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CAME THE REVOLUTION 191
started a picture with Lubitsch directing, but about that time the real panic started. Work on all silent pictures was stopped and the entire Paramount production was switched to talking pictures.
When this happened, I suddenly realized that I was in a very precarious position. I was a silent actor, so nobody thought I could act in talkies. The biggest Paramount stars were being replaced by stars from the stage; they knew how to talk. Tommy Meighan, who had been the highest-paid actor in the business, was finished; Gloria Swanson, the highest-paid actress, was on her way out. The studio had paid off Emil Jannings, the wonderful German actor, and he was on his way back to Germany. Maurice Chevalier was the new hope of Paramount; he not only spoke English but also sang.
I was in the last year of my contract at that time. My salary was $7,500 a week. I knew that unless I proved I could talk before my contract expired, I would be a dead pigeon. I went after every Paramount big shot in Hollywood demanding a voice test. Finally it was arranged. George Cukor, a stage director, had been brought out from New York, and he suggested a scene from Grounds for Divorce, a play in which Ina Claire and the late Philip Merivale had starred. Cukor directed me in the test.
The movable boom, which today allows the mike to follow the actor wherever he moves, had not yet been invented. Instead several mikes were hung over the stage or concealed in flowerpots and other places. Every time you read a line, you had to be sure that you were close to one of these mikes. Every movement you made had to be planned so that you would arrive at another mike for your next line of dialogue.
The strangeness of this new technique, combined with the problem of remembering lines and the difficulty of working with a strange director, scared me stiff. I knew instinctively that I was pretty bad. Next day I hurried to the studio to learn the results of my test. Everybody at Paramount was pessimistic; nobody would say yes and nobody would say no. Several days elapsed