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| Film-Making with a Portable Microphon... |
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The Year of Sound (Theatre Arts Monthly, 1929)
The oddballs who read old Hollywood magazines from the year 1929 seem to all be in agreement that these magazines all shared the same frenzied, enthusiastic energy; something new and wonderful and unpredictable had been introduced and it was going to cause an enormous shake up in every movie capitol under the sun: sound. "But it was in the past year that the newest art, that of the silent drama, like prehistoric Man, stood up on it's hind legs and began to talk. Like prehistoric man, it talked badly at first. But soon it's words came a shade more fluently, and gradually they began, when arranged, to make a small degree of sense". Read about the first "talkie movie star": Mickey Mouse...
| The Audience Laughed at the First Talkies (Film Spectator, 1930)
Attending one of the early sound movies, this film reviewer did not find it odd in the least as to why the audiences laughed uproariously while listening to perfectly ordinary dialog during the viewing of the new release, "War Nurse" (directed by Edgar Selwyn):
"It was not so much [that they chortled] at these isolated bits of dialogue that the audience laughed, as it was a resort to laughter caused by the absurdity ceaseless chatter that prevails throughout the entire production."The audience was used to silent films, and "What one British statesman said of another might be applied to the motion picture industry. It is "Intoxicated by the exuberance of it's own verbosity." Shattered Silents: How the Talkies Came to Stay
| Talking Pictures Fail to Impress (Film Spectator, 1929)
There can be no doubt that at some point between the appearance of this brief notice and the release of "Gone with the Wind", culture critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 - 1970) was won-over to the side that believed sound-movies were the way to go- but in 1929, he wasn't buy'n it.*Watch a Film Clip About the Revolution of Sound in Movies*
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| Some British Opinions About the First Talking Movies (Literary Digest, 1929)
Attached are excerpts clipped from a few British papers condemning all efforts made to produce the earliest talking pictures; one snide reviewer went so far as to insist that rather than calling the films "talkies", they should be referred to as "dummies":
"The majority of films in the future will be made stupidly for stupid people, just has been the case with the silent movies for twenty years...It is possible that a few talking pictures of an interesting, experimental sort will be made to be shown before superior audiences in the small and special cinemas which are beginning to be built in the larger American cities."
| Assorted Remarks Regarding the First Talkies (Photoplay, 1930)
Various quotes addressing some aspects of the 1930 Hollywood and the entertainment industry seated there. Some are prophets who rant-on about the impending failure of talking pictures, others go on about the obscene sums of money generated in the film colony; a few of the wits are well-known to us, like Thomas Edison, George M. Cohan and Walter Winchell but most are unknown - one anonymous sage, remarking about the invention of sound movies, prophesied:
"In ten years, most of the good music of the world will be written for sound motion pictures."
| Rudy Vallee: 'Vagabond Lover' (Film Spectator, 1929)
It is not surprising to think that one of the first sound movies to be made had to consist of a plot that involved a musical number, and when put to the task of writing his review of VAGABOND LOVER (1929: RKO Pictures) the well respected film critic Welford Beaton dished-out some lukewarm opinions concerning it's star, crooner/teen-idol Rudy Vallee (1901 - 1986):"The laddie's face is set in a sort of perpetual sorrow which, added to the fact that he seldom looks the camera in the eye, makes him seem like the wraith of some calamity walking through the scenes. Only the voice is virile..." *Watch Rudy Vallee Croon in this 1929 Clip from 'Vagabond Lover'*
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