1.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
2.
Encino, Los Angeles
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Encino is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Fray Juan Crespi, a Franciscan missionary travelling with the expedition, all of Crespis name was later dropped except encino. Rancho Los Encinos was established in 1845 when a parcel of former Mission San Fernando land was granted to three Mission Indians by governor Pio Pico. Many ranchos were created after the secularization of the California missions, Encino derives its name from the rancho. In 2008, the city estimated that the resident population had increased to 44,581, in 2000 the median age for residents was 42, considered old for city and county neighborhoods, the percentages of residents aged 50 and older were among the countys highest. The neighborhood was considered not especially diverse ethnically within Los Angeles, the breakdown was whites,80. 1%, Latinos,8. 5%, Asians,4. 9%, blacks,2. 4%, and others,4. 1%. Iran and Russia were the most common places of birth for the 32. 8% of the residents who were born abroad—an average percentage for Los Angeles, the median yearly household income in 2008 dollars was $78,529, considered high for the city. The percentage of households that earned $125,000 and up was high for Los Angeles County, the average household size of 2.3 people was low when compared to the rest of the city and the county. Renters occupied 38. 4% of the stock and house- or apartment-owners held 61. 6%. The percentages of divorced residents and of widowed men and women were among the countys highest, in 2000 military veterans amounted to 10. 6% of the population, a high rate for the county. Encino is situated in the portion of the southern San Fernando Valley. It is flanked on the north by Reseda and the Sepulveda Basin, on the east by Sherman Oaks, on the southeast by Bel-Air, on the south by Brentwood, the local economy provides jobs primarily in health care, social services, and professional services sectors. There are approximately 3,800 businesses employing about 27,000 people at a payroll of $1,400,000,000. Encino is in Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors district 3 and it is also represented within the city of Los Angeles by the Encino Neighborhood Council, an advisory body under the auspices of the city Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. The United States Postal Service operates the Encino Post Office at 5805 White Oak Avenue, forty-six percent of Encino residents aged 25 and older had earned a four-year degree by 2000, a high percentage for both the city and the county. The percentage of residents with a masters degree or higher was also high for the county. Lull Special Education Center, LAUSD,17551 Miranda Street Lanai Road Elementary School, LAUSD,4241 Lanai Road As of 2009, public high schools serving portions of Encino are Birmingham High School in Lake Balboa, and Reseda High School in Reseda. In 1982 the board considered closing Rhoda Street Elementary School in Encino, in April 1983 an advisory committee of the LAUSD recommended closing eight LAUSD schools, including Rhoda Street School
3.
Country music
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Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
4.
Accordion
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Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type, colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist, the concertina and bandoneón are related, the harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family. The instrument is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing pallets to open and these vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instruments reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block. The performer normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the manual. The accordion is widely spread across the world, nevertheless, in Europe and North America, some popular music acts also make use of the instrument. Additionally, the accordion is used in cajun, zydeco, jazz music. The piano accordion is the official city instrument of San Francisco, the oldest name for this group of instruments is harmonika, from the Greek harmonikos, meaning harmonic, musical. Today, native versions of the accordion are more common. These names refer to the type of accordion patented by Cyrill Demian, accordions have many configurations and types. Similar to a bow, the production of sound in an accordion is in direct proportion to the motion of the player. The bellows is located between the right- and left-hand manuals, and is made from pleated layers of cloth and cardboard, with added leather and metal. It is used to pressure and vacuum, driving air across the internal reeds and producing sound by their vibration. These boxes house reed chambers for the right- and left-hand manuals, each side has grilles in order to facilitate the transmission of air in and out of the instrument, and to allow the sound to better project. The grille for the manual is usually larger and is often shaped for decorative purposes. The right-hand manual is used for playing the melody and the left-hand manual for playing the accompaniment. The manual mechanism of the instrument either enables the air flow, or disables it, the different types have varying components. All instruments have reed ranks of some format, the most typical accordion is the piano accordion, which is used for many musical genres
5.
Banjo
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The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
6.
Capitol Records
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Capitol Records, LLC is an American record label which operates as a division of the Capitol Music Group. The label was founded as the first West Coast-based record label in the United States in 1942 by three industry insiders named Johnny Mercer, Buddy DeSylva and Glenn Wallichs, in 1955, the label was acquired by the British music conglomerate EMI as its North American subsidiary. EMI was later acquired by Universal Music Group in 2012 and was merged with the company in 2013, making Capitol Records, Capitol Records circular headquarter building located in Los Angeles is a recognized landmark of California. Mercer first raised the idea of starting a company while golfing with Harold Arlen. By 1941, Mercer was a songwriter and a singer with multiple successful releases. Mercer next suggested the idea to Wallichs while visiting his record store, Wallichs expressed interest in the idea and the pair negotiated an agreement whereby Mercer would run the company and identify their artists, while Wallichs managed the business side. On February 2,1942, Mercer and Wallichs met with DeSylva at a Hollywood restaurant to inquire about the possibility of investment of the company from Paramount Pictures, while DeSylva declined the proposal, he handed the pair a check worth $15,000. On March 27,1942, the three men incorporated as Liberty Records, in May 1942, the application was amended to change the companys name to Capitol Records. On April 6,1942, Mercer supervised Capitols first recording session where Martha Tilton recorded the song Moon Dreams, on May 5, Bobby Sherwood and his orchestra recorded two tracks in the studio. On May 21, Freddie Slack and his orchestra recorded three tracks in the studio, one with the orchestra, one with Ella Mae Morse called Cow-Cow Boogie, on June 4,1942, Capitol opened its first office in a second-floor room south of Sunset Boulevard. On that same day, Wallichs presented the companys first free record to Los Angeles disc jockey Peter Potter, on June 5,1942, Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra recorded four songs at the studio. On June 12, the recorded five more songs in the studio. On June 11, Tex Ritter recorded Jingle Jangle Jingle and Goodbye My Little Cherokee for his first Capitol recording session, and the songs formed Capitols 110th produced record. 133 - Get On Board Little Chillun - July 31,1942 - is a Freddie Slack/Ella Mae Morse/Mellowaires recording that might be the first rock n roll record and she has sometimes been called the first rock n roll singer. A good example is her 1942 recording of song which, with strong gospel, blues, boogie. Bone Walker recorded Mean Old World a pioneering example of the use of electric guitar. The earliest recording artists included co-owner Mercer, Whiteman, Tilton, Morse, Margaret Whiting, Jo Stafford, the Pied Pipers, Johnnie Johnston, Tex Ritter, Capitols first gold single was Morses Cow Cow Boogie in 1942. Capitols first album was Capitol Presents Songs By Johnny Mercer, a three 78-rpm disc set with recordings by Mercer, Stafford and the Pied Pipers, all with Westons Orchestra
7.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
8.
Western (genre)
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Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Other characters include Native Americans, bandits, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, mounted cavalry, settlers, Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a. mythic vision of the plains, specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution. The Western was the most popular Hollywood genre, from the early 20th century to the 1960s, Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Fords landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939, Westerns were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time – including High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–frontier justice–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, a showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. And like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress, similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, Westerns often stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Apart from the wilderness, it is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West, it is the place to go for music, women, gambling, drinking, brawling and shooting. The American Film Institute defines western films as those set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle, the term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World Magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th century popular Western fiction and were firmly in place before film became an art form. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds, Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era. With the advent of sound in 1927-28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and these smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream star in the wake of a decade of headlining B westerns
9.
Gene Autry
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Orvon Grover Gene Autry was an American performer who gained fame as a singing cowboy on the radio, in movies, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was also owner of a station, several radio stations in Southern California. From 1934 to 1953, Autry appeared in 93 films and 91 episodes of The Gene Autry Show television series, during the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true—and profoundly touched the lives of millions of Americans. Autry was also one of the most important figures in the history of country music and his singing cowboy movies were the first vehicle to carry country music to a national audience. The town of Gene Autry, Oklahoma was named in his honor, orvon Grover Autry was born September 29,1907 near Tioga in Grayson County in north Texas, the grandson of a Methodist preacher. His parents, Delbert Autry and Elnora Ozment, moved in the 1920s to Ravia in Johnston County in southern Oklahoma and he worked on his fathers ranch while at school. After leaving high school in 1925, Autry worked as a telegrapher for the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway and his talent at singing and playing guitar led to performing at local dances. While working as a telegrapher, Autry would sing and accompany himself on the guitar to pass the lonely hours, one night, he was encouraged to sing professionally by a customer, the famous humorist Will Rogers, who had heard Autry singing. As soon as he could collect money to travel, he went to New York and he auditioned for Victor Records, about the time it became RCA Victor. According to Nathaniel Shilkret, director of Light Music for Victor at the time, Shilkret explained to Autry that he was turned down not because of his voice, but because Victor had just made contracts with two similar singers. Autry left with a letter of introduction from Shilkret and the advice to sing on radio to gain experience, L. Watson, recorded My Dreaming of You and My Alabama. Autry signed a deal with Columbia Records in 1929. He worked in Chicago on the WLS-AM radio show National Barn Dance for four years, and with his own show, in his early recording career, Autry covered various genres, including a labor song, The Death of Mother Jones, in 1931. Autry also recorded many records in 1930 and 1931 in New York City. These were much closer in style to the Prairie Ramblers or Dick Justice and these late Prohibition-era songs deal with bootlegging, corrupt police, and women whose occupation was certainly vice. These recordings are not heard today, but are available on European import labels. His first hit was in 1932 with That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, a duet with fellow man, Jimmy Long. He wrote Here Comes Santa Claus after being the Grand Marshal of the 1946 Santa Claus Lane Parade and he heard all of the spectators watching the parade saying Here comes Santa Claus
10.
Roy Rogers
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Roy Rogers was an American singer and actor who was one of the most popular Western stars of his era. Known as the King of the Cowboys, he appeared in over 100 films and numerous radio, in many of his films and television episodes, he appeared with his wife, Dale Evans, his golden palomino, Trigger, and his German shepherd dog, Bullet. His show was broadcast on radio for nine years and then on television from 1951 through 1957 and his productions usually featured a sidekick, often Pat Brady, Andy Devine, or George Gabby Hayes. In his later years, Rogers lent his name to the chain of Roy Rogers Restaurants. Rogers was born Leonard Slye, the son of Mattie and Andrew Andy Slye in Cincinnati, the family lived in a tenement on 2nd Street, where Riverfront Stadium would later be constructed. In 1919 the Slye family purchased a farm in Duck Run, located near Lucasville, Ohio, about 12 miles north of Portsmouth, a notable gift was a horse on which young Len Slye learned the basics of horsemanship. Living on the farm with no radio, the made their own entertainment. On Saturday nights, they often invited neighbors over for square dances, during which Len would sing, play mandolin and he also learned to yodel during this time, and he and his mother would use different yodels to communicate with each other across distances on the farm. Len attended high school in McDermott, Ohio, but after he completed his year there his family returned to Cincinnati. Realizing that his family needed his help, Len quit school. He tried to attend school, but after being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, he quit school. They stayed for four months before returning to Ohio, soon after returning, Len had the opportunity to travel again to California with Marys father-in-law, and the rest of the family followed in the spring of 1930. The Slye family rented a house near Mary, and Len. In the spring of 1931, after the company went bankrupt, Len traveled to Tulare, California. During this time he lived in a camp similar to the ones depicted in John Steinbecks novel The Grapes of Wrath. The economic hardship of the Great Depression was just as severe in California as it was in Ohio, after 19-year-old Len Slyes second arrival in Lawndale, his sister Mary suggested that he audition for the Midnight Frolic radio program, which was broadcast over KMCS in Inglewood. A few nights later, wearing a Western shirt that Mary had made for him, he overcame his shyness and appeared on the program playing guitar, singing, a few days later, he was asked to join a local country music group, the Rocky Mountaineers. He accepted the offer and became a member in August 1931
11.
B movies (Hollywood Golden Age)
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The B movie, whose roots trace to the silent film era, was a significant contributor to Hollywoods Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. As the Hollywood studios made the transition to film in the late 1920s, many independent exhibitors began adopting a new programming format. The popularity of the bill required the production of relatively short. The double feature was the predominant presentation model at American theaters throughout the Golden Age and it is not clear that the term B movie was in general use before the 1930s, in terms of studio production, however, a similar concept was already well established. The following year, the Butterfly line, a grade between Red Feather and Bluebird, was introduced, during those two years, about half of Universals output was in the Red Feather and Butterfly categories. While the down-market branding was soon eliminated, Universal continued to focus on low and modestly budgeted productions. By 1927–28, at the end of the silent era, the production cost of a feature from Hollywoods major film studios had soared. These averages, again, reflected specials and superspecials that might cost as much as $1 million and those studios could then parcel out second-rate product along with A-class features and star vehicles, which made both production and distribution operations more economical. A new programming scheme developed that would become standard practice, a newsreel, a short and/or a serial. The second feature, which screened before the main event. The majors comprehensive booking policy, which would become known as the run-zone-clearance system, the clearance policy prevented independent exhibitors timely access to top-quality films as a matter of course, the second feature allowed them to promote quantity instead. As the president of one Poverty Row company would put it. Some people like bread, and even a number of people like stale bread rather than fresh bread. The low-budget picture of the 1920s naturally transformed into the second feature, the major companies upon which the Hollywood studio system was built had been resistant to the B-movie trend, but they soon adapted. All ultimately established B units to provide films for the expanding second-feature market, block booking increasingly became standard practice, in order to get access to a studios attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the companys entire output for a season. With the B films rented at a fee, rates could be set that essentially guaranteed the profitability of every B movie. They also distributed totally independent productions and imported films and they had few or no theaters, but they did have major-league-level distribution exchanges. There were fewer than 500 of these downtown movie palaces, in 1934,77 percent of them were under the control of one or the other of the leading studios, the Big Five
12.
Petticoat Junction
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Petticoat Junction is an American situation comedy that originally aired on CBS from September 1963 to April 1970. The series takes place at the Shady Rest Hotel, which is run by Kate Bradley, her Uncle Joe Carson, the series is one of three interrelated shows about rural characters produced by Paul Henning. Petticoat Junction was created upon the success of Hennings previous rural/urban-themed sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, the success of Petticoat Junction led to a spin-off, Green Acres. Petticoat Junction was produced by Wayfilms, the show follows the goings-on at the rural Shady Rest Hotel. Widow Kate Bradley is the proprietor, Uncle Joe frequently comes up with half-baked get-rich-quick schemes and ill-conceived hotel promotions. Much of the show focuses on the Hooterville Cannonball, an 1890s steam-driven train run more like a taxi service by engineer Charley Pratt. It was not uncommon for the Cannonball to make a stop for passengers to go fishing, or to pick fruit for Kate Bradleys apple butter. The Hooterville spur line had been cut off from the rest of the railroad 20 years before the start of the show by the failure of a trestle, charlie and Floyd are retired employees of the railroad receiving pensions. Many plots involve railroad executive Homer Bedloes futile attempts to shut down, occasionally, youngest daughter Betty Jo can be found with her hand on the Cannonballs throttle, as running the train is one of her favorite pastimes. The series pilot introduced a feminist element whereby Betty Jo turned out to be skilled at driving the train, train engineer was traditionally a mans job, & F. W. Railroads headquarters are shocked when they learn of this. Trips on the Cannonball usually include a stop in Hooterville at Druckers Store, Druckers is the local hub, where menfolk come to play checkers and chat. Sam Drucker is the postmaster, and his telephone is a lifeline for the Bradleys, Uncle Joe, the Shady Rest Hotel is located at a water stop along an isolated branch line of the C. & F. W. Railroad, halfway between the farm community of Hooterville and the small town of Pixley, each about 25 miles away. Kate Bradley says her grandfather built the hotel there because that was where the fell off the train. The town of Pixley, at one end of the Cannonballs route, was named for Pixley, a number of location shots were filmed in the real Pixley. The exact location of Hooterville is never mentioned on Petticoat Junction or Green Acres and it is likely in the Ozark Mountains, one of the proposed titles for the show was Ozark Widow. The Shady Rest is an hotel, accessible only by train. Kate Bradley cooks sumptuous meals on a stove, and her specialty is chicken n dumplings
