This Day in History October 21, 1928
In 1928, Hollywood
film studio fox released Mother Knows Best, the first ‘talkie’ in which ‘every
player actually speaks his part.’
JOHN MACKIE
In 1927, AI
Jolson caused a sensation when he sang six songs in the first "talking
picture," The Jazz Singer. But much of the
dialogue was still in subtitles flashed across the screen,
like a silent movie.
This led to
a race between movie studios to issue a full-on "talkie." Eighty-five
years ago, Fox entered the fray with its "Movietone Masterpiece"
Mother Knows Best.
"Here
at last," boasted the ad for the movie's run at the Capitol Theatre.
"The first talking feature production. Every player actually speaks his
part"
No copies
of the movie are known to have survived, but it sounds like it was pretty
bizarre. It was based on an Edna Ferber novel of a stage mother and her
"love hungry" stage-star daughter, but probably took a few liberties
with the novel's plot. In a bid to reel in the talkie-mad masses, Fox had star
Madge Bellamy impersonate several singers during the film, including Harry
Lauder, Anna Held, and Jolson - she donned black-face while "yodelling"
Mammy.
The Sun
published a four-part series on the talkie phenomenon by Hollywood
columnist Dan Thomas the week Mother Knows Best played the Capitol.
"Of
course talking pictures are hereto stay declared Jack Warner, whose company
released The Jazz Singer.
"And
quite naturally they will be improved. Spoken words and sound effects have
opened new fields which we have never dreamed of before. Talkies are a novelty
now, but by the time the public has tired of them as a novelty we will have
improved them to such an extent that people will go to the theatres because of
their entertainment value
Joseph
Schenck of United Artists, on the other hand, thought that talkies "are
nothing but a novelty and will only last a short time." He presumably
changed his mind by the time he became chairman of 20th Century Fox in 1935.
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