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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.
A Scopitone fad soon 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. The fad soon spread to England. Scopitone was a draw in upscale bars and pubs. Scopitone appeared in a few New York City bars in the summer of 1964.
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, who made a Scopitone of "A Whiter Shade of Pale". In another 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 bomshell Joi Lansing performed "Web of Love" and "The Silencer" and Julie London sang "Daddy" against a backdrop of strippers. The obvious 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 all but disappeared. The last film for a Scopitone was made at the end of 1978. As of 2006, the only public scopitone within the US is located at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee[3].
The 2002 movie Punch Drunk Love prominently features imagery described as "Scopitones", but those images have nothing to do with Scopitone films or the Scopitone Jukebox.