Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Paramount Goes For All-Talking Lead


Sound Takes A Stride With Interference (1928) --- Part One

The early talking era works like a magnet on me, what with survivors washing up on DVD shores and TCM serve from bottomless barrels. It's easy to look at emerging sound and laugh, or be bored. Fun along that line began with Singin' In The Rain in 1952 and hasn't abetted. Try as many might, it's tough assuming place of thrilled onlookers when screens learned to speak. Experiments with talk had gone on since movies themselves got a start, these stymied by gremlin host of trip-overs. Even Edison did a bow-out after failing to match voice with picture. What sound needed was big money and corporate patience in putting technology from telephones and radio to service of movies. That merger could happen only when biggest players took an interest and lent discoveries to betterment of picturegoing. Audiences were thrilled by dialogue they could finally make out and for most part withheld criticism as kinks were smoothed. What excited most was amplification of sound to levels a seated thousands would hear. In large enough theatres, this alone told truth that a new era was upon us.


Progress was a watchword. As major studios joined the fray, each swore a next would surpass the last, and they'd be right for improvements made week-to-week by staff sped round learning curves. An exploding market for talk had been ceded to Warners and Fox by other majors, but two seasons was enough of that and now with assurance that sound was here to stay, big players Paramount and MGM took the field with goal of seizing lead via bigger/better merchandise typical of these giants. Fall of 1928 saw engines revving for a contest to get serious now that all players were in the game. Warners still led, as they had since August 1926 and Don Juan, thanks to September 19 rollout of The Singing Fool at the Winter Garden, opening night tickets a jaw-dropping $11, sold out and being scalped for several times that by Broadway sharpies. Here was a biggest so-far smash of talkers and a spinner of cash undreamt of by makers or observing trade. Paramount had been testing water with a Richard Dix baseball comedy appropriately called Warming Up, with synchronized music and sound effects, and that company's own historic hit, Wings, owed at least part of its two-a-day success to a synced score the handiwork of resident sound expert Roy Pomeroy.


Pomeroy was Paramount's tech creator-in-chief, having made a name as part-er of the Red Sea for DeMille in The Ten Commandments and now as chief reader of talking tea-leaves. Pomeroy had spent time with Western Electric staff in the east and understood best how to harness sound on Para's behalf, having put across the Wings score and further experiment with R. Dix and audible baseball batting. Every studio needed a resident genius, and Pomeroy was Paramount's. With The Singing Fool toppling pins on B'way, it was time to push a GO button. Interference had begun as a silent feature directed by Lothar Mendes; in fact, he'd finished it. But was the play-derived yarn a better bet for talkies? Paramount thought so, especially after eyeball of advance Singing Fool ducats sale as reported by trades. Announcement came "suddenly," said Exhibitor's Herald World (9-13-28), that Interference would be done again, this time as 100% talker. The cast reported on 9-22 for sound shooting under Mendes direction, but it was Roy Pomeroy who'd take over, him having done tests all along using Interference cast members in talking scenes for the film.


Meanwhile there were four stages under construction at Paramount, each 70 feet wide, 100 feet long, and customized for recording ("plans formulated by Roy Pomeroy," said the Exhibitor's Herald World). With Paramount's headline came pledge that Interference would be finished and in release by November. "Progress, not hysteria, will mark Paramount's advance in the field of audible pictures," declared production chief Jesse L. Lasky in Publix Opinion, the studio's house organ. Meanwhile, race was on to complete Interference and have it ready for November 5's World Premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Company brass knew how much rode on quality they'd achieve. Interference would simply have to look and sound better than anyone else's talkie up to then. A best and maybe only way to achieve that was by giving Roy Pomeroy carte blanche. Who of a nervous industry knew more of sound and how to capture it? That Pomeroy took over like a field marshal would be overlooked, at least for now. Nothing could be left to chance, Interference as a title being risky enough, for what if wags used it ultimately to describe Paramount attempt at voicing?


Pomeroy was early on recognized as wand-waver over stars who sought to speak. Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd both came to him for assist and supervision of their first voice tests. Roy had a system that involved use of two negatives, one to record picture and the other for sound. That meant he could process each to maximum quality result, unlike sound-on-film technique where developing of aural plus visual usually meant sacrifice of seeing, hearing, or both. Tough part was the expense, as Pomeroy had to make two prints that would run in sync, sort of like Vitaphone but with tandem films projected rather than film plus accompanying disc. It was a system not unlike Natural-Vision3-D to come, with its two prints side by side. Whatever the cost, Paramount was willing to spend, at least for initial playdates attended by industry rivals and opinion-makers who'd confirm Para sound as clearest in town. Trade columnists got an early peek and lauded Pomeroy's innovation, but would note necessity of everything in twos --- negatives, release prints, twice the supply of projectors and operators. "This, of course, is alright with the large (Paramount) Publix-owned theatres, but what will happen in the small towns?," asked Exhibitor's Daily Review.


Paramount put day-and-night shifts to work in what was described as "the busiest era of activity in the history of the organization," with three sound-enhanced features in west coast production. As Interference barreled toward set-in-stone opener date, there was Emil Jannings laboring under Sins Of The Fathers, which would have talking segments, and Richard Arlen/Nancy Carroll at work on Manhattan Cocktail. Six further audions were in varying stage of preparation. Insurance was had with the silent version of Interference as completed by Lothar Mendes. This was, after all, how most audiences would receive the movie (Greenbriar's own hometown and unwired Rose Theatre was one). Exhibitor's Herald World published a Western Electric estimate of 849 theatres that had been equipped for sound as of 11/17/28 (Interference would open in NYC on 11/16). The Herald World said this included "all of the greatest theatres, and greatest revenue producers." That left the rest of nationwide houses mute, result being many of earliest talkies never played smaller markets except in silent versions. Viewers who got to see and hear Interference were very much in a privileged minority, this being case with numerous features released during 1928 and into 1929.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024