The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930

by Scott Eyman, Adams Morgan (Narrator)

Although film and the movies had existed for some years prior, it was D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, that turned what had been a flickering novelty into a transformational art form. In the years following that first epic film, that art form had been refined and reinterpreted many times and in many ways, and such masters of the silent film as F.W. Murnau, King Vidor, and Erich von Stroheim had emerged to create movies that were visual works of art. And then in 1926 came sound, and with it, at least in the eyes of many, came the end of art. Certainly it marked the end of moviemaking as its first creators had known it. Their careers, and those of many others who had been celebrated during Hollywood's silent era, were over. It was a turbulent, colorful, and altogether remarkable period, four years in which America's most popular industry reinvented itself.
For the first time ever, here is the epic story of the transition from silent films to talkies, that moment when movies were totally transformed and the American public cemented its love affair with Hollywood. In The Speed of Sound, author Scott Eyman, whose biography of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch was hailed as "resoundingly wonderful," has created a mixture of cultural and social history that is at once both scholarly and vastly entertaining. Here is the first and last word on the missing chapter in the history of Hollywood, the ribbon of dreams by which America conquered the world.

Audible Audio

Published March 15, 2001

About the author

Scott Eyman has authored 11 books, including, with Robert Wagner, the New York Times bestseller Pieces of My Heart.

Among his other books are "Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer," "Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford," "Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise," and "The Speed of Sound" (all Simon & Schuster) and "John Ford: The Searcher" for Taschen.

He has lectured extensively around the world, most frequently at the National Film Theater in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Moscow Film Theater. He's done the commentary tracks for many DVD's, including "Trouble in Paradise," "My Darling Clementine," and Stagecoach.

Eyman has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune, as well as practically every film magazine extinct or still extant.

He's the literary critic for the Palm Beach Post; he and his wife Lynn live in Palm Beach.