Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2018 April 29

= April 29 =

First conductor to have women in his previously all-male orchestra?
Was it Sir Henry Wood in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913? Our article doesn't say. Ericoides (talk) 05:48, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * According to this, it was indeed Sir Henry Wood in 1913. American orchestras didn't follow suit till 1930 (Leopold Stokowski admitted a woman harpist to the Philadelphia Orchestra; ironically, it's rare to find a male harpist these days).  And famously, the Vienna Philharmonic didn't allow women members until as late as 1997 (!).  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:59, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jack! Ericoides (talk) 04:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

#ThanosDemandsYourSilence
Is Infinity War the first film in recent years to have a major campaign not for viewers to spoil the film? I'm aware of films like Psycho and The Crying Game, or the ever-controversial The Mousetrap (not a film, but still) that had similar "policies", but I don't recall any recent films having similar and prominent no-spoil campaigns, and I don't recall a no-spoil hashtag ever being done for a film before. Are there any other parallel examples to Infinity War's case? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 13:37, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There was something similar with the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play, #KeepTheSecrets-- Jac 16888 Talk 17:16, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

MGMs classification of its films as "Superspecials", "Specials", and "Programmers"
How did MGM decide which of its films to classify as "Superspecials", "Specials", and "Programmers"? Yellow Sunstreaker (talk) 18:44, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What is the basis for your premise? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:34, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The book “Hollywood hoopla: creating stars and selling movies in the golden age of Hollywood” mentions the “superspecials”, “specials”, and “programmers” categories: https://books.google.com/books?id=NfFkAAAAMAAJ&q=mgm+superspecial+specials+programmers&dq=mgm+superspecial+specials+programmers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2sbu73uPaAhWLg1QKHVxSCcIQ6AEIPTAE Yellow Sunstreaker (talk) 05:07, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles on film history are often misleading, because they do not cite more specialized print sources, and quote websites that mostly focus on modern practices. The terms are explained in "Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939" by Tino Balio. See: https://books.google.gr/books?id=_J9HTLOI08wC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq="MGM"+superspecials&source=bl&ots=6-VupI9TIS&sig=HgiZWjx9wmu8QLQ8Rzyk0yPoacE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyosnamOTaAhVIJlAKHUZcB_IQ6AEwBHoECAAQWw#v=onepage&q="MGM"%20superspecials&f=false

"Average production costs, however, do not tell the entire story, because the class-A output of the majors was actually divided into three tiers- superspecials, specials, and programmers.:
 * "Superspecials typically consisted of prestige pictures and big-budget musicals with top stars, expensive production values, and running times as long as two and a half hours. Costing $1 million and more to produce, only a handful of such pictures would be produced by a studio in any given year."
 * "Specials constituted the bulk of the class-A line. Like superspecials, they were based on presold properties and contained popular starts, but they followed the principal production trends, conformed to regular running times, and had lower production budgets."
 * "Programmers had the lowest budgets of the group. They were typically based on original stories and contained minor stars and running times as short as fifty minutes. Such films were called programmers because they could fill either the top or bottom of a bill, depending on the genre, size of theater, and audience."

Later pages emphasize that the studios of the era placed more faith in adapting well-known stories, because they already had their own audience, and in securing rights for them. The source material included novels, plays, and short stories. While films with original screenplays were considered poor investments, and typically received less funding. Dimadick (talk) 09:56, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The answer to the OP's specific question "How did MGM decide which of its films to classify as "Superspecials", "Specials", and "Programmers"?" is surely that they didn't make the films first and then decide how to classify them; they designed and budgeted the films from the outset to fall into one of these catagories. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.14.51 (talk) 05:00, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Musicals having a predominantly male audience just like they were intended to when they were invented
The Black Crook was aimed at a male audience and was the first musical. How would musicals be able to regain a predominantly male audience like they were intended? Yellow Sunstreaker (talk) 18:58, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You are making both an unsupported assertion and several logical errors. There is nothing in our article, at any rate, suggesting that The Black Crook was aimed at male audiences any more than other staged performances of the time, so you need to substantiate the allegation.
 * Secondly, the makers of The Black Crook were not consciously inventing Musical theatre; that was a later categorisation formulated by others, so there can at the time have been no such intention for a form not yet recognised.
 * Thirdly, even assuming TBC had been aimed at male audiences, that doesn't mean that other musicals were subsequently so intended. Individual staged works that may be categorised as musicals were written by many different people, frequently unconnected, not some masculinist cabal, so whose would this intention have been?
 * Fourthly, you are suggesting that the first work of any subsequently identified genre should set in stone the form of subsequent works as if, say, the fact that the (alleged) first western film depicted a train robbery and the subsequent killing of the robbers, all subsequent westerns should also depict train robberies and show retribution for the crime. Art does not work like that.
 * Finally, you are assuming that anyone but a minority of maladjusted individuals would consider such an aim in present-day society to be desirable rather than pathological. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.14.51 (talk) 20:24, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

"There is nothing in our article, at any rate, suggesting that The Black Crook was aimed at male audiences any more than other staged performances of the time"

Actually the article attributes the success of this musical to that it managed to attract a female audience, which was unusual at the time.:


 * "Theatre historian John Kenrick suggests that The Black Crook's greater success resulted from changes brought about by the Civil War: First, respectable women, having had to work during the war, no longer felt tied to their homes and could attend the theatre, although many did so heavily veiled. This substantially increased the potential audience for popular entertainment. Second, America's railroad system had improved during the war, making it feasible for large productions to tour. "

Note that this musical debuted in 1866, shortly after the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The peacetime conditions and a booming economy increased the ability of the audience to pay for its entertainment. "In the late 1860s, as post-Civil War business boomed, there was a sharp increase in the number of working- and middle-class people in New York, and these more affluent people sought entertainment. Theaters became more popular, and Niblo's Garden, which had formerly hosted opera, began to offer light comedy. The Black Crook was followed by The White Fawn (1868), Le Barbe Blue (1868) and Evangeline (1873). " Dimadick (talk) 10:30, 1 May 2018 (UTC)