One. The Invention of the Phonograph

1 John Cain, Talking Machines (London: Methuen, 1961), p.14.

2 Count du Moncel, The Telephone, the Microphone and the Phonograph (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1879), p.235.

3 Cain, pp.15-16.

4 The French text of the document by Cros is to be found in Charles Cros, Oeuvres Complets (Paris: J-J. Pauvert, 1964), pp.523-524. See also the commentary on pp.626-627. A translation of the Cros document is included as a long footnote in the Count du Moncel’s book see n.2 above), p.236. For a fuller account of Cros and the Paléophone, see Louis Forestier, Charles Cros: L’homme et l’oeuvre (Paris: Lettres Modernes, Minard, 1969), pp.155-165.

5 V. K. Chew, Talking Machines 1877-1914 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1967), p.5.

6 Frank Lewis Dyer, Thomas Commerford Martin, and William Henry Meadowcroft, Edison: His Life and Inventions, 2 vols. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1929), vol. 1, pp.207-208.

7 Chew, p.2. The writer provides a sketch of the proposed telephone repeater.

8 Ibid., p.3.

9 Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), p.2. (Hereinafter referred to as Hendricks, Myth.)

10 André Bazin, “The Myth of Total Cinema,” in What is Cinema? (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), p.21.

11 Nature, January 24, 1878, p.242.

12 Martin Quigley, Jr., Magic Shadows (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1948), pp.140-141.

13 Chew, pp.10-12.

14 See Dyer, et al., vol.II, pp.992-994, for a detailed list of patents for this period of Edison’s career.

15 See Chew, pp.14-24; and C. A. Schicke, Revolution in Sound (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp.16-38.

16 W. K. L. Dickson, “A Brief History of the Kinetograph, the Kinetoscope and the Kineto-phonograph,” originally published in Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Televsion Engineers, December 1933; reprinted in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp.9-10. (Hereinafter referred to as Dickson, “Brief History.” Page references are to the 1967 reprint.)

17 W. K. L. and Antonia Dickson, History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph (New York: Albert Bunn, 1895). The edition used here is the facsimile reprint by Arno Press and the New York Times, 1970, in which Edison’s letter appears on p.[4.]. (Hereinafter referred to as Dicksons, Kinetograph.)

18 Hendricks, Myth, p.10.

19 Quoted, ibid., p.12. See also the reprint, Eadweard Muybridge, Animals in Motion, edited by Lewis S. Brown (New York: Dover Books, 1970, p.16).

20 Hendricks, Myth, p.12.

21 Ibid., p.11.

22 Gordon Hendricks, The Kinetoscope (New York: The Beginnings of the American Film, 1966), p.118.

23 D. B. Thomas, The Origins of the Motion Picture (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), p.17.

24 Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, reprint ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), p.36.

25 See Muybridge, Animals in Motion.

26 Both were optical devices utilizing the principle of persistence of vision. The Zoetrope was a rotating drum lined with pictures showing separate phases of an action or movement; the pictures were viewed through vertical slits along the side of drum. The Zoöpraxiscope, invented by Muybridge, was a more complex device for projecting successive photographs so that they could be viewed by an audience. Illustrations of both devices may be seen in C. W. Ceram, Archaeology of the Cinema (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., n.d.).

27 Dicksons, Kinetograph, p.6.

28 Quigley, p.134.

29 Dickson, “Brief History,” p.13. See also Dicksons, Kinetograph, p.19.

30 Hendricks, Myth, p.8on.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid, p.8o.

33 Ibid, p.81.

34 Raymond Spottiswoode, ed., The Focal Encylopedia of Film and Television Techniques (New York: Hastings House, 1969), p.318.

35 Hendricks, Myth, p.163.

36 Ibid., p.141.

37 See Science, July 1893; Hendricks, Myth, chap. 15; and Hendricks, The Kinetoscope, p.41.

38 Hendricks, The Kinetoscope, p.41.

39 Ibid., P.37.

40 Ibid., p.23.

41 See Electrical World, June 16, 1894, pp.799-801.

42 Ibid., p.125.

43 Quigtey, p.144.

44 G. Demeny, “Les Photographies Parlantes,” La Nature (Paris), pt.1, pp.311-315. See also Kenneth Macgowan, Behind the Screen (New York: Delacorte Press, 1965), p.276.

45 Quigley, p.146.

46 Ray Allister, Friese-Greene: Close-Up of an Inventor (London: Marsland Publications, 1948), p.53.

47 Ibid., PP.54-55.

48 Ramsaye, p.95.

49 Ibid., pp.98-99.

50 On the Lumière program, see Georges Sadoul, Louis Lumière, Cinéma d’Aujourd’hui series, no.29 (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1964).

51 Quigley, p.58.

Two. The Application of the Phonograph

1 See George Donald Pasquella, “An Investigation in the Use of Sound in American Motion Picture Exhibition, 1908-1919” (dissertation, University of Iowa, 1968), p.59.

2 Much valuable information on the creation and use of sound effects during the so-called silent period is contained in chap. IV, ibid., to which the foregoing paragraph is indebted.

3 H. F. Hoffman, “Drums and Taps,” Moving Picture World, July 23, 1910, p.185.

4 “Sound Effects: Good, Bad and Indifferent,” Moving Picture World, October 2, 1909, p.441.

5 W. Stephen Bush, “When Effects are Unnecessary Noises,” Moving Picture World, September 9, 1911, p.690.

6 Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, reprint ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), pp.75, 312-14.

7 Moving Picture World, October 2, 1909, p.441.

8 Clyde Martin, “Working the Sound Effects,” Moving Picture World, September 23, 1911, p.873.

9 According to Roger Manvell and John Huntley, The Technique of Film Music (London and New York: Focal Press, 1957), p.17.

10 George W. Beynon, Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures (New York and Boston: G. Schirmer, 1921), pp.5-6.

11 Ibid., pp.4-5.

12 Moving Picture World, July 23, 1910, p.184.

13 Pasquella, p.25.

14 Ibid., p.11.

15 Beynon, p.6. See further: John W. Landon, “Long Live the Mighty Wurlitzer,” Journal of Popular Film II, no.1 (Winter 1973), pp.3-13; Reginald Foort, The Cinema Organ, 2d ed. (New York: The Vestal Press, 1970).

16 Pasquella, p.16.

17 Good examples of cue sheets are to be found in Charles Hofmann’s Sounds for Silents (New York: DBS Publications, 1970) and in Manvell and Huntley. Max Winkler claims to have invented the cue sheets: see James L. Limbacher, Film Music from Violins to Video (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), pp.15-24.

18 Pasquella, p.11.

19 The Birth of a Nation score is analyzed and discussed at length in Seymour Stern, “Griffith:I The Birth of a Nation,” Film Culture (special Griffith issue), Spring-Summer, 1965, pp.114-132. A. Nicolas Vardac, Stage to Screen (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), p.209, reprints the titles of the pastiche selection for Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia (1913) and the specific cues.

20 Manvell and Huntley, pp.17-18.

21 Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie, The Japanese Film (New York: Grove Press, 1959), pp.24-25.

22 W. Stephen Bush, “The Added Attraction: Article 11,” Moving Picture World, November 25, 1911.

23 “The Baroness Blanc Talks About Talking Pictures,” Moving Picture World, January 28, 1911, p.186.

24 Carl Herbert, “The Truth About Talking Pictures,” Moving Picture World, March 20, 1909, p.327.

25 Pasquella, pp.58-59. A picture of a theater advertising Humanuva Talking Pictures (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Talking Pictures”) appears in Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seats (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), p.243.

26 On these three methods see further David Sherill Hulfish, Motion Picture Work (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1915), pt.I, pp.245-255.

27 Times (London), May 11, 1912.

28 See further, Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1912), p.186.

29 See Film Daily, February 24 through July 26, 1929.

30 The accounts of the French inventors and their work are based mainly on information in G.-Michael Coissac, Histoire du Cinématographe (Paris: Editions du ‘Cinéopse,’ 1925), pp.328-337; Georges Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma (Paris: Editions Denöel, 1948), II, pp.100-118; Rene Jeanne and Charles Ford, Histoire Encyclopédique du Cinéma (Paris: R. Laffont, 1958), IV, pp.13-23; and Jacques Deslandes and Jacques Richard, Histoire Comparée du Cinéma (Paris, Tournai: Casterman, 1968), II, pp.59-79.

31 Coissac, p.328.

32 See Sadoul, p.485.

33 Ibid., p.266.

34 Jeanne and Ford, p.15.

35 Ibid., p.16.

36 Quoted by Sadoul, p.112.

37 Le Figaro, Paris, September 9, 1900.

38 Quoted by Deslandes and Richard, p.69.

39 Quoted by Sadoul, p.114.

40 Ibid., p.114. On the recovery of the films and cylinders, see also H. Cossira, “La Resurrection des Premiers Films Parlants de 1900,” L’Illustration, Paris, April 1, 1933, p.395.

41 Quoted in Marcel Lapierre, ed., Anthologie du Cinéma (Paris: Bibliothèque du Cinéma, 1946), p.217.

42 Talbot, pp.184-185.

43 See further, Moving Picture World, March 28, 1908, p.263; Scientific American, June 14, 1913, P.539.

44 Times (London), May 11, 1912; Scientific American, June 14, 1913, P.539.

45 Times (London), June 24, 1922.

46 Quoted in Lapierre, p.218.

47 On early sound films in Germany, see in addition to Messter’s book, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, The German Cinema (New York: Praeger, 1971), pp.1-7 (from which much of my factual material on German sound-on-disk is derived); and Rudolf Oertel, Filmspiegel: Ein Brevier aus der Welt des Films (Vienna: W. Frick, 1943), pp.169-195.

48 Jeanne and Ford, pp.20-21.

49 Ray Allister, Friese-Greene: Close-Up of an Inventor (London: Marsland Publications, 1948), p.53.

50 Ibid., pp.53-54.

51 Garry Alligham, The Romance of the Talkies (London: Claude Stacey, 1929), p.14.

52 Rachel Low, The History of the British Film 1906-1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949), p.265.

53 Alligham, p.15.

54 See Low, pp.265-266 for more details.

55 Ibid., p.266.

56 Times (London), February 9, 1920.

57 Moving Picture World, April 25, 1908, pp.369-370.

58 See further, ibid., January 16, 1909.

59 On Valiquet’s Photophone, see Scientific American, April 25, 1908, p.292; on Greenbaum’s Synchroscope, see John Drinkwater, The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle (New York: G. p.Putnam’s Sons, 1931), pp.166-167; on the Vitagraph device, see announcement in Moving Picture World, December 19, 1908, p.498; on Cinephone in the U. S., see ibid., March 13, 1909, p.299; on Orlando Kellum’s Talking Picture Company, see Albert Marples, “Combining the Phonograph and the Camera,” Scientific American, September 17, 1914, p.208; and Louis J. Stellman, “He Makes the Movies Talk,” Sunset Magazine, August 1925, p.52. On talking and singing pictures generally in the U. S. c. 1913-14, see Robert Grau, Theatre of Science (New York and London: Broadway Publishing Co., 1914), pp.348-357.

60 Robert Grau, “The ‘Talking’ Picture and the Drama,” Scientific American, August 12, 1911, p.155.

61 Isaac F. Marcosson, “The Coming of the Talking Picture,” Munsey’s Magazine, March 1913, pp.957-958.

62 Eddie O’Connor, “When the Movies Married the Phonograph,” Equity, May 1929, p.30.

63 Ibid., p.15.

64 Ibid., p.16.

65 Marcosson, pp.959-960. On Edison and the 1913 Kinetophone, see also Robert Grau, “Talking Pictures a Reality,” Lippincott’s Magazine, August 1913, pp.191-194; “Moving and Talking Pictures,” Scientific American, January 18, 1913, pp.64, 78.

66 Iris Barry, D. W. Griffith: American Film Master (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965), pp.67, 81. See also the Times (London), March 4, 1920, for a note on a 1920 American “talkie” starring Sir Harry Lauder.

67 Times (London), June 6, 1921.

Three: Sound-on-Film: Fritts to De Forest

1 Moving Picture World, March 26, 1927, pp.343-345.

2 Film Daily, August 28, 1929.

3 See further the Times (London), October 13, 1923.

4 Earl Thiesen, “The History of Sound Pictures,” International Photographer, April 1933, p.2.

5 See further “Films that Talk,” Literary Digest, December 3, 1921, pp.20-21; A. O. Rankine, “Speaking Films,” Nature, October 27, 1921, p.276.

6 Moving Picture World, March 26, 1927, pp.343-345; Garry Alligham, The Romance of the Talkies (London: Claude Stacey, 1929), p.13.

7 Ernst Rühmer, Wireless Telephony in Theory and Practice (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1908), pp.20, 31.

8 See Merritt Crawford, “Eugene Augustin Lauste, Father of the Sound Film—A Recognition,” International Photographer Bulletin, August 1929, pp.3, 13, 18; also the same author’s “Pioneer Experiments of Eugene Lauste in Recording Sound,” in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp.71-75.

9 On Ries see Lee De Forest, “Pioneering in Talking Pictures,” American Cinematographer, April 1941, pp.164, 201-202.

10 Kinematograph Year Book (London, 1915), p.37, as quoted by Rachel Low, The History of the British Film 1906-1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949), p.267.

11 Scientific American, January 1923, p.19.

12 Main sources of information on Tykociner are John B. McCullough, “Joseph T. Tykociner: Pioneer in Sound Recording” and Joseph E. Aiken, “Technical Notes and Reminiscences on the Presentation of Tykociner’s Sound Picture Contributions,” both in Fielding; and R. A. Kingery, R. D. Berg, and E. H. Schillinger, Men and Ideas in Engineering (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967). Tykociner’s date of birth is given as 1867 in Kingery et al. and 1877 in McCullough.

13 Kingery et al., p.23.

14 Ibid., p.24.

15 Ibid., p.26.

16 Joseph E. Aiken, in Fielding, p.222.

17 Ibid.

18 Kingery et al., pp.19-20.

19 Ibid., p.21.

20 Quoted, ibid., p.30.

21 “Mr. Hoxie’s Talking Film,” Literary Digest, December 9, 1927, p.26; “Pictures that Talk,” Scientific American, January 1923, pp.19, 71.

22 Fielding, p.183.

23 Times (London), September 28, 1921.

24 Ibid., February 19, 1921 and September 28, 1921.

25 Facts on Tri-Ergon derived from René Jeanne and Charles Ford, Histoire Encyclopédique du Cinéma (Paris: R. Laffont, 1958), IV, p.21.

26 The Fox story is told in elaborate detail up to 1932 in Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox (Los Angeles: Sinclair Press, 1933); stor y is completed in less detail in Glendon Allvine, The Greatest Fox of Them All (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1969).

27 Lee De Forest, Father qf Radio: The Autobiography of Lee De Forest (Chicago: Wilcox and Follett, 1950), p.359.

28 Quoted in “Dr. De Forest’s Talking Film,” Literary Digest, September 16, 1922, pp.28-29.

29 The account here is based on the more detailed description in Lee De Forest, “When Light Speaks,” Scientific American, August 1923, P.94.

30 Maurice H. Zouary, “The New History of Motion Picture Sound, Part II,” I. A. T. S. E. Official Bulletin, Summer 1970, p.27.

31 Father of Radio, p.361.

32 Ibid., pp.365-366.

33 Quoted in Georgette Carneal, A Conqueror of Space: An Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee De Forest (New York: Horace Liveright, 1930), pp.283, 284.

34 Quoted, ibid., p.283.

35 See further, Father of Radio, p.370.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., p.371.

38 Carneal, p.285.

39 Spectator (London), June 7, 1924, p.915.

40 Times (London), November 29, 1924.

41 Father of Radio, p.387.

42 Lee De Forest, “Pioneering in Talking Pictures,” American Cinematographer, April 1941, p.201.

43 Ibid.

44 Father of Radio, pp.388-389.

45 Carneal, p.286.

46 As in his American Cinematographer article, see n.42.

47 Father of Radio, p.389.

48 Ibid., p.388.

49 De Forest, “Pioneering in Talking Pictures,” p.201.

50 Zouary, p.27.

51 E. S. Gregg, Shadow of Sound (New York: Vantage Press, 1968), p.14.

52 See Fielding, p.78.

53 Carneal, p.288.

54 Ibid., pp.288-289.

Four: The Voice of Vitaphone

1 Edward W. Kellogg, “History of Sound Motion Pictures,” in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), p.179.

2 Ibid., p.180.

3 “Development of Talking Films,” Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures, 1927 (New York, 1928), p.184.

4 Fitzhugh Green, The Film Finds Its Tongue (New York and London: G. p.Putnam’s Sons, 1929), p.163.

5 “Development of Talking Films,” p.184.

6 E. S. Gregg, Shadow of Sound (New York: Vantage Press, 1968), p.14.

7 Jack L. Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 1965), p.166.

8 Gregg, p.15.

9 Ibid., p.46.

10 Warner, p.167.

11 Green, p.49.

12 Joseph p.Kennedy, The Story of the Films (Chicago and New York: A. W. Shaw Co., 1927), p.319.

13 Green, p.50.

14 Ibid., p.53.

15 Frederick Thrasher, Okay for Sound (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), p.46.

16 Ibid., pp.68-69.

17 Ibid., p.69. See also still from the film, p.69.

18 Kennedy, p.319.

19 Thrasher, p.46.

20 Green, p.158.

21 Ibid., pp.166-167.

22 Ibid., pp.166-167. Green does not discuss methods for dealing with undesired sound effects created by actors’ costumes—the rustle of silk, the slither of satin, the click-click of necklaces, the squeak of shoes—which were often amplified and distorted in early sound recording systems. For a discussion of how H. M. K. Smith, costume director of Paramount-Famous-Lasky, dealt with this problem at his studio during 1928, see New York Times, September 9, 1928, IX, p.5. Smith observed, “The scenario of the future will contain a carefully prepared sound score in which the sound made by garments and jewels will have a definite place.” The clothes and jewels problem is amusingly satirized in the film Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

23 B. Brown, Talking Pictures (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1933), p.46.

24 Harold B. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929), pp.45-46.

25 Quoted by Colby Harriman in “The Vitaphone as a Presentation Feature,” Moving Picture World, August 28, 1926, p.555.

26 Moving Picture World, August 14, 1926, p.1.

27 Ibid.

28 Kennedy, p.323.

29 Ibid., p.330-331.

30 Kinematograph Weekly (London), July 15, 1926, p.32.

31 Will H. Hays, See and Hear (New York: Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, 1929), pp.48-49.

32 Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Jr., Show Biz from Vaude to Video (New York: Henry Holt, 1951), p.265.

33 New York Times, August 7, 1926.

34 Moving Picture World, August 14, 1926, p.7.

35 Paul Rotha and Richard Griffith, The Film Till Now (London: Spring Books, 1967), p.429.

36 “The Vitaphone: An Appraisal,” Moving Picture World, August 14, 1926, p.7.

37 Kennedy, p.332.

38 Moving Picture World, August 14, 1926, p.7.

39 New York Times, August 7, 1926.

40 Moving Picture World, August 14, 1926, p.7.

41 James Agate, the eminent theater critic of the London Times did not see the Martinelli film until October 1928, but he immediately reacted to it as a development of great significance:

This seems to me to solve the difficulties of opera in this country [England]. There is no reason why Middlesbrough, Peebles and Rochdale should not, if they want them, have their performances of The Ring. Visually operas performed in this way will be very nearly as good as, and sometimes better than, the real thing. The last time I heard Salome at Covent Garden I paid eighteen shillings for a seat in the gallery from which I could not see one-fourth of the stage, whereas at the Piccadilly Theatre I saw the whole of Signor Martinelli. Here let me suggest that the performance on the Vitaphone was better than any flesh-and-blood performance which any small town is ever likely to get—if indeed it gets any operatic performance at all. Here also is the place to say that as accompaniment to the silent picture the Vitaphone, while immeasurably inferior to orchestras such as those at the Tivoli, the Marble Arch Pavilion, and the best provincial houses, is certainly a great deal better than the small, inefficient, picture-palace band. [James Agate, Around Cinemas (London: Home and Van Thai, 1946), p.27.]

42 Both scores have been recorded: Lavagnino’s on United Artists disk UAL 4031; Previn’s on MGM disk S 3993. A few bars of the Don Juan theme music are recorded as the opening selection on side one of Fifty Years of Film (Warner Bros. Record 3XX 2737.).

43 The “love” theme was turned into a song entitled “Don Juan,” which was published as part of the promotional campaign for the film. The sheet music indicates that the lyrics were by Harry Lee and the music by William Axt. It also states that the song was originally sung by Anna Case and was the “theme song” of the Warner Bros. film. However, there is no evidence that Anna Case (or anyone else) sang it in the program or in a live performance at the premiere—let alone in Don Juan itself. The lyrics are hardly relevant to the story of Juan and Adriana:

Don Juan—when the vows are all broken

Will you leave no token

Of the love that is flame now?

Don Juan—when the flames are but embers

In the dark love remembers—

Love remembers but you. . . .

44 New York Times, November 13, 1923.

Five. “You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet!”

1 Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Jr., Show Biz from Vaude to Video (New York: Henry Holt, 1951), p.265.

2 New York Times, October 8, 1926.

3 Moving Picture World, November 29, 1926.

4 New York Times, October 8, 1926.

5 Ibid.

6 Moving Picture World, October 9, 1926.

7 New York Times, February 4, 1927.

8 Ibid.

9 Fitzhugh Green, The Film Finds Its Tongue (New York and London: G. p.Putnam’s Sons, 1929), pp.79-81.

10 Moving Picture World, February 19, 1927.

11 Ibid., January 8, 1927.

12 Quoted in Joseph p.Kennedy, The Story of the Films (Chicago and New York: A. W. Shaw Co., 1927), p.333.

13 Moving Picture World, January 8, 1927.

14 Green, p.78.

15 Rachel Low, The History of the British Film 1918-1929 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p.202.

16 Moving Picture World, January 29, 1927.

17 Ibid., March 12, 1927.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., December 24, 1927.

20 Ibid., March 26, 1927.

21 Gertrude Jobes, Motion Picture Empire (Hamden Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), p.263.

22 Moving Picture World, May 21, 1927.

23 Green, p.215.

24 Ibid., p.186.

25 Moving Picture World, June 4, 1927.

26 Green, p.186.

27 Ibid., p.187.

28 Moving Picture World, June 4, 1927.

29 Green, p.189.

30 Moving Picture World, October 8, 1927.

31 New York Times, June 22, 1927.

32 Green, pp.195-198.

33 Frederick Thrasher, Okay for Sound (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), p.69.

34 Alexander Walker, Stardom (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), p.220.

35 Ibid.

36 See further, Michael Freedland, Jolson (New York: Stein and Day, 1972), p.72; Dave Jay, Jolsonography (Washington, D. C.: Big Time Press, n.d.), passim.

37 D. W. Griffith, “The Movies 100 Years from Now,” reprinted in Harry M. Geduld, Film Makers on Film Making (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967).

38 Moving Picture World, June 4, 1927.

39 Pearl Sieben, The Immortal Jolson (New York: Frederick Fell, 1962), p.118.

40 Walker, pp.20-21.

41 Freedland, pp.114-115.

42 Leo Guild, Zanuck: Hollywood’s Last Tycoon (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1970), pp.40-41.

43 Quoted in Hal C. Herman, How I Broke into the Movies (Hollywood, Cal.: privately published, 1930).

44 Moving Picture World, May 28, 1927.

45 Ibid., August 20, 1927.

46 Green, pp.206-207.

47 Moving Picture World, October 1, 1927.

48 The first disk to be released was a recording of the song “Mother O’Mine” (Brunswick 3719), which went on sale concurrently with the film’s premiere. The next phonograph recordings, “My Mammy” (Brunswick 3912) and “Dirty Hands, Dirty Face” (Brunswick 3790), were not released until the fall of 1928.

49 Harry Jolson and Alban Emley, Mistah Jolson (Hollywood, Cal.: House-Warven, 1951), p.180.

50 The essay is included in Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (New York: Harper and Row, 1929).

51 Walker, pp.221-222.

52 Robert E. Sherwood, in The Silent Drama, October 27, 1927, p.24.

53 Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York: Teachers College Press, 1967), p.298.

54 Paul Rotha and Richard Griffith, Film Till Now (London: Spring Books, 1967), p.429.

55 David Robinson, The History of World Cinema (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), p.163.

56 Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies (Indianapolis: Pegasus, 1971), p.229.

57 Sherwood, p.24.

58 See, for example, the copy of the screenplay in the archives of the British Film Institute. None of the other copies examined showed additional directions for the use of Vitaphone.

59 Alexander Walker, after noting James Agate’s contemporary impression of Eugenie Besserer’s mumbling as an illusion that was “perfect and unmannered,” comments:

Eugenie Besserer was simply poorly recorded and her few, probably improvised interpolations into the middle of Al’s spiel would in any case lack the sock-it-over impact of the vaudeville man’s technique. But the effect she makes is indisputably more naturalistic; and this was the hardest lesson that the silent stars had to master when they took to sound. So long as the voice took priority in a performance, the naturalness of the acting was bound to suffer. [ Stardom, p.223.]

The present writer does not find Eugenie Besserer “indisputably more naturalistic” than Jolson. It is the latter who seems naturalistic; Besserer comes across as bewildered—even embarrassed—at finding herself little more than a puppet in a scene in which Jolson is perfectly at ease because he is, in effect, creating it in spite of her.

60 Walker, p.221.

61 New York Herald Tribune, October 7, 1927.

62 Moving Picture World, October 22, 1927.

63 Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1933 (italics mine, H. M. G.).

64 Today’s Cinema, January 24, 1935.

65 By ironic coincidence, William Demarest, who appeared in a very minor role in The Jazz Singer, was given one of the more important roles in The Jolson Story—that of Steve Martin, the vaudevillian who first “discovers” the boy Jolson and later becomes his business manager.

66 Green and Laurie, p.263.

67 New York Times, January 14, 1953.

Six: Lights of New York and Sounds of Hollywood

1 The statistics are from E. I. Sponable, “Historical Development of Sound Films,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, April 1947, pp.275-303; May 1947, pp.407-422.

2 Fitzhugh Green, The Film Finds Its Tongue (New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1929), pp.189, 199, 213-214.

3 New York Times, March 15, 1927.

4 Green, p.214.

5 New York Times, April 27, 1928.

6 William C. DeMille, Hollywood Saga (New York: E. p.Dutton, 1939), pp.268-270.

7 New York Times, June 16, 1928.

8 Mel Gussow, Don’t Say Yes until I Finish Talking (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), p.42.

9 Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), p.435. Jacobs continues: “The pacing of the scenes also was unduly slow because of the adjustment that had to be made in the speed of the camera. . . .” See further pp.435-436.

10 Clara Bow, the phenomenally popular “It” girl, was among the silent screen stars who felt seriously constrained by the new impositions of the sound studio. Adolph Zukor notes that “the unrestrained vitality which had been her greatest asset now was a curious handicap. . . . Clara was too restless. She would be all over the set, and then, realizing that the microphone was not picking up her voice, would sometimes stand and curse it.” Adolph Zukor, The Public Is Never Wrong (New York: G. p.Putnam’s Sons, 1953), p.255.

11 As Darryl F. Zanuck was later to recall, “Microphones had to be hidden. Every telephone had a microphone in it. We hid them in the chandeliers. We would hang microphones on the wall, the same color as the wall. The cameramen went out of their minds trying to keep the microphones out of the picture.” Quoted in Gussow, pp.41-42.

12 New York Times, July 9, 1928.

13 Exhibitors’ Herald and Moving Picture World, July 21, 1928, p.22.

14 Ibid., July 14, 1928, p.14.

15 Ibid., July 14, 1928, p.19.

16 New York Times, July 9, 1928.

17 Stephen Louis Karpf, The Gangster Film (New York: Arno Press, 1973), pp.39-40.

18 New York Times, August 16, 1928.

19 Ibid.

20 Rachel Low, The History of the British Film 1918-1929 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p.203.

21 New York Times, September 20, 1928.

22 Ibid.

23 Harry Jolson and Alban Emley, Mistah Jolson (Hollywood, Cal.: House-Warven, 1951), pp.180-181.

24 Harrison’s Reports (New York) X, no.3, October 27, 1928.

25 New York Times, December 3, 1928.

26 Charles Higham, Ziegfeld (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1972), pp.144-145.

27 Gertrude Jobes, Motion Picture Empire (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), p.275.

28 See further, I. Witmark and I. Goldberg, From Ragtime to Swingtime (New York: Lee Furnam, Inc., 1939), p.426; and Jack Burton, The Blue Book of Hollywood Musicals (New York: Century House, 1953), p.11. On general links between Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood see Ian Whitcomb, After the Ball (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1974), pp.117-123.

29 E. S. Gregg, Shadow of Sound (New York: Vantage Press, 1968), pp.39-40.

30 Jobes, p.267.

31 Gregg, p.41.

32 New York Times. May 16, 1928.

33 Ibid., July 8, 1928, III, p.1.

34 Ibid., December 5, 1928.

35 Ibid., August 5, 1928, VII, p.4.

36 Ibid., May 5, 1928.

37 Ibid., July 29, 1928, VII, p.3.

38 Ibid., July 29, 1928, VII, p.4.

39 Ibid., August 5, 1928, VII, p.4.

40 Ibid., August 22, 1928.

41 Ibid., July 8, 1928, VIII, p.2.

42 Ibid., October 21, 1928, IX, p.6.

43 Harold B. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929), pp.47-57.

44 Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), p.184.

45 Maurice H. Zouary, I. A. T. S. E. Official Bulletin, Fall 1970, p.34.

46 Edward W. Kellogg, “The History of Sound Motion Pictures,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, July 1955.

47 Exhibitors’ Herald and Moving Picture World, July 14, 1928, p.32.

48 Ibid.

49 New York Times, May 15, 1928.

50 Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures, 1927, p.814.

51 Exhibitors’ Herald and Moving Picture World, July 14, 1928, p.32.

52 New York Times, October 4, 1928.

53 Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures, 1927 (New York, 1928), p.814.

54 Exhibitors’ Herald and Motion Picture World, December 3, 1927.

55 New York Times, April 9, 1928.

56 Ibid., February 14, 1928, p.27.

57 Colleen Moore, Silent Star (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p.186.

58 New York Times, August 6, 1928.

59 Ibid., December 27, 1928.

60 Herman G. Weinberg, The Lubitsch Touch (New York: E. p.Dutton, 1968), p.320.

61 According to Marjorie Rosen (presumably basing her claim on information received from Dorothy Arzner herself), it was Arzner who “improvised the first moving microphone by insisting that sound technicians at Paramount attach a mike to a fishing pole balanced on a ladder and thus follow Clara Bow about the sound stages in The Wild Party [1929].” M. Rosen, Popcorn Venus (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1973), p.377.

62 New York Times, November 11, 1928, X, p.6.

63 William K. Everson, The Detective in Film (Secaucus, N. J.: The Citadel Press, 1972), pp.52-53.

64 New York Times, November 17, 1928.

65 Frank Capra, The Name above the Title (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1971), p.99.

66 New York Times, August 1, 1928.

67 Iris Barry, D. W. Griffith: American Film Master (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965), p.81.

68 Christopher Finch, The Art of Walt Disney (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1973), pp.50, 53.

69 Richard Schickel, The Disney Version (New York: Avon Books, 1969), pp.96-97.

70 Ibid., p.57.

71 Quoted by Finch, p.57.

72 Ibid., p.58.

Seven. The End of the Beginning

1 Except where otherwise indicated, factual material appearing in this chapter is based on New York Times news items and feature articles published during 1929.

2 Monthly Labor Review, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 1931, p.262.

3 Ibid., November 1931, p.1017.

4 New York Times, July 28, 1929, III, p.4.

5 See further David Ewen, George Gershwin: His Journey to Greatness (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp.178-180. The Gershwin songs in Delicious were “Delishious,” “Bla-Bla-Bla,” “Somebody from Somewhere,” and “Katinkitschka.”

6 New York Times, June 9, 1929, VIII, p.6.

7 Monthly Labor Review, August 1931, p.263.

8 Dennis Sharp, The Picture Palace (New York and Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p.102.

9 See Sharp, pp.104-148, for an account of developments in movie-house design during the first years of the sound period.

10 “Talking Films no.3: Tri-Ergon Single-Unit Process,” Wireless World (London), April 10, 1929, pp 376-378.

11 According to Jay Leyda in Dianying Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), p.64n.

12 William C. DeMille, Hollywood Saga (New York: E. p.Dutton, 1939), p.287. DeMille’s book contains the best brief account of the effects of the sound revolution on Hollywood.

13 The information about the stellar upheaval is based on Arthur Knight, “All Singing! All Talking! All Laughing!” Theatre Arts, September 1949, pp.33-40; and Julian Fox, “Casualties of Sound,” Films and Filming, October 1972, pp.34-40, November 1972, pp.32-40.

14 Fox, p.40.

15 Much of the material in this paragraph is based on information in David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars—The Golden Years (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970).

16 See further: Gene Ringold, The Films of Bette Davis (New York: Citadel Press, 1971); Clifford McCarty, Bogey (New York: Cadillac Publishing Co., 1965); James Robert Parish and Alan H. Marill, The Cinema of Edward G. Robinson (South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes, 1972); Edward G. Robinson and Leonard Spigelglass, All My Yesterdays (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973); Homer Dickens, The Films of James Cagney (Secaucus, N. J.: Citadel Press, 1972); Ron Offen, Cagney (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1972).

17 “Griffith Turns Prophet,” New York Times interview, January 27,