Scopitone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. It was a forerunner of music video. The Italian Cinebox/Coilorama and Color-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time^[1].

Based on technology developed during World War II^[2], color 16 mm film clips with a magnetic soundtrack were designed to be shown in a specially designed jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France around 1960: Johnny Hallyday covered Los Bravos' "Black is Black" (as "Noir c'est noir") and the "Hully Gully" was danced round the edge of a French swimming pool.

Scopitones spread to West Germany, where the Kessler Sisters burst out of twin steamer trunks to sing "Quando Quando" on the dim screen that surmounted the jukebox. Scopitone went on appear in bars in England. Scopitone appeared in a few New York City bars in the summer of 1964.^{[citation needed]}

Several well-known acts of the 1960s appear in Scopitone films, ranging from Dick and Dee Dee ("Where Did All the Good Times Go") to Procol Harum ("A Whiter Shade of Pale"). In one Scopitone recording, Dionne Warwick lay on a white shag rug with an offstage fan urging her to sing "Walk on By". Inspired by burlesque, blonde bombshell Joi Lansing performed "Web of Love" and "The Silencer", and Julie London sang "Daddy" against a backdrop of strippers. The artifice of such scenes led Susan Sontag to identify Scopitone films as "part of the canon of Camp" in her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'".

By the end of the 1960s, the popularity of the Scopitone had faded. The last film for a Scopitone was made at the end of 1978. As of the mid-2000s, one of the only public Scopitones in the United States was located at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee^[3].

The 2002 movie Punch Drunk Love features imagery described as^{[citation needed]} "Scopitones", but which are not actual Scopitone films and do not use the Scopitone Jukebox.