[Ads-l] Jazz Girls, 1915?

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Mon Oct 26 14:19:13 UTC 2015


On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Christopher Philippo wrote:
>
> The date of its production is disputed, some theorizing it was made in
> the 1920s.  Just to throw in another wrinkle: regardless of when it was
> made, I would guess it is at least possible that the title cards are not
> the original ones.

Good point -- there's no way of knowing when the title cards were
added. In Linda Williams' 1989 book _Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and
the "Frenzy of the Visible"_, she talks about watching a print at the
Kinsey Institute that had some shots inserted from a later stag film
("The Casting Couch," 1924), so it's clearly tricky determining what's
"original" in a film like this.

https://books.google.com/books?id=OMa96WrLnhQC&pg=PA61

Williams says the Kinsey Institute dates the film to 1917-19, which
would be enough for "Jazz Girls" to make more historical sense without
even jumping to the '20s. (According to Wikipedia, the estimate of
c1923 is based on one of the girls' Mary Pickford-style hair.)

--bgz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list