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26 SOUND MOTION PICTURES
which was presented initially at the Fox West Coast Criterion Theatre, Los Angeles, on December 25, 1928. This film was photographed and recorded outdoors against a sweeping background of natural beauty, and in it sound recording achieved its highest artistic success up to that time. Filmed and recorded right in the vast open spaces, the scenes and human voice and all the accompanying sounds were reproduced with a clearness and naturalness that attracted wide attention. The Movietone process caught and reproduced with fidelity not only the voices of the actors, but actually the natural sounds of the outdoors : the whispering of the wind, the song of the birds. The picture was thus notable in combining the perfected technique of the silent film with the faithful recording of music, dialogue, and sound.
Subsequent Fox pictures that were well received and that helped to advance the art of sound recording included the all-talking picture Through Different Eyes, and Hearts in Dixie, which was unusual because of the fact that it was reproduced with an all-Negro cast. It is probably the first musical offering produced as a motion picture would be, without the limitations of a proscenium arch.
The confidence that Mr. William Fox had in the future of sound and talking pictures took definite form in the erection of Movietone City, which arose from the cactusgrown waste land of Fox Hills, Los Angeles, and was built in ninety days. At the time of writing Fox's Movietone City is the world's largest sound studio plant, covering more than forty acres of ground. Here a staff of celebrated directors, authors, composers, and technicians has been devoting its efforts, under the supervision of Winfield R. Sheehan, to the development of the new art.
The studio consists of twenty-five buildings constructed of concrete. Four of them are 212 feet long by 165 feet