The Art of American Entertainment

This insight, in turn, was itself the product of something that can be called "the art of American entertainment" -- a combination of artistry and showmanship that melded the performing arts traditions of the diverse peoples who had come to this country into a new democratic idiom that not only entertained us, but expressed our collective hopes and fears and dreams so dynamically that the entertainment arts became the single greatest instrument in enabling Americans to come together, imagine and re-imagine ourselves, and define our American Experience to the world.

So it was that spectacular Movie Palaces were built across the country in the 1920s. And the public flocked to them.

The elaborate designs of the Movie Palaces were often based on the grand opera houses and palaces of Europe. But the Movie Palaces were unabashedly American in spirit, and unlike their Old World antecedents, were not built for a privileged elite, but for everyone. The banker and the shop girl sat side by side in the Palaces and were equally entertained.

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