From silents to sound – book details tipping point in Hollywood history

June 16, 11:54 PMSF Silent Movie ExaminerThomas Gladysz

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From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Performers Who
Made the Transition to Talking Pictures, by Roy Liebman, is just out in
softcover from McFarland.

By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner

The arrival of sound in the late 1920s proved a kind of tipping point in the history of film, as many of the biggest stars of the day faced a difficult transition to what must have seemed (both to them and to their fans) an almost new medium.

That observation is at the heart of a new book, just published in soft cover, on this interesting and important period in film history. From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures (McFarland) tells the career stories of more than 500 actors and actresses who worked in both silent and sound pictures.

Garbo balked, then talked. Chaplin refused. Clara Bow feared the microphone. Louise Brooks left for Germany. Buster Keaton suffered the loss of creative control. Colleen Moore suffered poor material. And dashing John Gilbert – one time rival to Rudolph Valentino as the silent screen’s leading lover – clashed with studio executives. His career during the sound era was the worse for it.

Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish and many other fan favorites also saw their stardom slip away. The times were changing, and so were the movies and those who performed in them.

As author Roy Liebman notes in his considered introduction, “it is probably true that a majority of silent actors and actresses experienced varying degrees of career decline after sound came in. It is also true that some went on to even greater heights than they would have achieved had the cinema remained silent.”

Why did some careers come to an end? And why did some begin anew? Those questions are at the heart of each of the profiles included in Liebman’s book.

Certainly, the new technology took its toll. Actors who had poor speaking voices or regional or foreign accents were considered unsuited to the new medium. And certainly, the addition of dialogue demanded a somewhat different acting style. Some failed to adapt.

However, Liebman also suggests that the creative and economic turmoil created by the arrival of sound created a situation in which the studios took advantage. Of course, there was the inevitable desire for fresh faces. But as well, “The advent of sound gave the studios new leverage over their stables of stars. When contracts expired, studio heads seized the opportunity to cut the salaries of some of their high priced stars under the threat of dismissal. . . . Another ploy used by the studios was to cite problems of ‘temperament’.” In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, many performers were released from their contracts for these and similar reasons.

One actress – now more popular then at the height of her career in the Twenties, is Louise Brooks. Her story is typical of the many film personalities profiled in From Silents to Sound.

Brooks appeared in a handful of silent films, and was considered a rising star. In 1928, her contract was up for renewal. Paramount refused her a raise, and so, the sometimes temperamental actress headed to Germany where she starred as Lulu in Pandora’s Box. Upon her return to the United States, Paramount executives asked the actress to dub her voice in the film she had been working on before she left for Europe. That film, The Canary Murder Case, was shot as a silent and was being adapted for sound.

Feeling snubbed, Brooks refused Paramount’s offers, and as a result, the studio hired similar looking Margaret Livingston to dub Brooks’ lines, as well as double for the bobbed haired actress in reshot scenes. Brooks’ career never really recovered. Brooks herself believed, with some justification, that studio executives derailed her career by suggesting she was difficult to work with, and that her voice – as heard in The Canary Murder Case – did not record well.

Lupe Velez, one of the stars featured in this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival, also had an up-and-down career. Velez’s brief tenure in silent pictures began in 1927, and within a year, she made her feature debut second-billed to Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho. Her first sound film was D.W. Griffith’s 1929 part-talkie, Lady of the Pavements. Nicknamed the “Mexican Spitfire,” Velez's hectic and much-reported love life included affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper and Johnny Weissmuller (with whom she also had a stormy marriage).

During the sound era, Velez was often typecast. As Liebman notes, “Talkies revealed her considerable accent and she was more or less consigned to a range of exotic portrayals that included characters who were French-Canadian, Indian and even Chinese.” As her career faded, Velez made Spanish-language versions of Hollywood pictures, as well as B-movies which traded on her Latin heritage. Velez’s last film, Nana, was made in Mexico the year before her suicide.

While the careers of many stars suffered with the coming of sound, some actors found new opportunities. Talkative comedian W.C. Fields, crusty character actor Alan Hale, and dashing romantic lead Ronald Colman each enjoyed success during the silent era. And each went on to even greater accomplishment and fame in the sound era.

Of interest to Bay Area readers are the handful of stars included in From Silents to Sound who hail from the Bay Area. San Francisco-born actors Alma Rubens, George O’Brien, Lawrence Gray, Aileen Pringle, and Ruth Roland – as well as Oakland-born Lloyd Hamilton and San Jose-born Edmund Lowe - are each given their due in Liebman’s wide-ranging book. [O’Brien and Hamilton are also the subjects of biographies due out later this year.]

Interesting, and somewhat telling, is an appendix, “Some Silent Stars Who Did Not Appear in Talkies.” There are some significant names on the list – Theda Bara, Mary Miles Minter, Nita Naldi, Mabel Normand, Constance Talmadge, Alice Terry, and Pearl White among them. Why each never made a sound film often had as much to do with professional as well as personal misfortune.

A second appendix lists actors and actresses whose sound career was exceptionally brief. Gilda Gray, Georgia Hale, and Florence Vidor, for example, are among the silent stars who appeared in only one talking or part-talking American feature, while Vilma Banky, Jetta Goudal, Norma Talmadge could only claim two talkies to their credit. With the arrival of sound, new faces and new voices stepped in to roles these one time fan favorites often played.

The arrival of sound – and the advent of talking pictures, was a turbulent period in film history. It is a period written about – but not so thoroughly detailed. Roy Liebman’s eminently readable book is a fascinating, fact-filled work; it is also the kind of book one can enjoyably dip into, find the answer to the proverbial “whatever happened to” question, and then put down. And then just as quickly pick up again to peruse willy-nilly or check the career of a just remembered favorite. From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in early film.