Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

24 Come On, Let's Sing! The once-mute picture colony enters with gusto into the development of its singing voice now that the song is the thing, and this authoritative article gives intimate glimpses of the stars at their lessons as well as side lights on their teachers. By Elza Sckallert THERE is no question about it, Hollywood is beconaing cultured. And with a vengeance ! The highest social grace any one may possess is an interest in music. The more one knows about Herr Ludwig von Beethoven and the less about Paul Whiteman the better. The only "out" for being on intimate musical terms with Whiteman is the knowledge that he is a good musician, besides being a "King of Jazz," and that for years he was one of the first violins in a symphony orchestra, where Brahms and Bach and Mozart and Tschaikowsky were friends and not enemies. The talkies are to blame for this state of affairs — for Hollywood's artistic milieu. Because, with their advent into the realms of literature and music, there followed to the Western metropolis the greatest influx of Broadway's celebrated authors, actors, and actresses, writers of melody, headliners of song, musical comedy favorites, and even artists of concert and operatic stages, that the world of entertainment has known. In a way, the Broadway regulars and reserves have been a veritable army of invasion into a territory that had been exclusively occupied for many years by the sons and daughters of pantomime. They have been charming and talented invaders, but they have stirred up a fight for survival among the Hollywoodites, none the less. The film colony's battle for self-preservation has resulted in numerous casualties and complete annihilation in some instances, but the scars have been all to the good. Because, for once, Hollywood's eyes have been opened to broader vistas of effort. The players have come to realize that there is something beyond the horizon of flickering shadows, and that they, in turn, must invade and conquer new worlds — the worlds of the spoken word, and of song. The days when the height of aesthetic achievement was the triumphant ride through town of Tom Mix in an oversized Rolls-Royce, with liveried chauffeur and footman, and luxuriating in plum-colored evening clothes and sweeping, white sombrero, are gone forever — no more to return. Hollywood is now giving more attention to the inside than the outside. Beautiful stars aren't content any more with their merely pictorial personalities. They really and truly want to learn how to act, how to articulate, how to give the meaning to a word that they have in the past given to a gesture, so that their sisters of the stage cannot steal their thunder. They want to learn how to sing, so that they may beautify their speaking voices, or better still, that they may be able to sing when a part in a talking film calls for it. They do not want to resort to a double, as some stars unfortunately had to during the past year. The effect of this doubling has been very bad for the star. Audiences have resented it. They have felt that something akin to cheating was put over them. The stars that have survived the old order are also anxious to learn about music — piano, for instance — so that they may hold their stellar places in the new social life of Hollywood and enjoy the evenings which are given in great part to music. The big games of charades and ping pong are not prime attractions any more. We come to this. Hollywood has been the playground and the workshop of naive children who have outgrown their toys and their clothes. Now they have to get down to the serious business of growing up and sticking their Otto Morando, Bebe Daniels' teacher, is something of a martinet and the fame of his pupils means nothing to him.