From the late 1920s through the end of World War II, studios like MGM, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO would dominate film production, not only in America but throughout the world. The reasons for Hollywood’s success during this period are...
From Bill Haley to the Beatles Rock music exploded on the big screen when Bill Haley & the Comets sang “Rock Around the Clock” at the opening of Blackboard Jungle in 1955. Frenzied teenagers danced in the aisles and there were reports of violence and vandalism at...
Fred Astaire was one of the twentieth century’s greatest magicians—his sorcery depended on making some of the most complex dancing ever seen on the screen seem as effortless as breathing. Whether it was partnering Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse or a hat...
Gene Kelly is one of the most engaging and influential dancers in motion picture history. He came at a time when movie dance was basically just a showcase for elegant partners in motion, but within a few years he had transformed not only the nature of male dancing but...
Next to Fred Astaire, Judy Garland may be the most talented person to work in Hollywood musicals. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t do, from breaking an audience’s heart with a song, to effortlessly dancing up a storm, to delivering comic and dramatic performances...
There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it—Frank Sinatra was the greatest singer to ever set foot in Hollywood. His voice—so mesmerizing in person and so evocative in recordings—was ideally suited for the big screen as well. And his 100 musical performances in motion...
From 1956 to 1969, Elvis Presley made 31 films, playing the above-the-title star in all but one. That’s an extraordinary achievement and it helped make him one of the wealthiest performers in Hollywood as a result. But unfortunately, Elvis’ dream of being taken...
Watching television used to be a fairly simple enterprise—you turned on the set, selected one of 500 channels, and enjoyed your program. Now, television is changing in front of our eyes. More and more viewers are cancelling cable television, preferring to watch new...
Over the last nine decades, the Walt Disney Company has transformed every facet of the entertainment business—from the creation of feature length cartoons like Snow White, Bambi, and Pinocchio, to television programming like The Wonderful World of Disney, from theme...
From its start as a DVD-by-mail rental service, Netflix has systematically changed the rules of the media business. Its introduction of streaming in 2007 led to the decline of the video rental store and dramatically increased the use of broadband internet. Starting in...
From its very beginnings in the 1890s, motion pictures have delighted the public—and upset civic and religious authorities who felt that movies needed to be regulated to protect “innocent” minds and discourage immorality. As more and more cities and states established...
The movies and dancing are a partnership born in heaven. From its very beginnings, the new medium of motion pictures turned toward dance as one of the best ways to showcase its unique ability to make movement come alive. And through the decades, it’s been dancing on...
From the moment movies learned to talk, they learned to sing. Audiences back in 1927 were electrified when they heard Al Jolson belting out the top tunes of the day in The Jazz Singer, and through movie history some of our greatest vocalists have been star attractions...
For more than a century, Hollywood has relied on star power as the most reliable way to draw an audience. From the early days of silent movies, when Mary Pickford was able to command $10,000 a week to modern times, when actors like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks are...
Hollywood is an industry that has always depended on blockbusters, beginning with The Birth of a Nation and continuing with epics like Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music. But beginning in 1974, two young filmmakers, Steven Spielberg and...
For more than 125 years, filmmakers have been drawn to the dynamic vitality of New York City. Its dramatic architecture, its diverse neighborhoods and populations, its universally recognized landmarks, its 24/7 lifestyle, and its 8 million stories have helped make the...
Voted the most inspirational movie ever made by the American Film Institute, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life has been a beloved Christmas classic for many generations. The snowbound streets of Bedford Falls, the desperate travails of George Bailey, and the...
Alfred Hitchcock is probably the most famous film director who ever lived. For five decades, first in England, then in Hollywood, he made fifty-four films, including classics such as The Thirty-Nine Steps, Rebecca, Notorious, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Vertigo,...
Ever since the movie industry was born in the 1890s, audiences have thrilled to watch stories come to life on the big screen. At first, this screen wasn’t very big—nor was attending the stuffy local nickelodeon all that pleasant. But by the 1920s, extravagant movie...
As soon as movies could talk, they began to sing and dance—and musicals quickly became among the most popular film genres in America. Over the next nine decades, the movie musical would evolve to embrace every type of performance, from operatta to rock and soul, from...
Since the beginning of motion pictures, making audiences laugh has been one of film industry’s chief box office attractions. Skilled acrobatic comedians like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin were enormously popular in the silent era, as were their more...
For nearly a century, Hollywood has been captivated by the allure of the Broadway musical. From the beginning of talkies up through today, most of the Great White Way’s biggest hits have made the transfer to the movie theater, though sometimes the journey has yielded...
The first decade of American TV comedy was a remarkable period of innovation and imagination. Pioneering talents like Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason and Steve Allen helped create a new type of visual comedy that would have a lasting influence on television...
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