The Shattered Silents : How the Talkies Came to Stay

by Alexander Walker

The time was March 1928 and Hollywood's most highly paid stars were doing a Big Broadcast to the American people to prove they actually possessed talking voices, good enough to meet the challenge of 'the talkies.' The two years that followed, until 1930, were the most turbulent in Hollywood history. Alexander Walker explores the extraordinary mixture of panic and opportunities, upset and innovation, threat to the old ways and incredible promise in the new which erupted in America with the coming of 'the talkies.'

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, History, Media Tie In

Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Alexander Walker was a film critic and author of a number of biographies and books on the film industry.

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is only for the serious student of the birth of talking film. Why?.....because it does provides quite a bit of technical detail as Hollywood struggled with the methods of transferring sound to film, stationary microphones, and sound quality. That is not to say that the reader has to be an engineer to appreciate the text......just that it might provide too much information for the casual reader.

There are interesting anecdotes regarding the rise and/or fall of established silent stars and the emergence of a different style of story presentation. Although I feel that Scott Eyman's book The Speed of Sound (of which I have an autographed copy) is the seminal work on the rise of the talking film, I would also recommend this book to those who have an interest in this time of transition in the motion picture industry. A 3.5 star rating.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before the “talkie”, you could record live performances and send them around the world, but only using one sense: audio was on audio recordings, and video was in the movies. They weren’t even called silent pictures because it would have been an oxymoron: pictures don’t talk.

The first sound-enhanced movies did little more than replace in-theater musicians with recorded musicians. And the first movie started as a sound movie was pretty much a series of short orchestra pieces. Musicians saw it as a means of disseminating their works across the globe, much like the Internet thirty years ago.

But what amazed the public as much or more than the music was the introduction to the music, the conductor or announcer talking “directly” to them from the big screen.

Soon, movies started providing selected scenes in dialogue instead of on interstitial cards. The cards were still used for most of the film. Even when dialogue took over the entirety of the movie, the cards were still made available for those theaters that didn’t have sound installed.

The cultures of movie-making and movie-watching were entirely different before the advent of audio dialogue. Without microphones to worry about, everyone involved in the filming, from the director on down, could be as talkative, loud, or noisy as they wished. The same was true in the theaters. And in both cases they could be open to the world. Watching and making movies were friendly, bustling events.

Installing sound didn’t just mean installing audio equipment. It meant closing the stage and closing the theater to avoid outside sound. Which also meant installing ventilation (and, later, air conditioning) equipment. Everything changed.

Sound also personalized the actors. They were no longer silent and separated from the viewer; they spoke, and the movie viewer heard them. It was only one barrier dropped, but it was an important one.

The transition occurred over a period of about three to four years.

It is instructive to see what silent movies were actually being shown on Broadway during that fateful week in August 1926… Rex Ingram’s Mare Nostrum… Rudolph Valentino’s The Son of the Sheik… King Vidor’s The Big Parade… Sjostrum’s The Scarlet Letter… MGM’s Ben Hur… such movies as these represented some of the silent cinema’s finest flowering… Yet this was the world that a short selection of Vitaphone concert items and a Mammy singer in blackface helped sweep out of common currency…

Contrary to popular legend, the talkies didn’t create a carnage of lost careers. Most actors transitioned into speaking roles, perhaps less distant from their viewers but in the same kinds of roles and with similar drawing power. Those that didn’t, failed more due to changing tastes—after 1929, flapper-typecast actresses such as Clara Bow were less in demand, but this had less (if anything) to do with their speaking voices than with having been typecast.

This history follows the movies—many more than just The Jazz Singer—as well as the actors, companies, directors, and technologies that slowly transformed Hollywood from sound as a gimmick to sound as a natural part of a movie.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone really fascinated about the early, chaotic first
years of sound this book is indispensable. From Al Jolson's
sensational talkie debut (really only a couple of adlibbed
lines, a few of his song standards, it didn't matter, the
audiences just lapped it up). Within a year films became
"all talking" with beloved silent stars being dumped in favour
of stage veterans mostly with disastrous results. More was
needed than just reciting lines and after the initial excitement
of hearing movies talk, the public longed for the days when
movies actually moved and demanded that their old favourites,
who were not frightened by movie cameras, be returned!! Richard
Barthelmess became one of the highest paid actors of the early
1930s, Bebe Daniels, who had been in films since WW1 found she
was back in popularity again as she demonstrated a lovely light
operatic voice in "Rio Rita", likewise Bessie Love gave a
tremendous performance in "The Broadway Melody" with her portrayal
of a gutsy little trouper and was nominated for an A.A, but
strangely MGM did not take advantage of her talent.
Conrad Nagel, a romantic leading man in silents, proved in talkies
to have a beautiful, clear speaking voice - and was even called
in to give some big stars - Lya De Putti, Lupe Velez etc, lessons!!
He is interviewed and admits that his over exposure (7 films in
1929, 10 in 1930) may have killed off his career. Some feared the
mike, others, like Adolphe Menjou, saw the writing on the wall and
called the studio's bluff. He knew he could talk and forced the
studio to feature him in a talkie before his contract was up
(he and the feature "Fashions in Love" were a success and he never
looked back).
Until William Wyler took the camera outdoors for "Hell's Heroes"
westerns were supposed to be dead in the water but that wasn't the
case for musicals. From the very good ("Dance of Life", "Applause")
to the very bad ("Howdy Broadway") there were more musicals made in
those few short years (over 170) than ever before or since but by
mid 1930 film fans were staying away from them and cinemas were
putting placards out the front advertising "This is not a Musical"!!
As well as musicals there were "goat gland movies" - silents that
had already been released but were quickly withdrawn so they could
be "doctored" - inserting often innane scenes of dialogue so they
could be advertised as "Part Talkie"!! This book covers it all!!
There is also a lot of technical talk and some interesting stories
- electrical engineers, down the bottom in pecking order a few years
previously now had the ability to make or break established stars
- and in some cases it went to their heads. Frank Pomeroy, a minor
technician, went to an AMPAS seminar (because no one else could be
spared) returned to the studio with exhorbitant demands for a huge
salary increase - because he was the only one at the studio who knew
how to shoot in sound. He was treated as a King - for a while until
others learned the secrets of sound and then it was curtains for
Frank!!

[Robert Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a very useful in that it deals with a section of cinema history given very little cover in previous works. Walker is admirably entertaining, having a good conversational style which is free of the sort of jargon which began plaguing film books in the early 1960s. It is a layman's book, but nonetheless worth having in any serious film enthusiast's library. I would also take issue with the lady who complained about the lack of detail on women directors, as even Dorothy Arzner only made one talkie (THE WILD PARTY, 1929) during the period under discussion and others were mainly still working in silents (e.g. Dorothy Davenport's LINDA, 1929) or abroad (KNOWING MEN, 1930, THE CHEATERS, 1930). There is also the difficulty, if not impossibility of finding viewable copies of such films such as Arzner's 'lost' MANHATTAN COCKTAIL (1928).

I would have found it useful, however, to have a list of which films Walker managed to see, and also if any of them had missing elements, as some early talkies seem only to survive in silent versions or prints missing the disks. In addition, since the book's publication, some of the films mentioned (such as TENDERLOIN, 1928) are in the 'missing believed lost' category. In addition, despite his criticism of other authors being unspecific about (for example) a film's initial release, Walker manages to be likewise vague at times.

These quibbles aside, a worthwhile piece of work.

[Dru · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting but slow-going account of the brief years when talkies took over silents in the film industry, basically 1925-29. Obviously very focused and very detailed.

[Ally McCulloch]

I suppose I'd give it 2.5 stars out of 5. I quickly scanned the index and they didn't really mention any female director in that time period besides Dorothy Arzner, even though there were several.

I only read the page about her (118) for my dissertation. I might make use of the information or I might not.

[Christophe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent insight into the story of the introduction of sound into cinema.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Month by month details of how talkies came into Hollywood and the effect of the early pictures. Not accurate in all details.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good use of period source material.