio show, and then after hearing the commercials on the radio show be encouraged to patronize the gas stations owned by the sponsor. One only has …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, Radio
Posted by: Mike Mashon
This guest post was written by Dan Streible, Director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University, and James Irsay, host of “Morning Irsay” on WBAI-FM in New York City. Dan Streible: While chopping down trees in Kentucky recently, I was enjoying the benefits of twenty-first century living, listening to music …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Film/Video, Jukebox, Motion Pictures, Radio, Recorded Sound
Posted by: Mike Mashon
This week we’re celebrating the bicentennial of The Star Spangled Banner, which originated as a poem written by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the unsuccessful bombardment of Ft. McHenry by the British Navy on 14 September 1814. Although The Star Spangled Banner wasn’t adopted officially as our National Anthem until 1931, its repeated use …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures