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.
