Erik Barnouw Research Articles

Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society

Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society Scott MacDonald (bio) It is a catastrophic fallacy to assume that running a film society involves nothing more than an idealistic concern with good films, coupled with their lackadaisical presentation to willing audiences. On the contrary, the individual brave enough to venture into this troublesome field, must be—no matter what the size of the society—an organizer, promoter, publicist and copywriter, businessman, public speaker, and artist; a conscientious, if not pedantic, person versed in mass psychology. He must have roots in his community. And he must know a good film when he sees it. Amos Vogel Scholars of independent cinema, and especially of that arena of independent cinema variously known as “avant-garde film,” “experimental film,” “underground film”..., have tended to approach the field in one of two ways. Some have written with the idea of attracting a wider audience to the full range of cinema; others have explored specific contributions to particular historical and/or theoretical developments. Unfortunately, little sustained critical/scholarly attention has been accorded the histories of those institutions that have nurtured and sustained alternative cinema. 1 One result has been a fragmented sense of film history. Another is the sadly marginal and precarious situation in which so many institutions devoted to the broadest sense of film history continue to find themselves in the late 1990s. If even the most remarkable institutional contributions to alternative production, distribution, and exhibition are not studied, how can those who might be willing to commit themselves to the development of a more vital film and video scene learn from the past to reinvigorate the present and the future? If those who have honored alternative cinemas at the cost of their labor and their personal resources are not themselves honored by those of us who profit from the field they have helped develop, can we expect a younger generation to make the necessary sacrifices to maintain and re-energize this field? It is to the credit of Wide Angle and its current editor, Ruth Bradley, that the journal has decided to devote considerable space to the development of a [End Page 3] more complete sense of the institutional contexts within which so many of the glories of our cinematic heritage have developed. Wide Angle’s publication in 1995 (Volume 17, Nos. 1–4) of The Flaherty: Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema, edited by Erik Barnouw and Patricia R. Zimmermann, was a breakthrough contribution in this regard, and my hope is that this documentation of the New York Film Society, Cinema 16, will be a worthy successor to it. The purpose of Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society is to provide a wide range of materials that future scholars, historians, critics, teachers, students, and film-lovers will find interesting and useful in reassessing the development of alternative cinema in the United States and the institutions that have contributed to this development. In general, the documents speak for themselves, sometimes with considerable eloquence; but we have also provided various forms of context that may be useful, especially for those currently unfamiliar with the pivotal role of Cinema 16 in American independent film history. Of course, while this project attempts to reveal something of the remarkable scope of Cinema 16’s activities and contributions, it can make no pretense of being a complete, or even a thorough, exploration of the film society. At most, we provide a lure toward a remarkable moment in the institutional history of independent film—a lure we hope other scholars will be attracted by. Backgrounds From 3the end of 1947 until mid-1963, the New York City cultural scene was energized by Cinema 16, the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history. At its height, Cinema 16 boasted seven thousand members who filled a sixteen-hundred-seat auditorium at the High School of Fashion Industries (in Manhattan’s garment district) twice a night, as well as two and sometimes three five-hundred-seat, first-run theaters at various Manhattan locations, for monthly presentations. These audiences were presented with a very wide range of film forms, often programmed so...

Erik Barnouw's Close-Ups

When scholars turn to their memoirs, readers usually get shop talk. But the story of good fights on committees for the soul of the profession is not the only model for the academic's autobiography. Henry May's Coming to Terms: A Study in Memory and History (1987), for instance, probed character rather than curriculum. Media Marathon is personal scrapbook that says little explicitly about the writing of history, but much implicitly. Erik Barnouw offers vignettes of the powerfully influential people in the life of a white-collar vagabond (p. 1). He covers his precocious success in theater at Princeton in the 1920s, his improvised career as director and writer for network radio during the Depression and World War II, and his later appointments as teacher and custodian of media at Columbia University and the Library of Congress. Part performer, part journalist-documentarian, part archivist, Barnouw is fully honored member of the historian's guild. Before his three-volume History of Broadcasting in the United States (1966-1970), writing on this subject was an apologia, recent scholar has noted. The trilogy broke this industry stranglehold and provided the entree for future critical explorations.1 Barnouw's other histories of film, television, and commercialism are standard works for everyone who seeks to understand the media landscape. Heavy with honors (including the Bancroft Prize and the annual award in his name from the Organization of American Historians), Barnouw's story should be combed for clues as to what it takes to practice media history at top form. Barnouw is case study in the synergy between the skills necessary to work in the media and to write serious history. Work as journalist has, of course, been preface to many scholarly careers. This is memorialized in the Allan Nevins Prize, honoring the outstanding dissertation in American history. (Nevins did not leave the newsroom for academia until he was 37 years old and he trained generation of historians at Columbia without bothering to get his own Ph.D.) Reporters and editors have sometimes

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio by Tom Lewis

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 701 history of the Steinmetz myth” (p. x). The reader therefore must not expect a connected narrative of Steinmetz’s private life. Kline might have observed, however, that Steinmetz’s vision of technological and economic transformation did not, apparently, include speculation on possible concomitant change in the relations of men and women. Of the various works on Steinmetz, many represent superficial research or, though scholarly, focus on certain aspects of his thought. Kline’s biography is solidly based on several manuscript and archive collections, on relevant technical literature, and on recent interpreta­ tions of intellectual and cultural history. Throughout, he takes pains to sift reality from legend. The tone is balanced, critical, but essen­ tially understanding of its subject in his time. Jean Christie Dr. Christie is professor of history emerita, Fairleigh Dickinson University, author of Morris Llewellyn Cooke: Progressive Engineer (New York, 1983), and coeditor of Decisions and Revisions: Interpretations of Twentieth-Century American History (New York, 1975). Empire ofthe Air: The Men Who Made Radio. By Tom Lewis. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Pp. vii + 421; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $25.00 (cloth); $13.00 (paper). In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Tom Lewis (an English professor at Skidmore College) tells the story of radio broad­ casting through the interactions of two inventors (Lee deForest and Edwin Howard Armstrong) and one business entrepreneur (David Sarnoff). The book, on which Ken Burns based his television docu­ mentary of the same name, is a collective biography that seeks to explore the technology and institutions of American radio through the intersecting lives. Writing in an engaging prose style, Lewis does a goodjob ofincluding the kind of telling details that also make a narrative interesting. Moreover, the book contains useful descriptions of how radio broad­ cast technology developed and works. Lewis’s explanations of Arm­ strong’s inventions, including the superheterodyne and frequency modulation, are particularly good. In fact, the material on Armstrong and his contributions provides the most interesting, and the only new, material in the book. Lewis relies throughout both on primary sources and on the important work of historians Hugh Aitken, Erik Barnouw, and Susan Douglas. Telling the story of radio through an examination of the personal and work lives of three men brings with it a host of problems that the author ignores. By the middle of the book, the shifting from one character to another becomes distracting, as does the fact that some of the stories needed for symmetry do not work very well (deForest did little in World War II, but Lewis feels he must describe his nonrole 702 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE because Armstrong and Sarnoff were so busy). Additionally, none of the main characters are particularly appealing, and while reading about one nasty person can be fun, three proved dreary. The book is primarily descriptive, giving psychological answers to the few questions it does raise. The lack of analysis leads to lengthy accounts of quite boring patent battles. To make any patent case (let alone one as absurd as that between deForest and Armstrong) interesting enough to be the center of a work, the author must explain why patents are important. Although the book is about inventors and inventing, Lewis never ties the stories of invention and patents together. Why do deForest, Armstrong, and Sarnoff care so deeply about who receives the patent for certain inventions? Lewis focuses on what might be thought of as a second generation of “heroic” inventors, given that deForest and Armstrong self-consciously, and from child­ hood, modeled themselves on their 19th-century predecessors. Sar­ noff, who needed the new inventions to consolidate his power, defined himself as a protégé of Marconi and as a businessman who understood technology. Thus, the patent cases represent personal crusades to preserve the heroic inventor and symbols of the disjuncture between the heroic ideal and the reality of invention in the corporate age. Not only do the patent battles bring the three main characters into direct conflict (and thus hold Lewis’s narrative to­ gether), but they also illuminate 20th-century changes in the context for technology. In addition, patent struggles show...

House with a Past

Book Review| October 01 1992 House with a Past House with a Past, Erik Barnouw. Richard H. Jackson Richard H. Jackson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utah Historical Quarterly (1992) 60 (4): 381–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/45063532 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Richard H. Jackson; House with a Past. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 January 1992; 60 (4): 381–383. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/45063532 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressUtah Historical Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Copyright 1992 Utah State Historical Society1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Communication and the circle of learning

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATIONS. Erik Barnouw, editor in chief. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Published jointly with the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania; pp. 1 (Acti‐Deco): xxv+462; 2 (Demo‐Mead): 506; 3 (Mean‐Rumo): 490; 4 (Sapi‐Zwor): 455. $300.

Corporate Sponsorship

In 1978 the foremost historian of American broadcasting, Erik Barnouw, distilled a lifetime of radio and television experience into a brief but illuminating book. It was titled The Sponsor, but it might just as appropriately have been called “The Real History of Broadcasting in America.” On the last page, Barnouw concluded:

Erik Barnouw: A Selected Bibliography and Filmography

Erik Barnouw: A Selected Bibliography and Filmography

A Conversation with Erik Barnouw

A Conversation with Erik Barnouw

An Appreciation of Erik Barnouw's A History of Broadcasting in the United States

An Appreciation of Erik Barnouw's A History of Broadcasting in the United States

From the Ground Up: The Autobiography of an Aeronautical Engineer by Fred E. Weick, James R. Hansen

486 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE channel the uses of the new technology into the broadcasting that we know today. It is here at the end that one encounters one of the few flaws of this fine book. For a work entitled “Inventing American Broadcasting,” there is actually rather cursory discussion of the real emergence of the broadcasting industry. Only twenty-three pages—the last substan­ tive chapter—are devoted to explaining how the forces that Douglas has characterized so well give rise to the use of radio as a medium for mass entertainment, information, and propaganda. Certainly it could be argued that this part of the story is told elsewhere (perhaps most thoroughly in several volumes by Erik Barnouw) and that Doug­ las makes her real contribution by explaining how the stage was set for broadcasting—for Frank Conrad’s broadcast of the 1920 election returns from the Westinghouse-backed KDKA in Pittsburgh and for the subsequent radio boom that took off in 1922. Still, the reader may be left with a faintly unsatisfied feeling at the conclusion of the story, a feeling that it would not have been too much to expect Douglas to round out the story, to tell us about such figures as David Sarnoff (whose name does not even appear in the index), to give us at least a quick look at how AT&T began setting up network broadcasting and of how the industry rapidly began taking on the economic power, social responsibilities, and cultural hegemony that it continues to ex­ ercise in the late 20th century. Robert Friedel Dr. Friedel is associate professor in the History Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was formerly director of the IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering in New York and has written about invention in the chemical, electrical, and electronics industries. From the Ground Up: The Autobiography of an Aeronautical Engineer. By Fred E. Weick and James R. Hansen. Washington, D.C.: Smithson­ ian Institution Press, 1988. Pp. xvi + 447; illustrations, notes, ap­ pendixes, index. $39.95. Fred E. Weick was nearly ninety years old when his autobiography, prepared with the assistance of James Hansen, NASA historian and assistant professor of history at Auburn University, was published. In 1911, in the eighth year of the powered flight era, Weick became interested in flying and saw his first airplanes, including one built by the Wrights. He is the only person to have attended the twenty-fifth, fiftieth, and seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations of their pioneering flight. One of the first American graduates in engineering to pursue a career in aeronautics, Weick devoted most of his life to the devel­ opment of simple-to-fly, inherently safe, and inexpensive light aircraft. He designed the Ercoupe—over 6,000 were produced starting in 1940 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 487 (at a peak rate of thirty-five per day in 1946) and some 3,000 are still flying today—and the Piper Cherokee series of planes. Until retire­ ment in 1969, Weick was in the forefront of general aviation aircraft development in the United States. His autobiography has been rec­ ognized as a major definitive contribution to the history of this tech­ nology and in 1987 won the History Manuscript Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics “for the best historical manuscript dealing with the science, technology and/or impact of aeronautics and astronautics on society.” But the significance of Weick’s autobiography goes far beyond the historical record. It clearly indicates the elements essential to success in the engineering profession. A strictly rational approach to the anal­ ysis and solution of technical problems and—as noted by Weick— “marvelously clear” thinking allowed the Wright brothers to achieve, within five years, controlled powered flight, a goal that eluded others for decades. The same qualities were responsible for Weick’s own numerous and important successes. His career included research in the NACA laboratories, design and engineering management in the aircraft industry, teaching at Texas A&M University, technical writing, and participation in many professional activities. Rational approach and clear thinking led fifteen-year-old Fred to construct a four-wheel “cycle-car” with a single-wheel drive...

Review: The Magician and the Cinema by Erik Barnouw

Book Review| July 01 1982 Review: The Magician and the Cinema by Erik Barnouw The Magician and the CinemaErik Barnouw Bill Desowitz Bill Desowitz Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (1982) 35 (4): 48. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212113 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Bill Desowitz; Review: The Magician and the Cinema by Erik Barnouw. Film Quarterly 1 July 1982; 35 (4): 48. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1212113 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1982 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Frontier Films: Trying the Impossible

If Frontier Films seemed an impossibility to Paul Strand in the 1930s, it seemed even more so to the cultural imagination of the subsequent decades. As a result, the production company now is scarcely known, even to film historians, and has only begun, like farleft dance and theater, to emerge from obscurity. It is striking that Richard Pells's and William Stott's recent studies of radical art and thought and of documentary form in the 1930s do not mention Frontier Films. Early film histories, with some exceptions, ignored Frontier, and it is only in the last several years that documentary-film historians Erik Barnouw, Richard Barsam, and Lewis Jacobs have given the organization equal time if by no means intensive investigation.

Education Unit in World War II: An Interview with Erik Barnouw

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 12, Issue 2 p. 275-284 Education Unit in World War II: An Interview with Erik Barnouw David Culbert, David Culbert David Culbert is Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of News for Everyman: Radio and Foreign Affairs in Thirties America. published by Greenwood Press.Search for more papers by this author David Culbert, David Culbert David Culbert is Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of News for Everyman: Radio and Foreign Affairs in Thirties America. published by Greenwood Press.Search for more papers by this author First published: Fall 1978 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1979.1202_275.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume12, Issue2Fall 1978Pages 275-284 RelatedInformation

Erik Barnouw’s ‘Tube of Plenty’: public airways, private profits

Multimedia Review| February 01 1978 Erik Barnouw’s ‘Tube of Plenty’: public airways, private profits Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of America Television by Eric Barnouw Oxford University Press/520 pp./$4.50 (sb) Martha Gever Martha Gever Martha Gever is on the staff of Portable Channel, a Rochestercommunity video organization. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (1978) 5 (8): 16–17. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1978.8.16 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Martha Gever; Erik Barnouw’s ‘Tube of Plenty’: public airways, private profits. Afterimage 1 February 1978; 5 (8): 16–17. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1978.8.16 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1978 by The Regents of the University of California1978 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television

Tube of Plenty is an abridgement of Erik Barnouw's classic 3-volume History of Broadcasting in the United States. The paperback edition was first published in 1976 and a second edition in 1982. Much has happened in television in the 1980s; the decline of the three major networks, the expansion of cable and satellite television, film channels like Home Box Office, the success of ESPN (sports), and MTV (pop music), and the increased way in which the White House in Washington has managed and controlled national news and its contents. Barnouw has added an extensive chapter dealing with the changes of the 1980s and looking ahead to the 1990s.

Book of the Month

Erik Barnouw's Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974—$10.95)

The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, by Erik Barnouw

The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, <i>by Erik Barnouw</i>

A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Vol. I: to 1933, by Erik Barnouw

A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Vol. I: to 1933, <i>by Erik Barnouw</i>

A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States

Journal Article A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Volume I—to 1933. By Erik Barnouw. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. 344 pp. Illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $8.50.) Get access Burl Noggle Burl Noggle Louisiana State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 54, Issue 1, June 1967, Pages 186–187, https://doi.org/10.2307/1900412 Published: 01 June 1967

Review: Indian Film by Erik Barnouw, S. Krishnaswamy

Review: Indian Film by Erik Barnouw, S. Krishnaswamy