The End of an Era

It wasn’t the first “talkie” film, but 1927’s The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson was the first commercially successful movie that showcased spoken dialogue. Made with the new Vitaphone technology that featured sound-on-disc system, it paved the way for other full-length sound films and led to the demise of the silent film within the next three years.

The reasons for the success of The Jazz Singer were not simply due to the novelty of sound-and-picture cinema, but also due to the savvy marketing on the part of Warner Brothers. Their contract with theaters to guaranteed long runs, instead of  splitting films into partial week segments, as was the custom. Also, Warner Brothers received a percentage of the ticket sales, as opposed to a traditional flat rental fee. This inflated the profit margin when compared to other productions company’s films.

And while, in historian Richard Koszarski's words, "Silent films did not disappear overnight, nor did talking films immediately flood the theaters”, but by mid-1929, Hollywood was focused on producing all-talking or musical pictures. It took almost five years from the premiere of The Jazz Singer for theaters to convert to sound, so many of the original audience who attended initial showings of the film had to “view” it silently due to a lack of equipment.

The focus on “talkies” also led to the demise of the careers of most silent-era stars. While 1952’s Singing In the Rain spoofed the grating voice and lack of diction of one such silent star, other factors to be considered in hiring actors included general vocal quality, depth of timbre and heavy accents. The studios unceremoniously dropped contracts and cut salaries of former stars and chose to begin anew with performers who had vaudeville and theater experience. One of the prerequisites for new talent was “the voice.”

The primitive quality of early audio technology required easily recognizable, distinctive voices. Good examples of these are: Groucho Marx, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Mae West, W.C. Fields and even little Shirley Temple, had an exceptionally individual intonation. Even the singers were inimitable: Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, Ella Fitzgerald, Kate Smith, and Billie Holiday.

One of the few surviving films of Alice Calhoun was an early talkie called Now I’ll Tell. The stars of the movie were Spencer Tracy, Shirley Temple, and Alice Faye. The part played by Alice Calhoun was very small, and the 60 seconds she is on the screen make it obvious why she did not receive a featured role. Her voice is soft and gentle, and nowhere near the unique distinctiveness of the afore-mentioned starring players.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Alice Calhoun possessed a neutral, mid-western tone, which is often referred to as a “General American Accent” and is the standard for modern newscasters. But in the early 1930’s, this was not the character accent desired by the “new” Hollywood. Thus, the oft-repeated statement that “her voice did not lend itself well to early Hollywood talkies” in many of the biographical chronicles of Alice Calhoun is better explained.