If you are interested in entertainers and the history of entertainment,
you may want to explore the following: "Emile
Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry." Berliner
was a largely self-educated man who was responsible for the development
of the microphone and the flat recording disc and gramophone player.
In "Inventing
Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of
the Edison Companies," you can read about, as well as see
and listen to, the work of the "Wizard of Menlo Park."
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects
established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
under the Works Progress Administration. In "The
New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939,"
you can learn about an important part of the career of Orson Welles,
the mastermind behind "Citizen Kane." In this collection
are stage and costume designs, still photographs, posters and scripts
for Welles’ productions of Macbeth, The Tragical History of
Dr. Faustus and Power, a topical drama of the period.
Around the same time, William P. Gottlieb began photographing the
greatest names in jazz. More than 1,600 of these extraordinary images
can be seen in "Photographs
from the Golden Age of Jazz." Other entertainers are documented
in "Creative
Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964."
And that is just a small portion of the entertainment-related images,
sound recordings and films available in American Memory. If you
go to the American
Memory Collection Finder Search page and scroll down the list
of more than 100 collections, entertainers of all sorts, from many
periods in American history, can be found.
A. Al Hirschfeld, artist, "Philip
Bosco in Copenhagen Meets Claudia Shear in Dirty Blonde, 2000. Prints
and Photographs Division. Reproduction No.: LC-USZ62-127468.
B. Al Hirschfeld, artist, "Billy
Graham: A Visionaries Vision," 1970. Prints and Photographs
Division. Reproduction No.: LC-USZ62-127465.