BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: George Sidney: Creativity and Innovation in Golden Age Hollywood

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: George Sidney: Creativity and Innovation in Golden Age Hollywood:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: George Sidney: Creativity and Innovation in Golden Age Hollywood
January 19, 2016 – March 21, 2016
George Sidney (1916-2002), was an Oscar-winning director of musicals, dramas, and comedies during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1930s through the1950s. Sidney was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for fifteen years and later directed films for both Columbia Pictures and Paramount. In many of his motion pictures Sidney pioneered new techniques such as filming underwater, combining live action with animation, shooting on location, and filming in 3-D. This exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of George Sidney’s birth and salutes his career as a film innovator.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show? [Slideshow]

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] SIAHGS_160307_001.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] SIAHGS_160307_006.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] SIAHGS_160307_009.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[4] SIAHGS_160307_019.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[5] SIAHGS_160307_023.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[6] SIAHGS_160307_035.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[7] SIAHGS_160307_039.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[8] SIAHGS_160307_045.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[9] SIAHGS_160307_049.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[10] SIAHGS_160307_053.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] SIAHGS_160307_055.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] SIAHGS_160307_058.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[13] SIAHGS_160307_065.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[14] SIAHGS_160307_070.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[15] SIAHGS_160307_074.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[16] SIAHGS_160307_076.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[17] SIAHGS_160307_081.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[18] SIAHGS_160307_083.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[19] SIAHGS_160307_087.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[20] SIAHGS_160307_090.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[21] SIAHGS_160307_098.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[22] SIAHGS_160307_100.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[23] SIAHGS_160307_103.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[24] SIAHGS_160307_107.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[25] SIAHGS_160307_110.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[26] SIAHGS_160307_112.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[27] SIAHGS_160307_116.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[28] SIAHGS_160307_118.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[29] SIAHGS_160307_120.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[30] SIAHGS_160307_124.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[31] SIAHGS_160307_127.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[32] SIAHGS_160307_132.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[33] SIAHGS_160307_134.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[34] SIAHGS_160307_137.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[35] SIAHGS_160307_140.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[36] SIAHGS_160307_143.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[37] SIAHGS_160307_146.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[38] SIAHGS_160307_149.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[39] SIAHGS_160307_151.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIAHGS_160307_001.JPG: George Sidney: Creativity and Innovation in Golden-Age Hollywood George Sidney (1916-2002), was an Oscar-winning director of musicals, dramas, and comedies during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s. Sidney was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for fifteen years and later directed films for both Columbia Pictures and Paramount. In many of his motion pictures Sidney pioneered new techniques such as filming underwater, combining live action with animation, shooting on location, and filming in 3-D. This exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of George Sidney's birth and salutes his career as a film innovator.
2. SIAHGS_160307_009.JPG: "I was always interested in cartooning." -- George Sidney, 1987 One of Sidney's most innovative and creative film was the musical Anchors Aweigh (1945), starring actors Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra alongside MGM stock cartoon character Jerry the Mouse. In one creative sequence, Kelly and Jerry dance together in a pioneering blend of live action and animation. Sidney later became a founding member of Hanna-Barbera Productions, creator of such television cartoons as Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons.
3. SIAHGS_160307_035.JPG: "The interesting thing about it is that we used real sets, not cartoon sets. We had Gene Kelly as a real dancing character and then we superimposed the mouse onto that. We put a cardboard mouse on a stick. Gene would go to one side and... the dance assistant would push the cardboard mouse in that direction. We pushed the cardboard mouse around so that the cameraman could see where the mouse was supposed to be. Then we'd shoot with Kelly's figure on the left-hand side of the screen. When the mouse moved to the side we'd have to pan on nothing, just air. We put the number together and it was fine..." -- George Sidney, 1987
4. SIAHGS_160307_049.JPG: "The stories were always built on a promise -- big deal. On Anchors Aweigh a sailor promises a girl that she's going to get an audition... That's the story of one of the most successful musicals ever made." -- George Sidney, 1987 This script for Anchors Aweigh (1945) lays out the storyline for the movie Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra play sailors on leave who meet an aspiring singer, played by Kathryn Grayson and promise to get her an audition. In one musical segment, Kelly has memorable encounters with cartoon animals.
5. SIAHGS_160307_058.JPG: The Harvey Girls (1946) creatively combined history with musical showmanship. In it, Judy Garland joins a group of young women opening a Harvey House restaurant. This popular franchise started in Kansas in 1876 and soon spread across the southwest. Its recipe for success included good food, clean surroundings, and efficient, friendly waitresses, known as "Harvey Girls." in the film, the Harvey Girls' civilizing influence is opposed by the local saloon girls. The plot develops along a good girls versus bad girls theme and in the end Garland gets her man.
6. SIAHGS_160307_065.JPG: The waitress' uniforms worn in the film were adapted from those worn by the original Harvey Girls. This swatch book contains fabric samples for the many costumes used in the film.
7. SIAHGS_160307_070.JPG: "We... tried to get outside to create a little realism. The screen opened up. The technology was keeping foot with us, and pushing us. People wanted to see the world. We had gotten away with studio shooting for as long as we could." -- George Sidney, 1987 George Sidney pioneered the use of shooting on location in The Harvey Girls (1946), one of the most memorable and successful films. Although some scenes were shot on the MGM back lot, much of it was filmed on location at Iverson Ranch near Los Angeles and in Monument Valley, Utah.
8. SIAHGS_160307_083.JPG: "On location we had crickets, airplanes, and automobiles. A whole new technique known as looping [synchronizing dialogue with previously shot film] was developed. We'd run the film and where we decided there was too much noise, we looped. Judy Garland could do eighty loops in one hour." -- George Sidney, 1987 Among these photographs taken on location during filming of The Harvey Girls (1946), George Sidney is seen reviewing the script with actress Judy Garland.
9. SIAHGS_160307_090.JPG: George Sidney: Creativity and Innovation in Golden-Age Hollywood "I was always terribly interested in all phases of filmmaking. Whenever they wanted any experimenting done in the studio with new equipment, they'd say, 'Hey get the kid up there, he'll do it.' " -- George Sidney, 1987 George Sidney (1916-2002), was an Oscar-winning director of musicals, dramas, and comedies during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s. Sidney was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for fifteen years and later directed films for both Columbia Pictures and Paramount. In many of his motion pictures Sidney pioneered new techniques such as filming underwater, combining live action with animation, shooting on location, and filming in 3-D. This exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of George Sidney's birth and salutes his career as a film innovator. For more information about Hollywood as a place of invention, please visit the Places of Invention exhibition on the first floor of this museum.
10. SIAHGS_160307_098.JPG: The materials in this exhibition are drawn from the George Sidney Collections in the Archives Center and in the Division of Culture and the Arts -- a gift of Corinne Entratter Sidney. The quotations are from George Sidney's 1987 oral history interview with the Directors Guild of America.
11. SIAHGS_160307_110.JPG: George Sidney's Bathing Beauty (1944) was the first "aqua-musical." Its elaborate synchronized swimming and diving sequences showcased Esther Williams' aquatic prowess as an integral component of the storyline. Sidney broke new ground in underwater filming techniques, doing much of the work himself, as the photographs show.
12. SIAHGS_160307_116.JPG: "There was a lot of very inventive things photographically in [Bathing Beauty]... We developed a camera that could go under the water, and over the water, and for six months I had water in my ear. We had to build a waterproof sphere for the camera. But there was no ventilation so it would start to sweat and fog up the lens. We had to have little air conditioning units put inside it... It was an innovative picture, and it was a hell of a success." -- George Sidney, 1987
13. SIAHGS_160307_124.JPG: George Sidney won back-to-back Oscars from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for two of his one-reel films. Both dealt with technical subjects and reflected his interest in how film might complement and document science and scientific procedures. In Quicker 'n a Wink (1940), MIT professor Harold E. Edgerton demonstrated strobe photography, which allowed the audience to see "what happens at speeds too fast to be discerned by the naked eye." Of Pups and Puzzles (1941), showed how the US War Department used dogs in designing aptitude tests.
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: ) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2023_DC_SIAH_Mirror: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Mirror, Mirror for Us All: Disney Parks and the American Narrative / Experience (146 photos from 2023)
- 2023_09_26C2_SIAH_More_Perfect: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time (23 photos from 09/26/2023)
- 2023_09_26C1_SIAH_Latinas_Report: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Latinas Report Breaking News (85 photos from 09/26/2023)
- 2023_09_19A5_SIAH_More_Perfect: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time (134 photos from 09/19/2023)
- 2023_09_17D2_SIAH_Holzer: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Jenny Holzer, THE PEOPLE (22 photos from 09/17/2023)
- 2023_07_13B1_SIAH_Weatherbreak: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Reconstructing ‘Weatherbreak’ in an Age of Extreme Weather (17 photos from 07/13/2023)
- 2023_06_30D1_SIAH_Trouble: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive (42 photos from 06/30/2023)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Sense: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things (87 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Remembrance: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: War and Remembrance (8 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Rallying: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Rallying Against Racism (8 photos from 2022)
- ...More (List all 132 pages)...
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (11 photos from 2022)
- 2021_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (27 photos from 2021)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2016 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Seven relatively short trips this year: two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City), my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California), a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral, two additional trips to New York City, and a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing. Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link: [Thumbnails Only]
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].