Collecting Scopitones, 1960s a/v jukeboxes


We've posted before about Scopitone, the A/V jukeboxes of the 1960s that featured 16-milimeter films of the musicians singing and dancing in campy loungadelic scenes. For example, dig Joi Lansing's Web of Love" Scopitone film above. Over at Collector's Weekly, BB pal Ben Marks takes a deeper look at the Scopitone scene. From Collector's Weekly:

 Articles Wp-Content Uploads 2011 09 Scopitonefrenchad Whitecrop-1

Scopitone films were deliberately exotic, designed to appeal to a target audience of men on the prowl in bars. “They had to grab people’s attention from across a room,” (Scopitone collector Bob) Orlowsky says. “They are the only type of film I can think of that’s produced for people who aren’t watching them. In general, nobody is choosing to look at the Scopitone machine. They’re mostly guys hanging out in a bar. The wild colors, suggestive dances, and bikini girls in the films were supposed to distract men from their drinking long enough to put more money into the machine to see what else might be in there.”

"Scopitone: ’60s Music Videos You’ve Never Seen"