https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jIeUm2KAqYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlb7WNwcs_I The transition silent stars had to make to sound movies was a treacherous one, the main problem being not that they sounded funny but that their voices didn’t always match their on-screen personas. This could work in two different ways. On the one hand, the voiceless William Powell was
The famous (in her day) nightclub hostess/chanteuse Texas Guinan was captured on film on several occasions, the most elaborate of which was a feature she starred in called ‘Queen Of The Nightclubs’. Shot in 1928, it was likely the best and most detailed view of the true look, tone and
We tend to think of the evolution of the title sequence as moving from a simple series of cards with actors names on them (sometimes splashed up a little with caricaturist representations of the actors), gradually becoming more dramatic, exotic or even story-heavy as the years progressed. But back in
‘Fox Movietone Follies of 1929’–sometimes referred to as ” Movietone Follies of 1929 and The William Fox Movietone Follies of 1929–is a lost film. Or is it? Wildly successful upon its release in the spring of 1929–a year of true American madness, peaking that summer and soon to collapse in the fall–the film
Early talking films are invaluable relics of a dead civilization–namely the 1920s. The acting, pacing, diction, style and behavior are as incomprehensible and different from anything we now consider normal as sitting around a cave might be with its cro-magnin inhabitants. The movies aren’t really useful anymore to us in
Above I’ve posted the Jeanne Eagels starring vehicle ‘The Letter’ from 1929. Click here to read my post from earlier this week about Eagels tragic life and brilliant career. The movie is well worth watching and only runs 60 minutes. In my collection of antique New Yorker Magazines I found
It’s June 11, 1929: the first of a three-day film shoot for Judy Garland and her two sisters known as “The Gumm Sisters” at the Tec-Art Studios in Hollywood, California, for the Mayfair Pictures short “The Big Revue” (aka “The Starlet Revue”). This is Judy Garland’s film debut. She’s just