Scopitone

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

The Scopitone was essentially a video jukebox, originally conceived and built in France, they were later built under license in the US in the early to mid 1960s.





A friend of mine (now deceased) had one and I would show it off to guests at large parties at his house. I became rather adept at fixing it. The internal mechanism was 72 reels (36 choices x 2), a projector at the base and the image transferred to the screen above via mirrors. I'm not sure how many were originally built but they are coveted by jukebox collectors today. They don't trade hands often. Wikipedia claims there's only one left in the US left but I'm certain that is inaccuarate.

The films shown were not quite top 40 tunes though some we would surely recognise today, hurriedly produced and the production values can be sparse. I'm including some just as YouTube URLs for brevity.

Brooks Benton "Mother Earth, Father Time".....a sweet ballad choreographed by strip tease artistes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TAZNEELEvk

Line Renaud "Le Hully Gully"....a classic with speedo clad male go-go dancers. Very camp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNgjkrzctY

Debbie Reynolds "Sing in the Sunshine"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDGeoCsjR4Y

Nancy Sinatra "These Boots Were Made For Walking".....someone took the original film and put Karaoke text over it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5qx3fuTUHM

German Singer "Copacabana"....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUX_C77mE8

It really was a lot of fun for twenty-five cents. The efforts were shortlived, Scopitone could not produce films fast enough to keep up with an ever changing Top 40 playlist and some artists did not want to participate. You might still be able to get copies of the songs that were transferred to DVD on eBay.

I believe the dusty machine below was one of the original French machines. My next post to vintage_ads will be about the Scopitone's ancestor, the Mills Pan-O-Ram.

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

I love the old Scopitones. Poor Debbie Reynolds lost so much money when one of her husbands invested her money in the US operation.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

You should definitely crosspost this to anachrotech. They'd be amused.

[bigkidsid.livejournal.com]

that mothert nature video is almost porn...

[misstia]

this is great! thanks for posting this!! I never heard of these before!

[reid.livejournal.com]

amazing post, but FYI all of your youtube links (minus the last one) are all the same link.

[jtaylor2.livejournal.com]

icon <3!

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

Fixed! Sorry about that!

[thehappycat.livejournal.com]

The videos were great. The dancers in the Brook Benton one were obviously dancing to a different song. I especially enjoyed the "Hully Gully" one with the guys in Speedos dancing with the fully-clothed female singer. So campy.