Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

86 Wkat Are the Talkies Saving? cMZ/.&? The chattering screen, on which the hero lisps and the heroine booms, is patiently tolerated by spellbound fans who manage to see light ahead through a fog of home-made accents. By Grace Kingsle^ Illustrated by Lui Trugo TALKING pictures will be good when they really say something, won't they? Now they're like the trained elephant that can blow, a horn — it isn't that he blows a horn well, but the wonder is that an elephant can blow a horn at all. So we hold our breath when John Gilbert says to Ralph Forbes, "How are you, old chap?" And Ralph answers, "Fine, old top, how's yourself?" But they're coming on, they're coming on. We'll soon have our Maughams of the movies, our Shaws of the shivering photographs. In the meantime, all our film idols are hollering down the rain barrel. And how ! Oh, the big, strong hero who lisps! And the little, delicate heroine, who booms ! "Oh, thweatheart, I thall thave you !" he cries when her house is on fire. And she booms back, "I await you, my hero !" There is one remarkable thing I've noticed about talking pictures. Nobody in a talkie ever seems to be able to move and to speak at the same time. Characters in a talkie are like the Mississippi steamboat Abraham Lincoln talked about, which couldn't both whistle and go ahead at the same time. So when the villain pursues the girl, she can't let out a single yell until she has romped across the room. And if there's a fire! Well, no matter how scared the poor girl is, she can't scream until she gets a chance to stand still near a window. Why, even if a man's coat tails are on fire, he can't yelp till he finds a microphone ! And then how the talkies do dash from one sort of scene to another! Why, it's perfectly bewildering. In the very midst of a hectic love scene, for instance, as you are holding your breath waiting for Mary to give John his answer, lo, you are whisked right off to watch Tom kill Harry. Aren't our lives hectic enough these days, without having our nerves wracked by a sudden shift like this? "Dearest, I've braved perils in strange lands ; but now I have won a fortune. Will you marry me, darling?" "Ah, I don't know, John, whether I love you well enough " Imagine what talkies would have done for the old-time film dramas. Wham! Zozvie! "You blankety-blank so-and-so, I'm going to kill you with my bare hands !" And then straight to a comedy scene, where you're expected to laugh ! But it could have been worse. Supposing, my dears, we had had talkies in the old days ! We can't be too thankful, indeed, that the talkies didn't come in during the war-picture era. What would have become of us if we had had to listen to all those battle scenes ? But perhaps what we have most to be thankful for is, that historical subjects are out just now. Wouldn't it have been just too dreadful if we had had to hear our heroes like Washington and Napoleon lisping ? Imagine Julius Caesar saying, "I came, I thaw, I conquered !" Could we ever have felt the same again toward our own Lincoln if we had heard him say, in a picture, "Four thcore and theven yearth ago our fatherth brought forth on thith continent a new nathion " Then, too, how they would have ruined some of our old favorites for us, if they had put talk into them. Imagine "Broken Blossoms," for instance. Wouldn't it have been just too awful if we had had to listen to Richard Barthelmess lisp pidgin-English to Lillian Gish? And what delicate memory could we have carried away of the ethereal Lillian, on the other hand, if her voice had resounded apparently from a deep cellar? All the wallop, too, would have been taken out of the chase scene, and it would have been hard to be sorry for Lillian, if the brutish Donald Crisp had cornered her in the closet and then lisped at her as he swung his big fist, thever your thilly head! I'll thend your thoul to Thaten !" Methinks the dainty Lillian wouldn't have had to poke up the corners of her mouth to get a laugh out of that ! What kick, I ask you, could you have got out of "What Price Glory?" if, instead of reading the lips of the captain bawling out his first lieutenant, you had heard him lisp that naughty name he called him ? Or in "Way Down East," to have heard the hero say, "Watch out for the ithe"?