The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

January, 1944 Page 19 MOTION PICTURESNOT FOR THEATRES By ARTHUR EDWIN KROWS Installment 53. — Non-theatrical history was made indeed by the advent of modem talking pictures. They came nearly twenty years ago Chapter XII-And Now They Must Talk WE ARE ACCUSTOMED to Speak loosely about the "sudden" coming of talking pictures. As a matter of fact, even from the time of the first successful demonstration until widespread acceptance, there was a long period of vacillation — about three years for many of the lesser theatres^and the places of non-theatrical exhibition were, with a very few well-to-do exceptions, the last to be "wired for sound." Writers presumably authoritative declared clint the growing popularity of sound films was only a fad, and would subside to a normal state in which silent pictures also would hold their own. To this prophecy clung many teachers, ministers, clubmen and industrial users, fearful that their hard-won mute equipment would be rendered useless, and unable to afford the new. So far as they were concerned the prophecy was not altogether without force. Upwards of a dozen years after the fear loomed importantly on the horizon, film rental libraries were still doing a substantial business in 16mm prints of old silent subjects. The Parts oi Speech There had been talking pictures since before the close of the nineteenth century. One of Edison's first efforts, after his invention of the Kinetoscope, had been to combine it with his phonograph. Indeed, much of the apathy with which the modern talking picture was at first received, undoubtedly was because numerous sound film devices of different sorts had actually appeared in the theatres for many years without working even slight changes in the prevailing form of popular entertainment. Whenever a type of apparatus showing unusual promise was brouglit forth, a conglomeration of others also rushed upon the market. Leon Gaumont came to America in 1913 to supervise a New York demonstration of the talking pictures for which a French patent had been granted him in 1901, and showed them in colors into the bargain. He came mainly because, in January, 1913, Edison's improved (but by no means perfected) Kinetophone talking pictures had been received with favor by a few leading theatres. William A. Brady, ever eager to set sail upon the tide of popularity, contracted in the same year for Webb's "electrical talking pictures," and exhibited them at the Fulton Theatre, New York, in May, 1914; and a little before that the public was regaled with Dr. Isadore Kitsee's "vocal pictures" of Harry Lauder, produced at Philadelphia. There were the Whitman Cameraphone, revealed in 1904 and exploited by Mark Dintenfass, a prominent Independent producer, in 1907 ; the Powers Fotofone of 1910 ; the Vivaphone, and Greenbam's Synchronoscope, which is said to have represented a passing interest of Carl Laemmle in 1908. Look into the New York Dramatic Mirror of March 19, 1913, and see an advertisement by John W. Mitchell : "Wanted — sketches and scenarios for Talking Motion Pictures," and. on Page 24 of the issue of May 28, 1913, behold the already casual use of the term "talkies." This picture of Thomas Edison's plan to make the world's first talkies by joining phonograph and kinetograph was originally published in Harper's Weekly, in the issue of June 13, 1891. Nor did the Edison Kinetophone pictures at once die out. I was chatting recently with Charles Gilson, an Edison cameraman of those hectic pioneer days. He told me that, until the outbreak of World War No. 1 Edison maintained talking picture studios, by license and using operators provided by his own American company, at Vienna and Moscow. Gilson was at Moscow. He was there when the World War began, with one other operator and an interpreter — three, out of only about nineteen Americans, it is said, in the city at that time. The popular notion that what held the achievement of the modern talking picture back was because voice and picture could not be synchronized, was mistaken. Wliat actually retarded the development was the need of sound amplification, a problem which was not solved sufficiently until the perfected invention I of the audion tube, the same which signalized the popularization of radio. It was invented by Lee De Forest in 1904 and sold by him for further development to the Western Electric Company in 1907. Then, for the first time, a real quality reproduction of original sound became possible, as did the raising of its volume without distortion. .'Vs far as films are concerned, this step was importantly begun about 1919, when De Forest, then a figure notable in "wireless." is said to have turned his attention for the first time to the talking picture device which became associated with his name. To keep away from the prying eyes of inquisitive fellow-.^mericans and at the same time to avail himself of trained technological assistance, De Forest carried on his experimental work in Berlin, Germany, until about 1922, when he felt that he had overcome his major obstacles. He then returned to the United States, where, with the backing of a South African theatrical magnate. M. A. Schlesinger, whose headquarters were in New York City, he incorporated his firm of General Talking Pictures. I first met De Forest in this period through Frank A. Tichenor, who had been made general manager and treasurer. His original offices were in space sublet from Tichenor in the Candler Building, 220 West 42nd Street, precisely where the American Red Cross had had its film center in wartime. The Simplex Projection Room, belonging to Tichenor, was outfitted for private demonstrations of DeForest's Phonofilm, and some of De Forest's first pictures I was permitted to see and hear in that place. Unfortunately, De Forest was an inventor primarily and not also a shrewd business man, a combination which really is a little too much to expect ; and a sharp divergence of opinion over management of the corporation led to Tichenor's resignation. Early in 1923 De Forest gave a public showing of his Phonofilm at the Rialto Theatre in New York. Hugo Riesenfeld, then the director of that house, had watched the more recent developments with great interest, and he opined that while the invention would be popular as an occasional program novelty, it could not, of course, affect the established powers of "the silent screen." The Will Hays office was quoted at about the same time by a New York Times reporter as stating warily that students of the film were generally confident that "speakies" would never supersede the movies, and Edison, who surely had had much painful experience, declared flatly that the public had demonstrated that it did