Birth of Hollywood (2011): Season 1, Episode 3 - Episode #1.3 - full transcript
Hollywood. In the space of 15 years,
it progressed from filming
anonymous people
standing in front of a barn,
to huge stars walking
through purpose-built sets,
dodging choreographed traffic.
Major studios run by charismatic
moguls built their own worlds,
dream factories.
By the mid-1920s the best films
were getting better and better.
The greatest talents were
working here in Hollywood,
both European and American.
Film stars directors, cameramen.
And then almost overnight,
films became awful.
I planted the stuff in Eddie's shop.
Yeah? And Dickson will be there at 10 o'clock. Uh-huh.
But they must not find Eddie.
What, you mean...?
Take him for a ride.
The silent film grew from
simple fairground novelty
into a sophisticated art form.
But at the height of its power,
the wheels fell off.
The cinema industry was
wrong-footed by the coming of sound.
The introduction of talkies
rushed filming techniques
right back to basics.
The visuals became
subservient to sound.
In times of revolution,
wise heads are needed.
And one of Hollywood's youngest
and greatest producers,
Irving Thalberg, who helped
perfect the art of silent cinema,
would steer the biggest
film studio in the world
through the traumatic
change to talkies.
This is his story.
These are the old MGM Studios.
When they were built in the
mid-1920s, Metro Goldwyn Mayer
had ambitions to become the biggest
beast in the Hollywood jungle.
Long before Leo was a lion,
Hollywood was a
small backwater town.
Then, independent film companies
started moving here to enjoy
California's sunny
filming locations.
In these early days, the industry
was dominated by directors
such as DW Griffith
and Cecil B DeMille.
They created the cult of
the all-powerful director,
but many would be undermined
by their over-reaching
ambition and fiery temperaments.
Some of them needed
adult supervision.
A new kind of figure
needed to step forward.
Hollywood defined the
role of the producer,
an important bridge between the
money men and the creative talent.
One such individual who
was both a good businessman
and an excellent judge
of what made a good movie
was Irving Thalberg.
This is the Thalberg Building
behind me.
At the top of his form,
he produced cinematic masterpieces.
Here is Irving receiving
the Best Picture Oscar
for Mutiny On The Bounty in 1936.
It's obvious, but nevertheless
true for me to say
The Bounty won this award.
Thalberg, because he always refused
to put his name on his films,
you've certainly heard of
the films he produced.
Irving Thalberg
was from the East Coast,
and grew up in the turn of
the century tenements of New York.
The Thalberg family had
emigrated from Germany.
Irving Thalberg was born
to Henrietta Thalberg
in Brooklyn, New York in 1899.
His father William imported lace.
Irving was born with a
congenital heart defect.
Doctors told his mother
that he was unlikely to live
past his 30th birthday.
Henrietta spent the first
seven years of Irving's life
giving him sponge baths,
rubdowns and enforced rest periods.
Irving's health improved,
although he was never what
you would call robust.
In his teens, he
developed rheumatic fever
and became bedridden for a year.
Irving sharpened his
opinions and storytelling
by reading classical literature,
autobiographies and plays.
Thalberg gained his introduction to
the film industry
as an 18-year-old boy,
when he met the owner of
Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle,
on a family holiday.
Laemmle was a self-made man.
Born in Germany, he emigrated to
the United States as a young man,
as did a surprising number
of the early film moguls.
He hired Thalberg,
whose evident talent
quickly led the studio
boss to make him his secretary.
In 1919, Carl Laemmle took one of
his regular train trips
from New York to Los Angeles.
On this occasion he was accompanied
by his new 19-year-old secretary.
After five days they arrived here
at the Universal Studios.
Thalberg impressed the
boss of Universal
with his knowledge and enthusiasm
for the movie making business.
I spoke to Laemmle's niece, Carla,
an actress at the Universal Studio,
about what impressed her
uncle so much about Thalberg.
What was it about him
that made him special?
Well, he seemed to be very aware
of everything going on,
and he seemed to be
on top of things,
and just managed things.
He was very, very gifted,
and so young. So young.
He was astute, that was all.
He just had it.
Universal's output of low budget
westerns,
melodrama, and short comedies,
needed shaking up.
Irving Thalberg arrived
at a troubled studio.
Carl Laemmle had a tendency
to employ his relatives
in key positions, whether they
could do the job or not.
This caused a great deal of
resentment and anger
amongst the Universal management.
Carl Laemmle then really threw
the cat amongst the pigeons,
when he appointed Irving Thalberg
as the new head of production.
This was a complete
surprise to everyone,
including Irving Thalberg.
Thalberg's first big problem
was dealing with the massive ego
of one of cinema's
great maverick directors,
Erich Von Stroheim.
Von Stroheim, like so many other
players in our story,
was a European immigrant,
who arrived in America
seeking his fortune.
At the Ellis Island
Immigration Centre,
all the records of these
arrivals can be viewed online.
COMPUTER VOICE: 'First,
type the passenger's name."
Let's see if we
can track Erich down.
There's his name there, Stroheim,
but Erich Oswald.
There's no Von at that point.
So Erich Oswald Stroheim.
He kept quite about the Oswald,
I think!
And it says here about his
distinguishing feature,
he's 5'5",
but he's got a cut on the forehead.
Born in Austria,
arrived November 25, 1909.
That's definitely our man.
Erich got himself a job assisting
the renowned director, DW Griffith.
Erich was an expert on uniforms and
was employed as a military advisor.
By the time America entered
the First World War in 1917,
Erich had risen through the ranks
to become a noted character actor.
He was advertised as
"The man you love to hate.”
Audiences were horrified
by his sadistic roles.
Here he is in The Heart of Humanity,
a gruesome World War I
propaganda film.
Von Stroheim craved power.
If he hadn't made
it in Hollywood
he would undoubtedly have become
a dictator of a small European country.
But he settled for
the next best thing,
being a film director.
He took an idea to Carl Laemmle
for a film to he wanted to direct.
Nothing was going to
stand in Erich's way.
They spoke through the night.
Carl agreed that Eric would write
and direct the film for nothing
and be paid $200 a week
to star in it.
The film was made for $42,000
and made a profit of a million.
Blind Husbands was a
stunning directorial debut.
Audiences were shocked by
the erotic charge
of Von Stroheim's performance.
In the film's climax,
terrified by a stuffed vulture,
he falls off a mountain.
I believe you did a screen test
once for Eric Von Stroheim.
Is that correct? Oh, I did.
Can you tell me about him? Was
he a severe man or a humorous man?
Not very much humour.
This is supposed to be war,
death, hell, destruction!
He was such a talented man,
but he wanted everything to be
actually perfect and genuine.
I mean, something
that you don't need,
something like ruffles
on the underpants,
and my uncle thought that
was going too far, you know?
You don't need to
do that in a movie.
And he would have, if people
in the background
were drinking champagne,
he'd be giving them
genuine champagne, vintage.
Well, I didn't hear that but
it's most likely that was true.
For his next film, Foolish Wives,
Von Stroheim created
a full sized reconstruction
of the Plaza in Monte Carlo
on the Universal back lot.
Von Stroheim demanded complete
control to write, direct and star.
Here he is up to
his old tricks again.
Irving Thalberg grew concerned.
Erich was a brilliant director
but his budget was out of control.
Thalberg demanded that Erich
stopped filming
or he would be fired.
Erich replied that
if he was fired as director,
Universal would also
lose the star of its film.
Thalberg backed down.
Foolish Wives premiered
a few months later.
It made more money than
Blind Husbands but,
as Thalberg pointed out,
most of that profit was
eaten up by Von Stroheim's
outlandish production costs.
Von Stroheim's image was ripe
for parody. Here's Ben Turpin.
In Von Stroheim's film
Merry Go Round,
the vintage champagne flows
with no thought of cost.
Thalberg summoned
Stroheim into his office.
Erich said, "You can't throw Von
Stroheim off a Von Stroheim picture.”
But Irving replied,
"You're not starring in this film."
He sacked the director.
This was a pivotal moment
in Hollywood history.
Von Stroheim was a huge star
and a big name director.
Von Stroheim believed
the film was his,
but Thalberg said no,
the producer was king.
Merry Go Round was completed by
a Universal staff director,
exactly as instructed.
The triumph of the producer led to
a debate about art versus commerce.
If the artist pays no
attention to the budget,
then the money men have to step in.
Equally, if the money men
don't have the creative
flair of Irving Thalberg,
they make artistic decisions
which often end up
ruining the film.
One solution was for the film star
to become his own producer.
Here Douglas Fairbanks
signs the agreement
that created United Artists in 1919,
together with Charlie Chaplin,
DW Griffith and Mary Pickford.
Douglas Fairbanks had a
vivid imagination
which he transferred
to the screen.
Here he risks indigestion by
indulging in a midnight feast.
This is the food in his stomach.
Later, bad dreams
predictably arrive.
This is the only film ever made
where the hero is pursued across
open countryside by his own dinner.
But then it starts to get weird.
Filming the impossible was a
daily occurrence in silent cinema.
Comedy became
increasingly more surreal.
Distorting reality was a
speciality of the actor Lon Chaney.
He could radically change his
appearance to a frightening degree.
In The Penalty
he plays a double amputee.
His legs, which are
painfully strapped up behind him,
are hidden by his long coat.
Irving Thalberg greatly admired
Lon Chaney's dedication
and believed he would be
perfect casting in the title role
of one of Irving's
favourite novels.
Chaney's elaborate make-up
and his physical transformation
into the Hunchback was astonishing.
Here, out of costume, Lon Chaney
demonstrates his climbing prowess.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
made a fortune,
which Carl Laemmle,
as Universal's boss,
refused to share with Thalberg,
who remained on a fixed salary.
The boy wonder was not happy.
It was clearly time to move on,
there were no shortage of offers
for Hollywood's wonder boy.
In early 1923, Irving Thalberg
became the head of production
at Louis B Mayer's studio.
Within a year,
Mayer had been bought out
by Marcus Loew,
who owned the cinema chain.
He merged three companies -
Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer.
Louis B Mayer became the chairman
and Irving Thalberg became the
head of production at MGM.
The Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn
was not part of
Metro Goldwyn Mayor.
But he was a close friend of Irving
Thalberg, who he admired greatly.
He admired his education
and how he'd used it,
that he, er...
he said he had one advantage
that my father never really had,
or anybody had to that extent,
but he'd say, “Irving doesn't just
make pictures, he remakes them.”
That might mean bringing a new
writer in and rewriting it,
changing directors,
changing cast,
but if he had a story that he
believed in fundamentally
he stuck with that story and
then he'd look for the best way
to keep doing it and doing it
and that was one of the reasons
why the films were successful
and why they were able to
develop so many stars,
because the roles were good,
and if they weren't good
he kept reshooting.
Thalberg set about
building MGM's fortunes.
He chose stories that he
believed would make great movies.
He allocated writers,
stars, directors,
to films that suited their talents.
Everything needed
to make a film was to be found
within the walls of MGM.
To ensure top quality, MGM employed
only the best directors, actors,
writers, cameramen, technicians,
designers and makeup artists.
They all worked under
exclusive contract to MGM
and were available to work on any
film the studio deemed suitable.
In his heyday it was a bit
like going into Alcatraz.
It was so boarded up, you know,
and I remember the entrance
on Washington Boulevard
- not the one going
into the Thalberg building
because that's the executive offices
of course,
and the gate is right there
where you drive in -
but you know, I was nobody so we
had to go in through a kind of turnstile,
which was very heavy metal,
believe me,
it was like getting into jail,
and you had to get an OK
to push the thing, and they
released a lock on it
and you went around this thing
and you got in.
And we were shown to the
casting director's office
which was a small office
not far from the entrance,
and my mother and I met the
casting director,
and at that time he
looked at me and he said,
"Mmm, how old are you?"
And I told him I was 17.
I was taken to the character
wardrobe first time out,
and here you had a character
wardrobe with all of the costumes
that had ever been worn in an
MGM movie, they were all there.
Can you imagine walking into that?
And the woman who was in charge of
it, a white-haired lady,
was smoking away, and she
showed me a lot of the dresses.
She said, "Now,
Jean Harlow wore that”,
in such and such.
They had some incredible
bits and pieces there
in that wardrobe.
So they had a massive
wardrobe department,
I was reading the other day, that it
even had its own foundry so they could...
Yeah, they could make anything,
but they usually got the Italians
to make the boots and shoes.
They did the tailoring.
They did have a
tailoring department
but it was all Italian tailors,
I remember that.
That was an era of a certain
naivete, I think, too,
where people wanted to be
kind of carried out of the humdrum
experience of their own lives,
and fooled into thinking that there
was something better out there and
they could find it in the cinema.
The greatest talents in
cinema were drawn to MGM.
Eric Von Stroheim amongst them.
Here he is on the MGM back lot in
1925 standing next to Stephen Fry.
25-year-old Irving Thalberg
found himself
in charge of the richest, newest,
biggest film studios in the world.
He'd inherited one problem
from Goldwyn films and that was
a production that was currently
filming in San Francisco.
Its director was Erich Von Stroheim.
The old adversaries met once again,
this time there would
be a decisive knockout.
Greed,
the greatest film you'll never see.
A film about
humankind's lust for gold.
The building behind me
features in one of the most
notorious films ever made.
I'm on the corner of
Hayes and Laguna Street
here in San Francisco.
Eric Von Stroheim shot interiors
for his extraordinary epic,
Greed, in this very building.
Here, Erich films from
inside a genuine interior
through the window
to the genuine street below.
This was a revolutionary
shot in its day.
Greed was the latest product of
Von Stroheim's passionate vision.
He spent seven months filming in
San Francisco and Death Valley.
The finale of Greed
takes place in Death Valley.
Temperatures at the time had
reached 142 degrees Fahrenheit,
it was so hot the paint was
peeling and curling off the cars.
The two actors were exhorted by
Erich Von Stroheim
to fight to the death.
“Fight, fight," he said.
"Hate each other
as much as you hate me.”
The character on the left
is guilty of murder,
the character on the right has
tracked him down
and is about to
arrest him.
But the tables are turned
and our murderer appears to gain
the upper hand, but then...
Erich Von Stroheim
finished filming in October 1923.
He'd spent over
half a million dollars.
He spent the next few months
feverishly editing the picture.
Its first public screening
was in January 1924
to an invited audience
of about ten people.
His film was eight hours long,
completely uncommercial.
He reduced it by half to four hours,
and claimed that he couldn't
cut another foot to save his soul.
So Thalberg simply
took the film off him,
it was edited down
to two hours
and released in December 1924.
Once again, Irving Thalberg
had demonstrated
exactly who was the boss.
Thalberg had a clever
technique for honing his films
for maximum appeal to
cinema audiences.
When previewing a film, he would
sit in the back of the cinema
making notes of the
audience's reaction.
Irving Thalberg
would not release a film
until it was shown
to test audiences.
Films were edited or re-edited
according to public reaction.
Re-shooting sequences was so common
that MGM became known as
re-take valley.
Irving Thalberg believed that no
film should be released
until it was as good
as it could possibly be.
His motto was "Films aren't made,
they are re-made.”
Another inherited project in
trouble that year
was Ben Hur,
which went on to become
the most expensive film
of the entire silent era.
Goldwyn studios had
begun production in Italy,
but within two months had spent
the entire production budget
of $1.25 million.
Because the sets had already been
built there in Italy, Louis B Mayer
and Irving Thalberg
decided to continue filming.
But they got rid of
three key personnel -
the writer, the star
and the director.
Thalberg still wasn't happy
with the footage
that was being sent back.
With costs
escalating to $3 million,
Thalberg knew that if Ben Hur
was a flop,
it would destroy MGM Studios.
He especially found the climax
of the chariot race unexciting.
Thalberg decided to bring the
entire production
back to Hollywood,
where he restaged the chariot scene
at a cost of $300,000.
The chariot race
was covered by 42 cameras,
the most ever used by
Hollywood before or since.
Working around the clock,
Irving Thalberg personally
supervised the editing of Ben Hur.
This was an important picture,
it needed to be ready
for a Christmas release
and the very future of MGM as a
studio depended on its success.
The strain was enormous.
Irving had a heart attack.
Whilst recuperating and bed-ridden
he continued to edit the picture.
All this hard work paid off.
Ben Hur was a massive
box office hit,
although Irving was too ill
to attend the premiere.
Thalberg understood
Hollywood better than anyone.
He knew that a studio's
greatest assets were its stars
and he took great delight
in creating new ones.
When he heard that a relatively
unknown actor called John Gilbert
was receiving sackfuls
of fan mail,
Thalberg astutely cast him as a
handsome Prince in The Merry Widow,
transforming him into the
newest, biggest star in town.
Thalberg would repeat the success
with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford,
Greta Garbo, and many others.
Within a few years, MGM claimed to
have more stars than heaven itself.
Thalberg's productions packed
cinemas throughout the country.
By 1926, Wall Street had invested
over $2 billion into the
American film industry,
the majority of which went
into building new cinemas.
And with good reason because,
at this time,
60 million Americans
went to the movies every week.
Irving was a young man at the
very top of his profession.
He created new stars
that the public adored.
Everything he touched turned to
gold, the future seemed assured.
But the future doesn't always
do what you want it to.
Behind me are the original
Warner Brothers studios.
At the beginning of 1927 they were
not a particularly big concern,
but by the end of that year
they had revolutionised the motion
picture industry and had struck fear
into the heart of
every other filmmaker in Hollywood.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
'In the projection of the motion picture
'and the reproduction of the sound,
'the sound record
in the form of a large disc
'is rotated on a turn table.
'This turntable is geared directly
'to the motion picture
projecting machine,
'and is driven by a common
constant speed electric motor."
Two formats had been invented
in the early 1920s
to synchronise sound and pictures.
One used discs, the other created
a visual soundtrack on the film.
Warner Brothers were in a
strong position to exploit
this new technology
as they had invested
in the dramatic 1920s
expansion of radio in America.
For the first time
Americans could tune in
to music and speech broadcasts
in their own home.
Warner Brothers, realising the
publicity value of this new medium,
installed their own radio
station here at the studio.
Radio KFWB was run by Sam Warner.
Sam used the station to
publicise his studio's films
and sometimes included a feature
where listeners could hear the
sounds of films being made.
Sam wondered why
radio listeners
could hear his actors
but cinema goers couldn't.
He knew that the
technology existed.
Everybody quiet, please.
After months of badgering
and dozens of tests,
he persuaded his brothers
to let him experiment further.
This is the first time
that I have ever
addressed a large number of people
without being scared half to death.
Quite a few people have asked me
if I would not explain how this
system of talking movies works.
I will endeavour to explain
in as few words as possible.
Most of you probably have never
seen a piece of moving picture film.
Here is a piece of the
standard film.
I will hold it against
my white shirt front
and I believe you can
see the outline of the picture.
Maybe you can make out the pictures.
Now right along here is where we
photograph the sound on the film,
right next to the main picture.
I'm going to play
a piece on the mouth organ.
PLAYS 'ROCK-A-BYE BABY'
The tinny sound and
squeaky voices
of the first sound films
were wonderfully parodied
by Charlie Chaplin,
in his film City Lights.
He also wrote the music.
CRUDE HORN TOOTS
MIMICKING SPEECH RHYTHMS
Silent films spoke a visual
language understood
by millions all over the world,
and these films were always
accompanied by live musicians,
but silent films were
about to become obsolete.
Warner Brothers had kick-started
the manic rush into talking movies.
They had nothing to lose
and everything to gain.
If Warner Brothers could make
sound films commercially acceptable,
they would have a head start
on all the major studios.
But having to record sound
took filmmaking right back
to its very early days.
A camera that didn't move,
filming popular novelty acts.
These films were test films,
never released to the public.
[CE SG
♪ He is making eyes at me
QUACK!
♪ He is awful nice to me
♪ Oh, Ma!
♪ He's almost breaking my heart
♪ I'm beside him
♪ Mercy, let his conscience
guide him!
QUACK!
♪ He wants to marry me
♪ And be my honeybee
♪ When he left
he shakes your shoulder
QUACK!
♪ He's kissing me! ♪
QUACK!
Silent movies didn't become talkies
overnight - for a while silent films
were produced with a recorded musical
soundtrack replacing the job of live musicians.
One such film, Don Juan, produced by Warner
Brothers in 1926, starred John Barrymore.
This film, with its lavish musical
soundtrack, meant that audiences
even in the smallest cinema would
have an orchestral accompaniment.
Barrymore played
the eponymous hero.
The perfectly-synchronised music
thrillingly accompanied the action.
It became an overnight sensation.
The premier of Don Juan was
accompanied by a programme
of Vitaphone shorts
with synchronised songs.
♪ When the rangers come to town
They saddle up or saddle down
♪ They're in their heyday
Because it's pay-day... ♪
And a message from Will H Hays,
the president of the Motion Picture
Producers and Directors Association,
with references that
might surprise you...
Today the screen presents pictures
that walk and talk and act and sing.
There is colour to give
them vividness and life.
There is widescreen projection just out of
the laboratory to bring you the spectacles
of nature and art in their true
majesty.
There is the promise, too, of three-dimension
projection to give lifelike perspective.
The writing was on the wall for
Thalberg and his vast operation at MGM.
None of the studios, cameras and cutting
rooms were equipped to handle sound.
But of course
Thalberg hadn't seen anything yet!
On 6th October 1927, The
Jazz Singer was premiered.
It was a sound film in that it had recorded
musical accompaniment, but also featured its star
Al Jolson singing a couple of songs
and adlibbing a few words of dialogue.
It was these moments that
caught the audience's ears.
'Wait a minute, wait a minute,
you ain't heard nothing yet.
Wait a minute, I tell you!
You ain't heard nothing.
You want to hear
Toot, Toot, Tootsie?
All right, hold on, hold on.
Listen, play Toot, Toot, Tootsie
- three chorus, you understand?
And the third chorus, I whistle.
Now give it to 'em hard
and heavy - go right ahead.
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, goodbye
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie,
don't cry... ♪
The Jazz Singer was a
huge box office sensation.
Warner Brothers made so much money, they were able to
buy one of the big three film companies at the time,
First National, and move into their
vast studios here in Burbank.
It would take nearly three years to convert all
the studios and cinemas in America for sound.
When sound came in, when The Jazz Singer was released
and became the huge box office smash that it did,
what was your father's attitude to it, because most
people it seemed, intelligent film makers of the day,
thought that talkies were
just a passing novelty...?
My father and mother and,
er, Mr Thalberg and his wife, Norma,
all went to the premier
of The Jazz Singer together.
And my father just sat and watched
this, and that old survival instinct
was there and he knew this was
what was coming. Oh, really?
Yeah. And he walked out, and my
father just couldn't say anything
and Thalberg didn't say anything,
and...
“Irving, isn't this terrific?”
He says,
"It's just a passing fancy."
And my father was stunned by that,
he couldn't believe that,
and he often told me that story.
But what Thalberg was
really concerned is that
they were a factory, a mass-produced factory,
and an invention had come along that had made
35 pictures that they had sitting on
the shelf for release obsolete. Yes.
So they had to go back and redo it,
and he didn't want this thing.
Silent film may have seemed obsolete
but it didn't go quietly.
One of the best films of the entire silent era
was released among its dying embers - Sunrise.
Directed in Hollywood by the noted
German director FW Murnau,
Sunrise featured his trademark
moving camera.
Here it is used to stunning effect,
as Murnau mimics the core nature
of cinema - a journey through the dark
that takes us into spectacular visions.
Irving Thalberg, like so many
other wise heads at the time,
dismissed the talking picture
as a passing novelty.
It's easy to see
why he thought this.
By the mid-1920s, the finest films
of the silent era were being made,
not just big box office hits, but
also prestigious experimental films.
One such movie was The Crowd, produced by Irving
Thalberg and directed by King Vidor in 1928.
This was not a star vehicle - in fact its
subject matter was literally a face in the crowd.
I told Thalberg, this may not pack
the theatres as much as we hope.
I said, "We can't tell,
but it may not.”
And he says, "Well, I think MGM
"are making enough
pictures, enough money,
"they can afford an experimental
film every once in a while.
“It'll do something for the studio
“and it'll do something
for the whole industry.”
So that was a pretty good attitude
for a top production executive.
Irving Thalberg's creative commitment
manifested itself in other ways as well.
The studio didn't know,
they were lost,
what sort of... how to
end this picture happily.
So we made actually seven endings
and tried it out, seven previews
with the various endings,
and finally I came up with
the ending where he's lost again
in the crowd, and the camera moves
back, back, back.
King Vidor was just one of the
prominent American directors
heavily influenced by
Murnau's moving camera.
Hollywood was still under the influence of
the stationary camera, shooting into a set.
And they used to say,
long shot, medium shot, close-up.
And they'd just move straight into
the set - that was the way a lot of
fellas were working and had been
working and continued to develop.
Just camera stop, move up to a closer shot,
mover closer, without panoraming the actors
through the set, without
following them, without moving up
with them, moving the camera up.
And I remember producers saying,
"Don't keep moving the camera all
over, I don't like it, I get dizzy."
I planted the stuff in Eddie's shop.
There was no chance of getting dizzy with
the static camerawork of the early talkies.
But they must not find Eddie...
Here you may be wondering why
the actor in the background is
completely masked by the
actor in front of him.
It's because the actor in front of him
is trying to make sure the telephone,
which is in fact a microphone,
can hear every word he says.
What, you mean...?
An amazing coincidence running
into you accidentally like that.
Especially as we had parted
for ever three months ago.
You know it wasn't a coincidence.
Here, the microphone has been
skilfully hidden in the set.
But why didn't you telephone
if you wanted to see me?
I was afraid you might be in.
And the film-making ability
has also been skilfully hidden...
Clare, did he kiss you?
Yes.
And did you kiss him?
Oh, stop it, stop it -
this man means nothing to me.
Go ahead and ask your questions,
but, oh, Jim, you've got
to believe me.
Cameras were now encased in huge
boxes to muffle their sound,
so it wouldn't be picked up by the static
microphones hanging above the static actors.
And suddenly a voice test could
make or break a Hollywood star.
A few of the silent film stars,
such as Greta Garbo,
John Barrymore and Joan Crawford, survived the
transition to sound, but the majority didn't.
John Gilbert was one
high-profile victim.
It was an image of the great
lover, the intensive lover.
You couldn't put this image he had
established into words - it becomes funny.
Your eyes told me so, your heart
told me so, your lips told me so.
The people were waiting - what was
he saying all the time in the silent films?
And then they hear these
words and they laugh!
I love you. I've told you that 100
times this week - I love you.
And I've told you
not to tell me that again.
Others were hampered
in less obvious ways.
Douglas Fairbanks had created the action-hero
film, a cinema genre still thriving today.
His first hero was Zorro, a caped
crusader - Batman with a fag on.
Silent film allowed the luxury of superhuman
action - a sword fight could be speeded up.
Here is Douglas in Robin Hood...
Audiences were stunned by the
sheer scale of the production.
In the Black Pirate, Fairbanks
brought a new dimension
to the screen - Technicolor.
Critics compared scenes in this film
to paintings by the old masters.
But visuals were no longer enough -
sound had arrived.
In Fairbanks' first sound film, with his wife Mary
Pickford, he was more or less rooted to the spot.
Let him that moved thee hither,
remove thee hence!
Oh, ho, ho, ho!
Oh, come, Kate, come!
You must not look so sour!
It is my fashion when I see a crab.
Why? Here's no crab!
Come, Kate, come, sit down...
Fairbanks is deprived of exuberant
movement, but he still manages
to inject some into this scene.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Oh, come, come, you wasp!
You are too angry.
If I be waspish, then beware my sting!
Eric Von Stroheim embraced sound
in a way you would never guess.
♪ And my best gal said, sho-lo!
♪ Ha-ha-ha!
♪ Hee-hee-hee!
Woah-ho-ho, I'm laughing... ♪
After a year and a bit,
sound films improved dramatically.
Filmmakers rediscovered cinema and
were no longer a slave to the microphone.
Comedic performances were
enhanced by well-written dialogue.
I was reading a book
the other day...
Reading a book?
Yes, it's all about
civilisation or something.
Do you know that the guy said that machinery
is going to take the place of every profession?
Oh, my dear!
That's something you
need never worry about.
MGM'S first talking film was the
all-singing, all-tap-dancing
extravaganza Broadway Melody,
which in 1929
set the style
for future MGM musicals.
Another talkie that year was
The Hollywood Review of 1929.
Irving Thalberg produced a picture
which featured almost every one of
MGM's stars in either a singing or talking role
- the notable female exception being Greta Garbo.
Garbo's first sound film for
Thalberg wasn't released until 1930.
Public curiosity was at fever pitch.
What would the Swedish
goddess sound like?
The answer?
Swedish!
Give me a whisky -
ginger ale on the side.
Irving Thalberg continued to exhibit his acumen at
MGM by signing the Marx Brothers in the mid-1930s.
He produced their biggest every
picture - A Night At The Opera.
As Irving described to Groucho,
women didn't particularly like
uncontrolled horseplay - they liked
a little romance thrown into the mix.
I love you.
Difficult to believe when I find you
dining with another woman.
That woman?!
Do you know why I sat with her?
Because she reminded me of you.
Really? Of course! That's why I'm sitting here
with you - because you remind me of you!
Your eyes, your throat, your lips -
everything about you reminds me of you.
Except you.
How do you account for that?
She figures that one out,
she's good.
Thalberg had the Marx Brothers road-test the film's
comedy routines in front of live theatre audiences.
This allowed them to time their
filmed scenes for the cinema crowd.
Thalberg was keen to work in this
way again on a new Marx Brothers film.
But he ran out of time.
Irving Thalberg didn't see the next
Marx Brothers film, A Day At The Races.
He died in 1936 at the age of 37,
not after all from a weakened heart,
but from pneumonia.
His wife, the film star Norma Shearer, and
his mother, Henrietta, were at his bedside.
MGM employed the factory system to make their
films, although Irving always found time
and room for the personal, artistic movie - films
that didn't insult the intelligence of the audience.
He believed in the power of the story and also
making films as good as he possibly could.
But for now,
the young man in a hurry,
he'd reached the finish line.
Thalberg's dedicated
pursuit of excellence
created a special kind of legacy.
The best of his films
are as enjoyable now as
when they were made.
And his insight, skill and dedication made
MGM the gold standard for the industry,
not merely in Hollywood
but throughout the world.
Amidst the studio system Thalberg stood for
individuality, for the higher aspirations of filmmaking.
Irving Thalberg always
believed cinema could be art.
And the past 100 years have
demonstrated that.
Cinema is now well
into its second century.
When it began in 1895, moving photographs on a
large screen were considered a sensational novelty.
But now the moving
picture is everywhere.
Compact devices which
access the internet
give us a vast visual library that
we can carry around in our pocket.
But the ubiquity of the moving photograph
does not mean the end of cinema.
As human beings we like to sit
in audiences,
having the communal spirit,
being entranced by the story,
laughing at the same gags.
As long as cinema entertains, then
we will be entertained by cinema.
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, goodbye
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, don't cry
♪ The choo-choo train
that takes me away from you
♪ No words can tell
how sad it makes me
♪ Kiss me, Tootsie, and then
♪ Do it over again
♪ Watch for the mail
I'll never fail
♪ If you don't get a letter
then you'll know I'm in jail
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, don't cry
♪ Toot, toot,
tootsie, goodbye! ♪
Do you know there are various composers
that fit various parts of the country?
HE SAYS NAMES IN LOCAL ACCENTS:
For example Liverpool is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Cardiff is, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Birmingham is Rimsky Korsakov.
The Irish is Beethoven.
And to move to the philosophers,
for Newcastle, Schopenhauer!
And I don't mean how long
you've got to do your shopping.
♪ Goodbye, Tootsie, goodbye! ♪
it progressed from filming
anonymous people
standing in front of a barn,
to huge stars walking
through purpose-built sets,
dodging choreographed traffic.
Major studios run by charismatic
moguls built their own worlds,
dream factories.
By the mid-1920s the best films
were getting better and better.
The greatest talents were
working here in Hollywood,
both European and American.
Film stars directors, cameramen.
And then almost overnight,
films became awful.
I planted the stuff in Eddie's shop.
Yeah? And Dickson will be there at 10 o'clock. Uh-huh.
But they must not find Eddie.
What, you mean...?
Take him for a ride.
The silent film grew from
simple fairground novelty
into a sophisticated art form.
But at the height of its power,
the wheels fell off.
The cinema industry was
wrong-footed by the coming of sound.
The introduction of talkies
rushed filming techniques
right back to basics.
The visuals became
subservient to sound.
In times of revolution,
wise heads are needed.
And one of Hollywood's youngest
and greatest producers,
Irving Thalberg, who helped
perfect the art of silent cinema,
would steer the biggest
film studio in the world
through the traumatic
change to talkies.
This is his story.
These are the old MGM Studios.
When they were built in the
mid-1920s, Metro Goldwyn Mayer
had ambitions to become the biggest
beast in the Hollywood jungle.
Long before Leo was a lion,
Hollywood was a
small backwater town.
Then, independent film companies
started moving here to enjoy
California's sunny
filming locations.
In these early days, the industry
was dominated by directors
such as DW Griffith
and Cecil B DeMille.
They created the cult of
the all-powerful director,
but many would be undermined
by their over-reaching
ambition and fiery temperaments.
Some of them needed
adult supervision.
A new kind of figure
needed to step forward.
Hollywood defined the
role of the producer,
an important bridge between the
money men and the creative talent.
One such individual who
was both a good businessman
and an excellent judge
of what made a good movie
was Irving Thalberg.
This is the Thalberg Building
behind me.
At the top of his form,
he produced cinematic masterpieces.
Here is Irving receiving
the Best Picture Oscar
for Mutiny On The Bounty in 1936.
It's obvious, but nevertheless
true for me to say
The Bounty won this award.
Thalberg, because he always refused
to put his name on his films,
you've certainly heard of
the films he produced.
Irving Thalberg
was from the East Coast,
and grew up in the turn of
the century tenements of New York.
The Thalberg family had
emigrated from Germany.
Irving Thalberg was born
to Henrietta Thalberg
in Brooklyn, New York in 1899.
His father William imported lace.
Irving was born with a
congenital heart defect.
Doctors told his mother
that he was unlikely to live
past his 30th birthday.
Henrietta spent the first
seven years of Irving's life
giving him sponge baths,
rubdowns and enforced rest periods.
Irving's health improved,
although he was never what
you would call robust.
In his teens, he
developed rheumatic fever
and became bedridden for a year.
Irving sharpened his
opinions and storytelling
by reading classical literature,
autobiographies and plays.
Thalberg gained his introduction to
the film industry
as an 18-year-old boy,
when he met the owner of
Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle,
on a family holiday.
Laemmle was a self-made man.
Born in Germany, he emigrated to
the United States as a young man,
as did a surprising number
of the early film moguls.
He hired Thalberg,
whose evident talent
quickly led the studio
boss to make him his secretary.
In 1919, Carl Laemmle took one of
his regular train trips
from New York to Los Angeles.
On this occasion he was accompanied
by his new 19-year-old secretary.
After five days they arrived here
at the Universal Studios.
Thalberg impressed the
boss of Universal
with his knowledge and enthusiasm
for the movie making business.
I spoke to Laemmle's niece, Carla,
an actress at the Universal Studio,
about what impressed her
uncle so much about Thalberg.
What was it about him
that made him special?
Well, he seemed to be very aware
of everything going on,
and he seemed to be
on top of things,
and just managed things.
He was very, very gifted,
and so young. So young.
He was astute, that was all.
He just had it.
Universal's output of low budget
westerns,
melodrama, and short comedies,
needed shaking up.
Irving Thalberg arrived
at a troubled studio.
Carl Laemmle had a tendency
to employ his relatives
in key positions, whether they
could do the job or not.
This caused a great deal of
resentment and anger
amongst the Universal management.
Carl Laemmle then really threw
the cat amongst the pigeons,
when he appointed Irving Thalberg
as the new head of production.
This was a complete
surprise to everyone,
including Irving Thalberg.
Thalberg's first big problem
was dealing with the massive ego
of one of cinema's
great maverick directors,
Erich Von Stroheim.
Von Stroheim, like so many other
players in our story,
was a European immigrant,
who arrived in America
seeking his fortune.
At the Ellis Island
Immigration Centre,
all the records of these
arrivals can be viewed online.
COMPUTER VOICE: 'First,
type the passenger's name."
Let's see if we
can track Erich down.
There's his name there, Stroheim,
but Erich Oswald.
There's no Von at that point.
So Erich Oswald Stroheim.
He kept quite about the Oswald,
I think!
And it says here about his
distinguishing feature,
he's 5'5",
but he's got a cut on the forehead.
Born in Austria,
arrived November 25, 1909.
That's definitely our man.
Erich got himself a job assisting
the renowned director, DW Griffith.
Erich was an expert on uniforms and
was employed as a military advisor.
By the time America entered
the First World War in 1917,
Erich had risen through the ranks
to become a noted character actor.
He was advertised as
"The man you love to hate.”
Audiences were horrified
by his sadistic roles.
Here he is in The Heart of Humanity,
a gruesome World War I
propaganda film.
Von Stroheim craved power.
If he hadn't made
it in Hollywood
he would undoubtedly have become
a dictator of a small European country.
But he settled for
the next best thing,
being a film director.
He took an idea to Carl Laemmle
for a film to he wanted to direct.
Nothing was going to
stand in Erich's way.
They spoke through the night.
Carl agreed that Eric would write
and direct the film for nothing
and be paid $200 a week
to star in it.
The film was made for $42,000
and made a profit of a million.
Blind Husbands was a
stunning directorial debut.
Audiences were shocked by
the erotic charge
of Von Stroheim's performance.
In the film's climax,
terrified by a stuffed vulture,
he falls off a mountain.
I believe you did a screen test
once for Eric Von Stroheim.
Is that correct? Oh, I did.
Can you tell me about him? Was
he a severe man or a humorous man?
Not very much humour.
This is supposed to be war,
death, hell, destruction!
He was such a talented man,
but he wanted everything to be
actually perfect and genuine.
I mean, something
that you don't need,
something like ruffles
on the underpants,
and my uncle thought that
was going too far, you know?
You don't need to
do that in a movie.
And he would have, if people
in the background
were drinking champagne,
he'd be giving them
genuine champagne, vintage.
Well, I didn't hear that but
it's most likely that was true.
For his next film, Foolish Wives,
Von Stroheim created
a full sized reconstruction
of the Plaza in Monte Carlo
on the Universal back lot.
Von Stroheim demanded complete
control to write, direct and star.
Here he is up to
his old tricks again.
Irving Thalberg grew concerned.
Erich was a brilliant director
but his budget was out of control.
Thalberg demanded that Erich
stopped filming
or he would be fired.
Erich replied that
if he was fired as director,
Universal would also
lose the star of its film.
Thalberg backed down.
Foolish Wives premiered
a few months later.
It made more money than
Blind Husbands but,
as Thalberg pointed out,
most of that profit was
eaten up by Von Stroheim's
outlandish production costs.
Von Stroheim's image was ripe
for parody. Here's Ben Turpin.
In Von Stroheim's film
Merry Go Round,
the vintage champagne flows
with no thought of cost.
Thalberg summoned
Stroheim into his office.
Erich said, "You can't throw Von
Stroheim off a Von Stroheim picture.”
But Irving replied,
"You're not starring in this film."
He sacked the director.
This was a pivotal moment
in Hollywood history.
Von Stroheim was a huge star
and a big name director.
Von Stroheim believed
the film was his,
but Thalberg said no,
the producer was king.
Merry Go Round was completed by
a Universal staff director,
exactly as instructed.
The triumph of the producer led to
a debate about art versus commerce.
If the artist pays no
attention to the budget,
then the money men have to step in.
Equally, if the money men
don't have the creative
flair of Irving Thalberg,
they make artistic decisions
which often end up
ruining the film.
One solution was for the film star
to become his own producer.
Here Douglas Fairbanks
signs the agreement
that created United Artists in 1919,
together with Charlie Chaplin,
DW Griffith and Mary Pickford.
Douglas Fairbanks had a
vivid imagination
which he transferred
to the screen.
Here he risks indigestion by
indulging in a midnight feast.
This is the food in his stomach.
Later, bad dreams
predictably arrive.
This is the only film ever made
where the hero is pursued across
open countryside by his own dinner.
But then it starts to get weird.
Filming the impossible was a
daily occurrence in silent cinema.
Comedy became
increasingly more surreal.
Distorting reality was a
speciality of the actor Lon Chaney.
He could radically change his
appearance to a frightening degree.
In The Penalty
he plays a double amputee.
His legs, which are
painfully strapped up behind him,
are hidden by his long coat.
Irving Thalberg greatly admired
Lon Chaney's dedication
and believed he would be
perfect casting in the title role
of one of Irving's
favourite novels.
Chaney's elaborate make-up
and his physical transformation
into the Hunchback was astonishing.
Here, out of costume, Lon Chaney
demonstrates his climbing prowess.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
made a fortune,
which Carl Laemmle,
as Universal's boss,
refused to share with Thalberg,
who remained on a fixed salary.
The boy wonder was not happy.
It was clearly time to move on,
there were no shortage of offers
for Hollywood's wonder boy.
In early 1923, Irving Thalberg
became the head of production
at Louis B Mayer's studio.
Within a year,
Mayer had been bought out
by Marcus Loew,
who owned the cinema chain.
He merged three companies -
Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer.
Louis B Mayer became the chairman
and Irving Thalberg became the
head of production at MGM.
The Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn
was not part of
Metro Goldwyn Mayor.
But he was a close friend of Irving
Thalberg, who he admired greatly.
He admired his education
and how he'd used it,
that he, er...
he said he had one advantage
that my father never really had,
or anybody had to that extent,
but he'd say, “Irving doesn't just
make pictures, he remakes them.”
That might mean bringing a new
writer in and rewriting it,
changing directors,
changing cast,
but if he had a story that he
believed in fundamentally
he stuck with that story and
then he'd look for the best way
to keep doing it and doing it
and that was one of the reasons
why the films were successful
and why they were able to
develop so many stars,
because the roles were good,
and if they weren't good
he kept reshooting.
Thalberg set about
building MGM's fortunes.
He chose stories that he
believed would make great movies.
He allocated writers,
stars, directors,
to films that suited their talents.
Everything needed
to make a film was to be found
within the walls of MGM.
To ensure top quality, MGM employed
only the best directors, actors,
writers, cameramen, technicians,
designers and makeup artists.
They all worked under
exclusive contract to MGM
and were available to work on any
film the studio deemed suitable.
In his heyday it was a bit
like going into Alcatraz.
It was so boarded up, you know,
and I remember the entrance
on Washington Boulevard
- not the one going
into the Thalberg building
because that's the executive offices
of course,
and the gate is right there
where you drive in -
but you know, I was nobody so we
had to go in through a kind of turnstile,
which was very heavy metal,
believe me,
it was like getting into jail,
and you had to get an OK
to push the thing, and they
released a lock on it
and you went around this thing
and you got in.
And we were shown to the
casting director's office
which was a small office
not far from the entrance,
and my mother and I met the
casting director,
and at that time he
looked at me and he said,
"Mmm, how old are you?"
And I told him I was 17.
I was taken to the character
wardrobe first time out,
and here you had a character
wardrobe with all of the costumes
that had ever been worn in an
MGM movie, they were all there.
Can you imagine walking into that?
And the woman who was in charge of
it, a white-haired lady,
was smoking away, and she
showed me a lot of the dresses.
She said, "Now,
Jean Harlow wore that”,
in such and such.
They had some incredible
bits and pieces there
in that wardrobe.
So they had a massive
wardrobe department,
I was reading the other day, that it
even had its own foundry so they could...
Yeah, they could make anything,
but they usually got the Italians
to make the boots and shoes.
They did the tailoring.
They did have a
tailoring department
but it was all Italian tailors,
I remember that.
That was an era of a certain
naivete, I think, too,
where people wanted to be
kind of carried out of the humdrum
experience of their own lives,
and fooled into thinking that there
was something better out there and
they could find it in the cinema.
The greatest talents in
cinema were drawn to MGM.
Eric Von Stroheim amongst them.
Here he is on the MGM back lot in
1925 standing next to Stephen Fry.
25-year-old Irving Thalberg
found himself
in charge of the richest, newest,
biggest film studios in the world.
He'd inherited one problem
from Goldwyn films and that was
a production that was currently
filming in San Francisco.
Its director was Erich Von Stroheim.
The old adversaries met once again,
this time there would
be a decisive knockout.
Greed,
the greatest film you'll never see.
A film about
humankind's lust for gold.
The building behind me
features in one of the most
notorious films ever made.
I'm on the corner of
Hayes and Laguna Street
here in San Francisco.
Eric Von Stroheim shot interiors
for his extraordinary epic,
Greed, in this very building.
Here, Erich films from
inside a genuine interior
through the window
to the genuine street below.
This was a revolutionary
shot in its day.
Greed was the latest product of
Von Stroheim's passionate vision.
He spent seven months filming in
San Francisco and Death Valley.
The finale of Greed
takes place in Death Valley.
Temperatures at the time had
reached 142 degrees Fahrenheit,
it was so hot the paint was
peeling and curling off the cars.
The two actors were exhorted by
Erich Von Stroheim
to fight to the death.
“Fight, fight," he said.
"Hate each other
as much as you hate me.”
The character on the left
is guilty of murder,
the character on the right has
tracked him down
and is about to
arrest him.
But the tables are turned
and our murderer appears to gain
the upper hand, but then...
Erich Von Stroheim
finished filming in October 1923.
He'd spent over
half a million dollars.
He spent the next few months
feverishly editing the picture.
Its first public screening
was in January 1924
to an invited audience
of about ten people.
His film was eight hours long,
completely uncommercial.
He reduced it by half to four hours,
and claimed that he couldn't
cut another foot to save his soul.
So Thalberg simply
took the film off him,
it was edited down
to two hours
and released in December 1924.
Once again, Irving Thalberg
had demonstrated
exactly who was the boss.
Thalberg had a clever
technique for honing his films
for maximum appeal to
cinema audiences.
When previewing a film, he would
sit in the back of the cinema
making notes of the
audience's reaction.
Irving Thalberg
would not release a film
until it was shown
to test audiences.
Films were edited or re-edited
according to public reaction.
Re-shooting sequences was so common
that MGM became known as
re-take valley.
Irving Thalberg believed that no
film should be released
until it was as good
as it could possibly be.
His motto was "Films aren't made,
they are re-made.”
Another inherited project in
trouble that year
was Ben Hur,
which went on to become
the most expensive film
of the entire silent era.
Goldwyn studios had
begun production in Italy,
but within two months had spent
the entire production budget
of $1.25 million.
Because the sets had already been
built there in Italy, Louis B Mayer
and Irving Thalberg
decided to continue filming.
But they got rid of
three key personnel -
the writer, the star
and the director.
Thalberg still wasn't happy
with the footage
that was being sent back.
With costs
escalating to $3 million,
Thalberg knew that if Ben Hur
was a flop,
it would destroy MGM Studios.
He especially found the climax
of the chariot race unexciting.
Thalberg decided to bring the
entire production
back to Hollywood,
where he restaged the chariot scene
at a cost of $300,000.
The chariot race
was covered by 42 cameras,
the most ever used by
Hollywood before or since.
Working around the clock,
Irving Thalberg personally
supervised the editing of Ben Hur.
This was an important picture,
it needed to be ready
for a Christmas release
and the very future of MGM as a
studio depended on its success.
The strain was enormous.
Irving had a heart attack.
Whilst recuperating and bed-ridden
he continued to edit the picture.
All this hard work paid off.
Ben Hur was a massive
box office hit,
although Irving was too ill
to attend the premiere.
Thalberg understood
Hollywood better than anyone.
He knew that a studio's
greatest assets were its stars
and he took great delight
in creating new ones.
When he heard that a relatively
unknown actor called John Gilbert
was receiving sackfuls
of fan mail,
Thalberg astutely cast him as a
handsome Prince in The Merry Widow,
transforming him into the
newest, biggest star in town.
Thalberg would repeat the success
with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford,
Greta Garbo, and many others.
Within a few years, MGM claimed to
have more stars than heaven itself.
Thalberg's productions packed
cinemas throughout the country.
By 1926, Wall Street had invested
over $2 billion into the
American film industry,
the majority of which went
into building new cinemas.
And with good reason because,
at this time,
60 million Americans
went to the movies every week.
Irving was a young man at the
very top of his profession.
He created new stars
that the public adored.
Everything he touched turned to
gold, the future seemed assured.
But the future doesn't always
do what you want it to.
Behind me are the original
Warner Brothers studios.
At the beginning of 1927 they were
not a particularly big concern,
but by the end of that year
they had revolutionised the motion
picture industry and had struck fear
into the heart of
every other filmmaker in Hollywood.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
'In the projection of the motion picture
'and the reproduction of the sound,
'the sound record
in the form of a large disc
'is rotated on a turn table.
'This turntable is geared directly
'to the motion picture
projecting machine,
'and is driven by a common
constant speed electric motor."
Two formats had been invented
in the early 1920s
to synchronise sound and pictures.
One used discs, the other created
a visual soundtrack on the film.
Warner Brothers were in a
strong position to exploit
this new technology
as they had invested
in the dramatic 1920s
expansion of radio in America.
For the first time
Americans could tune in
to music and speech broadcasts
in their own home.
Warner Brothers, realising the
publicity value of this new medium,
installed their own radio
station here at the studio.
Radio KFWB was run by Sam Warner.
Sam used the station to
publicise his studio's films
and sometimes included a feature
where listeners could hear the
sounds of films being made.
Sam wondered why
radio listeners
could hear his actors
but cinema goers couldn't.
He knew that the
technology existed.
Everybody quiet, please.
After months of badgering
and dozens of tests,
he persuaded his brothers
to let him experiment further.
This is the first time
that I have ever
addressed a large number of people
without being scared half to death.
Quite a few people have asked me
if I would not explain how this
system of talking movies works.
I will endeavour to explain
in as few words as possible.
Most of you probably have never
seen a piece of moving picture film.
Here is a piece of the
standard film.
I will hold it against
my white shirt front
and I believe you can
see the outline of the picture.
Maybe you can make out the pictures.
Now right along here is where we
photograph the sound on the film,
right next to the main picture.
I'm going to play
a piece on the mouth organ.
PLAYS 'ROCK-A-BYE BABY'
The tinny sound and
squeaky voices
of the first sound films
were wonderfully parodied
by Charlie Chaplin,
in his film City Lights.
He also wrote the music.
CRUDE HORN TOOTS
MIMICKING SPEECH RHYTHMS
Silent films spoke a visual
language understood
by millions all over the world,
and these films were always
accompanied by live musicians,
but silent films were
about to become obsolete.
Warner Brothers had kick-started
the manic rush into talking movies.
They had nothing to lose
and everything to gain.
If Warner Brothers could make
sound films commercially acceptable,
they would have a head start
on all the major studios.
But having to record sound
took filmmaking right back
to its very early days.
A camera that didn't move,
filming popular novelty acts.
These films were test films,
never released to the public.
[CE SG
♪ He is making eyes at me
QUACK!
♪ He is awful nice to me
♪ Oh, Ma!
♪ He's almost breaking my heart
♪ I'm beside him
♪ Mercy, let his conscience
guide him!
QUACK!
♪ He wants to marry me
♪ And be my honeybee
♪ When he left
he shakes your shoulder
QUACK!
♪ He's kissing me! ♪
QUACK!
Silent movies didn't become talkies
overnight - for a while silent films
were produced with a recorded musical
soundtrack replacing the job of live musicians.
One such film, Don Juan, produced by Warner
Brothers in 1926, starred John Barrymore.
This film, with its lavish musical
soundtrack, meant that audiences
even in the smallest cinema would
have an orchestral accompaniment.
Barrymore played
the eponymous hero.
The perfectly-synchronised music
thrillingly accompanied the action.
It became an overnight sensation.
The premier of Don Juan was
accompanied by a programme
of Vitaphone shorts
with synchronised songs.
♪ When the rangers come to town
They saddle up or saddle down
♪ They're in their heyday
Because it's pay-day... ♪
And a message from Will H Hays,
the president of the Motion Picture
Producers and Directors Association,
with references that
might surprise you...
Today the screen presents pictures
that walk and talk and act and sing.
There is colour to give
them vividness and life.
There is widescreen projection just out of
the laboratory to bring you the spectacles
of nature and art in their true
majesty.
There is the promise, too, of three-dimension
projection to give lifelike perspective.
The writing was on the wall for
Thalberg and his vast operation at MGM.
None of the studios, cameras and cutting
rooms were equipped to handle sound.
But of course
Thalberg hadn't seen anything yet!
On 6th October 1927, The
Jazz Singer was premiered.
It was a sound film in that it had recorded
musical accompaniment, but also featured its star
Al Jolson singing a couple of songs
and adlibbing a few words of dialogue.
It was these moments that
caught the audience's ears.
'Wait a minute, wait a minute,
you ain't heard nothing yet.
Wait a minute, I tell you!
You ain't heard nothing.
You want to hear
Toot, Toot, Tootsie?
All right, hold on, hold on.
Listen, play Toot, Toot, Tootsie
- three chorus, you understand?
And the third chorus, I whistle.
Now give it to 'em hard
and heavy - go right ahead.
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, goodbye
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie,
don't cry... ♪
The Jazz Singer was a
huge box office sensation.
Warner Brothers made so much money, they were able to
buy one of the big three film companies at the time,
First National, and move into their
vast studios here in Burbank.
It would take nearly three years to convert all
the studios and cinemas in America for sound.
When sound came in, when The Jazz Singer was released
and became the huge box office smash that it did,
what was your father's attitude to it, because most
people it seemed, intelligent film makers of the day,
thought that talkies were
just a passing novelty...?
My father and mother and,
er, Mr Thalberg and his wife, Norma,
all went to the premier
of The Jazz Singer together.
And my father just sat and watched
this, and that old survival instinct
was there and he knew this was
what was coming. Oh, really?
Yeah. And he walked out, and my
father just couldn't say anything
and Thalberg didn't say anything,
and...
“Irving, isn't this terrific?”
He says,
"It's just a passing fancy."
And my father was stunned by that,
he couldn't believe that,
and he often told me that story.
But what Thalberg was
really concerned is that
they were a factory, a mass-produced factory,
and an invention had come along that had made
35 pictures that they had sitting on
the shelf for release obsolete. Yes.
So they had to go back and redo it,
and he didn't want this thing.
Silent film may have seemed obsolete
but it didn't go quietly.
One of the best films of the entire silent era
was released among its dying embers - Sunrise.
Directed in Hollywood by the noted
German director FW Murnau,
Sunrise featured his trademark
moving camera.
Here it is used to stunning effect,
as Murnau mimics the core nature
of cinema - a journey through the dark
that takes us into spectacular visions.
Irving Thalberg, like so many
other wise heads at the time,
dismissed the talking picture
as a passing novelty.
It's easy to see
why he thought this.
By the mid-1920s, the finest films
of the silent era were being made,
not just big box office hits, but
also prestigious experimental films.
One such movie was The Crowd, produced by Irving
Thalberg and directed by King Vidor in 1928.
This was not a star vehicle - in fact its
subject matter was literally a face in the crowd.
I told Thalberg, this may not pack
the theatres as much as we hope.
I said, "We can't tell,
but it may not.”
And he says, "Well, I think MGM
"are making enough
pictures, enough money,
"they can afford an experimental
film every once in a while.
“It'll do something for the studio
“and it'll do something
for the whole industry.”
So that was a pretty good attitude
for a top production executive.
Irving Thalberg's creative commitment
manifested itself in other ways as well.
The studio didn't know,
they were lost,
what sort of... how to
end this picture happily.
So we made actually seven endings
and tried it out, seven previews
with the various endings,
and finally I came up with
the ending where he's lost again
in the crowd, and the camera moves
back, back, back.
King Vidor was just one of the
prominent American directors
heavily influenced by
Murnau's moving camera.
Hollywood was still under the influence of
the stationary camera, shooting into a set.
And they used to say,
long shot, medium shot, close-up.
And they'd just move straight into
the set - that was the way a lot of
fellas were working and had been
working and continued to develop.
Just camera stop, move up to a closer shot,
mover closer, without panoraming the actors
through the set, without
following them, without moving up
with them, moving the camera up.
And I remember producers saying,
"Don't keep moving the camera all
over, I don't like it, I get dizzy."
I planted the stuff in Eddie's shop.
There was no chance of getting dizzy with
the static camerawork of the early talkies.
But they must not find Eddie...
Here you may be wondering why
the actor in the background is
completely masked by the
actor in front of him.
It's because the actor in front of him
is trying to make sure the telephone,
which is in fact a microphone,
can hear every word he says.
What, you mean...?
An amazing coincidence running
into you accidentally like that.
Especially as we had parted
for ever three months ago.
You know it wasn't a coincidence.
Here, the microphone has been
skilfully hidden in the set.
But why didn't you telephone
if you wanted to see me?
I was afraid you might be in.
And the film-making ability
has also been skilfully hidden...
Clare, did he kiss you?
Yes.
And did you kiss him?
Oh, stop it, stop it -
this man means nothing to me.
Go ahead and ask your questions,
but, oh, Jim, you've got
to believe me.
Cameras were now encased in huge
boxes to muffle their sound,
so it wouldn't be picked up by the static
microphones hanging above the static actors.
And suddenly a voice test could
make or break a Hollywood star.
A few of the silent film stars,
such as Greta Garbo,
John Barrymore and Joan Crawford, survived the
transition to sound, but the majority didn't.
John Gilbert was one
high-profile victim.
It was an image of the great
lover, the intensive lover.
You couldn't put this image he had
established into words - it becomes funny.
Your eyes told me so, your heart
told me so, your lips told me so.
The people were waiting - what was
he saying all the time in the silent films?
And then they hear these
words and they laugh!
I love you. I've told you that 100
times this week - I love you.
And I've told you
not to tell me that again.
Others were hampered
in less obvious ways.
Douglas Fairbanks had created the action-hero
film, a cinema genre still thriving today.
His first hero was Zorro, a caped
crusader - Batman with a fag on.
Silent film allowed the luxury of superhuman
action - a sword fight could be speeded up.
Here is Douglas in Robin Hood...
Audiences were stunned by the
sheer scale of the production.
In the Black Pirate, Fairbanks
brought a new dimension
to the screen - Technicolor.
Critics compared scenes in this film
to paintings by the old masters.
But visuals were no longer enough -
sound had arrived.
In Fairbanks' first sound film, with his wife Mary
Pickford, he was more or less rooted to the spot.
Let him that moved thee hither,
remove thee hence!
Oh, ho, ho, ho!
Oh, come, Kate, come!
You must not look so sour!
It is my fashion when I see a crab.
Why? Here's no crab!
Come, Kate, come, sit down...
Fairbanks is deprived of exuberant
movement, but he still manages
to inject some into this scene.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Oh, come, come, you wasp!
You are too angry.
If I be waspish, then beware my sting!
Eric Von Stroheim embraced sound
in a way you would never guess.
♪ And my best gal said, sho-lo!
♪ Ha-ha-ha!
♪ Hee-hee-hee!
Woah-ho-ho, I'm laughing... ♪
After a year and a bit,
sound films improved dramatically.
Filmmakers rediscovered cinema and
were no longer a slave to the microphone.
Comedic performances were
enhanced by well-written dialogue.
I was reading a book
the other day...
Reading a book?
Yes, it's all about
civilisation or something.
Do you know that the guy said that machinery
is going to take the place of every profession?
Oh, my dear!
That's something you
need never worry about.
MGM'S first talking film was the
all-singing, all-tap-dancing
extravaganza Broadway Melody,
which in 1929
set the style
for future MGM musicals.
Another talkie that year was
The Hollywood Review of 1929.
Irving Thalberg produced a picture
which featured almost every one of
MGM's stars in either a singing or talking role
- the notable female exception being Greta Garbo.
Garbo's first sound film for
Thalberg wasn't released until 1930.
Public curiosity was at fever pitch.
What would the Swedish
goddess sound like?
The answer?
Swedish!
Give me a whisky -
ginger ale on the side.
Irving Thalberg continued to exhibit his acumen at
MGM by signing the Marx Brothers in the mid-1930s.
He produced their biggest every
picture - A Night At The Opera.
As Irving described to Groucho,
women didn't particularly like
uncontrolled horseplay - they liked
a little romance thrown into the mix.
I love you.
Difficult to believe when I find you
dining with another woman.
That woman?!
Do you know why I sat with her?
Because she reminded me of you.
Really? Of course! That's why I'm sitting here
with you - because you remind me of you!
Your eyes, your throat, your lips -
everything about you reminds me of you.
Except you.
How do you account for that?
She figures that one out,
she's good.
Thalberg had the Marx Brothers road-test the film's
comedy routines in front of live theatre audiences.
This allowed them to time their
filmed scenes for the cinema crowd.
Thalberg was keen to work in this
way again on a new Marx Brothers film.
But he ran out of time.
Irving Thalberg didn't see the next
Marx Brothers film, A Day At The Races.
He died in 1936 at the age of 37,
not after all from a weakened heart,
but from pneumonia.
His wife, the film star Norma Shearer, and
his mother, Henrietta, were at his bedside.
MGM employed the factory system to make their
films, although Irving always found time
and room for the personal, artistic movie - films
that didn't insult the intelligence of the audience.
He believed in the power of the story and also
making films as good as he possibly could.
But for now,
the young man in a hurry,
he'd reached the finish line.
Thalberg's dedicated
pursuit of excellence
created a special kind of legacy.
The best of his films
are as enjoyable now as
when they were made.
And his insight, skill and dedication made
MGM the gold standard for the industry,
not merely in Hollywood
but throughout the world.
Amidst the studio system Thalberg stood for
individuality, for the higher aspirations of filmmaking.
Irving Thalberg always
believed cinema could be art.
And the past 100 years have
demonstrated that.
Cinema is now well
into its second century.
When it began in 1895, moving photographs on a
large screen were considered a sensational novelty.
But now the moving
picture is everywhere.
Compact devices which
access the internet
give us a vast visual library that
we can carry around in our pocket.
But the ubiquity of the moving photograph
does not mean the end of cinema.
As human beings we like to sit
in audiences,
having the communal spirit,
being entranced by the story,
laughing at the same gags.
As long as cinema entertains, then
we will be entertained by cinema.
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, goodbye
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, don't cry
♪ The choo-choo train
that takes me away from you
♪ No words can tell
how sad it makes me
♪ Kiss me, Tootsie, and then
♪ Do it over again
♪ Watch for the mail
I'll never fail
♪ If you don't get a letter
then you'll know I'm in jail
♪ Toot, toot, tootsie, don't cry
♪ Toot, toot,
tootsie, goodbye! ♪
Do you know there are various composers
that fit various parts of the country?
HE SAYS NAMES IN LOCAL ACCENTS:
For example Liverpool is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Cardiff is, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Birmingham is Rimsky Korsakov.
The Irish is Beethoven.
And to move to the philosophers,
for Newcastle, Schopenhauer!
And I don't mean how long
you've got to do your shopping.
♪ Goodbye, Tootsie, goodbye! ♪