14
The Well-Tempered Sound Track, 1930–1931

Forget art.

Carl Laemmle, Jr., 1931

In 1930 regular customers began attending movies less frequently and spending less money. The motion picture industry cut back on production budgets, furloughed workers, and sold theaters, all the while trying to keep America's alleged movie habit alive. The talkies had lost their allure as a technological novelty and a harbinger of scientific progress. The films of the 1930-1931 season had to succeed or fail on factors other than their use of sound.

The new filmmaking was very different. Sounds were being consolidated into the unostentatious presence which the critics had been espousing for a year or so. There was even a tendency to indulge in what producers were calling "silent" technique, though no one—except Charlie Chaplin, and even he only briefly—thought that real silent filmmaking would return. Filmmakers had the technical capacity to emphasize or diminish the sound at their disposal. It could be brought in or out, up or down, made "expressive" or "inaudible," as desired. Voices and effects could be "synthetic," the term used for dubbing and adding sounds in post-production. Music could well up and fade back to underscore action and mood. The new modulated sound track constructed a heterogeneous sensory environment, but one always dominated and unified by the voice.

The technicians' increasing control of signal-to-noise in recording and playback was driven, in large measure, by a desire to improve the comprehension of human speech. Quieter recording media and directional mikes could amplify the voice above the internal noise of the thermionic system and isolate it from the unwanted sounds of the environment. The moviegoer could hear language, even softly spoken, without straining. Fans favored those actors with distinctive voices who spoke in a wide-ranging natural style and yet could soften their articulation for a more intimate effect. The boys on the lam in Public Enemy (dir. William Wellman, 1931) can argue stridently or whisper conspiratorially and still be understood.

As ever, acoustic presence continued to be foregrounded, but was used blatantly only in comedy scenes. So when the heroes slip on a wet street in Fifty Million Frenchman (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1930) a funny note on a slide whistle can accompany them. The romantic leads in The Lottery Bride (dir. Paul Stein, 1930) still break into an unprovoked, unintegrated love song, which may be enjoyed for its own sake. "It is a pictorial contribution that causes one to wish that the performers would sing more and talk considerably less," conceded the Times' Mordaunt Hall. He was still impressed by sound as punctuation in Moby Dick (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1930): "When one hears the man in the main top shouting 'Thar she blows!' it creates a thrill such as the screen is seldom capable of affording."¹ At the same time, but with no sense of self-contradiction, Hall espoused integrating sound as "inaudible" support for the image. The modulated sound track should only call attention to itself in a few circumscribed situations. For example, Dorothy Arzners Anybody's Woman (1930) used a clever device to highlight sound. An electric fan "blows" a conversation across a hotel courtyard. Hall was not impressed. "This more or less ingenious notion can be accepted in an early episode, but when it crops up again in the climactic sequence the result is emphatically disappointing."² For the Times critic, this overly assertive use of sound was old-fashioned. His review of Good News (dir. Nick Grinde, 1930) reacted specifically against the formerly impressive aesthetic of superabundance: "With sudden flaring into moonstruck ballads, 'hotcha-cha' dance numbers and all manner of contrivances short of a balloon ascension, the story is unfolded of a college hero who has flunked in astronomy." Even Jolsons charisma failed to redeem Big Boy (dir. Alan Crosland, 1930) because "the ancient ideas throughout the tale scarcely atone for Mr. Jolson's gift of melody."³ The Royal Family of Broadway (dir. George Cukor and Cyril Gardner, 1930) exemplified Hall's insistence on sound not distracting from story development. "It moves along with such sureness and rapidity that it seems over all too soon…. It is evident that any extraneous dilly dallying with cinematic stunts would have interrupted the narrative." Hall attributed the film's snappy story to the original Kaufman and Ferber play, but for creating the brisk screenplay—"possibly the fastest example of film work"—he praised the directors and writers, Herman Mankiewicz and Gertrude Purcell. He mused:

New York Times, 23 December 1930">

It causes one to reflect on the difference between this current offering, which incidentally was produced at Paramount's Astoria studio, and those that were put out two years ago. Here the leading rôles are performed by experienced players [Ina Claire and Fredric March], with the consequence that there is never any hesitation in their lines and their voices are admirably recorded, so well that one can't help thinking now and again of the vast progress made in the technical end of this relatively new form of entertainment. (Hall, New York Times, 23 December 1930)

Hall contrasted this film to the first talkies: "It is a film without the slightest sign of the old technique."

Trying to describe the specific effects of sound, Hall occasionally used the terms "sound close-up" and "sound intrusion" to describe acoustic events which stood out from the normal level of the sound track. The first term suggests an analogy to the silent-movie inserted close-up image; the second acknowledges that such effects are artificial additions to the "normal" acoustic environment. When these effects were properly orchestrated, the result could be superior to the silent film. In the review of Moby Dick, Hall adamantly maintained that the talkie was better than the 1927 version (The Sea Beast) precisely because it was "enhanced by a variety of sounds and the power of speech."⁴

The movies of 1930-1931 show the effects of Hollywood's efforts to operate under tighter fiscal controls and stabilization. There were fewer releases as well as less emphasis on blockbusters and big spectacles. The musical genre breathed its last gasp (until its revival with Busby Berkeley's extravaganzas for Warners in 1933), while studios tested the gangster and Western. The comedies of this period have in common their performers' idiosyncratic voices and delivery styles, as well as the much-appreciated zany anarchism of their plots. These films attracted viewers the way pratfalls and chases did a decade earlier. Audiences seemed to be fascinated by the likes of El Brendel, the comedian with the corny Swedish accent in Just Imagine (dir. David Butler, 1930), in which he plays a "sleeper" who is killed by lightning in 1930 and revived in 1980, and in The Big Trail (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1930), in which he is a henpecked immigrant settler. Moran and Mack dazzled white audiences with their "Black Crow" dialects. Stepin Fetchit drawled. Ole Olsen convulsed himself with shrill giggling. Eddie Cantor sang and joked with a Jewish inflection. Ed Wynn's high-pitched nuttiness in Follow the Leader (dir., 1930) was contagious. (Hall thought that "his gags could never be pictured to such advantage in a silent film.")⁵ Chevalier oozed Gallic charm in Playboy of Paris (dir. Norman Taurog, 1930). Will Rogers's southwestern vowels were welcome. Charlotte Greenwood distinguished herself "with her ear-splitting voice and thrashing movements …, her steady stream of slang and wisecracks."⁶ These comics' vaudeville roots were clearly showing. Their voices were their living onstage, and the talkies gave them a national audience.

More subtly, melodramas and romances benefited from the ability of the camera to move in close to hear a sad crack in the voice or billets-doux spoken by lovers. Marlene Dietrich, in Morocco (dir. Josef von Stemberg, 1930), enthralls the listener with her world-weary throatiness, as when she tells Gary Cooper, "There's a foreign legion of women too, but we have no uniform, no medals, no flags. But we are brave."

The Musical: Welcome as the Measles

The fate of Fox's Song o' My Heart demonstrates the musical genre's increasing loss of favor as early as February 1930. Frank Borzage shot the film, which starred the renowned tenor John McCormack, partly on location in Ireland using Technicolor and the Grandeur process. Variety liked the film as a virtual performance: "The recording on McCormack is excellent, as is the judgement evidenced in the handling of all the component parts…. Besides, John McCormack and eleven McCormack songs for 75 cents." Yet the plot was a trifle. Obviously, because Fox had paid McCormack $500,000, it wanted to reap as many notes as possible from him. The public apparently desired something more than a cinematic concert; the film played poorly, and McCormack's option for a second film was not picked up.⁷

The box-office failure of The King of Jazz (dir. John Murray Anderson) in early 1930 was another sign that the public was tiring of the concoction of attractions constituting the revue movie.

What it lacks most is a little more skill in its construction, for it runs from the ultra artistic to the commonplace. It is a magnificent patch work quilt clumsily sewn together, for it has everything, including trick photography, exquisite color, a cartoon sequence, some good laughs and the most stupendous sets shown to date in a screen musical. The whole affair is rather a musical cocktail centered around King Paul himself and his merry musicians. (Film Daily, 4 May 1930, p. 1)⁸

Hall described Warners' Sweet Kitty Bellairs (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1930) as "operetta-conscious in a dull way."⁹Variety actually liked Bride of the Regiment (dir. John Francis Dillon, 1930), but to the extent that it departed from the musical norm: "Containing a nicely knit story … with less emphasis laid on the music than most operetta talkers, Bride of the Regiment has a far better chance than many of the predecessors in its class." Filmmakers, the review continued, were "realizing fans are far more concerned with story and plot." Children of Pleasure (dir. Harry Beaumont, 1930), because it contained so many songs, was "built for the novelty era."¹⁰ Reviews like these clearly demonstrate the pressure which studios were receiving to integrate music within a narrative—or omit it.

Why, the trades pondered, had the musical become so prevalent? "Can it be that the mental weavers of Los Angeles-by-the-Sea can think of no other tales than those about chorines, dressing rooms, soubrettes and bum comedians or has Hollywood gone so completely Broadway that nothing else matters?" queried Film Daily. "Too much aqua pura," Variety remarked in its inimitable style, "has trickled under the trestle since the backstage formula was first promulgated by Hollywood."¹¹

The rapid falloff in box-office returns for musicals that began in the summer of 1930 continued during the new season, reflecting an unmistakable popular backlash against the genre. Fan magazines and exhibitors' letters to the trade press communicated the general public's increasing boredom. Samuel Goldwyn, one who listened, predicted that 50 percent fewer films would be made in 1931, with the biggest cuts in musicals: "It is ridiculous for studios to attempt to turn out fifteen to twenty musical productions a year. The best showmen on Broadway with years of experience in the field are only able to do one or two."¹² Alicoate confirmed that Hollywood was rebalancing its genres: "Reacting to box-office experience and exhibitor pleas, producers are making another reduction in the number of musicals for next season…. Scenario writers have been instructed to go slow on musical material. ' The cuts in musical production were supposed to have precipitated an "exodus of chorines from Hollywood," along with songsmiths, musicians, and assorted Broadway talent. Paramount even laid off Jeanette MacDonald.¹³

Why the change in taste? The simplest explanation is that the public was surfeited with the glut of musical movies as a genre. But some critics and industry insiders suggested that the public was dissatisfied with the content: plotless revues and excessive singing. The composer Sigmund Romberg (The Student Prince, Viennese Nights) complained that music and dancing failed on Hollywood screens because the producers had not adopted what he called a graduated approach to musical content:

Sigmund Romberg, "What's Wrong with Musical Pictures," Rob Wagner's Script, 2 August 1930, reprinted in Anthony Slide, ed., The Best of Rob Wagner's Script [Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1985], p. 12">

Did the movie producers realize the difference between a score and a song? Did any of them stop to think that a score is a unit of melodies written after careful consideration, by graduation, to bring an audience into a certain mood, or frame of mind, as the book may require? Nobody knew, or cared, that in a score, a composer, from the opening note to the closing bar, through skillful manipulation of different tempos, with different instrumentations, through different songs, plays for two and a half hours with an audience and sells them something so satisfactory that, by the end of the evening, they go out whistling his numbers and recommending the show to their friends. (Sigmund Romberg, "What's Wrong with Musical Pictures," Rob Wagner's Script, 2 August 1930, reprinted in Anthony Slide, ed., The Best of Rob Wagner's Script [Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1985], p. 12)

Implicit in Romberg's criticism that the musical was not being approached as a whole, structured work but rather a series of "numbers" is the neglect of the function of the "book," the narrative element. The composer and lyricist should lead an audience through the operetta's structured progression. He believed that instead of canned revues, moviegoers responded to films with a story. Alfred E. Green, the Warners director, concurred: "Music must be subordinated to action."¹⁴ The Wall Street Journal reported that this was the Hollywood consensus: "Film producers in planning their new production programs will endeavor to place more emphasis on the quality of entertainment and less on the mere novelty of sound. The industry has been deluged with musical revues and operettas for the screen. This fall it seems more likely that greater importance will be given to plot."¹⁵ Alicoate wrote in "Flops of 1930" that musicals had "committed box-office hari-kari."

A great majority of these screen musicals that came in like a lion and went out like a lamb were beautiful, but Oh! so dumb. We believe the musical talkie still has a chance regardless of the fact that it is now as welcome as the measles in most directions. Sunny Side Up was a smash because it combined story and action with honest-to-goodness comedy and bright tunes that one could remember. (Film Daily, 1 July 1930, p. 1)

Hall liked Viennese Nights (dir. Alan Crosland, 1930) because "its none too novel narrative often captivates one's interest."¹⁶ After a year of complaints about their lack of originality and entertainment value, Hollywood stopped releasing musicals. Does this mean that producers were following the critics' recommendations? Not necessarily—perhaps not even likely.

While the critics may articulate (accurately or not) the reasons behind audience reaction to films, only when the trend becomes a box-office reality are studios likely to react in turn. The films of the 1930-1931 season were the first to suffer the jolt of the Depression. Superabundance was expensive. These films had to do very well just to recoup the high cost of production values (which might include Technicolor photography and release prints), royalties paid to Broadway producers, and hefty fees for stars. But contrary to the general belief that hard times generated a desire for escapist fare, audiences showed little interest in these revues and musicals. Mordaunt Hall's ten-best list of 1930 films, significantly, did not contain a single musical.¹⁷

Several productions with a Broadway genesis were de-tuned for their movie versions. Columbia, for instance, bought the rights to the James Gleason and Maurice Marks musical Rain or Shine, but Capra's 1930 screen version contained no songs (only some background music from the original). Instead, it featured the comedian Joe Cook doing his balancing act circus specialty. "There may not be much to the factual story of this musical comedy now without song," wrote Hall, "but it possesses the quality of humor that is not too strained."¹⁸ What happened to Fifty Million Frenchmen strikingly illustrates this retreat from musicals. Warner Bros. had underwritten the original Broadway musical, which featured songs by Cole Porter, specifically for the purpose of filming it. But when the studio shot the movie, it cut out all the songs, including the soon-to-be standard "You Do Something to Me." A few Porter melodies were used as (extremely expensive!) background music. The play's love story was transformed into a filmed farce showcasing the slapstick of the Palace Theater comedy team of Olsen and Johnson. It ends with a chase in fast-motion (silent comedy style) with post-dubbed footsteps and sound effects. "With the song and dance numbers eliminated and action being substituted in their place," said Film Daily with approbation, "this screen adaptation of the Broadway musical success comes off as a fairly satisfying piece of comedy entertainment."¹⁹ The tendency to strip musicals of their music (which in these cases had already been paid for by the studios) demonstrates clearly that the genre was rejected not primarily for economic reasons but rather as a response to customers' changing tastes.

As always, however, these changes were not global. Hollywood did not suddenly decide to throw aside the earliest conception of sound as a supplement and adopt the ideal of the voice-dominated environment. The films of this season were full of contradictions. In some musicals, like the above two examples, the songs were naturalized to the point of extinction. In others, song-and-dance numbers were still conspicuously encapsulated as virtual performances. (Jules Bledsoe, for example, sings "The Toreador" from Carmen and "Old Man River" from Show Boat in Remote Control [dir. Malcolm St. Clair, Nick Grinde, 1930]). Some movies used nonstop talk, superabundant sound effects, and background music to maximize the acoustic potential of the medium; others experimented with extended nondialogue passages for a contrast effect. Even within one film some parts flaunted vocal and audio effects and other sections used sound "inaudibly." And finally, in early 1931, City Lights was released. Because it was the most prominent new film to buck the trend and use no dialogue whatsoever, Chaplin's film was widely viewed as a test.²⁰ Would it stand against the talkies? Would it, as Chaplin hoped, start a return to silent filmmaking as a minority practice within Hollywood?

The Modulated Sound Track

Paramount

A film that exemplifies the direction in which Hollywood was taking sound is Josef von Sternberg's Morocco, starring Adolph Menjou, Gary Cooper, and Paramount's German discovery, Marlene Dietrich. Tom Brown (Cooper) is trying to forget a woman by the usual means, a stint in the French Foreign Legion. He meets Amy Jolly (Dietrich), who is also ailing from a broken heart and has renounced men altogether. She is starting her new life as (apparently) a lesbian chanteuse in a seedy nightclub. Brown catches her eye, though, and inevitably restores her to heterosexual man-worship. In the final scene, she kicks off her high heels to trek across the Sahara behind Brown's platoon. (The film leaves room for doubt as to whether this is the right choice.)

Technically, the track is rather noisy. The splices are clearly audible because they were not altogether successfully blooped. This defect, however, enables us to hear how the different effects and music tracks were assembled. There is plenty of vocal foregrounding, exploiting the accents of the principals. (Amy Jolly is supposed to be French.) Vocal background sound occurs throughout, but especially in the nightclub scenes where conversations murmur behind the exchanges between Menjou and Dietrich. The film is punctuated by sound close-ups, sometimes associated with a gratuitous inserted source image (castanets, a flapping flag) and sometimes just added for acoustic "color" (the foghorn, the howling desert wind). Rising and falling sound levels indicate approaching or receding troops on the march. Sternberg's use of sound is perhaps analogous to his stocking every scene with ubiquitous palm-leaf fans. These acoustic atmospheric effects evoke a multi-sensory experience of the existential and erotic swelter of Morocco.

But the film is also notable for its pronounced lack of talking in key scenes. At the opening, when Brown is setting up a date with an Arab girl (a prostitute), they communicate by glances and finger gestures. At movies end, Brown and Jolly stare long and longingly at each other. There are no words during the entire final scene, only the rising metaphoric wind and the fading sound of a marching drum, which continues past the Paramount "The End" logo. Arthur Carew of the Los Angeles Express understood the significance of Stemberg's approach: "We must use dialogue sparingly, only when lines definitely highlight the character or point up the situation. Fortunately recent developments which have produced The Blue Angel, Morocco, Outward Bound and other cinematic gems are leading the way into a better understanding of our future needs."²¹

Warner Bros./First National

The musical turned around to sting Warners with big losses for Big Boy, the Jolson vehicle, and Viennese Nights, the last of the grand talkie operettas. (Both were directed by Crosland in 1930.) Zanuck, whose studio was the most committed to the now-unpopular stage-based musical, had a strong incentive to shift production to what he called "topical" subjects. He found his ideal in a novel by W. R. Burnett, the source for Little Caesar (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1930). The story was transparently based on the sensational exploits of Al Capone. "Raw meat stuff reel after reel."²² The ambitious sound track established the ambience of the gangsters' milieu. Edward G. Robinson's gravellyvoiced performance fascinated audiences and critics. But his snarling argot was something never before heard in the movies: "Yer yella, ya dirty …," and, "Yeah, I'll park it. I don't need no cannon to take care of guys like you." Dialogue is used to implicate the eavesdropping movie viewer in the narrative, as when Big Boy (Sydney Blackmer) says conspiratorially, "Listen, Rico. I'm gonna talk to you, but you're not gonna hear a word I say, see? This is inside dope." Rico (Robinson) pays close attention—and so do we. In the famous opening scene, we see a dark gas station off in the distance. Shots ring out, a cash register chings, and a door slams to depict the robbery without showing it. As Sam introduces Rico to the mob, LeRoy interpolates footage shot silent with a mobile camera, flitting from face to face. The same technique is used in the tour-de-force New Year's Eve holdup of the Bronze Peacock nightclub. The sound editors have constructed a track with several planes. Crowd noises continue as Rico bursts into the lobby (filmed silent). In a series of rapidly edited views (only two to ten seconds each, joined by dissolves), Rico executes the heist. The only dialogue is a close-up of Rico barking out, "Stay where you are," just before he shoots the crime commissioner (dubbed gunshots). Outside, the sound track blends into the street noise of the city. Hall scored Little Caesar high on its story and acting: "The production is ordinary and would rank as just one more gangster film but for two things. One is the excellence of Mr. Burnett's credible and compact story. The other is Edward G. Robinson's wonderfully effective performance."²³ The actor's voice became the icon of tragic gang leaders.

The Warner "realist" cycle was under way. Sinner's Holiday (dir. John Adolfi, 1930), a squalid story of carnival life, gave the contract player James Cagney an important role. He confesses to a murder in the last scene and is led away to his execution, his voice aching with high-strung emotions. Doorway to Hell (dir. Archie Mayo, 1930) starred Lew Ayres and Cagney in a supporting part. Hall appreciated the evocation of criminal atmosphere: "a plausible screen version of the underworld which will bring the flavor of familiar things to a public that has watched with growing alarm the reckless activities of gangland."²⁴ Zanuck promoted Cagney over Edward Woods to play the lead in Public Enemy. The new star's bravura performance included individualizing mannerisms—a sly wink, a soft punch on the chin with the fist—as well as a voice that ranges from sweetness with his lover to shrill vulgarity (to the waiter in a speakeasy concerning a couple of drunks: "Send those two smack-offs home to their mothers"). The director, William Wellman, utilized the relatively portable Vitaphone recording gear to open up his story with exterior shooting (using the Warner/First National backlot street sets and the main street of Burbank to stand in for Chicago's Michigan Avenue). These exteriors appear to have been filmed with a single camera, but multi-camera cinematography was used liberally on the soundstages. The scene in which Mike (Donald Cook) confronts his brother, Tom Powers (Cagney), about his life of crime is noteworthy. The action takes place in Mike's bedroom in the space of about eight feet. Yet apparently five cameras were recording simultaneously: one for a frontal long-shot, one for a frontal medium-shot, one for an oblique medium-shot from the right, and two for over-the-shoulder shot—reverse shot close-ups during the tensest moment of the argument. In addition, the frontal camera tracks in close, pulls back during the confrontation, then pans and tilts to follow Cagney as he kicks the door.²⁵ This use of multiple cameras has little in common with multi-camera recording of the superabundance of a big stage number; the technique instead is used to micro-analyze the dramatic scene into its component visual parts. In addition to providing the editor with "easy" match-action cuts, the multi-camera cinematography preserves the spontaneous intensity of the performance. Meanwhile, the sound track keeps running uncut and the recording level is unchanged throughout. Elsewhere there is some acoustic spotting, for example, using the staccato sound of an unloading coal truck to camouflage the rival gang's machine-gun attack. But for the most part, the effects are used to create mood and dramatic unity. There is no theme song, in the sense of an encapsulated performance; rather, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" emerges as a leitmotif at key moments during the film. We hear an ominous version under the main titles, a honky-tonk piano rendition, and finally, the tune playing on a phonograph record in the Powers' parlor. It symbolically hits the final groove just as Tom's mutilated body crashes over the threshold. The horror of Tom's death is emphasized by the banality of "Bubbles." The public loved the film and idolized Cagney, despite (or because of) the scenes in which he impulsively shoots a racehorse because it killed his boss and when he crams a grapefruit into his lover's face. Robert Sherwood picked up on the misogyny which runs throughout these early gangster biopics:

Cagney's ascent to eminence during the past year has been astounding, unaccountable. He is the type who, according to all the laws and traditions, should be a competent small part player, but never a star…. Cagney is the first one whose appeal is based on a sock in the jaw delivered either to the man he hates or to the woman he loves (preferably the latter). Every time Cagney clenches his little fist, the audience begins to squeal with delight, and when he lands it with audible impact upon the fair countenance of Mae Clarke or Joan Blondell or Loretta Young, or whoever the unlucky girl may be, the audience's enthusiasm is unbounded. "Hit 'er again, Jimmy!" they shout in their atavistic glee. What's the reason for this? Is it possibly a manifestation of wish-fulfillment? Have the film fans been nourishing a secret desire to bust the noses of their favorite cuties? (Film Daily, 7 March 1932, p. 9)

Fox

Another new performer with a quirky voice would prove to be among the most important male dramatic stars to emerge during this period—but not immediately. Film Daily found it somewhat remarkable that Fox had chosen for a principal role in Raoul Walsh's The Oregon Trail an actor whose only experience had been in bits, extra work, and assisting in the Fox prop shop. Marion Michael "Duke" Morrison became John Wayne, and the film became The Big Trail, released in October 1930. (The paper found the musical score to be even more remarkable: "Strange to say, the film won't have any theme song.") Winfield Sheehan was enthusiastic about the neophyte actor with the honey voice and was "laying out big plans for a smashing meller with all the trimmings called No Favors Asked, to star John Wayne who has done big things in The Big Trail." The actor signed a long-term contract in August."²⁶ The story shows Breck Coleman (Wayne) and Red Flack (Tyrone Power) locked in a bitter struggle for control of the wagon train (rather like what was happening in the Fox home office). Recorded sound overlays are used extensively to create atmosphere. A distant figure sawing logs, for example, is accompanied by sounds of her work. Most of the camp scenes have the sound of dogs barking—though not coming from any visible canines. Orchestral music is used much like that in silent films. When Coleman is telling Indian stories to the children, ersatz Native American music plays. A homey tune plays as he says good-bye to his girlfriend, Ruth (Marguerite Churchill). Sometimes the balance between the planes of sound effects is not good. On the steamboat landing, for instance, the actors can scarcely be heard through the layers of din. Hall complained that occasionally the voices did not come from the mouths of the players. (This dislocation was probably induced by the widescreen Grandeur image.) There is vocal foregrounding as Zeke (Tully Marshall) impersonates various animal calls, and Brendel speaks in his caricatural Swede dialect.

MGM

The studio produced one of the last full-fledged operettas in December 1930. Lawrence Tibbett costarred with Grace Moore, also from the Metropolitan, in a film adaptation of New Moon (dir. Jack Conway). (Moore's previous solo film, A Lady's Morals [1930], was a musical biopic about Jenny Lind that had flopped.) They sing Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg's original score, sometimes motivated by the plot, but sometimes not.²⁷

The Bishop Murder Case (dir. Nick Grinde, 1930) was an amusing low-budget film which explored the acoustic possibilities of the detective genre. Solving the murder mystery hinges on discovering the source of a scream heard in the first scene. As Philo Vance, Basil Rathbone uses his mellifluous voice to establish his character's Sherlockian command of any crime scene (although microphone placement problems sometimes make his speech fade in and out—this film was recorded by Donald (or Frank) MacKenzie, not Douglas Shearer).²⁸ Prerecorded offscreen sounds help establish a dramatic space: creaking doors, footsteps, sirens, typewriter keys, a ticking clock. The plot is conceived to maximize sound clues for establishing the serial killer's method of operation (leaving nursery rhyme clues). A radio broadcast informs us when midnight arrives. Finally, like the trial films, this one indulges in a long spoken explanation of the criminal's motives and the details of the detective's reasoning.

Cecil B. DeMille's second film for MGM was his flamboyantly campy Madam Satan (1930), which can perhaps be described as Ship of Fools set on a dirigible—with show tunes. A highlight is the "electrical ballet": the guests dress as spark plugs and other symbols of electricity. A reporter visiting the soundstage recalled the experience:

Only the property man's catalogue could describe in detail what was there. Only a colorist of the Dada school could convey an impression of it. It would have made a combination of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, a sunset over Vesuvius, Broadway at night, and the Quat'z Arts Ball seem pale and repressed. It was supposed to be a fancy dress party on board the Zeppelin…. At the height of the festivities the Zeppelin was to break to bits, and somehow you hardly blamed it. (Mildred Adams, Woman's Journal, June 1930, p. 16)

The climactic zeppelin crash, with all the principal characters getting their just desserts as they parachute into various symbolically appropriate landing spots, gave DeMille a chance to enhance his spectacle with booming sound effects. But Edwin Schallert wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "The superabundance of sound palls, and leaves one weary."²⁹

Way for a Sailor (dir. Sam Wood, 1930) was a "weak number lacking punch and with little woman appeal. [John] Gilbert [who was said to have collaborated on the writing and direction] miscast, and entire production ordinary." Film Daily's scorching continued:

It is hard to figure out just why they took the trouble to produce this one. It is one of the weakest productions on the entire M-G-M schedule. The story is pretty sordid, detailing the routine life of sailors on a merchant ship. The lives of three sailor buddies, Gilbert, Wallace Beery and Jim Tully, are high-spotted in trips to various foreign ports. Then arrived in London, we see Gilbert's love affair with a girl whom he finally induces to marry him. He has taken some money the sailors gave him to buy a concertina, and with it gets himself a suit and pays the wedding bill. Business of the sailors punishing him for his deception, while the girl beats it on learning he is still a sailor although he told her he had become a civilian. And so on and so on, a flat tale with no appeal to the femmes. (Film Daily, 14 December 1930, p. 11)

Hall was kinder, allowing that Gilbert was a little better than in Redemption, but only partly successful in delivering his British accent.³⁰

Vidor directed a somber A Western, Billy the Kid (1930), with John Mack Brown. The film has background music motivated by the Western setting and a theme song. Billy's rendition of "The Cattle Rustler's Song" is integrated into the narrative by foretelling the ending ("I know that in the Great Beyond we'll sing heigh-ho"). Gunshots and painful screams shocked viewers with the sounds of violence ("more reports of firearms are heard here than in any other film," observed Hall). But these are contrasted with scenes of cowboys singing around a piano, a domestic image that suggests the carving out of a home on the wild frontier. Narrative information is conveyed through eavesdropping, as when Billy (Brown) overhears the plot to kill his boss, Tunston (Wyndham Standing). The tune from a music box is used in ironic counterpoint to a crackling fire as Billy flees a burning building. The sound of sizzling bacon is spotted when Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery) fries a batch to entice the hungry Billy from his cave hideout. Slight continuity errors between shots within scenes reveal that Vidor did not consistently use multi-camera shooting—if he used it at all—perhaps because the film was released in both standard 35-mm and Realife versions. Hall thought that "the views on the wide screen are so compelling that when one goes to see a picture on an ordinary sized screen the standard image looks absurdly small."³¹

Marie Dressier won an Academy Award for her performance in Min and Bill. George Hill, as he had done in The Big House, brought the camera in close for melodramatic intensity. Dressler's face graphically registers Min's warring emotions when she says farewell to her adopted daughter Nancy (Dorothy Jordan), who is leaving the shabby wharf to marry the scion of a wealthy Boston clan. Unknown to the daughter, Min has just shot Nancys biological mother (Marjorie Rambeau) to prevent her from revealing her lower-class origins. There is noticeably less foregrounding of sound effects than in Hill's previous work. Instead, natural sounds suggest an audible bouquet of the seedy waterfront just offscreen. Sound also constructs screen space with architectural precision, inviting the viewer to infer an imaginary relationship between the sets. In the boardinghouse barroom, an unseen piano is heard. As Min goes upstairs to her room, the piano sound fades to an intermediate level when she is in the hall outside her door, then to a barely audible level when she enters her room. (The changes were evidently done by mixing a prerecorded track in post-production.) When Bill (Wallace Beery) peeps through her keyhole from outside, the piano reverts back to the louder "hall tone." It resumes its nearly inaudible level when he enters her room, diminishes, then disappears, ignored by all but the most acoustically attentive listeners.

The gin-soaked voices of Dressier, Beery, and Rambeau are crucial in establishing their plebeian social status. Nancy's transformation from low-class gamine to prep-school graduate worthy of a high-society marriage is conveyed by costume, by bearing, and especially by the change in Jordan's voice, which goes from common to cultured.

RKO

Radio Pictures' initial box-office success quickly dissipated. Dixiana (dir. Luther Reed, 1930) cost a fortune but was unpopular with critics and lost money. Ambitious pre-production plans for a stereoscopic, all-Technicolor extravaganza were greatly scaled back, but it remained a lavish production. Bebe Daniels is Dixiana, a singer and juggler in a New Orleans circus in the 1840s. She is courted by Carl Van Horn, the son of a Pennsylvania Dutch family which has inherited a great plantation. Dixiana leaves Carl, played by the Metropolitan Opera star Everett Marshall, to save his honor when his stepmother will not allow a déclassée actress in her house. The comedy duo Wheeler and Woolsey provide mild slapstick, including a running gag about picking up some cigars and getting a kick in the pants. The technical difficulties Reed had with sound in Rio Rita have been brought under control, but in Dixiana there is much less creative experimentation. Some songs are encapsulated performances, as when Dixiana sings from the music-hall stage. Others develop spontaneously operetta-style in duets with Carl. Hall, who may have been contradicting his ongoing campaign for better integrated musicals, but who always liked a good song, wrote of Marshall, "His singing is a distinct asset to this production, so much so that one wishes there was more of it and less of the some-what futile attempt at a story." Bill "Bojangles" Robinson also dances an encapsulated tap routine, his only appearance in the film. New York audiences responded to it with applause.³²

Danger Lights (dir. George B. Seitz, 1930) contains its share of foregrounded sound effects to capture the auditory environment of its rail-yard setting. The film premiered in the Spoor-Berggren Natural Vision widescreen format, with sound on a separate track, but in most cities the film played in the normal 35-mm Photophone format. Train whistles, a rock slide, and the acoustic spectacle of a tug-of-war between two locomotives thrilled the listener. Its sound-recording engineer, Carl Dreher, designed many scenes to showcase his new parabolic microphone. Nevertheless, in the scenes shot on location in the train yard, the loud background noises frequently occlude the characters' speech. Elsewhere, ambitious and more successful attempts are made to isolate characters' dialogue as they move around the set, as in the bar scene. By holding the parabolic mike on a character and not following him as he left the picture—for example, in Doyle's shower scene—an effect of acoustic depth was created. Several times the camera (and sound) reframes by tracking into a close two-shot.

RKO's monumental Western Cimarron, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel and directed by Wesley Ruggles, is a sprawling story inspired by the settling of what became Oklahoma. The saga highlights the heroism of Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix), a newspaper editor and family man who is not above shooting a bad guy in church. The film is a good example of the successfully modulated sound track: gunfights, stampedes, and land rushes are wildly raucous; the printing press operator has a comic stutter; and the intimate moments between Dix and Irene Dunne are punctuated with long silences. It was voted best picture by the Academy for 1931.

Universal

The case of Universal, though unique, is instructive. Having ventured into the pricey domain of "quality" production, the studio executives retreated to familiar genres when the financial risk increased. The Laemmles knew from experience that the public wanted to be scared by Gothic thrillers. The Cat Creeps (1930), directed by Phantom's Rupert Julian, was a talking remake of The Cat and the Canary (dir. Paul Leni, 1927). It was nondescript.Dracula (dir. Tod Browning, 1931) was, on the contrary, a big hit. It, too, was a quasi-remake, heavily influenced by Murnau's classic Nosferatu (1922). The sound track is rich in ambient effects (including the Count's "children of the night") that conjure a creepy atmosphere (analogous to Mumau's stock-footage inserts of weird nocturnal creatures). "As the scenes flash by," smiled Hall, "there are all sorts of queer noises, such as the cries of wolves and the hooting of owls, not to say anything of the screams of Dracula's feminine victims, who are found with twin red marks on their white throats."³³ Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi's liquid, if sepulchral, voice had just the right mixture of seduction and Transylvanian chill.

Columbia

Charley's aunt (dir. Al Christie, 1930) was a remake of the Christie brothers' 1925 production. It was canned theater, preserving the three-walled set which provided plenty of doors and windows for entrances and exits. It used sound to foreground the "Oxford" accents of the characters and their student slang. Charlie Ruggles steals the show with his unique vocalization full of stutters and verbal double takes and, of course, his falsetto when dressed in drag as the aunt from Brazil, "where the nuts come from."

United Artists

It was still Goldwyn and Schenck who powered United Artists. Samuel Goldwyn's 1929 partnership with Flo Ziegfeld paid off. Goldwyn had agreed to back Ziegfeld's next productions, including Whoopee! and Simple Simon (starring Ed Wynn), in exchange for the film rights.³⁴ In the plot—or more accurately, the excuse—for Eddie Cantor's musical mishaps in Whoopee! (dir. Thornton Freeland, 1930), he is a hypochondriac, Henry Williams, who goes west for his health. He resists the attentions of Miss Custer (Ethel Shutta), his passionate nurse, but seems to have more of an eye for Wanenis, the half-Native American who is in love with Sally, who is eloping with Henry to avoid marrying Sheriff Bob Wells, who is after Henry for … get the picture? After disguising himself in blackface and passing as a Jewish Indian, Henry somewhat reluctantly proposes to Nurse Custer. He looks into the camera and signs off with his tag line, "That's all there is." "The film is completely Technicolor, is gorgeously costumed and alluringly musical. There is no attempt at realism," said Film Daily approvingly, referring to the stylized Art Deco-influenced southwestern sets, flamboyant clothes, and Busby Berkeley dance routines, complete with his overhead "kaleidoscope" shots of dancers. The climax is a procession of showgirls mounted on horseback wearing increasingly outrageous headdresses—and not much else. Cantor exudes high spirits and cracks gratuitous Jewish injokes ("I could never be an aviator—" [rolls eyes] "Can't eat sandwiches").³⁵ In "My Baby Just Cares for Me," he kids his rivals in the talkies:

My baby don't care for Lawrence Tibbetts [sic],
She'd rather have me to kibitz.
Chuck Rogers is not her style,
Or even Chevalier's smiles.

Scott Berg has observed that Whoopee! is significant as a direct transposition of Ziegfeld revue to the screen, "one of the most telling fossils of that extinct genre—with all its nonsensical convolutions of plot, unexplained comedic star turns, and burstings into song." Contemporary urban audiences evidently liked those aspects and liked Cantor too; the film grossed $2.6 million. However, the production cost diminished Goldwyn's profits. The film failed in smaller and regional markets, prompting Goldwyn to rethink how he marketed Cantor nationally.³⁶ Whoopee! is also an example of a film which used sound simply as a means of recording music and voice, while scarcely calling attention to itself as a means of expression.

Douglas Fairbanks announced he was remaking The Mark of Zorro (1920) as a talkie—he never did. He did, however, take over Reaching for the Moon (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1931), an Irving Berlin project costarring Bebe Daniels. He completed it and previewed it as a musical with five of Berlins songs. But the genre was considered to be such box-office poison that he recut the film and released it with only one musical interlude. "It's a suave, 1930 model Doug Fairbanks who frolics through this clever piece of entertainment, set against a lavish background of Wall Street, Park Ave. and a modernistic ocean liner," said Film Daily appreciatively. "The dialogue is swift and sophisticated."³⁷

Mary Pickford's Kiki (dir. Sam Taylor, 1931), unfortunately, was a flop: "Mary Pickford seems miscast in hoydenish and very artificial role that lacks conviction," observedFilm Daily. Again, accents were a problem. "Miss Pickford manages a French accent surprisingly well for the most part, though she lapses from dialect often enough to hurt any illusion she hoped to create along that line," said Hall.³⁸ She made one more talkie in 1933, then retired from the screen.

Lewis Milestone directed The Front Page (1931), adapted from the hit comedy play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Howard Hughes's Caddo Productions produced it for distribution through United Artists. Though eclipsed today by Hawks's remake His Girl Friday (1940), the original version is really an extraordinarily fast-paced and lively film. In many ways it is the antithesis of the stereotypical early sound movie. Milestone's camera roams the sets on its prototype Bell and Howell Rotoambulator, a three-wheeled dolly capable of tight turns. The scene in which Walter Bums (Adolphe Menjou) descends to the shipping area of his plant was shot on location in a real newspaper building using artificial lighting. As he strolled, the camera whisked along on tracks, panning to keep him framed. Meanwhile, location sound recording captured the roar of the machinery and shouts of the workers. For the most part, the construction of the film went back to silent technique—single-camera, multiple-take cinematography and fast editing. The scenes in the newspaper office, in particular, use shots of only a couple seconds' duration to build up a frenetic atmosphere. The reporters' wisecracks, punctuated by ringing telephones and the gratuitous noise of one of them plucking a banjo, show the chaos of their professional lives.

City Lightsand Le Million: Silence Is Golden

In the fall of 1930, Charles Chaplin was still shooting City Lights. He stridently reassured his fans, "My own pictures will always be silent." Furthermore, he believed that there were enough like-minded producers to justify forming a company to satisfy what he called "a strong market for inaudible pictures." He was allocating $5-10 million for a new studio in the San Fernando Valley where he would direct two silent dramas annually and produce five silent features a year by other directors. (He did not plan to appear in these films himself.)³⁹

Chaplin hoped that City Lights would revive the silent film. His dream of starting his own studio to produce nondialogue features was still alive on the eve of the premiere. The press book heralded: "City Lghts Is Expected to Change Trend of Film World…. Movie Prophets Predict Avalanche of Talkless Pictures as a Result."⁴⁰ The director seized every opportunity to denounce dialogue films, but now he conceded that they were here to stay:

I shall never speak in a film. I hate the talkies and will not produce talking films. The American industry is transformed. So much the better or worse, it leaves me indifferent. I cannot conceive of my films as other than silent. My shadow appears on the screen as in a dream, and dreams do not speak. Artists, like Will Rogers, Rebe Daniels, Gloria Swanson, Bessie Love are interested in interpreting the talking films because they are thus able to present the maximum of their talent. But they are actors; as for me, I am a mime and all the nuances of my art would be destroyed if I were to accompany them with words or with sound effects. (Quoted in Theatre Arts Monthly, November 1930, p. 908)

The long-awaited premiere of City Lights took place on Friday, 30 January 1931. Los Angeles police estimated that fifty thousand fans tried to catch a glimpse of the star. Two police officers escorted Chaplin to his seat in the theater. True to his word, Chaplin released the film with a music score, but without dialogue.

The New York Times recognized Chaplin's intention; the headline announced, "Takes Fling at Talkies.'" The trade papers treated the film as a test case. Would Chaplin's reputation keep silents viable? "The lively controversy which it was predicted would be started by Charlie Chaplin's City Lights is now raging, following the premier of the picture Friday night at the new Los Angeles [theater]," Film Daily reported. "Praise of the silent comedy is enthusiastic, but opinions are sharply at variance on the point of whether it will influence any appreciable trend back to silents. The majority so far think not."⁴¹ The Record gave a typical pronouncement: "City Lights, though it was received with whole-hearted delight and punctuated with innumerable bursts of applause from the audience, is no menace for the talkies. It is the exception that proves the rule."⁴² In January 1931, the American film industry had long passed the point at which it could have reverted to silent production even had it wanted to—and it did not.

The Los Angeles reception of Chaplin's film seems to have tempered his feelings about the future of silents. He admitted as much when he was interviewed in New York upon arriving to attend the 6 February premiere at the George M. Cohan Theater. Silent pictures, he conceded, would never return, but he was still confident that a number of films would be made without dialogue. The new studio he had claimed to be establishing was no longer mentioned. Now he even foresaw directing a talker of his own, but never acting in one. He announced that a current project (never to materialize) would have a Spanish theme and be dialogue-free.⁴³

In New York, despite a skirmish with United Artists about the publicity, rental, and admission price that caused Chaplin to take over the premiere himself, City Lights succeeded fabulously.⁴⁴ But clearly the film failed to open the door to a new kind of "talkless" picture, in part because it was quite old-fashioned, not only in its technique but in its story. Alexander Bakshy, in The Nation, derided the directors mawkishness: "Chaplin's growing seriousness, his desire to be more than a mere comedian deceived him into holding sentiment more precious than fun."⁴⁵

City Lights' success was not transferable, either to other films or to other actors. Most commentators saw Chaplin as a unique genius. Alicoate discussed this pyrrhic victory:

The irresistible Mr. Chaplin paid Broadway his tri-ennial visit last evening and as usual Mr. Chaplin sent home the smartest first night audience of the season again singing his praises as the greatest pantomimist of all time. City Lights is all silent and typically Chaplinesque in its mixture of laughs, tears, pathos and slapstick. The story, although episodic, hits the high spots with delightful frequency. As to the question of sound vs. silent, this Chaplin affair settles nothing. Chaplin is king. He can do no cinema wrong. He could turn handsprings anywhere in filmland where others would not dare to tread. For instance, here he even gives sound the merry raspberry via travesty and it is as delicious a screen morsel as one will find. If City Lights does nothing else it will demonstrate that Silence is Golden, at least in this instance, and as far as City Lights the box-office is concerned. (Film Daily, 8 February 1931, p. 1)

For the New York critics, the director-star's performance eclipsed the sound issue: "Chaplin is so perfect and his comedy inventions are so distinguished," offered the Herald-Tribune, "that even those of us who are enthusiasts for the speechless manner will realize that [City Lights'] success is due to its star's perfection in his medium." The Journal's argument was expressed as simple logic: "City Lights is entertaining, and entertainment is a quality that is not limited to any one medium. Therefore the absence of dialogue in this production raises no argument on the subject of speech versus silence." According to the World, "The fact that City Lights is told by pantomime rather than by spoken dialogue goes practically unnoticed in witnessing the picture."⁴⁶Film Daily's commentator wrote that Chaplin's refusal to go talkie was good business sense: "And why have so many screen idols with good voices crashed since they started to talk in the talkies? So Charlie, the Wisest of 'em All, preserves his Mystery and Elusiveness in City Lights by not using his Voice. For Charlie knows better than anybody that his great comedy talent alone would not keep him perennially popular."⁴⁷

City Lights was a lucrative testament to Chaplin's incredible star power. It made millions in profits worldwide during the bleakest years of the Depression. But it was neither a turning point nor the swan song of the silent film. As an idiosyncratic vehicle for Chaplin, it did not seriously challenge sound production practices, either by showing the superiority of silent acting technique or by repudiating the aesthetic inroads made by the talkies. It should be pointed out that City Lights is not the "pure" silent film that Chaplin and reviewers publicized. Its score was carefully arranged (by Chaplin and Arthur Johnston) to closely complement the action, exactly like the music for synchronized features circa 1928. Hall shrewdly commented, "There are times when the notes serve almost for words."⁴⁸ There are two scenes which foreground dialogue by parodying it. The now-famous opening sequence finds the Little Tramp asleep on a monumental statue during its public unveiling ceremony. The dignitaries speak, but farty squawks emanate from their mouths instead of words. Chaplin equated lip-synched speech with highbrow pomposity and flatulent bourgeois complacency. Later Chaplin swallows a whistle, and its notes substitute for his voice. "This is what I think of your dialogue film," he seems to be expostulating. One aspect of the plot of City Lights dramatizes Chaplin's theoretical position. The Little Tramp befriends a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Through many tragicomic mishaps, he provides her with enough money to have an operation that gives her sight. The emphasis on vision as necessary to being a whole person argues for its special status relative to speech and hearing. This, of course, is also the privileged sensory mode of the silent cinema.

City Lights did confirm that dialogue was not a strict requirement to carry a film to a great critical or popular success. A movement to go back to silent technique was already in the air. It was not that anyone wanted to make silent movies again per se. Some proponents wanted to return to the practice of single-camera cinematography, but others were usually advocating that the all-talking, all-singing film be superseded by movies with modulated techniques which would enable talkies to utilize some formal conventions of silent production, if that was the desired effect. Producers were alternating nondialogue passages with talking and limiting background music to underscoring dramatic moments. The modulated sound track concept guarded a special place for silence. Alicoate noted that audiences were finding talk boring: "Pictorially you can hold almost any audience if the action is sufficiently thrilling, enticing or entertaining. Trying to hold that self-same audience with a two-hour load of inane, stupid talk is quite another and more difficult problem. Of course, every writer of dialogue cannot be constantly brilliant, but one thing is certain, unless he is continuously entertaining his picture cannot be commercially successful."⁴⁹

Another inspiration for the so-called silent technique was found in René Clair's Parisian comedy Le Million, which opened in New York in May 1931. Clair deeply admired Chaplin and may have had the implications of the theme of restored vision in City Lights in mind when he made his famous statement, "A blind man attending a true dramatic work and a deaf man attending a real film, even though they are both losing an important part of the work being presented, would not lose the essential part"⁵⁰ Unlike Chaplin, who repudiated the talkies in City Lights Clair seized upon sound with a vengeance, playfully foregrounding its artificiality. In contrast to, say, Whoopee!, in which the acoustic dimension is subsidiary to the performance and the auditor is encouraged to ignore the sound, Le Million never lets us forget that the acoustic component is as much a construction as the whitewashed sets. Clair's offbeat musical romance built around the pursuit of a winning lottery ticket replaced dialogue with actors singing and talking in rhyming couplets. Clair created teasing confusions between on- and off-screen sound. He also experimented with asynchronous audio tricks, as in the famous scene in which a chase after a coat is synched to the cheers of an invisible football (or rugby) crowd. The surprisingly strong response and the enormous acclaim for Clair's film excited critics. His simplified plot, minimized dialogue, and reliance on "pantomime" revealed an economical yet pleasing way to make a sound film. Why this style was misnamed "silent" is unfathomable, but the end product was certainly different from the effect of the modulated sound track. Film Daily advised domestic filmmakers to learn from this new international style: "The tendency is toward a return of the expressive pictorial technique of the silent film, with sound, music and a limited amount of dialogue in the background, the idea being that pictures of this type have the best chance of breaking through the barriers of all countries."⁵¹ Joseph Schnitzer, president of Radio Pictures, announced a return to silent film technique for his company's 1931-1932 season:

Dialogue will be minimized and used only to serve a similar purpose to the printed title, namely, to motivate the action and clarify situations. This move will serve two important purposes. Firstly, the novelty of sound is wearing off. By that I mean, the American public at first was anxious to have every click and footstep recorded in sound. Those times have passed. Combining silent picture technique with sound will do away with uninteresting talking sequences where two people sit at a table and talk for five or ten minutes without any action whatever. Secondly, the picture will be more adaptable to foreign versions. (Film Daily, 13 July 1931, pp. 1, 11)

Everyone, including Hollywood moguls, enjoyed Chaplin's little joke and Le Million's creativity. These films may have influenced a few comedy productions. Keaton's Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (dir. Edward Sedgwick, 1931), and Harold Lloyd's Feet First (dir. Clyde Bruckman, 1930), for example, contain more "pantomime" than the previous talkies of those two actors.⁵² For several industry spokespersons and popular critics as well, restoring the techniques of the past became a rallying cry. Whether these films and their commentators' favorable remarks actually had significant impact on Hollywood production is difficult to ascertain. Universal Pictures announced in June that it would remake Le Million in English—but it never did. Cecil B. DeMille did call for more old silent picture technique, with dialogue used as an auxiliary. There is not the slightest trace of an effort to do so in his third and final MGM production, The Squaw Man (1931), a remake of his Western done previously in 1914 and 1918. Recalling the Warner Proportion of 1928-1929, Paramount announced that its new comedy formula was 90 percent action mixed with 10 percent dialogue. The Film Daily poll reported a more moderate exhibitor consensus that 25 percent dialogue was about right.⁵³

Mass or Class?

The ideal of the modulated sound track did not develop in an economic vacuum. The Depression reached Hollywood by way of the box office in the fall, at the beginning of the 1930-1931 exhibition season. Hollywood, having no inclination to take unnecessary risks, joined other industries in reorganizing for the uncertain economic environment. In line with other aspects of production, sound had to be used as efficiently and predictably as possible, and thus producers needed to disseminate standard practices and conform to conventional styles. The directors and technicians who turned out routine weekly releases, Hollywood's bread and butter, quickly absorbed sound production as another workaday task.⁵⁴

The use of theatrical material was discredited by critics. In Jack Alicoate's opinion,

that a new writing technique must be cut and tailored to fit the sound screen is universally recognized…. In the present situation the re-vamping of the old silents into talker come-backs will help for a while but it's simply taking the easiest way. Lifting material bodily from the legitimate stage and transplanting it on the talkative celluloid will do only in spots. Probably more than fifty per cent of stage material, both past and present, is utterly unfit for screen use. (Film Daily, 10 March 1930, p. 1)

Thornton Delehanty wrote in the New York Evening Post,

The terrible examples of screen plays which have derived from the stage are those in which the content has been lifted bodily from one medium to the other. That was what happened with practically all of the earlier talkies, and it is why so many discerning people threw up their hands in horror when sound supplanted silence in the motion picture realm. Even today, when definite advances have been made toward a distinct talking picture technique, it is seldom that a stage play successfully survives the transcription to the talking screen. (Quoted in Film Daily, 11 March 1930, p. 6)

Gilbert Seldes, writing in the Evening Graphic, was instrumental in popularizing the notion that filmmakers must adapt sound to an ideal cinematic essence: "If the talkies stop emphasizing dialogue and go in for conversation; if they discard their feeble idea of keeping speakers in view; if they learn to use speech and other sound as active parts in a great harmony, of which the moving picture is another part, then they will begin to make a new art of themselves."⁵⁵ Seldes's notion a "great harmony" provides as good a definition as any of the modulated sound track.

There was a perception among critics (whether true or not would require a statistical survey) that fewer plays and more novels and magazine stories were being adapted. (The "original screenplay" was still a rarity.) "The connecting link between screen and fiction was strengthened during 1931," concluded Film Daily. "Reading tastes coincided with the public's taste for motion pictures as is shown by the fact that some 150 books, ranging from the classics to best-sellers of today, had been filmed."⁵⁶ Now that the sound film had become almost universal, Alicoate warned producers of the risk of being overintellectual:

Each [literary source was] an artistic success and each, apparently, something the great ninety per cent did not care particularly to see. The motion picture industry and its army of dependents cannot exist or carry on to the tune of raving critics or the approval of a decidedly intellectual minority. Its definite duty is to provide the great ninety per cent with the type of screen entertainment it prefers. [That] catering to a hundred million is naturally a leveling experience, is obviously rather clearly defined. Until the public, generally, respond to the subtle and more intellectual aspect of screen writing, direction and production, the process of reincarnating the motion picture to the point of intelligentsia-complex, must, of economic and financial necessity, be at least temporarily held in abeyance. In other words, the public evidently prefers to laugh and be amused, and not to have to think. (Film Daily, 19 March 1931, pp. 1, 2)

Contradicting commentators like Alicoate, the public had also cultivated a dislike for comics and musicals. The trade critic Gillette aptly observed in "Another Theory Gets a Jolt" that, despite the cry from theater managers that the public wanted laughter, only three of the thirteen top-grossing films in the 1930-1931 season were comedies.⁵⁷ Social problem and gangster films performed unexpectedly well, a fact which did not go unnoticed by moralists.

Whether cinema did or should appeal to an elite or to a mass audience had always been a fundamental question of cinema. The Laemmles of Universal were characteristically blunt. Carl Senior reacted to a Sherwood column which supported the Hays Offices call for cleaned-up films and ads: "You favor advertising with the 'highest esthetic appeal,'" retorted Laemmle. "You might get by with that if you were running a theater for esthetes, Mr. Sherwood, but I hope for your sake you never experiment with it elsewhere, unless you are backed by a bank roll which can weather a permanent business depression." Carl Junior could not have said it more plainly: "Forget art…. Our mission is to furnish entertainment, not to educate the public or foster propaganda. Stick to the proven essential of show business—make pictures for the vast inarticulate public—stop trying to please the arty and articulate critics. The mob who made the film industry possible and prosperous always will be your best customers."⁵⁸ The flip-flop in attitude by the producer of the urbane King of Jazz and Remarque's prestigious ALL Quiet on the Western Front is amazing. Universal, smitten by a negative cash flow, was henceforth staking its fortune on Bela Lugosi's vampire and, soon, Boris Karloff's monster. This conception of the movie audience as a lower-class mob might explain the moguls' and exhibitors' tendency to restrain experimentation and to standardize sound. With the industry in depression, there would be little incentive to adapt properties which appealed to an elite audience or to indulge in risky ventures like unorthodox audio techniques.

The short life span of the virtual Broadway concept in feature production suggests that literal transposition from stage to film was never a viable style. The industry's efforts over the previous years had been channeled into creating a sound track which would enhance the film with dialogue without reveling in its technological origins. Hollywood had developed sound into an all-purpose mechanism. The same equipment and technicians could record and construct a sound track for screwball comedies, melodramas, or musicals. Hollywood had mastered the technical challenge of sound and was prepared to give audiences traditional movies with stories, not overt theatrical presentations such as vaudeville acts, opera selections, or upper-class melodrama. Though films would never again be silent, the production process was once again routine. And going to the movies was fundamentally the same experience it had been a few years before sound.