Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

Stf P 11 B» 7^£ Screen Magazine of Authority Major George K. Shuler, Publisher September, 1928 Duncan A. Dobie, Jr., General Manager Laurence Reid, Managing Editor Camera! M UCH has been said concerning the effect of the talkies upon the present stars and starlets of the screen. It has been pointed out that the qualities of the voices of many of them are unsuitable for theatrical speech, and that they must choose between studying elocution and suffering oblivion. It has been prophesied, too, that foreign stars must necessarily cease to stake out claims in the celluloid El Dorado of Hollywood. It has furthermore been forecast that players from the speaking stage, the favorites of the New York playhouses, will forthwith come into demand and supplant the present inarticulate idols. Much, too, has been conjectured about the effect of the talkies upon the producers. It has been offered as an opinion that the exporting of audible productions cannot practically be accomplished. They are being made in English, and more particularly, American English ; and commentators have been quick to indicate that these cannot be understood in any country unaccustomed to such a language. This is only one and a representative remark. What About the Fans? ut in all the talk about the talkies, this is noticeable : that very little has been said about their effect upon those most important of all people in the scheme of the motion picture world : the fans themselves. What are the talkies going to do to them ? For one thing, it seems most probable, the talkies are going to exact at the start certainly a great deal of patience. There is no doubt that the invention of speaking movies is here and here to stay. And there is no doubt that the major mechanical difficulties have been surmounted. But it is one thing to have invented a practical automobile and another to have refined it to a point where many may drive it a thousand miles or so without ever so much as having to lift the hood. So with the talkies : it is likely to be some time before every theater showing them will have succeeded in so perfecting its projection of sight and sound as to make them run perfectly and unnoticeably. There is likely to be a recurrence of the situations which used to bring' "One Minute to Change Reels" to the screen. The fans are very probably going to be subjected to quite a bit of irritation. But this will pass with the removal of its causes. For they will be removed ; the technical skill of makers of motion pictures has always been of the very highest order and it will overcome the new problems as completely as in the past it has overcome the old. Take Your Tolerance With You Tt would be well, therefore, when witnessing the first few talkies, to go prepared for incomplete satisfaction. Not that any of them will be anything but as carefully made as possible, but because, with the invention in its very early infancy, there is bound to be present in its practical functioning a certain amount of imperfection. Therewas in the phonograph, there was in the radio ; there is in the talkies. But it should be remembered that as the first two devices improved, so will the third. Competition and the necessity of perfecting the mechanics will soon smooth out the wrinkles. The talkies are a great idea ; let us give them a chance to prove it. It Might Be G. B. Shaw TThe entry of George Bernard Shaw into the talkies sug*■ gests possibilities. They say that in his initial appearance he gives an imitation of Mussolini that is nearly as funny as the Duce himself. And this may mean that there has been uncovered a new great character actor. There are only too few. We have Lon Chaney and Jean Hersholt and Emil Jannings. The next time Samuel Goldwyn goes abroad, let him stop in London on his way to the Continent and sign George up. But the success of Shaw's performance is more than a personal achievement for him. It affords convincing proof of the practicability of the medium itself. It shows what the talkies can do. For in the picture in which he appeared and spoke, there was a noticeable improvement in the reproduction of sound. Not only the novelist's voice, with its every nuance of accent and tone, was clearly and pleasantly audible, but other sounds — such as the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel walk which led him into the picture. The whole thing made the absent performer seem very really present. Given reproduction of sound as natural as this, given a play written expressly for talkie presentation, and given professional actors, it would appear that if fans need at first be a little tolerant of the new medium, they need not long be. 27