Presented by Robert Gitt Of all the sobriquets given to America in the 1920s, none is more familiar than "The Jazz Age," with its artistic innovations, exuberant confidence in continued prosperity, and wondrous technological achievement. The Vitaphone, the first sound film technology to gain widespread acceptance, offered audiences the closest approximation possible to a live performance. Indeed, most of the performers featured in the shorts had already established reputations in vaudeville, music halls, or as "opening acts" preceding feature films. These shorts also became the genesis for the "band short," a genre which became a regular feature of the movie-going experience for the next thirty years.-Howard Hays, UCLA Tonight's sampling of late-twenties Vitaphone musical shorts, restored from fragile original sound disks, was made possible by a collaboration between the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Library of Congress, Turner Entertainment, and The Vitaphone Project. The Opry House (1929, the Mound City Blue Blowers led by Red McKenzie); Gus Arnheim and His Ambassador Hotel Orchestra (1927); Green's Twentieth Century Faydetts (1929, an "all-girl" orchestra); Rhythms (1929, Leo Reisman and His Hotel Brunswick Orchestra); Stoll, Flynn & Company (1928, the Jazzmania Quintette, with Edythe Flynn and Georgie Stoll); Hazel Green & Company (1927); Harlem Mania (1929, the Norman Thomas Quintette); Gus Arnheim and His Ambassadors (1928, with Russ Columbo); Tal Henry and His North Carolinians (1929); Ben Bernie and His Orchestra (1929).