Fox News Breaks the Sound Barrier

Title seen here: youtu.be/8jLHQ-HUbcY

In film history, the biggest news of 1927 was, of course, "The Jazz Singer," one of the year's highest-grossing pictures (next to "Wings" (1927), appropriately enough) and the first feature-length talkie and musical, the status of which would transcend history and enter into a foundational Hollywood myth, as seen in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) and reiterated countless times before and since, of the death knell being rung for the silent film and initiating a new era of synchronized-sound cinema. Truth though there may be in the myth, it's also a fact that studios and theatres weren't wired for sound overnight upon the supposed second coming of Al Jolson singing "Mammy" in blackface on October 6th. For example, the last Hollywood studio holdout MGM didn't release their final silent film until more than two years later, near the end of 1929. Furthermore, the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system employed for "The Jazz Singer" and other subjects from Warner Bros around the time was a cumbersome process for all--projectionists, distributors, and producers, and required a steady replacement of easily worn-out records--and largely trapped movies within a sound stage.

Another momentous if less often mentioned occasion in film history took place earlier in 1927, at another New York theatre, on May 20th. This event, by contrast, also aligned with the biggest news story in the world in 1927, which began earlier that day, the first transatlantic flight, as Charles Lindbergh flying solo in his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane departed from New York en route to Paris. Various studios sent their newsreel filmmakers to the scene, but only one of them was initiating a new series of sound-cinema reporting that would, well, do something for motion pictures akin to what Lindbergh was doing for airplanes.

While Sam Warner's Vitaphone was experimenting with the sound-on-disc system developed at AT&T's Bell Labs, William Fox had teamed up on the Movietone sound-on-film system with inventor Theodore Case, who had previously developed Lee de Forest's optical sound Phonofilm process before the two divorced over authorship claims. Except that the technology may not have been as familiar at the time as the phonograph-like records employed by Vitaphone, optical soundtracks were blatantly superior, not least for the mobility they allowed filmmakers. This is the underlying reason that, for while Vitaphone was busy recording Vaudeville acts on a stage and with the camera imprisoned in a sound-proofed sweat box, Movietone was shooting newsreels off-stage and on the fly, so to speak.

Like Vitaphone, Movietone began as a recorded score and sound effects for otherwise silent films--Warner Bros' "Don Juan" (1926) and Fox's 1927 re-release of "What Price Glory" (1926) being the first respective instances. This film, however, of "Lindbergh's Flight from N.Y. to Paris," would launch Fox Movietone News, and it was quite the audio-visual scoop. As their modern-day website declares (see works cited at end), "this was the first breaking news event in history to unify both the picture and the sound in one complete package," and as Scott Eyman put it, "Sound made things more immediate, made it seem as if it was happening now." Indeed, the film was first shown later that day and while Lindbergh was still flying over the Atlantic. The film itself may not have been front-page news, although the reviews and reported audience reactions were ecstatic, but turn on or hit play to how most of us get news nowadays, whether from cable news or a video in your internet feed, to see the lasting influence of this early coverage from a Fox News. That's right, you heard it here first, folks, Tucker Carlson is the Lindbergh baby (in more ways than one considering some of their shared controversial political beliefs and minus the heroic actions on the part of one of them, but I digress).

The film was later assembled together with footage of Lindbergh's reception by President Calvin Coolidge and speech from the not-so-silent "Silent Cal" at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard on 11 June 1927, reportedly, for which Lindbergh was unhappy with cutting his stay short in Europe to sail back across the Atlantic, it was a highly politicized affair--what we've since the Nixon administration cynically referred to as a "photo op" and what in its day was termed "Lindbergh Radio Day." Otherwise, the initial footage of Lindbergh's takeoff nary contains a word outside of "the cheers of the throng," as the New York Times reviewer put it in a May 23rd review, and as "the roar of the propellers" dominate the soundtrack. Movie theatre audiences, likewise, are reported to have applauded and cheered as they watched the film of Lindbergh departing on his historic journey. There's also some evident suspense seen and heard from the in-film audience as they appear to withhold their jubilation momentarily, unsure whether the plane will stay in the sky. All of which seems to have been more exciting than whatever silent film feature the newsreel happened to be paired up with for an evening's entertainment.

Like "The Jazz Singer," this initial Fox Movietone newsreel was a hybrid of the silent film and talkie, so we get title cards, as well as that old-timey static noise, to set the scenes before we see or hear anything else. As Edwin M. Bradley says, "A look at the footage in retrospect reveals a primitive presentation in one single pan shot showing onlookers milling about on the grounds before the roaring plane suddenly appears from the right and zooms across the screen to loud cheers and blaring horns of unseen automobiles." The plane is only briefly visible on the horizon as it flies back into frame. Bradley also notes that Coolidge's address was filmed with a single head-on camera, but that the public would've been thrilled at the time merely to see and hear the president talk. Not that it apparently prevented the filmmakers from inserting a jump cut as if providing an ellipsis between Silent Cal's bloviating. Nowadays, it may be more of a slightly boring historical curiosity to listen to the president. The view of some old-fashioned cameras also filming and photographing the happenings are of interest. The camera catching images of a bit of pageantry as birds are released as Lindbergh steps up to the microphone is a neat effect, as well.

Lindbergh's remarks appear awkwardly unrehearsed and are said to have led him to shy away from the movie microphone, if not the radio one, as evidenced by his later anti-interventionist "America First" campaigning during pre-Pearl Harbor WWII. Yet, here, as Donald Crafton remarks, "Awe of technology, hero worship, patriotism, and Lindbergh's charismatic American rugged individualism came together in a formative moment for the newsreel." He'd likewise impacted animation at a pivotal point, as reflected in Mickey Mouse taking to the skies in "Plane Crazy" (1928), a cartoon by Disney, which now owns what used to be the movie productions of Fox and as now split from the separate entity of Fox News. Appropriately enough, as Crafton has reported, the popularity and immediacy of Movietone newsreels would necessitate the use of aircraft to deliver the film reels to various venues. It wouldn't be long, either, before the greater dangers of the gabby gelatin announced itself when Movietone footage of Benito Mussolini was paired with screenings of "Sunrise" (1927) and its Movietone score and sound effects. As the fascist Italian dictator quipped (again, according to Crafton), "Let me speak through [the newsreel] in twenty cities in Italy once a week and I need no other power."

Works Cited
Bradley, Edwin M. The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, 1926-1931. McFarland, 2005.

Crafton, Donald. The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. Scribner, 1997.

Eyman, Scott. The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

www.foxmovietonenews.com/