
“See and Hear Your Favorite Stars on Scopitone” advertisement. c. 1965. Lithograph. Gift of Bob Orlowsky, Film Study Center Special Collections
My first encounter with Scopitone came about during the course of a joyride with out-of-state friends in in the summer of 1971. As evening fell they thought it would be amusing to leave me by the side of an unfamiliar suburban road in Connecticut, as a test of character. This sounds like the opening scene of a film noir or a creature feature, but instead I found myself in a roadside soda fountain filled with teenagers eating ice cream and watching dancers move on the screen of an unusually big jukebox.