American television was all set to launch in the late 1930s, but its progress was interrupted by the start of World War II. Finally, by the end of the 1940s, NBC and CBS began broadcasting to their east coast affiliates. They offered viewers a wide variety of programs: situation comedies, vaudeville-style revues, and most impressively, live original dramas. Within a few years, these anthology programs, like Kraft Television Theatre and Ford Television Theatre launched the careers of soon-to-be famous directors like Arthur Penn and John Frankenheimer, actors like Paul Newman and James Dean, and playwrights like Paddy Chayevsky and Rod Serling. But by the end of the 1950s, the era of live TV “theater” was over. So too was New York City as a center of TV production. This presentation will look at the forces that made this “golden age” such an intriguing chapter in TV history and why it was so short-lived (including brief examinations of blacklisting and the TV quiz show scandals).

For more than seven decades, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks made America laugh—either through their remarkable solo careers or their legendary partnership. Whether together or apart, they were giants of American comedy, who basically conquered every field they entered, whether television, movies, Broadway, or records. This presentation will examine their extraordinary achievements, beginning with their work together on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and their creation of the 2000 Year Old Man, to their individual accomplishments as writers, directors, and performers.

When television began in the late 1940s, advertising was already a vital part of the picture. TV’s first big hit, Milton Berle, appeared on The Texaco Star Theater; Frank Sinatra hosted Bulova Watch Time. Throughout the 1950s, advertisers were fully in charge, controlling the content of a large part of prime time, and selling their products through live demonstrations, celebrity testimonials, inventive animation, and ads that integrated directly into the program. With the shift away from full sponsorship to 30-second “participating” spots in the 1960s, a new era of creativity emerged, as advertisers embraced new techniques and approaches in order to reach new generations of consumers. This talk will look at how advertising changed during television’s first two decades and the important role it played in convincing viewers that the key to happiness lay in quite literally buying their way into the American dream.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, rock music found a surprising home on mainstream television. Programs hosted by Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and especially Ed Sullivan featured a wide variety of musicians including Bill Haley & the Comets, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and especially Elvis Presley, who appeared on all three shows to galvanic response. Afternoon dance programs like American Bandstand played a role as well in bringing rock to large and eager teenage audiences. Then, in 1964, the appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show would change the face of pop culture, leading to an explosion of televised rock, from the Supremes to the Rolling Stones, for the rest of the decade. This program will present a lively survey of the fascinating history of how rock and television grew up together.

From the earliest days of television, making people laugh was one the central goals of TV programmers. Successful radio formats like the sitcom and the comedy/variety show moved to television in the late 1940s, joined a few years later by the medium’s own innovation, the late night comedy talk show. For the next seven decades, these three formats dominated the airwaves, led by brilliant comedians such as Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, and Jerry Seinfeld. This presentation will survey the extraordinary landscape of American TV comedy, examining how comedy changed from the vaudeville shtick of Milton Berle and the slapstick artistry of Lucille Ball to the social satire of Saturday Night Live and the self-reflexive absurdities of David Letterman and The Simpsons.

From its start in the early 1950s, the talk show has been one of television’s most versatile and durable formats. Pioneering programs like Today, Person-to-Person, and Tonight established the basic features that have guided the format ever since, particularly the importance of the host as the chief focus of the proceedings. Whether it was the sophisticated wit of Dick Cavett, the magnetic empathy of Oprah Winfrey, the innovative comedy of David Letterman, or the sharp political satire of Jon Stewart, the talk show has continued to provide viewers with a lively mix of entertainment, information, and compelling conversation. This presentation will look at the fascinating history of the television talk show, and examine its changing appeal from decade to decade.

Television news has undergone remarkable transformations in the last seven decades. Beginning with the Camel News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze in 1948, evening newscasts drew tens of millions of viewers nightly, and expanded from 15-minutes to 30-minutes when Walter Cronkite became the anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1963. With the launch of CNN in 1980, TV news expanded to 24 hours a day, seven days a week–and a new era in television journalism was born. Americans no longer had to wait until 6:30 p.m. to get their news but could tune in any time to find out what was happening, all over the world. In 1996, TV news would change once again with the launch of two new 24/7 cable channels: MSNBC and six months later the Fox News Channel, which introduced a more partisan approach to news coverage that would have enormous implications on American political life. This presentation will look at these sweeping changes and examine the impact–both good and bad–of television journalism over the last six decades.

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 online-only channels like Netflix or Disney +. An entire generation of younger viewers has given up on the TV set altogether, and instead watch programs on their laptop or their phones. And tens of thousands of kids and teenagers have started their own TV networks on YouTube, bypassing NBC, ABC, and CBS altogether. This presentation will look at these startling developments and explain why the old days of simply “watching TV” are fast disappearing.

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 2013, its introduction of its own programming, from House of Cards to The Crown to Stranger Things challenged the traditional ways viewers watched TV. Now its original movies, like The Irishman and the three-time Academy Award-winner Roma, are upending the operations of the Hollywood studios. With an ever increasing budget of over $15 billion per year, service to 190 countries, and 150 million subscribers, this presentation will examine how Netflix is primed to become the dominant source of leisure time entertainment throughout the world.

This illustrated lecture will examine the many ways the internet has radically transformed the “old” media of newspapers, magazines, the recording industry, film, radio, and television. It will trace how this digital revolution took place in such a short period of time, and what lies ahead in the continually changing era of “new” media. Among the topics to be explored: will there be a printed newspaper in any city ten years from now? Will newsstands and bookstores disappear as fast as record stores? Will movie theaters exist in their present form? Will prime-time television vanish?

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 intriguing. Despite the economic problems posed by the Depression, the studios became virtual entertainment factories, with each studio producing more than 50 movies a year. The legacy of these years of frenzied activity are among the best-loved, and most significant films, ever made. This presentation will examine the forces that made Hollywood the giant of global film-making and the special nature of its achievements during its Golden Age, including discussions of studio politics and economics, the star system, and the nature of the movie-going experience. There will also be an analysis of why this period was so short-lived and of Hollywood’s desperate attempts, beginning in the 1950s, to recapture its faded glory.

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 theaters around the world. Rock’s notoriety would end up contributing to its appeal and Hollywood, recognizing the power of the teen audience, would begin to unleash a series of films featuring rock and R&B musicians performing their hits in the midst of plots ranging from rebellious high schoolers, out-of-control hot rodders, or the romantic antics of spring break college students. Movies and rock formed a valuable commercial partnership, whether it was Elvis Presley’s 31 mostly forgettable films or the Beatles’ groundbreaking A Hard Day’s Night from 1964. This presentation will look at the first decade of rock movies and how Hollywood helped reflect the power of this music around the world.

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 rack—or dancing on the ceiling or on roller skates, he made everything appear easy and elegant. Revered as a genius by everyone from Balanchine to Baryshnikov, Astaire appeared in a total of 133 dance numbers in 31 films, a significant portion of which are considered timeless classics of movie choreography. This talk will survey the sweep of Astaire’s remarkable career, looking at his work both as a soloist and as the most romantic dance partner in Hollywood history.

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 also the crucial role of the camera in making dance come alive on the big screen. Starting in the 1940s, Gene Kelly created dozens of classic numbers which helped to define the American movie musical and which continue to delight audiences of all ages around the world. This presentation will survey Kelly’s extraordinary achievements, and examine his enduring impact on Hollywood dancing.

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 that still enthrall today. While she was among the greatest live entertainers in show biz history, and one of the top recording artists of her time, it’s her appearances in front of the camera that remain her lasting legacy. This talk will examine her remarkable Hollywood career, which began in her young teens at MGM and continued with such timeless classics as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, and her stirring comeback in 1954’s A Star is Born.

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 pictures reveal a vocalist who almost from the start recognized how the camera could enhance his artistry as much as the microphone. Sinatra came to Hollywood right before he began his solo career and within a few years would be just as big at the box office as he was on stage and record. Though he would have his ups and downs, both professionally and personally, his ability to magically convey the inner heart of whatever he sang remained undiminished on film. This talk will survey Sinatra’s extraordinary Hollywood musical career, which began with uncredited appearances with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and continued through his celebrated days with the Rat Pack.

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 seriously as an actor and becoming a true movie star was never fulfilled, thanks to the almost insatiable greed and crass commercial instincts of his manager, Col. Tom Parker. This talk will examine the ups and downs of Presley’s Hollywood career, which started off with such promise in films like King Creole and Jailhouse Rock but would ultimately conclude with dozens of cheap, mediocre movies like Harum Scarum and Paradise, Hawaiian Style that dimmed his creativity and his reputation during the 1960s. We’ll also look at some of his movie musical highlights, including “Love Me Tender,” “Return to Sender,” and “Viva Las Vegas.”

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 online-only channels like Netflix or Disney +. An entire generation of younger viewers has given up on the TV set altogether, and instead watch programs on their laptop or their phones. And tens of thousands of kids and teenagers have started their own TV networks on YouTube, bypassing NBC, ABC, and CBS altogether. This presentation will look at these startling developments and explain why the old days of simply “watching TV” are fast disappearing.

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 parks that span the globe to Broadway musicals like The Lion King, from challenging Netflix with their new streaming service Disney+, to ownership of the greatest collection of franchise movies (from Stars Wars to Toy Story to The Avengers) under the control of a single studio in Hollywood history. This presentation examines this remarkable story of creativity and media growth, and looks at how the Walt Disney Company grew from a small cartoon studio in 1923 to become the most powerful force in worldwide entertainment.

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 2013, its introduction of its own programming, from House of Cards to The Crown to Stranger Things challenged the traditional ways viewers watched TV. Now its original movies, like The Irishman and the three-time Academy Award-winner Roma, are upending the operations of the Hollywood studios. With an ever increasing budget of over $15 billion per year, service to 190 countries, and 150 million subscribers, this presentation will examine how Netflix is primed to become the dominant source of leisure time entertainment throughout the world.

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 film censorship boards during the early 1900s, Hollywood recognized they needed to take some kind of action. The result was the 1934 Hays Code, which set up strict rules of language and conduct for studio films that lasted more than three decades. As the times changed, the Code was replaced by the voluntary MPAA film ratings system in 1968. And yet, fifty years later, the ratings system of G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 films still continues to have its own set of problems. This presentation will look at 125 years of movie censorship and the many ways Hollywood has tried to deal with this continuing issue.

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 the big screen that has provided some of the most ecstatic moments in film history—whether it’s Fred Astaire gliding on the ceiling in Royal Wedding, the Nicholas Brothers leaping down a staircase in Stormy Weather, Moira Shearer pirouetting through the dreamscape of The Red Shoes, or John Travolta burning up the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever. Illustrated with more than 75 video clips, this talk will survey 130 years of thrilling movie dance performances and demonstrate the extraordinary ways cinema brought dance to life.

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 in Hollywood musicals. The film industry did its best to showcase these performers with a variety of creative techniques, from elaborate production numbers to imaginative camerawork, all designed to enhance the emotional power of seeing and hearing singers like Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra come alive on the big screen. This talk will look at the varying ways Holllywood captured its star vocalists through the decades, and provided audiences then and now with an invaluable record of indelible performances.

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 guaranteed $20 million (or more) a picture, the film studios have recognized the crucial role stars played at the box office. This presentation will look at the history of movie stardom—how originally film actors weren’t even identified by name, how Mary Pickford became “America’s Sweetheart” and the first real film star, how the Hollywood studios manufactured stars like Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Lana Turner during its Golden Age, how the star system changed once television came on the scene, and how actors like Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Denzel Washington ushered in a new definition of stardom during the last few decades.

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 George Lucas, would together change the way the movie industry made movies. Spielberg’s Jaws and Lucas’ Star Wars (neither of which was predicted to be a hit) helped launch the careers of the most influential directors of our time. Whether they were making films together (like Indiana Jones) or separately (E.T., Jurassic Park, The Empire Strikes Back), they introduced the age of the “modern blockbuster,” which featured elaborate special effects and thrilling spectacle. This presentation will look at their four decades of filmmaking and discuss how they changed the movies.

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 city a featured player in more than 17,000 movies—including such memorable films as King Kong, Naked City, On the Town, West Side Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Taxi Driver, Wall Street, and Do the Right Thing. Illustrated with more than 50 clips, this presentation demonstrates the changing ways New York has been captured on film, and why it still remains a star attraction today.

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 discovery of Zuzu’s petals have become traditional signatures of the holiday season. Yet when the film was released in 1946, it was a box-office flop, won no Academy Awards, and was largely forgotten—until it was rediscovered through endless airings on local TV stations beginning in the 1970s and on annual Christmas eve broadcasts on NBC starting in 1992. This talk will examine the fascinating story of It’s a Wonderful Life, looking at the challenges of how it was made, its surprisingly dark portrait of small-town life, and how it became the ultimate portrayal of holiday goodwill and cheer.

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, and Psycho. Few filmmakers have been as popular, critically celebrated, and as influential, not only as a director but also as a multi-media showman through his tv series, magazines, book anthologies, even extending to board games and record albums. This presentation looks at his achievements as “the master of suspense,” and through dozens of film clips, examines his extraordinary creativity as one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers.

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 palaces were constructed in downtowns all over the country and moviegoing was transformed into a luxury experience. Sadly, this would end in the 1950s with the rise of the suburbs and the explosion of drive-in theaters, followed by shopping mall multiplexes. Today, going to the movies can be either overwhelming—at seven-story IMAX theaters—or thoroughly unpleasant, as your neighbor gobbles nachos and beer and teenagers talk and text throughout the film. And with the advent of the pandemic, for most of us, moviegoing is now just a memory. This presentation will look at the fascinating history of movie theaters and examine how the experience of moviegoing has changed over the decades. And whether movie theaters will survive in the age of Netflix.

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 tap to ballet, and every type of format, from Broadway hits to original creations from composers like Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin. This presentation will look at the fascinating history of this unique format, and include more than thirty excerpts, featuring artists like Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, the Nicholas Brothers, Busby Berkeley, Gene Kelly, and the Beatles.

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 verbally dexterous talking picture successors the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields. Comedy exploded once movies could talk, from screwball to romance to social satire to musicals, and in recent decades dozens of new variations have appeared from over-the-top dark comedy to gross-out teen comedy. This survey will look at the major highlights of screen comedy over the last 125 years, illustrated with more than 40 examples from Hollywood’s funniest films.

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 damaged goods. For every triumph like My Fair Lady or Cabaret there have been misbegotten flops like Camelot or A Chorus Line. This talk will look at the colorful history of the Broadway-to-movie musical, and trace its development from truncated adaptations, in which most of the songs were abandoned, to glorious reinterpretations like Milos Forman’s Hair or Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story from 2021.