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ESSAYS, ARTICLES, AND THEORIES ABOUT CINEMA
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| Thursday, July 8, 2010
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DEATH BY SOUND: An Exploration of the Transition From Silent Cinema to The Talkies |
On Wednesday November 18, 2009, the Emory Cinématheque prepared to show Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941) as part of their classical film series. As the projectionist fed the film through the projector, the sound track failed to amplify through the speakers as the title-credit “CITIZEN KANE” vibrantly filled the frame. The sound continued to remain absent as one of the most famous lines in cinematic history, was mouthed without dialogue. Sheer rage was felt by every film buff in that audience. The program coordinator walked down the steps from the projection booth and announced the sound would not be working, and the screening was cancelled. The relevance of this illustration is a prime example how the problems faced with sound-cinema in 1929 are still prevalent precisely eighty years later. Due to the film’s problem with amplification, the screening of what some consider the greatest sound film ever made was cancelled. Sound, as a separate part of the film was also the very reason of its cancellation. If the film had been a silent picture, there would have been no issue, however, in such a sound-saturated culture, the inability to hear synced dialogue and music created the rage. In this essay, with the aid of scholar criticism of sound, articles expressing feelings of the time, and personal accounts by individuals, sound is split up into two parts: a capitalistic innovation used by the studios and as the guillotine for many silent stars who could not conform to the new standards.
Before one can discuss how the Talkies killed the silent picture and its stars, an understanding of sound’s introduction and incorporation must be acknowledged before discussing its ramifications. In Donald Crafton’s book The Talkies, he says, “sound divided the movies with the assuredness of biblical duality,” while establishing the barrier between Old and New Hollywood (Crafton 1). Even though sound established this barrier, there exists no single event or film that splits the chronological timeframe of the silent and sound era (Crafton 4). The innovation of sound actually came about through researching various other technological innovations such as AT&T’s telephone, General Electric’s radio, electromagnets and Lee de Forrest’s vacuum tubes: the primary key to amplifying sound throughout the largest theater (Crafton 9). There existed a mass-communications rivalry between AT&T (which owned Western Electric) and General Electric (which owned RCA).
Warner Bros. signed with Western Electric to create the Vitaphone Partnership in 1926, and releasedDon Juan (1926), the first film ever to have music and sound effects recorded (Crafton 10-11). Warner manifested Vitaphone would be the very first to present speech, singing and canned music in the motion picture (Crafton 10).
Following Warner’s footsteps, Fox Film was working on another sound-film process. Along with Paramount’s Adolph Zukor, he and William Fox convinced the major studios to boycott the Vitaphone system and pour money into the competitor, RCA’s system, while promising to license the same system (Crafton 11). Fox, with the help of RCA, created the Movietone system, then signed with Western Electric and cross-licensed specific patents he owned (Crafton 11). Movietone was publicized by its fashionable mobility and Fox boasted this by shooting films outside (Crafton 11).
The Premier of The Jazz Singer in 1927.
The all-talking feature film with the use of sound, told the same traditional Hollywood narrative, however, relied heavily on sound to literally tell the story, compared to the silent films that showed the story (Crafton 14). Studios began running screentests with added dialogue to test the actor’s vocal ability, but also began hiring Broadway directors, writers, composers and actors from the New York stage (Crafton 14). Certain figures like Joseph Kennedy went on the record and said, “the worst talking film would make more money at the box-office than the best silent film” (Crafton 303).
1929 was the year of “the glitch” including technological malfunctions with recording and amplification (Crafton 14). Also during this year was the rise of fan magazines. Readers were now critics who could favor or damn their favorite stars’ performance (Crafton 15). This brought up a difficult situation, transitioning critics to establish a proper voice for a particular face (Crafton 15). The most popular cause of bad performances was the newly introduced microphone. “Terrible Mike” as it was called in the 1929 December issue of Photoplay, enhanced some careers, but mainly broke careers and dreams. The article, written by Harry Lang says “Terrible Mike” picked up everything and amplified it for the public to hear with clarity (Lang 32). Lang specifically mentions how certain stars had accents, which constructed their character image. During the silent picture, an actor was judged by his/her image to reflect judgment on a character, but now with sound, a completely new method was introduced (Lang 32). Specific actors who portrayed and “American image,” were actually foreign with a heavy accent, and now could be exploited by speaking into “Terrible Mike” (Lang 32). Respected silent film actors like Mary Pickford, Niss Asther, Dolores Costello, and even Charlie Chaplin were discovered as foreigners merely by the accessibility of giving the spoken voice to the public (Crafton 12). Stars who had thick accents were then stereotyped into roles pertaining to their accents, which meant demoting to smaller parts for some actors (Lang 32). Some were not even that lucky. There were some stars, given their inability to comprehend the English language, who had their contracts ripped up and were deported (Crafton 460.) Despite the rigid process for stars, audiences continued making their way to the cinemas, giving 1929 one of the greatest years in Hollywood’s history (Crafton 15).
The stock market crash not only brought The Depression’s title, but also accurately described the feeling of Hollywood at the time. Since the public had no money to live on and feed their kids with, they certainly did not have money to spend on movie tickets, which led to a major drop in theater attendance (Crafton 16). With many actors now unable to acquire employment because of their voice, they now had to deal with financial troubles of the crash (Crafton 16). This led to many career downfalls, eventually to vices and even death. The stars are the first to blame when it comes to the financial success or disaster of a film. An audience can be the deciding factor of a film’s fate, and what better outlet to blame or praise than the very image the audience sees and then was suddenly able to hear. Here are four examples of stars driven to madness by the transition from silent cinema to The Talkies:
The name Karl Dane is pretty much unfamiliar to a majority of moviegoers today. He was a Danish silent film actor who started out playing bit parts in the middle teens and early twenties, until being recognized by acclaimed Hollywood director King Vidor. Dane was casted in Vidor’s The Big Parade(1925), thanks to longtime friend and casting director Robert McIntyre, who gave Dane his first acting job in 1917. The film achieved international success, and MGM signed Dane in 1926, and presented a full long-term contract a year later. On the set of one of his films, he broke his shoulder – an injury that led to a nervous breakdown and delayed productions due to hospitalization. The talkies emerged and Dane, although carrying a heavy accent, was not hopeless but handicapped in specific character roles (Balough). Having difficulties with health and struggling with the new system, eventually led to the cancellation of his MGM contract. Paramount had minor success with Dane performing in a US tour, but wound up dropping him. Left with nothing but a little hope left, Dane participated in a solo Vaudeville act at Loew’s Orpheum in Boston, an act the critics loathed. His last film appearance was in The Whispering Shadow (1933) with Bela Legosi, another star whom was also trapped by his harsh accent. After a bad spell of failing to acquire decent acting jobs, he begged for a carpentry job at MGM, but was even turned down for that position (Balough). On April 14th, 1934, Karl Dane was found dead in his apartment with a bullet in his brain (Anger 233). According to Kenneth Anger’s rumor induced exploitation, Hollywood Babylon II, Dane laid out all of his successful reviews, studio contracts and a suicide note on the ground of his apartment, then shot himself in the head, leaving his body amongst his various successes (Anger 222). Even though many have attempted to refute Anger’s exploit as “fluff” it does indeed leave a Hollywood ending for a hard-working actor, who was handicapped by the sound era.
(Listen to Karl Dane speak here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT59TiHZauY)
Jeanne Eagels also began her career early by playing bit parts and worked her way up to bigger ones. In 1918, she acted in David Belasco’s production of Daddies. She made her Broadway breakthrough with a staring role as Sadie Thompson in Rain. Having success on Broadway, then brought to Hollywood starring opposite John Gilbert in MGM’s Man, Man, Woman and Sin (1927). She acted in play calledThe Letter, and her success from this brought her the opportunity to play her character in the film-adapted version directed by Jean de Limur (Ituarte). Her performance in The Letter (1929) was highly praised by the critics, however the experience in theatre and mastering the role of Leslie Crosbie was her only strength. It was perhaps her success from The Letter on Broadway that brought most of the people to the movie theaters. Eagels was also seen around tinsel town binge drinking heavily. Most of the drinking was in result from a failed abusive marriage, trouble with the studio and the pressure from all the fame. With the success from The Letter, Paramount gave her another chance at a talkie called Jealousy (1929). It was on the set of this film, she began experiencing severe nervous breakdowns, however Paramount did their best to conceal this from the public. At this point it was obvious the previous film’s success crutched on her theatre experience and her issue with conforming from theatre stage to sound stage began to show. One night while preparing to hit the town, Eagels felt ill, so she was escorted to the hospital, where she convulsed and died (Ituarte). Since the cause of death was unclear, the police held the information from reporters. It was a young crime reporter-later turned filmmaker, Samuel Fuller, who surprisingly discovered her body first inside a coffin at the funeral parlor (Fuller 50). He recounts seeing her body:
“I couldn’t believe it was her. Yet there she was, laid out in a stunning evening gown, her bleached-blond hair perfectly done up, as if she were going out on the town. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was dead” (Fuller 50).
Upon receiving a tip from the chief coroner, he came to find that the actual announcement of her death would be delayed to find the exact cause of death — a plan Fuller suspected was being devised by the Studios and the authorities to cover up an overdose. The final cause of death was announced as “Intoxication of Alcohol, Deterioration of Organs” (Fuller 50). Even though words like “drugs” and “overdose” were considered taboo in the press at the time, Fuller wrote and printed his expose, leaving it with his final thoughts on the star: “She was like a shooting star, ascending so magnificently, then falling precipitously into nothingness” (Fuller 51).
Perhaps the most intriguing story is Peg Entwistle’s. She did not start off as a silent actress, but her intrigue for stardom and inability to find success in the Talkies makes her story fascinating. Peg came over from Britain in 1926 hoping to meet success on Broadway as an actress. She indeed found success on the stage with eight staring roles, and then set her eyes on the big screen. Feeling the urge to make it in Hollywood, she moved out to the “city of dreams.” After finding a role in RKO’s production ofThirteen Women (1932), she felt on top of the world, or at least on the Hollywood Hills. The film was held by RKO, pending a later release, and her contract was not optioned for renewal. She searched for work, but since her film was not released, no one would hire her (Associated Press Peg). With the inability to find work, she took to alcohol, which quickly led her to depression. On the night of September 16th, 1932, Peg Entwistle took a ladder to the iconic HOLLYWOODLAND sign, climbed to the top of the letter “H” and jumped to her death. A suicide note was left, which read, “I’m afraid I’m a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this long ago it would have saved a lot of pain” (Associated Press Peg). Typically brushed off as a rumor, Kenneth Anger, again in his exploitative book, recalls a job from the Beverly Hills Community Players being sent to her home the very next week, a role coincidentally calling for suicide in the third act (Anger 233).
Aside from Hollywood spectacle-induced suicides, now comes Lou Tellegen’s story. Tellegen began his career performing on the stage with famous silent star Sarah Bernhart, later becoming romantically involved. The two eventually made La Dame Aux Camélias (1910), a film that captured the hearts of American audiences and brought the two successfully to the United States. After performing back and forth from New York to London so frequently, the two eventually split and by 1915, Tellegen hit success being considered one of the best looking actors in Hollywood. He starred in three subsequent films with Geraldine Farrar, whom he married in 1916. Due to the vast competition for success and fame between the two actors, the marriage fell apart in 1923 (Associated Press Tellegen). Being that the silent cinema welcomed Tellegen so successfully, by the time sound came about, Tellegen was getting old, and was surrounded by a new flight of actors, vocally training without silent cinema or theatre experience. This led him also to alcoholism, and one night in Atlantic City, Tellegen fell asleep in his hotel room with a lit cigarette in his mouth. His face was severely burned – a permanent injury that haunted people, and led to many studios refusing to hire him. By 1934, Tellegen felt as though he was going mentally insane – a feeling brought on by unsuccessful job follow-ups, and declining health, which he eventually fell to cancer. On the night of October 29, Tellegen locked himself in the bathroom and with a pair of custom name-engraved scissors, stabbed himself in the heart seven times (Associated Press Tellegen).
Aside from the actors themselves, the silent picture as a mode and medium was disintegrating by the arrival of sound, and was completely obsolete by the time The Talkies were perfectly “fine tuned.” In the process of progression, Donald Crafton says, “the Art of the silent Film was destroyed” (Crafton 1). While trying to enhance sound, the very nature of the cinematic “feel” of the image due to the physicality of the acting and the artistic cinematography was lost. The Marx Brothers, as characters, conjure up allegorical symbols for the certain people involved with the era itself. Groucho, being the most-talkative out of the three, gave long diction-induced monologues and beautifully sung ballads, symbolized the progressive stride that sound was the dominant force in the cinema. On the other hand, Harpo, remaining silent in his trade, emphasizing the physicality of his acting, symbolized the Buster Keaton’s and other various anti-sound individuals who still progressed in their own realm of silent cinema. Chico, perfectly shows the individuals stuck in between both sides, and therefore bounced back and forth (Crafton).
One cannot help but lose a sense of fulfillment with going from being shown the story to being told the story. However, ever since Thomas Edison, film has boundaries that innovators want to cross and improve. It was in the hands of people like the Lumiere Brothers, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, F.W. Murnau and others that cinema in the visual experience could be artistic due to its optical sensation. Chaplin even went on the record to attack The Talkies, saying, “Motion pictures need dialogue as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics” (Crafton 296). As far as sound goes, Hollywood wanted to stay ahead of Broadway, Radio and the other arts. In the very nature of Capitalism, the studios wanted to excel as the dominant force in the entertainment business, therefore progressed with the famous “next thing” idea. The “next thing” for that decade was sound and in the process of improving the it, silent film and its stars became the “old thing,” making the stars who couldn’t conform feeling obsolete, as well as destroying the artistic value of the silent cinema. Disease is not the silent killer; the real silent killer was sound.
Works Cited
Anger, Kennth. Hollywood Babylon II. New York: First Plume Printing, 1985. Print.
Associated Press. “Peg Entwistle Dies In Hollywood Leap.” The New York Times: The
New York Times Press. 20 September 1932. Web. 15 November 2009.
Associated Press. “Tellegen Stabs Himself To Death.” The New York Times: The New
York Times Press. 30 October 1934. Web. 15 November 2009.
Balough, Laura Peterson. “The Big Swede: The Tribulations of a Dane in 1920’s
Hollywood.” Danmarks Klogeste Filmtidsskrift: 16:9. April 2008. Web. 13
November 2009.
Crafton, Donald. The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997. Print.
Fuller, Samuel. A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking. New
York: Chrisam Films, Inc., 2002. Print.
Ituarte, Philip. “Falling Star: 1927-1929.” www.jeanneeagels.com, n.d. Web. 11
November 2009.
Lang, Harry. “The Microphone –The Terror of the Studios.” Photoplay. December 1929:
29-33. Print. |
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posted by Will Lewis 11:16 PM
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