The birth of the ‘talkies’ sounded the death knell for so many silent stars
BY the time Greta Garbo ordered, “Gimme a whvisky, gincher ale on the side ... and don’t be stingy, baby,’’ in 1930, the careers of several Hollywood contemporaries had already hit the floor. Those who failed to make the transition to sound included Vilma Banky, Mae Murray and Norma Talmadge.
Comic legend Charlie Chaplin had yet to talk on film. Roles for Rudolph Valentino’s romantic rival John Gilbert dried up, Douglas Fairbanks became disillusioned and audiences avoided director D.W. Griffith’s talkies.
The fate of Hollywood’s inaugural stars, after Warner Bros realised Thomas Edison’s vision of combining film and recorded sound in Al Jolson’s All That Jazz in 1927, inspired a cinema hit when Gene Kelly, umbrella folded, exuberantly went Singin’ In The Rain in 1952. A stage production of the cinema classic that launched Debbie Reynolds opens at the Sydney Lyric Theatre on Thursday.
Musical hits from Singin’ In The Rain were written by MGM producer Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown in 1929 as cinema made the transition to talkies, and just after industry magazine Variety declared “movie stars should be screened not heard”.
Audiences across the US agreed, stomping their feet and booing as theatres played a March 1928 radio broadcast by six stars, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Norma Talmadge, Dolores Del Rio, John Barrymore and D.W. Griffith.
The six shared a $50,000 fee to broadcast on The Dodge Brothers Hour in an attempt to convince audiences that silent movie actors could move to talkies. Hollywood was also adapting to changing audience tastes as the Great Depression hit: the end of silent films in 1929 was also the curtain-call for flappers and exotic foreign sheiks.
In the 1920s Talmadge, Murray and Banky, along with Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri, were beauties who became stars in popular, sentimentally simpering romantic melodramas. Their contemporary Clara Bow, installed as a flapper sex symbol in It, a sexy 1927 romantic comedy, articulated the challenge of moving from silent pantomime-style acting to talking roles.
“I hate talkies,” she said in 1930. “They’re stiff and limiting. You lose a lot of your cuteness, because there’s no chance for action.”
Hidden microphones restricted movement, to avoid catching extraneous sounds, and changed the entire dynamic of film acting. Most silent film actors had stage experience and were comfortable delivering dialogue, but were accustomed to directors shouting instructions during filming, and using exaggerated facial expressions and movement to project emotion.
Valentino’s premature death at 31 in 1926 robbed him of a sound debut, while Gilbert’s alcoholism was blamed for his unsuccessful talkie career. Fairbanks, almost 50, found technical restrictions dulled the pleasure of filmmaking. Hindered by declining athleticism and general health after years of chain-smoking, he retired in 1934 after four talkie roles.
Pickford, then married to Fairbanks, won a Best Actress Academy Award for her talkie debut in Coquette (1929). But she did not enjoy the new medium and retired in 1933, although she made films for United Artists, as a partner with Chaplin, until the mid-50s. Gish made moderately successful talkies but preferred theatre, although she later had a successful television career.
Talmadge, who made her screen debut at 14 in 1910, Murray and Banky were less fortunate. Despite voice lessons before her competent talkie debut in New York Nights (1929), the film flopped. When bad direction in Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930) delivered another flop, her actress sister Constance advised “quit pressing your luck, baby.”
Banky’s popularity as a silent all-American sweetheart crumbled when she delivered lines with a Hungarian accent as a cook in This Is Heaven (1929). Murray’s 1926 marriage to minor aristocrat David Mdivani, who had her break her MGM contract, made an enemy of studio head Louis B. Mayer, even before the lukewarm reception to her three talking films in 1930-31. Polish-born Negri’s talking debut flopped as a film, but she had a hit with her film rendition of Paradise before resuming her career in Europe.
Chaplin resisted talking on film, writing in 1931 that the “silent picture ... is a universal means of expression. Talking pictures necessarily have a limited field,” arguing “pantomime lies at the base ... of drama”.
But he did incorporate synchronised sound effects, including a whistle that Chaplin’s Tramp swallows, in City Lights before his first speaking film, The Great Dictator, in 1940.
MGM publicity for Swedish-born Garbo’s speaking debut in a film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie in 1930 simply stated “Garbo Talks”.
Reviewers noted “the immensely popular Greta Garbo is even more interesting through being heard than she was in her mute portrayals ... Unlike most of the film actresses in their debuts in talking films, Miss Garbo suits her actions to the words.”
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/today-in-history/the-birth-of-the-talkies-sounded-the-death-knell-for-so-many-silent-stars/news-story/672605add2b50e6c09e6c46b771c0f44
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