Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel (1882-1936) built an influential and
prolific career as film exhibitor, stage producer, radio
broadcaster, musical arranger, theater manager, war propagandist,
and international celebrity. He helped engineer the integration of
film, music, and live performance in silent film exhibition; scored
early Fox Movietone films such as Sunrise (1927); pioneered the
convergence of film, broadcasting, and music publishing and
recording in the 1920s; and helped movies and moviegoing become the
dominant form of mass entertainment between the world wars. The
first book devoted to Rothafel's multifaceted career, American
Showman examines his role as the key purveyor of a new film
exhibition aesthetic that appropriated legitimate theater, opera,
ballet, and classical music to attract multi-class audiences. Roxy
scored motion pictures, produced enormous stage shows, managed many
of New York's most important movie houses, directed and/or edited
propaganda films for the American war effort, produced short and
feature-length films, exhibited foreign, documentary, independent,
and avant-garde motion pictures, and expanded the conception of
mainstream, commercial cinema. He was also one of the chief
creators of the radio variety program, pioneering radio
broadcasting, promotions, and tours. The producers and promoters of
distinct themes and styles, showmen like Roxy profoundly remade the
moviegoing experience, turning the deluxe motion picture theater
into a venue for exhibiting and producing live and recorded
entertainment. Roxy's interest in media convergence also reflects a
larger moment in which the entertainment industry began to create
brands and franchises, exploit them through content release
"events," and give rise to feature films, soundtracks, broadcasts,
live performances, and related consumer products. Regularly cited
as one of the twelve most important figures in the film and radio
industries, Roxy was instrumental to the development of film
exhibition and commercial broadcasting, musical accompaniment, and
a new, convergent entertainment industry.
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