PART 2
Three Seasons: The Films of 1928–1931

If a revolution is a sudden event which throws over the past regime and substitutes a new oppositional rule, then the conversion to sound was certainly no revolution. The talkies were not instantaneous, although once sound film was in place, it was accepted very quickly. Part 2 presents a survey of major studio releases to look at what happened to the films themselves during the period following the signing of the ERPI and Photophone licenses and the twilight of silent exhibition.

As the talkies fanned out from the urban centers toward smaller towns, the nature of the film audience changed. The statistically average moviegoer who had access to talking pictures was increasingly likely to inhabit a small or medium-sized town. Hollywood tinkered with adjusting content to accommodate regional tastes. With more and more people experiencing the "thrill" of talking pictures, the novelty of sound for its own sake soon wore off. Fascination gave way to discrimination. The use of sound in motion pictures went through distinct—though overlapping—phases, from silent film supplement to integrated component. These changes were motivated in part by Hollywood's rapidly increasing technical mastery, but technology alone is not sufficient to explain the direction in which the industry took sound. That explanation has more to do with consumers—the movie fans who exerted economic pressure and the critics who condemned some uses of sound and praised others.

Part 2 begins in the summer of 1928, when film audiences began to taste the first fruits of the industry's experiments. It ends in the spring of 1931, more than one thousand films later, when Hollywood had definitely stopped producing silent movies, when the critical consensus had accepted that sound, rightly or wrongly, was permanent, and when only a tiny minority of moviegoers even had the option of attending a silent film.

Chapters 12, 13, and 14 present a "seasonal" review of some significant films which a moviegoer might have encountered during 1928-1931. In the 1920s the exhibition season extended from Labor Day (September) through Memorial Day (May). During the summer, the "orphan" season, theaters showed less expensive fare and often closed during the hot months of July and August. In early spring, traveling studio and distributor sales representatives sold blocks of films for the following season to independent exchanges and exhibitors. (Some of these productions had been finished before the studios' annual closing in January, some were still to be produced, and some would never be made.) A theater manager had more bargaining power if he booked films from only a few distributors (typically only two or three studios). The range of films available in a particular market depended on the number of competing theaters and on whether they were studio-affiliated or independent.

Of course, no individual moviegoer saw all of these films, nor was there an ideal audience experiencing the waves of innovations in film form and content that characterized these three seasons. Observations about audience behavior are always inferential and generalized. Most of our evidence derives from three indirect sources: box-office results, trade journal commentary, and critical accounts. These indicators, as discussed in part 3, are problematic. For now, however, they provide the best way to trace the unfolding of the talkies.

The diversity of product in circulation gave moviegoers a chance to shop, and the film industry strove to favor their preferences. When the transition began, sound was treated by the studios as a bonus, something dispensed to add value to a film or a program. Audiences seemed to respond favorably, regardless of the quality or content. It may also be that there was a tendency to think of movie sound as a new kind of electrical appliance; audiences were drawn to see what science had wrought. They were curious, and producers gave them what they wanted: sound tracks which spiced up traditional films by injecting music, noises, and perhaps an added reel or two of talking. Many producers apparently regarded sound as a way to rejuvenate old film genres. The virtual Broadway conception was also still powerful, and many of the new films adapted existing entertainment forms. The filmmakers drew freely from musical, operetta, and vaudeville material. The exploratory all-dialogue features from Warners generated public interest and long lines, confirming the suspicions of the studios that the talkies might succeed this time. The strength of the response was a surprise, but this possibility had already been taken into account in the studios' hedging strategies; the larger ones were already building or upgrading their facilities in Hollywood and New York. Critics, mean-while, emphasized the need for high technical standards of reproduction, disliked postsynchronized sound tracks, and yelped when speech was incomprehensible.

By the second season, 1929-1930, what had passed as a novelty a year before was now criticized as too loud or ostentatious. The films handled filmed performance in different ways. One was to segregate it as a short subject, literally substituting it for the former live entertainment. Within features, performances were integrated into the larger fiction of the film story. They could be either encapsulated or contained. An encapsulated act was presented more or less in its entirety, but as a stage act justified by the story. Show Boat (dir. James Whale, 1929), for example, shows the singing of Jerome Kern's songs as part of the show boat's routine entertainment program. A variant of encapsulation was the theme song, a musical intermezzo inserted in a film to break up the action, to show off the star's singing talent (or that of a voice double), and, incidentally, to stimulate sales of records and sheet music. Contained performances presented singing and dancing logically as a plot device, most commonly the backstage motif about the trials and tribulations of putting on a show, interspersed with an unfolding romance between young lovers. This motif provided plenty of opportunities for filmed performances.

The wayward tendencies of sound—evident in the part-talkie, for example, or in "static" genres like the trial film—were curbed. Broadway was still an ideal, at least for some producers, and several films appropriated legitimate theater, not only to provide readymade sources and talent but to attract a higher class of moviegoer while exposing the masses to dramaturgic and operatic art.

The 1930-1931 season was one of consolidation. Many musicals flopped, especially those which failed to rise above the clichés of the operetta, revue, and backstage story. After more than one hundred musicals in the previous season, fewer than thirty were released in this one. There was a critical reaction against "theatricality," although what the term was understood to mean is somewhat obscure. Critics, instead, settled on keeping all the acoustic effects in balance and under control as the first principle of sound production. Acting, voice, and story values were primary. The audible part of a film was not to distract the viewer. Borrowing a term from radio, I call this approach espoused by critics and practiced by Hollywood the modulated sound track. The most successful films, notably the so-called realist productions, limited dialogue and effects to creating irony, pathos, or laughter and providing narrative information. There was even a call for a return to silent film practice among its most extreme advocates.

For consistency and convenience, the films are discussed according to their respective studios. This method of organization is perhaps more valid for the first half of the transition, when the studios were using sound blatantly to compete and to distinguish their product. In the second half, the industry set out to standardize sound practice, and the uses of the sound track became more uniform. Did audiences care whether their films were from a certain studio? One cannot be certain. There were definite connotations to, and genres identified with, some of the producers (Paramount's European class, MGM's constellation of stars, Universal's Westerns). But if the studio label influenced a moviegoer's selection of a film, it probably carried about as much weight as a manufacturer's label on a phonograph record or a publisher's imprint on a book. The choice of studio product depended, too, upon the size of the consumer's town; the bigger the city, the greater the selection. If film audiences could be said to have "brand-name" loyalty, it was to certain stars, not producers. Genres also played a role—given a choice, a consumer could indulge his or her inclination to see a comedy, Western, gangster, melodrama, adventure, romance, or thriller. But we must be cautious about imputing motives. Because movies offer relatively cheap entertainment, there have always been many who attend for no conscious reason at all.

During the three-season span, sound film changed from being a genre in itself to being simply generic. There is a rapid falloff in the critical literature of references to a film's use of sound. This corresponds to Hollywood's standardization of techniques and establishment of storytelling conventions that balanced voice and music. When all films had dialogue, the term talkie lost its descriptive power.

Short subjects, travel films, and animation changed dramatically with sound. As described in chapter 15, these forms replaced the live entertainment which had kept each theater's bill of fare distinctive and competitive. Shorts standardized the program, limited the individual theater manager's power to diversify the bill, and made movie theaters a place reserved exclusively for film projection. The sound short was also something of a laboratory for features. Many technical experiments and unconventional content approaches could be tried out with relatively low risk. The travel film partook of the newsreel's connotation of authenticity, sometimes in quite exploitative ways. Cartoons capitalized on the studios' acquisitions of music libraries. Animating to the beat of popular music, synchronizing actions with funny noises, and giving characters voices transformed this short form into a powerful new mode of film production. The example of Mickey Mouse shows the importance of character development in creating animations illusion of life. Walt Disney's initial difficulties also demonstrate how the major studios tried to restrict independent producers' access to sound technology.

The coming of sound had the potential to open up the movies to subjects which addressed the interests of ethnic and linguistic minorities. Some filmmakers even dreamed of producing regular features outside the Hollywood institution. Chapter 16 sketches some efforts to establish nonmainstream sound cinema, as well as Hollywood's response.

The talkies bolstered Hollywood's increasingly important multinational status. Chapter 17 examines the ways in which Hollywood behaved as an international business and as a cultural influence, shifting quickly from imperialism to negotiation. For American audiences, the distribution of foreign-language productions (made in the United States and abroad) diversified urban film consumers' viewing opportunities. It is even possible that the directors of some of the imports may have influenced Hollywood's attitude toward the sound track.

It is tempting to see the process outlined in part 2 as a rebalancing, a return to the state of equilibrium represented by the "Golden Age of the Silents." But more accurately, it was a reorganization accompanying a necessary adaptation to a new technology. The talkies were something new and different, masquerading in some respects as something old. In 1928 sound was a new era in entertainment; in 1931 image and sound were integrated into one seamless experience: the movies, a familiar component of everyday life.