Screenland (Nov 1928-Apr 1929)

SCREENLAND 93 hoping Dolores' voice won't be drowned in the flood. ... Dolores' sister, Helene, was the heroine of Lights of Hew Yor\ and had her chance to speak as well as to exhibit lines. This was the first '100% All-Talking Picture.' Helene is thus made immortal — and her voice, recorded in Vitaphone, a museum piece for future generations. Won't she feel silly, though! Gladys Brockwell was the First Lady of the Talkers. Her voice, it seems to me, was the first to register effectively on the speaking screen. Mary Carr, also of Lights of Hew Tor\, managed to make herself heard, but Miss Brockwell, with her stage training, conveyed the illusion of reality, and her voice rose above the mechanics of the method. Chalk up Miss Brockwell, boy, as the first feminine voice to compete with the masterful men. Don't forget, dear friends, that the surface of the talking picture has not yet even been cracked. It may sound as if it has at times, but it hasn't really. It's only in its infancy — just lisping along. You remember yourself, when you were in kindergarten— just feeling your way, cutting out paper dolls or doing some other darn fool thing, and bored to death all the time, — it's just something we must all get through with, and as rapidly as possible. When the Hollywood girls have all learned their A, B, C's and their I, O. U's, then is the time to begin to criticize them. Right now all they need is encouragement. Come on, now — stop making cracks about the way they speak through their pretty little noses — and only yesterday you were writing fan letters to 'the shapeliest little nose in all the world,' you big hypocrite, you! — and take a long, deep breath for them. Listen to a recording of your own voice and see how good it sounds. There — I thought that would shut you up! How about your own sound defects? What I think the girls should do is to get up a round robin to present to John Barrymore. This little petition should beg dear, kind Mr. Barrymore to start a class in voice culture, giving the untrained actresses of Hollywood the bsnefit of his wonderful experience. Mr. Barrymore must realize his chanee to perform a great service to mankind — saving both stars and audience many weary, painful hours. Barrymore could fill the Hollywood Bowl three classes a day with eager ingenues. They would prefer that he wear his Hamlet costume while teaching, and they wish to remind him that the first lesson should be 'How to Say I Love You.' I really don't think it is asking too much of Mr. Barrymore and if he has the best interests of Hollywood at heart I am sure he will accept this opportunity to help the maidens of the film colony to find their voices. Of course, there are other teachers out there. And they are all pretty busy, let me tell you. Pretty actresses are spending every minute they can snatch from their work learning to talk. A fortunate few apparently know how already. Mary Pickford, for instance. Her very first voice test amazed everybody who had forgotten that Mary was a famous stage star once upon a time, before she made a great name for herself in pictures. A protegee of David Belasco, dean of American managers, she captivated New York as the star of A Good Little Devil. Mary hasn't forgotten what Belasco taught her, and when she spoke into the microphone it was in a cultured, well-trained soprano. Miss Pickford is making Coquette, the stage play, in sound — with herself and her company, mostly recruited from Broadway, speaking the original dialogue. She will also make an entirely different, separate version — a silent motion picture for those theatres which have not yet installed sound equipment. Her voice and diction will doubtless be an inspiration to all the girls in Hollywood, as Mary herself has always been. Clara Bow has a voice to match her personality! This is great news — and it means that a voice brimming with It and everything will soon come to us from the screen. So far, the most entirely satisfying feminine voice to speak from the screen — or wherever it is it speaks from; let's not get technical just now — belongs to Louise Fazenda. Her voice is in character. It matches ' Louise's richly comic spirit. Fa' zenda has never disappointed us yet and she never will. If they invent feelies Louise will be good in those, too. And I think that will be true with all of the really great and potent personalities of motion pictures. I'll bet you'll love Mary's voice — and Clara's — and John Gilbert's. I know you will like Harold Lloyd's voice — it is boyish and exuberant, and you will hear it in his next comedy. As for RinTin-Tin's bark, it has a carrying quality. Madge Bellamy and Louise Dresser in Mother Knows Best demonstrate the value of a former stage training. Just the same, the untutored Barry Norton, especially when he sang Sally, the theme song, more than measured up. For one Fazenda and Bellamy and Dresser, we have Barry and John Miljan and Arthur Lake and David Rollins and Neil Hamilton, in addition to all the other men I have mentioned who have made good in a big bass way. When some of my best movie girl-friends speak from the screen, I don't know them. That Vitaphone-Movietone thing certainly does something to nice sweet girlish voices. It doesn't flatter Sue Carol's. And as girl to girl, Josephine Dunn, weren't you startled when you heard yourself talking in The Singing Fool! You never talked like that to me. On the other hand, the Vitaphone reproduces Betty Bronson's child-like treble with amazing fidelity. Just as the movie camera is unkind to certain faces, no matter how charming, so, apparently, the recording equipment picks on some voices for no good reason. It may have something to do with lack of training, or it may be accounted for mechanically. I don't know anything about that. But I do think we should make allowances. Gosh — we have to! They say the stage actors, who were never much of a success in celluloid, are having the laugh on our beloved movie stars. Well, let them laugh. They look forward, perhaps, to crashing the studio gates with their vocal histrionics and showing up our darlings. Well, let them try. But don't let them forget that they may have to learn screen acting if they hope to make a howling hit on the screen. The art of movie pantomime, which the merest movie actor must master, is somewhat different from the broad and sweeping gestures of the 'legitimate.' Thank goodness! I'm not trying to pick a quarrel with Mr. Ryskind of The Stage Coach — but I am just reminding everyone concerned that he who laughs loudest iaughs longest, or something. Boys and girls together, we're all learning. 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