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Pioneering Talkies
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;ing camera; the blacking out by printing, of the otherwise noisy pauses in i the' positive sound-track (the basic patent in all processes of "noiseless recording") ; the method of dubbing sound \ recorded in synchronism with a projectled picture. This was practiced first in 11924 for The Covered Wagon, as exhibited in the Kivoli Theater during portions of the "Supper Shows" when jRiesenfeld's Orchestra was not playing. 'We did the same in 1925 for his splendid score of Siegfried, actually recorded in the Century Theater while the orchestra was playing to the projected picture.
Monologue numbers by Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, DeWolf Hopper and Chic Sale; dialogs between Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan, and Weber and Fields; Fokina's Swan Dance; playlets with Raymond Hitchcock; orchestra recordings by Ben Bernie, Paul Specht, Roger Wolf Kahn, and similar entertainment made up our repertoire during this early period of 1923-27.
It may not be remembered that Technicolor was first wedded to sound in the spring of 1925, when Balieff's entire Chauve Souris was thus recorded, using a sound-camera synchronized to the color camera, whose noise was quite successfully suppressed beneath a quilt blimp within an "ice-box" booth with walls eight inches thick. The soundtrack was then printed on the green positive, which dyed surface, although serving better than the red, was found quite unsuitable.
! Nevertheless certain numbers of this production were exhibited during 192425 to enthusiastic audiences in the Lonlon Tivoli, and in Japan and Australia.
About this same time I adopted as standard back-screen equipment large . i rtical exponential horns of wood with a cone-speaker at the base, and trumlets with Western Electric dynamic revivers located in the bell of the horn. Theater screens were yet unperforated.
Another very practical patent taken nit during this era covers the camera 'blimp," in an acoustically treated studio.
"Phonofilm" reproducing apparatus
' nstalled in thirty-four theaters scat
ered throughout the East in 1924-25 led
to the joint invention by Louis Reynolds and the author of the now well known "tone-control," whereby the operator, or a monitor in the auditorium itself, was enabled to mix the relative values of high and low frequencies to suit best the acoustic characteristics of the theater, or as the audience grew or diminished.
My early theatrical experiences were replete with humorous incidents interspersed with discouragement and heartfailure. For example, the only occasion on record when one of my first operators, Billy Brinkman, failed to forget to turn on the amplifier switch before he was applauded or kicked into that action was when he went home after the show one night and forgot to switch the amplifier off! The following matinee went off without a hitch. Unquestionably I shortened my life by several years by dashing up long flights of gallery stairs, two at a stride, to endeavor to start or improve the sound reproduction.
The spring of 1924 witnessed the first talking Newsreel, when an improvised sound-truck journeyed to Washington to record a pre-campaign talking-picture of President Coolidge on the White House lawn. That same summer saw also the Progressive Candidate, Senator La Follette, and the Democratic, John W. Davis, vieing for motion picture theater audience popularity. In 1925 Al Smith and "T. R., Jr.," each visited my studio to tell the recording camera why he should be elected Governor of New York.
The early public acceptance of this type of News Weekly readily convinced Manny Cohen, of Pathe News, that it possessed an assured future. Only our exceedingly modest royalty demands prevented him from thereby saving millions in later royalties for that organization.
Today, when the entire motion picture world has been for several years almost 100 per cent "talkie," it seems to me incredible that only a little more than a decade ago not one of the "Big Guns" in the industry believed that the talking picture had any place in the theater. Such "best minds" as Adolph Zukor, Sidney Kent, Goldwyn, et al., turned a deaf ear to all arguments by myself, Hugo Riesenfeld, and Harold Franklin. When I found that William
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April, 1941 201