Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, by Susan Delson Susan Delson. Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 418 pp. Paperback $35.00. Kim Nalley Kim Nalley KIM NALLEY, a cultural historian with a PhD from UC Berkeley, specializes in African American history and African diasporic studies. Her dissertation, “GI Jazz: African Americans as Occupiers and Artists in Post–World War II Germany,” was nominated for an “Outstanding History Dissertation” award and draws extensively upon oral history and musical/musicological analyses to investigate the differing ideas of freedom and democracy among African American GIs and Germans. Her published works include “Losing Its Grease: Black Cultural Politics in the Globalization of Jazz.” She is on the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Justice board for the California Conservatory of Jazz and has presented her work at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and GoogleTV. She is currently on the faculty of California State University East Bay. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 117–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.117 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kim Nalley; Review: Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, by Susan Delson. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 117–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.117 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 ContentCalifornia History Search Susan Delson, a film critic for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, investigates “Soundies” in her new book, Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time. Soundies were a type of 1940s wartime antecedent to MTV, though Delson dislikes the comparison to music videos. “Soundies were three-minute films made to be screened on movie jukeboxes known as Panorams—freestanding, closed-system projection cabinets” (3). These Panorams were placed in bars, cafés, and defense industry sites (3). Delson uses this brand name in reference to similar “musical shorts” made by Warner Brothers, Filmcraft, and a host of other companies, some of which were shown in movie houses before the main feature film. Delson mostly ignores the early shorts that feature Black people, which makes the intent of her book, “the changing image of Black Americans on screen,” difficult to prove, since what the image... You do not currently have access to this content.