Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 October 1937 — Page 34

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Jack Warner Traces Origin of Talkies

First Words Spoken Accidentally by Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer."

‘Disraeli’ Among Early Successes.

By Jack L. Warner.

I don’t believe that any one in our company realized the | full import of the story brought back from New York hy |

my brother Sam and Maj. Nathan lL.evinson some time in

1926. They had seen a demonstration of a talking picture |

device—the first of all such devices they had investigated that seemed destined to become really practicable.

All companies producing silent pic-¢ tures at that time had been watch- | ing the experiments with sound pic- | tures and most so-called experts in |

Hollywood were convinced that sound from the screen was still a long way off. But Sam’s enthusiasm was So great that almost before we knew it were were deeply involved

in the production of pictures that

talked. At first we made only short subjects, feeling our way along in this new and strange field. Most of those we kept on the shelves, but when “Don Juan,” starring John Barrymore, was released in 1927 in New York City it nized musical score—the first recorded for a feature picture—and there were several shorts shown with Martinelli sang, as did Marion Tal- | lex New Impetus Needed It was an impressive performance but we were not ready nor equipped to go into heavy talkie production at that time. Neither were the theaters of the country equipped to show the talkies and many millions of dollars were heeded to so equip them. Yet we knew, as producers that the motion picture industry necded some new impetus. We were slowly dying on our feet and nothing we seemed to be able to do helped the situation. Nothing, that is, until the Vitaphone came along to jar evervbody out of their lethargy. It is movie history now, of course, | but at that time it was not easy to raise the necessary money to inves- | tigate and perfect the talking tech- | nie My brothers and 1 decided to risk all or nothing on the Vita- | phone, the name we had selected | i our talking pictures

Made “The Jazz Singer”

We made “The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson in the leading role. Joisen sang in that and partly by accident spoke a few words into the microphone that were eventually left in the finished picture. “The Jazz Singer” was shown in New York on Aug. 5, 1927. The few spoken words | brought that first audience to its| feet and assured the eventual suc: cess and popularity of the new medinim of entertainment. But mv brother, Sam, had died in Los Angeles just one day before that opening and that took all the pleasure and pride out of the event for us A two-reel “short” was stretched into five-reel length and named ‘The Lights of New York.” I doubt | if any picture ever returned so much profit for a modest investment. By the time the second Jolson picture, “The Singing Fool,” In which there was much more dialog | recorded than in “The Jazz Singer,” | was released, every major company | i» the industry was in a stage of | turmoil. Talking pictures were here to Stay. The Most Hectic Years he rears 1928 {- 1929 were prob- | ably the most hectic in the history of Hollywood. In common with other major companies, Warner Bros. tried many new things. We made “On With the Show.” in the new and then almost untried Technicolor. Its most remarkable monent was that in which a yellow taxicab drove on the screen. In “Song of the West” we tried outdoor Technicolor for the first time in an important feature nicture. George Arliss came to the talking screen and made “Disraeli,” which won an academy award and brought pictures to the important audiences. We made a series of musicals, operettas, such as “The Desert Song, “Viennese Nights,” “Sally” with Marilyn Miller, and “Show of Shows” with 40 or 50 well-known stars in the cast. Meantime the First National studios in Burbank, which we had absorbed, were under the supervision of Hal Wallis, turning out such notable successes as “Little Caesar’—the real beginning of the ganaster cycle — ‘The Dawn Patrol,” “Son of the Gods” and “Five Star Final.” Warners shocked but intrigued the amusement world with the most sensational gangster picture ever made, “Public Enemy.” and counterbalanced that with an Arliss comedy called “The Millionaire.”

A Daring Experiment

In the second year of the depres. sion, while the nation faced a change in administrations and an

uncertain financial future, we made

our most daring experiment. We filmed “42d Street,” an elaborate and new-style musical, introducing spectacular dance numbers. “42d Street” started the musical cycle all over again and we followed quickly with “Gold Diggers of 1933” and “Footlight Parade,” pictures

which gave the world entirely new | ideas of screen spectacles and helped | the |

bring our company through darkest period of depression.

Still another venture undertaken |

under the stress of uncertain condi-

tions was the filming of “A Midsum- | mer Night's Dream,” with Prof. Max |

Here again tried out

Reinhardt directing. the Warner company

totally new fields and found them

profitable. Paul Muni, whose previ-

| nature,

had a fully synchro- | ever |

| terprise? { moreover, enjoys an added distinc- | tion—it is enjoyed by more millions the world over than all the single |

{ Hollywood | cals, | have had their brief fling of popu-

| this

| of

the latest being “The Life of Emile Zola.” Both have been impressively sueccessful, We made “The White Angel” with Kay Francis and more recently other pictures of a similar “Black Legion,” “Marked Woman” and “They Won't Forget.” “Disraeli” was among the early talking pictures which succeeded and began the process of elevating taste. It was off the beaten path as a movie, Since then other different films have been “The White ngel,” “Green Pastures,” “Anthony Adverse,” “Green Light” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Music, the stage and painting hold high places as arts. Why not, then,

i the motion picture, which combines it. Will Hays talked from the screen, | ’ p

manifold arts into a single enThe motion picture,

thi

fields of art put together.

Wanger Likes His ‘Sta nd in’

By WALTER WANGER Fachions in movies may come (and b> imitat2d) and gd, but one fashion remains eternal and constantly recurring-—that of mocking War pictures, musi=gangster epics—all of these larity, only to be consigned, once the heat is off, to the dust heap of oblivion. New trends come along to take the place of the old. But satires

on Hollywood always come back

flourishingly for more. That was among the things that I had to consider before I decided to make “Stand-In,” a Clarance

| ducers, the directors, the actors and | | actresses.

Buddington Kelland bladder-swipe | "bury Dodd, the human adding ma-

at Hollywood. More important than that, T had

to decide whether I thought Holly- |

wood was ready for a kidding. I have not thought so, up to this

| time. and that is why I have not

attempted a cinema satire of the cinema. Hollywood, to coin a phrase, is now grown-up, it is sufficiently intrenched as an art form to re:zist the subversive efforts of any sort of fair-minded satire. It was with conviction that I undertook the production of “Stand-In.” Hollywood, to the layman who knows next to nothing about its hard-working inmates, is a sort never-never land, an Academe

for the gsportive Pans who live

| within its golden precincts.

Unfortunately for the common conception, that is not true. Like any other large industry (we are now the third largest in the ecountry, and a fast-growing baby) the

attention of more | §

TIME: AUTUMN

at a

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

First Technicolor Picture

In New Musical

Irene Dunne is now appearing from coast-to-coast in her most successful moving picture musicale, "High, Wide and Handsome,’

with Randolph Scott. Produced

by Paramount Pictures, the film

was written by Oscar Hammerstein 2d, lyrics by Jerome Kern and

directed by Rouben Mamoulian.

The background covers the excit-

ing days of oil discovery in Pennsylvania. The score contain: a

number of unforgetable melodies, including "Allegheny AL"

Miss

Dunne a'so has the leading role in a forthcoming musical, "The Awful

Truth," tor Columbia Pictures.

movies have their foibles. And as such they are fair game for any able satirist. When I started “Stand-In” I determined that this would be the picture. about Hollywood to end all pictures about Hollywood (though of course. 1 knew it could do no such thing). But, at any rate I determined that I would not miss a single variable in the film colony that would lend itself to satire. As a resuli, the bankers, the pro-

even the extra and bit player, come in for their share of kidding. Leslie Howard, who plays Atter-

chine, is the arch-prototype of all bankers. He thinks in terms of dollars and units. He computes the

box office possibilities of pictures |

| through the medium of differential

and integral calculus rather than through potential audience appeal. He is a symbol of all that is logi-

cal, mathematical and cold coming,

up blunt and bewildered against the blatant confusion of Hollywood.

As Lester Plum, Joan Blongdell an- |

swers the fiercely moot questions of

lwhat becomes of child stars after

they grow up. Miss Blondell's characterization shows Miss Plum (known nicely as “Sugar Plum” when she was the Shirley Temple of her day), to be a highly sophisticated and slightly hardboiled voung lady who has nothing but the utmost, distrust for the fame that the screen offers to its principals. Hers is a role that is based much more

solidly on the stuff of actuality

m—

PLACE: HAIRDRESSING SALON

rather than on that of amusing fic-

tion, » As

Douglas Quintain, producer,

Humphrey Bogart (who in “Stand- |

In” reforms sufficiently to leave his submachine gun safely under the carpet at home) is given the first sympathetic role since he burst nastily on the cinema world as the Killer Duke Maniee in the “Petrified Forest.” Or am I mistaken in

thinking that a producer, under any

circumstances, could be a sympathetie fellow? Quintain is habitually costumed in a polo shirt, riding breeches and boots, looking very much the producer who weuld rather straddle a horse than an official

Made in Railway Car

By DR. HERBERT T. KALMUS | Some Boston Tech men under the direction of the writer | ' had among them ideas in embryo of what has since become | ‘the Technicolor process for photographing and making |

| prints of motion pictures in natural colors. The late William

1. Coolidge and C. A. Hight, now president of the U. S.| Smelting Co., were the original financial agents.

| Considerable experimenting had ® —

been done, small scale preliminary results were shown, pictures of a sort | were actually thrown on the screen, land there was considerable excite‘ment all round. | Coolidge and Hight were to organ- | ize a corporation to own, control and {develop this enterprise, and among

| |

= er hh

a headache for Technicolor. Our process was then two=componenis | and our prints were double-coated, | The first all-talking, all-Techni- | color picture was “On With the Show,” produced by Warner Bros. in 1020, Jack Warner, for his com | pany, was the first to contract for |

| other assignments I was to bring | an important series of feature pro=|

lin a suitable name for this corpora- | quetions in Technicolor. This series was “Gold Diggers of Broad.

[tion the following morning. was in 1915,

In this!

way,” which has grossed over $3,-

As a Tech nan, and not many | 500,000 and still ranks among the |

| vears beyond graduation day, the word “Technique,” the name of our lannual class book, was fresh in my memory. | —s0 putting the words “Technique” and ‘‘color” “Technicolor.”

And obviously it was color | Technicolor

first half-dozen all-time outstanding | box office aftroctions, | The difference between the! three component product of today and two-com= |

together, I invented | ponent up to 1082 is truly extra-

ordinary. In the latter the skies |

We originally called upon Messrs. | were greenish, foliage unreal and Coolidge and Hight for $10,000. How | many compromises had to be made

ridiculous that seems now. | some time it grew to $300,000. With

After | throughout the spectrum. With the

three-component process skies, |

that money we built our first labora- | water, foliage, faces-—every shade of

tory, which was railway equipped with all chin:vy to sensitize and develop negative, and to make rush prints, | This car we ran over the rails to { Florida, Tt was stationed on the | siding of an ice house, where it func | tioned as a laboratory for the proi ductfon of the first Technicolor pic- | ture, “The Gulf Between.” This | picture starred Grace Darmond and { Niles Welch, | Upon completion I screened “The [Gulf Between” for Mr. Erlanger in | New York, and we made arrange- | ments to put it out as a road show | That first Technicolor process was

attachment on the projector in the | theater booth and plenty of added light compared with black and white, After watching the show in Buffalo for a few days I decided that to keep special attachments in register required an operator who was a cross between a college professor and an acrobat, and right then and | there Technicolor gave up additive ‘prec osses and special attachments on the projector | 1 believe in the subtractive process with the color on the film, way the work of rendering motion pictures in natural color is done in the laboratory, where it belongs, and not as an added task and responsi bility of projection in the theaters. One the early landmarks in the Listory of Technicolor was a contract which the writer made with Douglas Fairbanks for production of “The Black Pirate” entirely in Technicolor. The picture did well at the box office and received

armchair placed comfortably behind

a buiton-infested desk Far better known for eccentric tactics is the director, who has supplied the eager press agents with a preponderant portion of copy. Mowbray, as Koslofski, a rabid Russ:an, rolis into one of the outstanding tricks and mannerisms of the most pictorial of the baton-wielders, So there yeu have it. If we've missed anything at all in “StandIn,” we'd like to be shown. As I said before, we wanted to do this thing up brown. We wanted to miss no single element that is Hollywood. In addition we tried to be fair. “Stand-In” was directed by Tay Garnett, one of the best men in the business, and a man who has been around Hollywood long enough to

have a nodding acquaintance with |

every amusing detail of idiosyncrasy that it boasts.

BOR

Presenting — DRAMATIC HEADLI NES ”

CAST: YOU... SUPPORTED BY

ROBERT STANLEY and THOMAS, Inc.

The scene swiftly changes to bright October days and a series of brilliant evenings! See that your hair is well groomed! This first important asset to Fashion must be shining, * wonilin , in : : lustrous . . . and coiffed to enhance your particular loveliness. Make our staff your per-

sonal consultants in the matter of hairstyling!

Every phase of beauty is at our finger tips

«+. and yours. Let us both look forward to a standing engagement in our immaculate SALON OF HAIRDRESSING.

T'o the Winner of the “Seek- A-Star Silhouette” Contest:

We will dress the hair of the lady who wins. If she de. sires, we will arrange her coiffure to suit her personality.

ous pictures, “I Am a Fugitive From | §

A Chain Gang” and “Black Fury,” | = sociological |

had been important screen documents, began his series |

of screen biographies, the first being | =

“The Story of Louis Pasteur,” and

420 GUARANTY BLDG.

Lincoln 2509

Alan |

| |

| which met {

lan additive one, requiring special |

| |

| | | |

In that |

car, every color may be faithfully re- | necessary ma- | produced. |

The writer felt it safest to try out the newly born three-coms= | ponent process first with cartoons and later to pass to the more com= | plicated problems of studio produc tion. Hence in 1933-1934 we had | Disney's “Three Little Pigs” and the “Big Bad Wol{” among many delighteful Silly Symphonies, first zerious attempt at three-coms | ponent work in the studio was in| the short subject, “L.a Cucaracha,” with such tremendous success in 1933, |

Whitney Company Formed

The success of “La Cucaracha” satisfied Merion Cooper, Jock Wiit=ney, John Wharton and their associates that (he three-component | process was free from the s..ort-| comings of the two-component process. And so an agreement was entered into under the terms of | which Pioneer Pictures, formed by these gentlemen, undertook to produce eight important Technicolor features and serious steps were taken in connection with Technicolor | financing. Following the success of “La Cucaracha’ there have been produced

| |

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13, 1937

The | &

A lineup of favorites who are

| coming to the Circle Friday in

"This Way, Please." Reading from

| hundreds of short subjects and top to bottom, Mary Livingstone,

| successlul

feature-length productions. there has been a flow of Technicolor pictures, | “The Garden of the Lonesome

many Recently

which are: “Trail of

among Allah,”

Charles (Buddy) Rogers and Betly Grable. :

Pine.” “Amona.” “Gods Country | capital of nearly $3,000,000, most of 3 3 + | dn i. ¢ AR} ‘and the Woman,” “A Star 1s Born,” | Which 1s in cash

extraordinary | preferred | praise from the critics. But it was no bank loans, It has a net working (color is substantially

and “Vogues of 1938’ | It has no bonded indebtedness nor stock outstanding and

added

prints

While it iz true that the cost of producing and making of a feature production in

greater than

['echnis |

Republic %

Discovers New Faces

Although Republic | Pictures is notably prolific in turning out

themes like “The Lone Star Rang= er,’ “Dick Tracy Returns,” ‘The Fighting Devil Dogs” and olher worials which collect a ot of money at the box office, every now and then the studio turns out features of another type One of these “Escape by Night” a gang ftriller with a new slant, made its debut last week. Thiee more of gentler hue are slated for release in November="The Wyong Road,” “Portia on Trial” and the widely heralded “Merry-Go-Round.” Republic usually has names (0 holster its serips, but since everyonas else is going in for discovering new things, it is not to be left out of a vogue, Tamara Geva was signed at the end of the long, prosperous run of “On Your Toes” on Broadway, But she is hardly new to people whe follow names in either branch of the theater, An 18-year-old, hazel-eyed blonde named Gloria Rich, epitomizes Res public's idea of a discovery. A studio talent scout found her doe ing rhort subjects at the Biograph Studios in the Bronx, and placed her under eontract., Her first part is a niche in “Manhattan Merry Go=Round,” but it is only a xtarter,

re es

for black and white, the difference is not sufficiently great but that pics tures like “The Garden of Allah” and “Vogue of 1938” show box office returns which abundantly repay this added cost Teanwhile, Technicolor is steadsw ily improving its quality and res ducing its cost, and what Techni» color has done to improve the appearance of some of the stars on the sereen and to reduce their apparent vears has been the talk of Holly= wood, Not infrequently we hear a tar say that he or she never wants to be seen in black and white again,

Growing Use of Color

We are living in a world of color, and the public will not be satisfied with its entertainment in black and white once it is possible to have iv in color, A growing use of color in advertisements, in magazines and in amateur photography is glowing evidence of this fact, Color properly used by the pro= ducer will help to create moods, will intensify the dramatic effect and will greatly enhance beauly, These are all integral parts of showmanship and of entertainment, At first sound was thought to be a hovelly in motion pictures and one not likely to persist, After the producers have had the experince with Technicolor that they had with sound when it became hizhly perfected, color will no doubt sweep the industry just as did sound, and eventually black and white pictures will be as rare as silent pictures are today,

w—-

CHNICOLOR’S

schedule for the new season includes the following

FEATURES:

distinguished producers and producing companies:

WALT DISNEY SAMUEL GOLDWYN ALEXANDER KORDA MERVYN LEROY METRO. GOLDWYN .-MAYER PARAMOUNT PICTURES R.K.0. PICTURES DAVID O. SELZNICK UNIVERSAL PICTURES WALTER WANGER WARNER BROS,

SHORT SUBJECTS:

WALT DISNEY MAX FLEISCHER METRO.GOLDWYN-MAYER CHARLES MINTZ LEON SCHLESINGER WARNER BROS,

TECHNICOLOR MOTION PICTURE CORPORATION

PRESIDENT