Talking Screen (Jan-Aug 1930)

Wagon anisms while the nerve-wrecked film actors stuttered and lisped through their lines. Unknown faces crept out from the shadows to tap little sticks before the microphone. Nobody knew why. Sinister wizards would appear from nowhere before the sound device and murmur "One, two, three, four, Mississippi." Then silently fade away. Bells would ring loudly tonguing a clarion call for silence. Red lights signalled danger. No wonder our stars had a bad case of the "Brooklyn Boys." IT OOK out, it may be Lon Chaney!" changed to "Look out, JL/ maybe it's Mike!" Microphones were hidden everywhere — under cushions, in back of chairs, beneath drapes — they crawled up your sleeve. Got in your hair. The studio was a wWspering gallery. And over all presided a diabolical figure encaged in glass, who twisted torture knobs arrayed before him, and with a turn of the wrist emasculated bassos into tenors. He spoke to no one, yet they called him the "mixer." More mystery. The only mixers Hollywood had known were the "he'sh a zholly goo' fellah" type. Herbert Brenon, who first reviled the talkies, and who is now making Lummox, all-dialogue. Furthermore, he says it wiU be the best picture of his entire long and successful career. And the direaors! Oh, the directors! Tlie boys who sat up nights rehearsing new insults to shout. The exalted souls who had been wont to beat their breasts like Dave Warfield in The Auctioneer and scream: "Give it to me! Give it to me!" The sons of — ^genius who had roared like ravening rhinoceri during every scene. The All Highests of the studio. Now they sat, practically gagged and bound, not even daring to tear their hair, for fear the metallic clank of fists against their skulls would be reproduced in the picture. In place of the good old thrill of a real pistol shot which once made the players forger the make-believe, now for the big shooting scene an "engineer" would step up to the sound device and crack a peanut. And if he snapped the shell too Colleen Moore hit the bull's-eye in her first talkie. Smiling Irish Eyes. Here she is as Fifi d'Auray, the character she plays in Footlights and Fools, her second talkie. close to the mike, the resultant outburst on the screaming screen would resemble the Battle of the Marne, or Tunney kissing the canvas in that long count round. SERIOUSLY enough, Gloria's silent film was shelved. Mary Pickford approached a nervous breakdown. Clara Bow was worn to a wisp. Jannings exited permanently. Movietone monarchs manipulated control of Metro. "Tom Mix's old stamping ground became Radio Pictures property. First National became second to Warner Brothers. Chaplin barely saved United Artists from a merger. Morale shattered, the wily movie magnates for once dropped their guard. It was the long awaited opportunity. Big Business swooped in. The industry was given over to a horrid tale titled "Mergers in the Rue Morgan." Not being professors themselves, the producers couldn't tell whether or not the stars of the silent drama could talk the language. And after many years of slangful conversations with their bosses, the players themselves weren't sure whether or not they could speak a brand of English intelligible throughout America. So the fast-thinking stage stepped in. And clinging to its slightly greenish frock coat came interfering Equity. The boys who had been mooching coffee nickels around the scene of Marlow's Last Ride complained that the caviar was imported from the wrong place. The smell of applesauce mingled with the orange-laden breath of the flowery land. But finally the Big Shots got their second wind. Reverting back to the cloak and suit business, it occurred to them as a good time to take inventory. Investigation proved what such erudition as that of Herbert Brenon had long since indicated. With the exception of Jimmy Gleason and the late Jeanne Eagels, "we of the drammer" had contributed no whit to either the artistic or the box-office aspects of the new medium. [Continued on page 93} 37 /