The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

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Without cost or obligation, please send me full particulars about the course I have cheeked below — □ College Preparatory Course □ Advertising □ High School Commercial Course □ Chemistry □ English □ Radio B Accounting □ Drafting Salesmanship D Electrical Engineering Xaine Aoe Address Grand Opera on the Screen lesqued itself when judged by modern taste in drama. Yet the purveyors of grand opera expect us to sit in reverent awe, see an equally antiquated work performed in early Victorian style, and accept it as seriously as did our grandparents. Very few arts can live on an antiquarian value alone, and any art involving drama must reflect to some degree the point of view and dramatic customs of its current audience. I fell into troubled sleep. At lunch time, next day, Clara came bursting in with the news that she had taken her idea to the genial president of ERPI (Electrical Research Products Incorporated— to you) and that he was most interested; that ERPI was just perfecting its wide-range process which would be a big step forward in musical recording and reproduction and that a modern method of showing grand opera on the screen would be the best possible way of demonstrating their new improvements. "So you see," she wound up, "we're practically committed to it; the only thing I'm not sure of is just how to do it." "At least," said I, "if we knew how to do it it would have been done before." "Gods! What wisdom!" she said, looking very Egyptian. When she looks like that I never know whether she is admiring or kidding me, and up to now I have been far too wise to find out. It is unnecessary to go into the long conferences which followed. The idea was discussed from every point of view: technical, pictorial, educational and theatrical. It was decided that we make an experimental reel just to demonstrate what could be done in the new field and "Pagliacci" was chosen as subject matter. CLARA and I secluded ourselves in a little house in California where we could look over the Pacific, dream dreams, and hear no external sounds but the soothing murmur of the distant surf. We had the opera with us, in the form of phonograph records, and with these we worked, timing the movement of every scene to the music; plotting every cut in the film on the musical score. To make a new, singable translation of the libretto we were fortunate enough to enlist the services of our friend John Erskine, who has been so successful as a novelist that the general public has forgotten his earlier reputation as a poet. As to the method involved we had decided to take the bull by the horns; to preserve the music inviolate but to abandon completely all the tradition of the opera-house. "It's this way," Clara said one day. "Even if singers can act, they can't really put over drama while they're singing." "Right," I agreed. "Singing is a full-time job and if a singer gets really emotional it goes to his throat and his singing goes to pot." "Then what are we going to do?" "Listen, child, and I will unfold the only way I think we can lick the problem." "Proceed, O sage." "Our problem has been to find a cast that can look and act like John Barrymore and at the same time sing like Caruso. This we have agreed cannot be done. But what if we had Caruso sing the role and then had Barrymore play it?" "Great," she said, "but what about the lips — what'll Jack be doing with his mouth while Enrico is singing a three-bar note." "His mouth will be in statu quo," I remarked. "That's the whole point. We won't pretend that Jack is singing; he'll be acting, expressing bar by bar what the other is singing but won't make the faces a singer has to make. Of course the actor's gesture, even his lips must keep time with the music ; but he'll be free to act. We can come close to him and his face won't look like the Holland Tunnel surrounded by eyes and ears ; he'll have freedom of movement and, best of all, we won't have to look at him all the time; we can cut to the gal who's listening and make a beautiful close-up carry the singer's difficult moments." "And we can put real movement into it," Clara said. "We can give it all the flow of the silent picture." "Sure! And I'll bet that if we do our job properly the audience will get more illusion of reality and certainly more beauty than they ever got in the opera house." U*OR several months we worked ■*■ making a silent picture of Pagliacci, which would fit the music, not only scene by scene, but bar by bar. There could be no guess-work here. The director had to visualize and time his scene before he ever went near the stage; for recording purposes he had to prepare a chart giving the sound engineers the exact distance of the actor from the camera at each moment so that the tone perspective of the voice would agree with the visual perspective of the scene. For the music had to be made first and, once made, could not be changed. Back in New York, the script completed, we set about recording the music of the experimental reel. We had chosen the final scene of the first act, the famous "Vesti la Giubba," to test our method in a long solo, and the opening scene of the second act as an example of ensemble work. Under the magic baton of Alexander Smallens the music came to life and was safely recorded on film and wax. It was with curious emotions that I faced my cast of four principals and a chorus of sixty and explained to them what we were going to do. They were to enact silently the voices which they would hear as they acted. They were not singers but actors; the singers would forever remain unseen by the audience, the actors remain unheard. We are welding the craft of the silent motion pictures to that of grand opera through the medium of recorded sound. Is the experiment a success? It is not for us to say. The little reel has gone to the public as an emissary of bigger things to come. At least it demonstrates one thing: if the public wants grand opera at movie prices in their home towns, the}' can have it. A TRUE STORY By A MOTHER \-** who tells of "a vital factor in continuous good health" for herself and her two children Following faithfully the advice of one's doctor or surgeon, as did Mrs. W. E. Waters, of 344 Lafayette Avenue, Lexington, Kentucky, is very sensible and wise. Read her letter below. "Twenty years ago, after a painful operation for hemorrhoids, my surgeon warned me that my probably inherited tendency to faulty elimination would be apt again to cause me much misery unless I regularly took Nujol. Since then, Nujol has been as essential to me as drinking water. That is, Nujol is a vital factor in my continuous good health. "Following instructions on the Nujol folder, I cured myself of life-long (I was then 17) constipation. For years I have been able to go for days without taking any Nujol, but if I am forced to eat white bread (which binds me) or am under any sort of nervous strain, then I can rely on a few nightly teaspoons of Nujol to keep me in good condition. "Julia Ann, aged 13 and Billy, aged 11, have taken Nujol since babyhood. They both were bottle babies, raised on pasteurized milk which has a slight tendency to constipate. They love Nujol and fuss if I give it to one and not to the other. "The secret of keeping Nujol palatable and agreeable to take is keeping it cold. There is always a bottle of Nujol in our refrigerator. If either the children or I are away from home, we forestall change of water, habits or diet, by taking a small bottle of the precious fluid with us. "This I know from personal experience— if the directions with Nujol are followed exactly, anyone with patience and perseverance can develop those regular habits which are the foundation of health and comfort. Why suffer or let your helpless babies or children suffer when there's Nujol?" Nujol, "regular as clockwork," now comes in two forms, plain Nujol and Cream of Nujol, the latter flavored and often preferred by children. You can get it at any drug store. What is your Nujol story? If you have been using Nujol for ten years or more, if you are bringing up your children on it, tell us. Address Stanco Incorporated, Dept. 19W, 2 Park Avenue, New York City. The Neiv Movie Magazine, January, 1935 69