Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

Talking Pictures that preparation for a comic picture has one important deviation from the technique used to build a dramatic photoplay. In drama, romance, and tragedy a writer can accurately judge in advance how the public will react emotionally, but laughs are a more difficult problem. They come, or they fail to come, on the presence of, or lack of, an accent of the voice, a split second in timing an action. For this reason the most successful screen comedians test the reactions to the "gags" they propose to use later in a picture before actual audiences. They fit these gags into a stage show and travel with it to several cities. Their "gag men" accompany the show and stand in the wing with hand adding machines to "clock" the number of laughs. By the audiences' laugh reactions they lengthen or condense a gag, or discard it entirely. The Marx Brothers have used this device successfully for several years, and Eddie Cantor's coming films will be preceded by similar "in the flesh" tours. If the reader has attended classes in any one of the thousands of high schools regularly using the "appreciation manuals" prepared for the best pictures by representatives of the National Council of Teachers of English or the National Education Association, he knows that dialogue on the screen can only be about half as long as that on the stage before being broken by action or by shifting of close-ups. He is able when attending a motion picture to sort the good touches from the mediocre, and to form in his own mind treatments for pictorial reproduction of stories he has read or plays he has seen. He will know that action upon [76]