My number 5 pick is another motion picture and it without a doubt brought about more change at its introduction than Star Wars, Jaws, Lawrence of Arabia, or Gone with the Wind. Its name was "The Jazz Singer" and stared that multitalened singer actor "Al Jolson" who graced us with immortal ballads such as "My Mammy" all while wearing black face makeup. What's that you ask, why would I pick a movie that was obviously so poorly acted, and racially insensitive to boot? Because no matter what its faults (and there were too many to count) it holds the distinction as being the first full length motion picture featuring the addition of sound, and additionally it launched the whole era of the Hollywood Musical. Today we have digital and surround sound add to our movie watching enjoyment with companies like THX creating not just ordinary sound but a sound experience. In fact they sometimes create so much of an experience that you can't understand what the actors are saying, or the actor's voices are so low that you turn up your system sound to hear what they are saying only to have your ear drums blown out by a blast of audio fx added for effect to a scene that the drug induced director felt needed a little extra punch. A little extra punch is what I would like to give that idiot while I am desperately trying to find the down volume button on my remote while simultaneously holding both hands over my ears. But that's for another post, getting back to "The Jazz Singer" we probably can't even imagine today what impact sound had on the movies after its 1929 release. Overnight the competing studios found themselves in a very awkward position and they were hard pressed to catch up with Warner Bros. Motion Pictures who produced the film and get the credit for the first "Talkie". Billionaire (then millionaire) producer Howard Hughes had just finished an incredibly expensive silent film called "Hell's Angels" which featured complex aerial footage of recreated World War I dogfights ever attempted, along with the sultry looks of James Hall and the rugged manliness of Jean Harlow, wait maybe that was the other way around? Oh whatever! In any case when Hughes saw the Jazz Singer he calmly informed everyone involved in the movie to be back on the set bright and early Monday morning as they were going to re-shoot the entire movie with sound. Even the actors themselves were effected, staring in silent features an actor didn't need to worry about how their voice sounded they just had to know how to over act, but with the advent of sound that all changed and you had to have a voice to match your face. Years later MGM would make a musical by the name of "Singing in the Rain" which featured a story line about the transition from silent to sound films expounding on the trials and tribulations of the actors and studios. If you don't think the audio track is important, try turning the sound off during the car chase in that Steve McQueen favorite "Bullitt." I think you will realize pretty quick just how important sound is to a film, and that is why one of the worst films ever made gets my Number 5 nod and goes to "The Jazz Singer."
My number 4 selection is a news film from December 8th, 1941 documenting a speech in which the 32nd President of the United States of America Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the joint houses of Congress following the surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on the Pearl Harbor Naval and Army bases in Hawaii on December 7th 1941. Prior to the Japanese attack the American public had made it quite clear to Washington politicians that the people wanted no parts of another in a long line of European wars. The general feeling was that Americans had been lied to when they were told that World War I was the war that would end all wars, when less than twenty years later the nations of Europe were at one another's throats again with that old perennial favorite Germany acting as bandleader once again. The people wanted no part of this conflict and even the immensely popular President Roosevelt had trouble convincing them that it was impossible to remain on the sidelines while our friends were being slaughtered. Roosevelt had done as much as he possibly could to help the allied nations with the creation of programs like the "Lend Lease" which helped funnel war supplies and machines to nations like England and Russia but these offered modest results and were comparable to applying a band-aide to a gunshot wound. The Japanese attack changed all that overnight, and Roosevelt wasted no time on taking advantage of the public outrage over the perceived sneak attack on the fleet lying at anchor at Pearl Harbor. FDR was a masterful speaker and he may have hit his peak with this speech. It turned a once timid, pacifist nation into fire breathing industrial juggernaut intent on revenge at any cost. When Roosevelt used the phrase "yesterday December 7th 1941, a date which will live in infamy" it's hard to say if he knew just how iconic those words would become, but it was enough to convince me that it deserved the Number 4 position on my list.
The date was May 25th, 1961 and I was 12 years old when then President John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke to a joint session of congress and asked them to commit seven to nine billion dollars (55 to 70 billion in today's dollars) in an attempt to put a man (hopefully breathing) on the moon, and then return him to earth (again, hopefully breathing). I remember thinking at the time, "humph!, what the heck do we need to go to the moon for, there's no water, there's no air, and there's no Dairy Queen?" That's right McDonald's fans, Ray Kroc had just bought out the McDonald brothers in 1961 and the Golden Arches were still mainly a west coast thing, Dairy Queen was the king, I mean the Queen, I mean....... oh heck, they were really big. I know that my opinion was kind of short sited and cynical but it hasn't changed much except that now I say, "go to Mars, what the heck do we need to go to Mars for, the water's frozen, the air is thin, and there's no McDonald's, happy now? I know you won't believe this but my twelve year old's opinion went unheeded and the United States embarked on what has been nicknamed "The Space Race", although truth be know it really wasn't much of a race. You see the Russians had some really good rockets, and some really good rocket scientists, but they lacked the one commodity that you really needed to get to the moon, and that was lots and lots of Rubles, but you can't fault them for not trying. Why those Russian boys launched a ton of people into space during those early days, unfortunately according to rumor most of them bit the big one which severely slowed the rush to volunteer. Then the Russians came up with a brilliant plan, sit quietly back and watch us spend a fortune trying to prove we were better than them by landing on an uninhabitable rock that held very little strategic value, while they pursued other goals. So instead they went to work on an orbital space station that really could help tip the balance of power, oh, if say they were to mount a couple nuke missiles on the cute little thing just for kicks. To our great surprise again in 1971 the Ruskies launched Salyut 1 and proceeded to give us the proverbial raspberries again! But, that's another story, so back to the race sports fans, we've just spent 8 years and a ton or two of money in order to boast "my rockets bigger than your rocket", but all that was forgotten when on July 21st, 1969 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. Old Neil proved to be a pretty good writer too when as he placed his foot on the moon for the first time and uttered that unforgettable phrase, "hey this isn't the moon it's a movie set in....." Just kidding, his actual first words were "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", confirming the reason for my number three pick for photo or videos that changed the world is Neil Armstrong saluting the American Flag.
My number 2 choice is really photos and videos of two events that have helped shape the world even though they occurred twelve thousand miles apart. One took place in post World War II Germany which following Germany's surrender had been carved up by the winners like a soup kitchen turkey. The Communists took the eastern half of Germany along with half of Berlin, while the allies got control of Western Germany and the west half of Berlin. Things were tense from the start but when West Germany began to prosper and grow while the Communist East disintegrated into poverty East Germans began a run for the west by the thousands which prompted the Communists to build a little deterent called The Berlin Wall in 1961. For 28 years the wall had served as the iconic symbol of the "Cold War" that had been waged between the Communists and Democratic nations since the end of World War II. But in the late 1980's the hard line Communist leaders left over from the war were being replaced by more moderate leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev. There were many reasons behind the change of heart over normalizing relations between the two Germanies, but it boiled down to two major factors. The world was changing at a break-neck pace and the old dodge of promising the people milk and honey times at some vague future date while they presently languished in poverty just wasn't working anymore. The global economy that was always dreamed of was becoming a reality and if you were going to compete you needed workers that weren't oppressed and depressed to produce goods. The second and probably more significant factor was the expense. East Germany and East Berlin were bogged down by that old Communist nemesis aka "lack of incentive." The motto for nearly all the Communist satellite nations had become "If I'm not going to get paid any more if I do it, and I'm not going to get paid any less if I don't do it, why would I do it" and was alive and thriving in East German. Adding heat to the pot which was already near boiling, President Ronald Reagan visited West Berlin in June of 1987 and issued a personal challenge to Mr. Gorbachev that still ranks as one of the most important political speeches ever made. So on November 9th, 1989 the East German government announced that their citizens would be allowed to travel to West Berlin and West Germany which sent tens of thousands of East Germans to action. They crowded through checkpoints and then as a sign of their new gained freedom began demolishing the wall by hand. The official demolition of the wall began on June 13th, 1990, the same year the East German state was dissolved making Germany whole again.
The second photo in this pair comes to us from that ancient Asian giant, The Peoples Republic of China, you know, the one where we get everything from now. In the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall the Chinese Government was experiencing its own problems with controlling self determination. It seems that the desire for more freedom had reared its ugly head in the world's largest Communist nation and Chinese leaders were determined to "nip it in the bud" to quote Deputy Barney Fife of Mayberry. Students and demonstrators had occupied Tienanmen Square in the heart of Beijing for nearly seven weeks following the death of Communist Party General Secretary and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang At first the government took a conciliatory approach to the demonstrations but when they began to spread to 400 other Chinese cities the government instructed the Chinese Military to disperse the demonstrators. In the insueing confrontations many Chinese civilians were killed, some say hundreds others say thousands, at any rate the Chinese Government has never released any actual figures. The morning after the military crack down a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks entered Tienanmen Square and proceeded to cross it when a lone young man (aka Tank Man) stepped out in front of the lead tank. Each time the tank made an effort to get around the young man he would again place himself in front of it. The world watched this incredible act of lone defiance holding their breath to see what the tank commander would do. Remarkably the tanks shut off their engines and the young man climbed on top the lead tank and held a conversation with the commander before getting down and blocking their way again. Two men in blue suits appeared and escorted the young man from the square and the tanks then proceeded on their way. No one knows for sure what the man's name was or what happened to him, some say he was executed, the Chinese Government says he got away. In either case the films and photos of him blocking the tank, and the thousands of East Germans tearing the Berlin Wall down by hand made 1989 the year that marked a decided softening of the grip Communist nations had on their people, and that's why the two images come in as my Number 2 entry for images that change the world.
September 11, 2011
No explanation necessary.
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