Articles and Essays

  • About Variety Stage Motion Pictures The 61 motion pictures in the American Variety Stage collection include animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture, and tableaus. The films represented were copyrighted between 1897 and 1920; the majority have been drawn from the Library's extensive Paper Print Collection. The practice of submitting paper print copies of nitrate film as copyright deposits dates from 1894 through at…
  • The Actuality Film The earliest popular venues for motion pictures were peep show parlors where machines played short film loops, or films on flip cards called Mutoscopes, for individual viewers on demand. By the turn of the century, films were being shown in store-front nickelodeons and traveling carnivals. Significantly, movies also began to be projected in vaudeville and burlesque theaters, sharing the bill with a variety of…
  • The Paper Print Film Collection at the Library of Congress Most of the films featured in the American Memory presentations are from the Paper Print Collection of the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Because the copyright law did not cover motion pictures until 1912, early film producers who desired protection for their work sent paper contact prints of their motion pictures to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library…
  • Content and Historical Context The Typical Vaudeville Show Line-up Motion Pictures as Vaudeville Acts Stereotypes in Variety Stage Films The Typical Vaudeville Show Line-up Advertisement for a vaudeville show listing the various acts, including the Kinetograph projecting motion pictures. The New York Clipper, April 23, 1904, p.203. By the turn of the century, there was a standardized line-up of acts on the vaudeville stage. The bill was divided…
  • American Variety Stage Audio Sampler American Variety Stage Audio Sampler Variety entertainment dominated the popular recording industry's acoustic era (pre -1925), from its beginnings in the 1890s, when records were made on wax cylinders, right up to the beginning of the jazz age in the mid-1920s. From slapstick vaudeville routines and ethnic dialect skits to romantic ballads and dramatic recitations, sound recordings brought variety entertainment into the homes of…