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22 Picture Show Annual NINETEEN twenty-nine will go down to posterity as the most upsetting year in the motion picture industry. It witnessed the beginning of the revolution caused by Warner Bros, and Vitaphone and " The Jazz Singer." Nineteen-thirty marked its con- tinuation. There was not a single side in the whole business that was not affected, and the fallacy of the belief that when the novelty had worn off pictures would revert to silence brought on a panic when it became evident. Old established favourites who had imagined them- selves secure for years found their popularity menaced, and rushed off to tone up their speech and song ; camera- men found themselves second in importance in the studio to the " mike" ; directors found themselves obliged to relinquish the megaphone and acquire a new technique; while the pro- ducers hastened the erection of sound-proof stages and talkie equipments whose various patentees waged unceasing war. In the pandemonium stage stars seized their opportunity. The fact that so many silent screen stars had no knowledge of using their voice for the stage or microphone made producers naturally look to the stage for stars with trained voices. The difficulty of pre- venting a stage star " playing to the audience " and overcoming the strangeness of the " close-up " was less than endeavouring to coach an entirely inexperienced star with Charles McNaughton and Beryl Mercer, of the original stage cast of "Three Live Ghosts." lent their inimitable humour to the talkie version. Mary Duncan is one of the most alluring vamps to desert the stage for the micro- phone, and has ployed in " City Girl " and " Romance of the Rio Grande." microphone fright in delivering lines dramat- ically yet naturally. Dorothy Burgess was one of the first New York stars to be so engaged. She played with Warner Baxter in " In Old Arizona," and her triumph, following Al Jolson's, was the signal for the producers to make a rush for stage stars.