O Say Can You See?

America’s Funniest…cocktail party

Los Angeles. The Entertainment Capital of the World. What better place could there be for a presentation on the Smithsonian’s comedy collection?

On May 25, Vin and Erica Di Bona hosted a cocktail party at their Los Angeles home to showcase the comedy collection to an audience of their friends, local Smithsonian supporters, and even a few Hollywood actors. As Executive Producer and Creator of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Vin knows a thing or two about comedy. Several objects from his long-running show were donated to the museum last year, and this event gave National Museum of American History Director Brent Glass an opportunity to thank Vin for that gift as well as for his support of the Smithsonian Council for American History.

 

 Erica and Vin Di Bona (left) with Cathryn Keller and National Museum of American History Director, Brent Glass.

After cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, curator Dwight Bowers spoke on the topic of “Making America Laugh: Comedy at the Smithsonian,” and introduced our 50 special guests to the treasures of the collection. Some of these objects make me laugh just thinking about them: Phyllis Diller’s joke file and wig, Archie Bunker’s chair from All in the Family, and the puffy shirt from Seinfeld. These iconic artifacts remind all of us that American history is also about the stuff of everyday life, including the comedians, performers, and television shows that bring us together as Americans sharing one big laugh.

Learn more about the Council and how you can be a part of future special events that highlight our extraordinary and sometimes hilarious collections.

Amy Karazsia is the Director of Individual Giving at the National Museum of American History.

The Technicolor world of Oz

Every day can be an adventure for the curators, specialists, interns, and volunteers who spend their days digging and researching in the museum’s vaults. Sometimes you’ll be looking for a certain photograph and find something totally unexpected. Other times, you know what you’re looking for, but once you find it, you discover a much deeper and richer story than you thought you knew!

I recently had the opportunity to talk about one of the objects in the Photographic History collection for a documentary film crew, and thought I’d share some of the research I did for the shoot. The object of interest was the Technicolor DF-24 Beam Splitter Motion Picture Camera: in layman’s terms, the camera that filmed The Wizard of Oz. While Curator Dwight Blocker Bowers has the enviable job of researching and writing about the actors, designers, and moviemakers who helped create the film, our primary interest in terms of Photographic History for this milestone of American cinema is the technology that brought it to life.

 

Technicolor Camera, around 1938.

People often say that the thing they remember most about The Wizard of Oz is its bright, vibrant color. The yellow brick road, the ruby slippers, and Emerald City are so richly saturated with color on screen that it’s hard to imagine the film without it! Contrary to a common misconception, Oz was not the first film made in color, but it was one of the first to prove that color could add fantasy and draw audiences to theaters, despite its release during the Great Depression. The Technicolor Corporation had been in the business of making color movies since 1917, but the high cost and complexity of the method as well as the poor state of the American economy, kept color movies from becoming the standard for decades.

Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, 1938.

Technicolor wasn’t a type of color film; instead, it was a process in which a specially modified motion picture camera recorded the same scene through colored filters on three different strips of film. These strips were then processed separately and used to “print” colors onto each finished print of the film sent to theaters. If a movie studio wanted to make a film in Technicolor, it had to lease the company’s unique movie cameras as well as a team of two experts to help operate the complicated machine.

L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was so popular that it spawned thirteen sequels, several stage versions, and five films before MGM made the familiar The Wizard of Oz in 1939. In the late 1930s, the height of the Hollywood studio system, MGM had a reputation for quality movie musicals, and the film’s producers decided to spare no expense to make Oz an unforgettable film. The museum’s Technicolor camera is one of as many as eight that were used in the filming by MGM cinematographer Hal Rosson and his staff, including three Technicolor consultants. Technicolor filming required very bright light on the studio sets, and MGM spent over a quarter of a million dollars on electricity alone (for years after, the actors involved in the production complained of permanent vision damage from the intense Klieg lights). Scenery and costume designers were encouraged to use as much color as possible to take full advantage of the expensive format and to emphasize the difference between sepia-toned Kansas and the fantasy world of Oz, one of the reasons that Baum’s silver shoes became bright ruby slippers in the film version.

The Wizard of Oz poster (reprint of 1939 original).

The Technicolor camera in the museum’s collection is a big, heavy piece of machinery, and a very different kind of object to work with for someone used to handling photographs. Nonetheless, it’s evident under examination that this camera put its stamp on a national movie treasure. The camera’s mechanical carriage gives it the ability to fully articulate and move smoothly, allowing the movie’s cinematographers to create sweeping shots and follow the action as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Toto journeyed down the yellow brick road. The large “blimp” casing over the camera’s machinery contained the noise of three strips of film running within to permit audio engineers to record Judy Garland and the other performers on set with true fidelity. For all the added cost, time, and effort, however, the Technicolor hues of The Wizard of Oz helped to make the movie what it is today, an American film classic. It’s just one of the many stories that we’re privileged to tell here at the National Museum of American History.

Ryan Lintelman is the Project Assistant in the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History.

Putting a face to the invention

One of the best ironic gifts I ever received is a paper bag vase. It’s a ceramic vase in the classic, flat-bottomed shape and classic brown of an everyday paper bag. Even the wrinkles look realistic.

Until the late 19th century, there was nothing classic or everyday about the flat-bottomed paper bag. For a long time, paper bags were more like envelopes. Margaret Knight, a factory worker from Massachusetts, identified a need and designed a machine for making square paper bags at a time when it was very difficult for women to obtain patents in their own names. After a hard-won legal battle against Charles Annan, who copied Knight’s idea and tried to patent his own, strikingly-similar machine, Knight earned a patent for her Paper Bag Machine in 1871.

 

1879 Patent Model for Margaret Knight’s Paper Bag Machine.

But this is not a post about paper bags. It’s about what we can learn when we humanize invention stories—when we put people first.

This was one goal of the Lemelson Center’s Spring 2010 collaboration with three departments at American University—History, Performing Arts, and Film and Media Arts—to enliven stories of women inventors through first-person interpretation. This work was truly interdisciplinary.

If you’ve seen programs like Join the Student Sit Ins at the Greensboro Lunch Counter, or Letters Home, then you’ve seen the museum’s historic theater program in action. Yet for the Lemelson Center, the process of translating inventor biographies into public performances was largely uncharted. The Center hoped to learn about this process from other Programs staff, highlight the often-underestimated contributions of women inventors, and provide a meaningful learning experience for collaborators beyond the museum.

With these goals in mind, the Center hosted a hands-on, collaborative project for graduate students in the practicum course led by Kathy Franz, Associate Professor and Director of Public History at American University. Practicum projects, hosted by cultural institutions around the city, enable students to learn public history by doing it. Franz said, “Working with the Lemelson Center gave students the perfect opportunity to grapple with how to create meaningful public history that builds on the stories of women inventors, makes the past accessible, and serves the mission and educational goals of an institution.”

Marion Donovan displays a package of Boaters in 1951, on the day she sold the rights to her diaper cover invention to Keko Corporation for $1 million. Source: Marion O’Brien Donovan Papers, Archives Center.

With input from Lemelson and Archives Center staff, four of Kathy’s students chose to research and interpret the personal stories behind two “everyday” inventions represented in the museum’s collections: the flat-bottomed paper bag (specifically, the machine to produce such bags) and the waterproof diaper.

Jordan Grant and Kelly Gannon developed a play highlighting Margaret Knight’s invention process and patent infringement case, a landmark lawsuit for women inventors. James Nelson and Erin Molloy dug into the Marion O’Brien Donovan Papers, 1949-1996, to explore her solution to the problems of cloth diapers and rubber baby pants common to the 1940s. Although she lived generations later than Margaret Knight, Donovan encountered plenty of similarly gender-based stereotypes; women didn’t do science and technology. Donovan became her own best marketer, and her “Boater” diaper flew off department-store shelves. Both Donovan and Knight became prolific inventors in their time.

How did this project work? Lots and lots of communication! Along with a genuine desire to collaborate, despite busy schedules and other challenges. On the museum end, Lemelson Center staff suggested background readings and possible characters, Education and Programs staff hosted workshops in informal education and historic theater, and staff across several departments reviewed script drafts and offered feedback throughout the semester.

In addition to learning from museum staff, the students gained invaluable insights from Caleen Jennings, American University Professor of Theatre and Chair, Department of Performing Arts, into the process and craft of translating archival research into performance. The museum became a lab for experimentation in playwriting.

American University playwriting professor Caleen Jennings, and actors Rachel Silvert (left) and Jordan Van Clief (right) prepare for their reading. Photo by Harriet Lynn.

“For history students to learn playwriting, for actors to build characters straight from archival material, and for a documentarian to capture the pieces and tell the story,” Jennings said, “that’s what a university education does in the very best circumstances. I think the students also learned from watching Kathy Franz, Maggie Stogner, Amanda Murray, and me problem-solve on the spot: organize schedules, maintain good communication, obtain permissions, and set deadlines and rehearsals—the nitty-gritty work that creates the foundation for a project.”

On May 3, for a final performance arranged at the museum, American University actors Jordan Van Clief and Rachel Silvert gave a dramatic reading of the final scripts while Jen Collins, graduate student in Film and Media Arts, filmed the performance as part of her own semester project, mentored by Maggie Stogner in the School of Communication.

 

American University film student Jen Collins and professor Maggie Stogner film the performance in Spark!Lab. Photo by Harriet Lynn.

This project provided a great foundation for future Lemelson Center forays into historic theater. I hope the project sparks future interdisciplinary collaborations. What inventor stories would you like to see brought to life? Tell us in the comments below!

Amanda Murray is Project Assistant for the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation

Who was Dennis Hopper? (1936-2010)

This past weekend the iconic actor and member of the counter culture Dennis Hopper passed away. In 2006, Robert Weingarten had the opportunity to work with Hopper. Weingarten, a California based photographer interested in the line between biography and portraiture asks his famous subjects, “What makes you who you are?” Weingarten proposes that “who we are,” is not the physical self that changes over time, but our passions, mottos we live by, memories, experiences, and contributions. 

The resulting image, part of the museum's Photographic History Collection, is a translucent composite made with Weingarten’s digital photographs.

 

The images are based on the list Hopper made describing himself, which acknowledges his influence on American culture and his personal passions.

• The director’s chair with his name on it as a reference to the movies he has directed.
• The mural based on Hopper’s photograph, “Double Standard” and his camera indicate his work as a photographer.
• The painting of the woman is one made by Hopper, the artist.
• The Andy Warhol painting of Mao references his modern art collection. The two bullet holes in the painting were created when he “shot Mao” during a drug induced rage.
• There are his golf clubs and a cigar.
• And, of course, the iconic motorcycle, “Easy Rider.”

Over the next few weeks we will see many obituaries and remembrances written by others. Weingarten’s photograph gives us Hopper’s last word on how he defined himself.

Shannon Perich is Associate Curator for the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History.