The year is 1942. It is February 6, a Friday evening—the dead of winter, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean much in Southern California. The evening is warm, and a gentle breeze is blowing onshore from the Pacific Ocean.

A jukebox in a Long Beach pool hall is playing Count Basie’s “Five O’Clock Whistle,” an ode to the signal that ends the main work shift at the local defense plants. It is 5:10 PM, and a young worker has indeed just left one of those plants. He whistles a few bars of the music as he passes the poolroom, familiar with the tune since the Basie recording is a popular one.

The gentleman limps slightly as he walks, the result of a farm injury when he was young. This minor problem has led to a 4-F classification and as a result, he cannot join the armed forces. Still, he considers his work at the defense plant an equally noble contribution to the war effort. A young lady, a defense plant administrator, and the gentleman’s regular Friday evening date, is waiting for him at the restaurant when he arrives. The restaurant is a nice one. Six years ago, with the country still largely in the midst of the Depression, it would have been unthinkable for the couple to dine here. The war, however, has created many well-paying jobs, and the cost of the meal is not beyond the pair’s still-modest budget.

Several couples have had a similar idea about their Friday evening meal, and the young lady and gentleman are told that there will be a short wait before they can be seated. They join a group of young adults who are also waiting for tables, six in all, who have congregated around a rather unusual machine in the foyer of the restaurant. The device stands almost seven feet tall, four feet wide and four feet deep. It is a handsome walnut unit, with cloth-covered speakers on the lower half, and a 22” x 17” ground-glass screen positioned at eye level. Prominent above the screen is a marquee, with words that march across the top of the machine, right-to-left: See A Soundie - Stars of Radio and Motion Pictures - Eight New Features Weekly.

One of the young ladies takes a dime from her purse and inserts it into the coin slot. The marquee ceases its repeating message, the colored patterns of lights that have caressed the screen disappear, and the group hears a machine—an RCA Victor 16mm motion picture projector located in the base of the mechanism—begin to operate. Then, projected brightly on the screen, a set of curtains opens as the screen announces:

Soundies Presents

This Love of Mine

Stan Kenton and his Orchestra with Charisse and Gary Leon

For the next three minutes, the onlookers hear the music of the popular Kenton orchestra, along with vocalist Gary Leon, while the young and then-unknown Cyd Charisse dances to the music. The film ends. The projector turns itself off, the colored lights resume their attractive patterns on screen, and the marquee once again presents its scrolling information, as the machine awaits another dime.

What the young people have seen is a three-minute film called a Soundie. The machine that projected it is the marvelous Mills Panoram. Between January 1941 and March 1947, a total of 1,887 Soundies were released to the public, to be shared by entrepreneurs who had installed a Panoram machine in their restaurant, pool hall, tavern, hotel lobby, bus depots, bar, amusement arcade, military base, or recreation hall—just about any location where large numbers of people might congregate.

These three-minute films were presented forty years before MTV became an influential force shaping not only rock ‘n’ roll, but American popular culture in general. The story of these musical shorts is a fascinating one filled with remarkable coincidences and moments of re-discovery.

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By the late 1930s, the “audiovisual jukebox” appeared to be an idea whose time had come. Indeed, one had been in use at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The entertainment trade papers—Billboard, Variety, Motion Picture Daily, and others—discussed such a device with growing frequency. Billboard later reported that between 1939 and 1941 almost thirty companies announced the intention to produce either a projection machine, the films that would be screened in it, or both. Ultimately, only one company would succeed: the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago, Illinois. The Mills Panoram projection device would be on the scene for a little more than six years, and each week it would share a reel of eight musical films called Soundies.

As noted above, Panoram viewing devices were located anywhere that large numbers of people might gather or casually pass by. The machines were either purchased by the user, or leased from a Mills Novelty franchise holder. Each week, a reel of eight films would be delivered and shared with patrons for the following seven days, after which a new reel of films would replace it.

Because the same reel of film would be delivered to all locations, and because Panorams could be found nationwide, the selection of song titles and performers needed to reflect a national demographic. For example, in 1941 a large number of Irish Americans lived in Boston, and a title like When Irish Eyes Are Smiling by Morton Downey would be most welcomed. In Minneapolis, on the other hand, Friendly Tavern Polka would be a title of interest. Black jazz combos might be preferred in Harlem or on Central Avenue, and vaudeville routine with interest those in the Midwest would never have the opportunity to visit New York City. Clearly, variety was a key to each weekly release.

The need for films was immense, and over five years the Mills Novelty Company turned too close to 50 companies for their product, always flying by the seat of their pants. The story of how the films made it to the local Panoram screens will be told in our next installment.

But for now, if this has piqued your curiosity about these marvelous films, you might want to check out the author’s book on Soundies. In addition, a large number of the musical shorts can be found on his website: www.jazz-on-film.com

Got a question or comment? Drop the author a line at markcantor@aol.com

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Film archivist and historian Mark Cantor has been active as a researcher and preservationist in the area of music on film for the past fifty years. During that time, he has assembled one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of popular music on film existing worldwide. Although the collection focuses on jazz and blues performance, it also includes such related musical forms as folk, ragtime, Swing (“big band”), nightclub & cabaret, vaudeville, vernacular (jazz) dance, “ethnic,” Latin, country-western, Western Swing, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, and “pop.”

Mr. Cantor has presented film programs worldwide, including presentations in Tokyo, Rio De Janeiro, London, Paris, and Rome. In the fall of 1994, Mr. Cantor produced the first Playboy Jazz Film Festival: “From Bix to Bird,” a comprehensive retrospective of feature films, selected short subjects, and documentaries featuring jazz and blues performances.

As a well-known authority on the subject of music on film, Mr. Cantor is contacted regularly by filmmakers, television producers, newspersons and writers for information relating to jazz music and its documentation on film.

Mr. Cantor is the author of The Soundies, A History and Catalog of Jukebox Film Shorts of the 1940s. This definitive study of jukebox shorts was published in May 2023 and is available from McFarland Press, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.