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54
Little pearls will click, so
Nancy Carroll's nice frock
is taboo.
Photo by Itichce
Anita Page's
fringed dress would
fairly steal a talkie
scene.
NOW that the screen stutters, and mum movies are a blessing of the past, all sorts of problems confuse the sound engineers. Even with thick walls lined with felt, the stages ricochet a sigh into a sneeze, and the delicately sensitive microphone can pick up, so one is told, the thud of a flea's hoof.
Clothes, too, have become articulate, and vocal wardrobes must be soft-pedaled. Brocades boom at too vibrant a pitch, the colorature screech of silk offends the mike's sensitive ear, and even some softer materials have accents.
"Speak easy" is the new motto of costuming.
The gowns' gabfest threatened to drown the stars' soliloquies, so materials and imitations have been sought which present, if any, only soothing syllables. The new optiaudience, both seeing and hearing, has quite enough to occupy itself in becoming accustomed to the hero's squeak and the heroine's resonant basso — many voices recording with just that startling incongruity — and lacks sufficiently trained auditory equipment to absorb, also, the mumbling of clothes.
That fanciful expression of the society reporters who write up fashionable gatherings, "Mrs. De Blump was a symphony in yellow satin," has become an actuality, to the horror of directors — except that in its auditory rendition satin is slightly off key and inharmonious.
Beads rattle. Maybe this explains the sudden departure from the studios of Betty Blythe and Gilda Gray! Magnified by the mike, taffeta rustles with the crackle that our grandmothers had to don numerous petticoats to achieve.
Clothes have a tonal range from the highest notes of the
You Can't
The microphone made this the battle no clacking of beads, rattle of taffeta.
By Myrtle
oboe to the saxophone's moan. Organdie has a swish and a smack all its own, crinoline a soprano squeak. Some crapes yodel. And metallic cloth does a verbal valedictory.
Some incidental sartorial noise is permitted. While spangles are out, merely as an ornament, they are used if their clacking sound, as the wearer crosses the room, seems suitable to character and scene.
Shoes are soled and heeled with felt or rubber.
No longer will the heroine proclaim herself of the haute monde by adorning herself with jewels. For most gems have a repertoire of celluloid calisthenics. Jewelry is either worn most sparingly, or not at all, and in some cases is made of rubber in clever imitations.
Pearls seem to be the worst offenders. Nice, ladylike pearls, that so add distinction,
When Baclanova goes
Moscow, now what'll she
use for pearls?
Photo by Bull
Photo by Richee
Creations such as Josephine Dunn wears here irritate the sensitive mike.