Museum Treasures

Popeye Makes a Movie
(Seymour Kneitel, US 1950, 9 min., 35mm)

Paramount News Review 1938: A Year of Contrast
(director unknown, US 1938, 11 min., 35mm)

This Theatre and You
(Felix Jacoves, US 1949, 8 min., 35mm)

The History and Development of the 35mm Projector
(Don Malkames, US 1956, 23 min., 35mm)

Let’s Go to the Movies
(Tholen Gladden, US 1949, 9 min., 35mm)

History Brought to Life
(Jerry Hopper, US 1950, 10 min., 35mm)

The Film That Was Lost
(Sammy Lee, US 1942, 10 min., 35mm)

Dancing in the Street
(David Mallet, UK 1985, 3 min., 35mm)

How the Movies Began
(director unknown, US 1954, 6 min., 35mm)

Mentored by the museum’s first film curator James Card, Ed Stratmann knew that he needed to get preserved and restored films in front of an audience for the process of preservation and restoration to truly be complete. So, when asked to curate programs, he did so with enthusiasm. Stratmann created this program as a look into the moving image treasures that exist within the museum’s vaults. His original text follows: 

The way we watch movies has changed greatly over the years—from the films we watch and how we watch them, to the spaces where we watch them and even the reason we watch them. Once a staple of the moviegoing experience, short films like those in this program—meant to be shown in a theater to a large audience—are relatively unknown to younger audiences today.

Many people have likely never seen newsreels, cartoons, serials, or educational short films in a theater. Many may not realize that cartoons were originally made for adults, and that most were series following familiar characters who could do things that would not have been allowed on the screen if done by live people. This program includes a cartoon from a very popular character that continued to be featured in his own series of adventures in theaters for many years.

The newsreel was used for decades as a method of informing the public of interesting and entertaining stories. We will show a Paramount News Review of 1938, part of the Paramount series that would travel with films at the beginning of each year and review major stories from the previous year, rather than being based on a weekly series like many newsreels. The program also contains several educational shorts on history and motion pictures, and it ends with a theatrical music video distributed to commercial theaters by Eastman Kodak Company for use as a promotion for the Live Aid benefit concert.