The entrepreneur of phonograph concerts and motion-picture programs Lyman H. Howe was the leading traveling exhibitor of his time and the exemplar of an important but until now little examined aspect of American popular culture. This work, with its numerous and lively illustrations, uses his career to explore the world of itinerant showmen, who exhibited all motion pictures seen outside large cities during the 1890s and early 1900s. They frequently built cultural alliances with genteel city dwellers or conservative churchgoers and in later years favored "high-class" topics appealing to audiences uncomfortable with the plebeian nickelodeons. Bridging the fields of American studies and film history, the book reveals the remarkable sophistication with which exhibitors created their elaborate, evening-length programs to convey powerful ideological messages. Whether depicting the Spanish-American War, the 1900 Paris Exposition, or British colonialism in action, Howe's "cinema of reassurance" had many parallels with the music of John Philip Sousa. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Looks at the early years of the motion picture industry through 1907.

Today the Colorado Chautauqua is one of the only remaining Chautauquas, and this is the story of that group, filled with delightful, comic, and heartwarming descriptions of life at this historic Chautauqua.

David Nasaw has written a sparkling social history of twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that assembled in the city's pleasure palaces, parks, theaters, nickelodeons, world's fair midways, and dance halls. The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children, native-born and immigrant, rich, poor and middling. Only African Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they were overrepresented in parodic form on stage. This stigmatization of the African American, Nasaw argues, was the glue that cemented an otherwise disparate audience, muting social distinctions among "whites," and creating a common national culture.