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:

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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.

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[1] SIAHGS_160307_001.JPG	[2] SIAHGS_160307_006.JPG	[3] SIAHGS_160307_009.JPG
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[10] SIAHGS_160307_053.JPG	[11] SIAHGS_160307_055.JPG	[12] SIAHGS_160307_058.JPG
[13] SIAHGS_160307_065.JPG	[14] SIAHGS_160307_070.JPG	[15] SIAHGS_160307_074.JPG
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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.
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