Popular Entertainment - Overview
This Museum's popular entertainment collections hold some of the Smithsonian's most beloved artifacts. The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz reside here, along with the Muppet character Kermit the Frog, and props from popular television series such as M*A*S*H and All in the Family. But as in many of the Museum's collections, the best-known objects are a small part of the story.
The collection also encompasses many other artifacts of 19th- and 20th-century commercial theater, film, radio, and TV—some 50,000 sound recordings dating back to 1903; posters, publicity stills, and programs from films and performances; puppets; numerous items from World's Fairs from 1851 to 1992; and audiovisual materials on Groucho Marx, to name only a few.
"Popular Entertainment - Overview" showing 1943 items.
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The Great Historical Clock of America
- Description
- Briefly—but spectacularly—during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a peculiar set of clocks excited the interest of the American public. These were monumental clocks—towering agglomerations of clockwork, decorative flourishes, animated panels, and mechanical music. Between roughly 1875 and 1900, more than two dozen such giants appeared and toured throughout the United States and Europe.
- These huge clocks were built to compete with the cathedral clock of the French city of Strasbourg. Completed in 1352, it had long been Europe's most famous clock. As the United States became a leading industrial power in the nineteenth century, American clockmakers strove to build monumental clocks greater than Strasbourg's.
- Although the American clocks differed in details, they shared several features—elaborate ornaments, astronomical indicators, and celebrated scenes and figures from the American past. With one exception, each was a labor of many years by a lone craftsman, usually a jeweler by profession and a recent immigrant. Each clock was covered with a riot of colorful folk decorations combining Christian and patriotic items, some mechanically animated. Almost every clock had a professional manager, distinct from the maker, who promoted the clock as the mechanical wonder of the age. The Great Historical Clock of America epitomizes these clocks.
- Regrettably, little is known of its history or its maker. Since Benjamin Harrison is the last president to march by in the procession of figures we assume it was completed about 1893. Handbills found in the clock's packing crates indicate that it toured with Bent and Bachelder's Anglo American Christy's Minstrels as far as Australia and New Zealand. The clock spent most of the twentieth century in a New Hampshire barn, where the owners charged twenty-five cents for a peek at it.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1890
- ID Number
- 1981.0001.01
- accession number
- 1981.0001
- catalog number
- 1981.0001.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sound Recording
- Description
- Over the course of her 60–year career, Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) became known to fans and colleagues as "The First Lady of Song." Her rise to international fame as a jazz and popular singer coincided with the rise of an American entertainment industry that brought music to millions through concerts, sound recordings, film, radio, and television. In 1938, Fitzgerald came up with the idea for song called "A–Tisket, A–Tasket," basing her lyric on a 19th–century nursery rhyme. Her 1938 Decca recording of the song in time became a million–seller.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- recording artist
- Fitzgerald, Ella
- Chick Webb and his Orchestra
- performer
- Fitzgerald, Ella
- maker
- Decca
- performer
- Webb, Chick
- composer
- Feldman, Al
- Fitzgerald, Ella
- Gershwin, George
- Cahn
- ID Number
- 1993.0102.041
- catalog number
- 1993.0102.041
- accession number
- 1993.0102
- maker number
- 1840
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Microphone
- Description
- WANN represents a significant moment in American cultural history—the rise of black-oriented broadcasting. Although blacks constituted 10 percent of the population, black interest in broadcasting on any scale, didn't begin until 1948. That year WDIA in Memphis became the first station to go to a format with exclusively black on-air personnel. Shortly after, a handful of stations committed to black interests. WANN was one of the first half-dozen. The station went on the air in 1948, and by 1950 owner and manager Morris Blum had directed his station to the black community in Annapolis and the surrounding area.
- A 1000-watt daytime station, WANN was among the pioneering stations that were central to black life in the pre-Civil Rights era. Morris Blum, a Jew who came of age in the New Deal, conceived of the station while in the service during WWII. He explicitly rejected the segregation he saw in the armed forces, especially after he saw that death did not discriminate. While he initially tried a conventional format for his station, he quickly refocused it to serve the black community. Blum's programming mixture of community service, black interest news, music, and religion developed through his dealings with African American public figures—preachers, businessmen and his own staff. Hoppy Adams, WANN's star personality, and Blum enjoyed a 30-year collaboration that reflected the interracial collaboration that was the heart of black radio in its formative years.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- late 1940s
- related person
- Blum, Morris H.
- Adams, Hoppy
- ID Number
- 2000.0165.7776
- catalog number
- 2000.0165.7776
- accession number
- 2000.0165
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Alien Egg Prop
- Description
- The mysterious world of science fiction is a major influence in American popular culture, from Superman comics to the various Star Trek TV series. The 1979 movie Alien is a landmark in the tradition of science fiction motion pictures. Telling a nightmarish tale about a demon beast that terrorizes the crew of a space cargo ship, the original has spawned a number of film sequels. This plaster of Paris egg, created by designers H. R. Giger and Michael Seymour, is a central prop in the Alien narrative and functions as the iconic image in the poster art for various editions of the film.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1985
- ID Number
- 2003.0347.01
- catalog number
- 2003.0347.01
- accession number
- 2003.0347
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
sound recording: The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert
- Description (Brief)
- Benny Goodman. THE FAMOUS 1938 CARNEGIE HALL JAZZ CONCERT (disc 2) (Columbia ML 4342), from the album THE FAMOUS 1938 CARNEGIE JAZZ CONCERT (Columbia SL-160)
- 33-1/3 rpm
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1938
- 1950
- recording artist
- Goodman, Benny
- maker
- Columbia
- ID Number
- 1978.0670.737
- accession number
- 1978.0670
- catalog number
- 1978.0670.737
- maker number
- SL-160
- ML 4342
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sheet Music, "A-Tisket A-Tasket"
- Description
- Over the course of her sixty-year career, Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) became known to fans and colleagues as "The First Lady of Song." Her rise to international fame as a jazz and popular singer coincided with the rise of an American entertainment industry that brought music to millions through concerts, sound recordings, film, radio, and television. In 1938, Fitzgerald came up with the idea for a song called "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," basing her lyric on a 19th–century nursery rhyme. Her 1938 Decca recording of the song over time became a million–seller.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1938
- lyricist
- Fitzgerald, Ella
- maker
- Robbins Music Corporation
- ID Number
- 1984.1117.04
- accession number
- 1984.1117
- catalog number
- 1984.1117.04
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Koschei Puppet
- Description (Brief)
- Basil Milovsoroff (1906–1992) made whimsical puppets as part of a WPA program. Milovsoroff emigrated from Siberia as a child. He created fanciful puppets based on characters from Russian folklore, such as the magical villain Koschei.
- date made
- ca 1939
- maker
- Milovsoroff, Basil
- ID Number
- 1985.0398.02
- accession number
- 1985.0398
- catalog number
- 1985.0398.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Dizzy Gillespie's B–flat Trumpet
- Description
- This custom–made "Silver Flair" trumpet belonged to renowned trumpeter, bandleader, and composer John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, a founder of the modern jazz style known as bebop. Renowned for his musical virtuosity and for his impish good humor and wit, Gillespie played this trumpet in the early 1980s. Its uniquely shaped upturned bell was Gillespie's internationally known trademark.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1981
- owner
- Gillespie, Dizzy
- user
- Gillespie, Dizzy
- maker
- King Musical Instruments
- ID Number
- 1986.0003.01
- catalog number
- 1986.0003.01
- accession number
- 1986.0003
- serial number
- 673792
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sheet Music, "Over the Rainbow"
- Description (Brief)
- “Someday I’ll wish upon a star/And wake up where the clouds are far/Behind me./Where troubles melt like lemon drops/Away above the chimney tops/That’s where you’ll find me.” E.Y.”Yip”Harbug’s hopeful lyrics made “Over the Rainbow” from the film The Wizard of Oz an instant favorite with 1939 audiences. The song, composed by Harold Arlen, quickly became a national standard and the signature ballad of the film’s star, Judy Garland (1922–1969).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1986.0021.28
- catalog number
- 1986.0021.28
- accession number
- 1986.0021
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Kunta Kinte's Manacles
- Description
- Actor LeVar Burton wore these prop manacles in the miniseries Roots (ABC, 1977), a dramatic portrayal of slavery as experienced by several generations of one family. Based on Alex Haley's autobiographical novel, Roots began with Kunta Kinte, an African youth brought to America as a slave in the 1700s, and ended with the emancipation of his descendants during the Civil War. Watched by more than 100 million people, it was a significant departure from programs that had traditionally relegated blacks to minor, stereotyped roles.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- user
- Roots
- ID Number
- 1993.0170.02
- catalog number
- 1993.0170.02
- accession number
- 1993.0170
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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