In 1929, when the talkies flooded the world, all the musicals produced had to be filled with songs. Naturally all these musicals became a fantastic opportunity for aspiring songwriters to get recognition. Sometimes the songs were brilliant, sometimes not. The music publishers quickly hired songwriters who wrote songs more or less off the cuff. The need for songs seemed never ending. Inspiration wasn't always at hand, so some of the songwriters recycled chord progressions and even parts of melody that had worked before, if only to get a song placed. The songs at this time had to fit the three minute limitation of a record, the radio and now the talkies. Basically, a quite strict template for hit songs was created. This template would be used more or less untouched until the advent of Television and Rock'n'Roll.
Many of the late silents and early talkies indeed included some brilliant songwriting. Many of the songs became evergreens even if the film it was performed in quickly fell into oblivion. One of the most popular types of theme songs in the late 20's was the romantic waltz. Ramona, Diane, Charmaine, Coquette to name a few, almost every film had one. The theme song was often performed throughout the picture in many different versions and styles just to show off how versatile it was. Very often it was even turned into a snappy fox-trot. The goal was of course to induce it as much as possible to get it to stick properly with the audience. It was important to get a hit song. With the increasing output it became more and more difficult to tell which songs would work the best. Sometimes publishers were even lurking outside the theatres just to pick up which songs people were humming when leaving.
The theme song in Our Dancing Daughters in 1928 was no exception to the rule. I Loved You Then As I Love You Now, written by the team Axt-Mendoza-MacDonald is perhaps not well remembered today but it’s still a very efficient song that is very characteristic. There are several 1928 recordings of it so it was definitely a hit back then. Here is the fox-trot rendition of it from the party scene in the movie:
The chorus works rather well as a fox-trot even if it was conceived as a waltz. If we slow down the tempo a bit, change the meter to ¾ and attach the verse, in its original form it sounds like this, performed by Louis Wick: Our Dancing Daughters was released early September 1928 in the US. It was a silent movie but it had a rather elaborate soundtrack, still not synchronized but it included some off camera dialog.
Now we fast forward about six months. The young Swedish songwriter Jules Sylvain was hired to write some songs for the first Swedish talkie Säg Det I Toner (Say It With Songs) in the summer of 1929. Sylvain had seen The Singing Fool in Berlin late 1928 and immediately understood where it all was heading. According to Sylvain's memoirs the occasion was not only the first time he saw a talkie but also the premiere of talkies in Europe all together. On his return to Stockholm he immediately started lobbying for Swedish talkies. Naturally he saw the opportunity to promote his own songwriting. So when SF, the leading studio finally decided to make a talkie it was quite obvious which composer to hire for the project.
However, Sylvain apparently had trouble finding appropriate songs for the picture. He even admits it in his memoirs. After all he had no experience writing for movies. To get the hang of it he saw as many talkies he possibly could. When shooting was to begin he was over in London where it was much easier to catch a talkie than I Stockholm where only one cinema had installed a Vitaphone system.
This might sound controversial but I think he must have seen Our Dancing Daughters sometime during the summer of 1929 and contrary to the official story he more or less nicked the theme song from it to use in “his” film. Judge for yourself but I think the similarities are apparent.
Sylvain’s theme song to Säg Det I Toner is in the same key, the verse has basically the same melody and the general feel of the songs are very much alike even if the chorus is different in the Swedish song. I'm sure he thought the original was a great waltz and believed he would get a away with murder borrowing parts of it. Actually, I think he did!
Sylvain wasn't the only one who borrowed stuff from fellow composers. Here's another example, not as evident but every time I hear one of these songs I always sing the melody to the other one on top just because it can be done, well almost.
Tip-Toe Through The Tulips With Me (Burke-Dubin) From Gold Diggers Of Broadway (1929)
Performed by Nick Lucas and chorus.
Everyone Says I Love You (Kalmar-Ruby) from Horse Feathers (1932)
Performed by The Marx Bros.
Much have been written about and attributed to this 1928-29 mammoth production, definitely one of the greatest productions Hollywood had seen at the time. However, it's mostly remembered for being unfinished and that it crushed at least two brilliant careers. I guess we have all heard at least one story about why it went down like the Titanic. One thing is certain, what was planned to be a fantastic queen dressed in full gala turned out a dismembered peasant in the end. I will try to give some background to this giant project and give a possible reason why it was unfinished and ended up in the darkest corner in the back yard of movie history.
Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron as Kelly and Prince Wolfram
Let's go back and have a look. What we have is this: Joseph Kennedy (JFK's dad) was to finance a big film through Gloria Productions, a company he set up for Swanson on the FBO (Film Bookers Office) lot. Yes, Kennedy and Swanson were having an affair at the time. Both Kennedy and Swanson wanted a special project for their first collaboration together and they were both impressed by Erich von Stroheim, the brilliant Vienesse director who had made masterpieces like Greed (1924) and The Wedding March (1928). A preliminary meeting was held and at this meeting von Stroheim, who was out of work at the time told Swanson and Kennedy about an original story that had had written called The Swamp.
Gloria Swanson and Joseph Kennedy
Set in Kronberg, a fictitious 'Middle European' kingdom, the first portion of von Stroheim's screenplay tells a fairy tale-like story of an innocent convent girl, Patricia Kelly, who becomes involved with Prince Wolfram, a playboy who unbeknownst to her, is already betrothed to the reigning Queen. At first the Prince wants only to toy with Kelly, but in the course of their one evening together he sincerely falls in love with her. Unfortunately, the mad Queen Regina learns of the affair and literally flogs Kelly out of the palace. Kelly attempts suicide, but is rescued and abruptly sent to German East Africa, where her dying aunt runs a brothel. She is forced to marry a syphilitic plantation owner and eventually winds up successfully running the brothel herself, under the ironic moniker Queen Kelly.
Both Kennedy and Swanson were impressed and agreed to take on the project even though both were aware of von Stroheim's excessive and painstaking habits while filming. The Swamp was announced in July 1928.
The press releases published in the summer of 1928 show that Swanson was specifically recruited by FBO to make a sound film, and that The Swamp was envisioned from the start as at least part-talking: "Gloria Swanson's next for United Artists will have talking sequences. Voice tests are now being made and the leading man will be chosen with suitable attention to his vocal ability." This was a little tricky since United Artists who Gloria Swanson had an exclusive distributing deal with wasn't permitted to use the sound system that was going to be used by FBO-Gloria Productions.
Erich von Stroheim - Director
With a budget of $800,000, production started November 1, 1928, as a silent movie. At this stage the title was changed to Queen Kelly because everyone involved (except von Stroheim) felt that The Swamp was a bad title. Von Stroheim was a meticulous director and he would shoot thousands of feet of film and redo scenes over and over again until he felt that they were perfect. Queen Kelly was also shot in sequence, which means it was shot from start to finish, the scenes in right order. This is a very cumbersome and expensive way to make a movie and thus very rarely used.
Swanson was worried about Stroheims methods from the very beginning but since Kennedy was not concerned, she let it slide. At one point she even told her assistant that she saw this film as a child that didn't want to be born. Both von Stroheim and Swanson despised the new talking pictures but Kennedy was getting cold feet. Was it even going to be possible to release a silent film of this caliber in 1929? Kennedy imagined Queen Kelly as at least 40% talking. The director and co-producer-star were making a very long and expensive silent film while the main investor saw a talkie. There was definitely a problem here. Another problem was von Stroheim's habit of constantly changing the script, usually made to inject more explicit scenes to the picture.
Take a look at this dramatic scene where the Mad Queen Regina (Seena Owen) discovers her beloved Prince Wolfram (Walter Byron) in bed with Kelly (Gloria Swanson). This is pure Stroheim at the height of his powers and also one of the best scenes in the movie.
Filming progressed through December '28 and mid January '29 until it came time for the African sequences. It was already clear that the project would not be completed for several months because the production was going at a snails pace. It was now January 17, 1929 at a cost of $400,000. More than 200,000 feet of footage directed by von Stroheim, with little more than one-third of the scenario shot. Kennedy called for a meeting telling Swanson that they now had to convert Queen Kelly into a talking picture. Kennedy insisted on incorporating dialogue. Kennedy's views were presented by E. B. Derr, his chief of staff. Also present was Edmund Goulding, who had just written The Broadway Melody. The changes made in the script included adding scenes with "synthetic sound," that is, post-synchronized effects and vocal dubbing. Apparently von Stroheim wasn't present at this meeting.
The mad Queen flogging poor Kelly out of her palace
Some days passed. January 21, 1929. The marriage scene in the African brothel, when von Stroheim was instructing actor Tully Marshall how to dribble tobacco juice on Swanson's hand while he was kissing it, she stormed off the set, called Kennedy and demanded that the project be stopped. Kennedy arrived in Los Angeles to confer with Swanson during February 1929. They decided to shelve the project for the time being and write off the $750,000 that Kennedy had invested. An advertisement in Film Daily on 28 February stated: "Gloria Swanson, talking and singing in Queen Kelly, vitalizes the drama." There were definitely plans of making Queen Kelly a talkie, but how?
There are different views on what caused Gloria Swanson to stop the production that January day in 1929. Gloria Swanson always stuck to her version. She gives her explanation in an intervew with Dick Cavett in his TV-show aired august 3, 1970. Jump to 1:45, that's where it's getting really interesting.
While Queen Kelly was still visible on the shelf Swanson and hired sound specialist Edmund Goulding and convinced Kennedy to finance a new all-talkie to be called The Love Years, if only to give Gloria's fans something before the eventual completion of Queen Kelly that now definitely had to be turned into a talkie. This filler was written and directed quickly by Goulding and released as The Trespasser in October 1929. It became one of Swanson's biggest hits.
The Queen Kelly cast reassembled in December 1929 (without Stroheim of course) to make some singing inserts in an effort to salvage the movie by reincarnating it as a musical (I suspect it was too late even for that by this time). The musical numbers was directed by Richard Boleslawski. Film Daily now reported that "Queen Kelly, the Gloria Swanson picture shelved some time ago and lately revived for production by Pathé as an operetta, will be released through United Artists. The picture will have color treatment by Pathe multicolor method."
Kennedy thought he had commissioned Franz Lehar, the Austrian composer of The Merry Widow, to devise the music. But Lehar wrote only one song. Goulding, meanwhile, now called it quits and wanted nothing further to do with this fiasco. Then Kennedy finally walked away from what was now an $800,000 debacle. The musical version of Queen Kelly would probably have been as odd as turning Bergman's The Seventh Seal into an operetta. it simply couldn't be done. The song and musical scenes were naturally never completed or used.
Swanson continued hiring writers, technicians, and consultants to save the film. On November 24, 1931, a rewritten ending in which the Prince discovers that Kelly has successfully committed suicide by drowning was shot by cinematographer Gregg Toland and directed by no other than Irving Thalberg (whom von Stroheim had had so much trouble with before). This version was released in 1932 but only in Europe and South America due to a clause in Stroheim’s contract. The "Swanson version" had a score but no dialogue, "synthetic" or otherwise.
A scene from Queen Kelly shown in Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Queen Kelly remained unseen in the USA until a TV screening of the Swanson version in 1966, almost ten years after von Stroheim's death. Some of the silent footage had found its way into Sunset Blvd. in 1950, where it represents the glorious stardom of Swanson's Norma Desmond, watched by her icy butler played by von Stroheim. When the fictional silent star Desmond visits the Paramount studio, she symbolically pushes an annoying mike on a boom away from her face, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" She conveniently ignores the fact that Queen Kelly was, from the start, probably supposed to be a talkie.
I'm quite convinced that the reason Queen Kelly didn't happen was a combination of all these things. von Stroheim had no experience in making talkies and was certainly not willing to learn. He had no intention letting talk besmirch his art and just kept on going, despite the orders from above. Swanson was certainly concerend about how much of the picture would end up on the cutting room floor but most of all I think both Swanson and Kennedy feared that Queen Kelly would become far too expensive. With the advent of sound big silent pictures was no longer making money.
The part-talkies were a quite exclusive bunch of movies that came out just when the transision from silent to talking pictures was taking place. We all know that the talkie craze started in october 1927 with the Jazz Singer which in fact was the mother of all part-talkies and thus the first film in this very exclusive club of films. The Jazz Singer was a part-talkie as only the songs in it had synchronized sound.
Soon every studio wanted to explore the new technique and of course also make a profit on the talkie fad. However, technical limitations prevented most studios from making all talking pictures at once. There was almost no sound stages built yet because most studios still didn't take sound in motion pictures very seriously so the shortage of equipment was very comon as well. The major studios thought that including talking sequences in their movies would do fine for the time being. Sound was clearly a fad after all and would soon fade away, or so they hoped.
At this point, early in 1928 no one knew that talking pictures were here to stay. During a very brief period of about 18 months from mid 1928 to the end of 1929 quite a few part-taklies saw the flickering light of the projector. Most of them are forgotten or incomplete today.
Let's have a look at the part-talkie as a genre. As such it can be divided in three distinct types. The first type is a film that was meant to be a part-talkie from the start. Essentially it's a silent picture which has been graced with certain scenes with synchronized sound, often songs. I don't count the silent movies with a recorded score as part-talkies as there are no talking in those. Sometimes, as in the case of The Jazz Singer, they actually contain very little sound. The Jazz Singer only have about 15% of its running time in synchronized sound. With The Singing Fool it's the inverse as it contains very few silent scenes, about 70% are sound scenes. They are still both good examples of this first type.
Warner's head sound engineer George Groves recording
Fanny Brice in the part-talkie musical 'My Man' (1928)
The second type is a silent film with an added, often lengthy talking prologue where the actors present the movie or as in the case of the British film Piccadilly in 1929, one of the key players recollects the story and what the audience is about to see. The film itself becomes a giant flashback. The talking introduction served as a nice addition to the plot and it worked rather well. It could also be omitted quite easily without affecting the movie. Douglas Fairbanks made a talking prologue for The Iron Mask, which also included a prologue to the second act of the film.
The third type is a silent movie where talking sequences have been spliced in here and there, seemingly out of context because the picture itself were shot as 100% silent. Sometimes the talking sequences were added months after the completion of the silent picture. I think this hybrid usually stands as the example for how bad these films could turn out. They are often labeled as "grotesque curios" and mostly very rightly so. This kind of movie was never meant to be talking in the first place but it was made talking because of the ongoing talkie craze. Usually the talking sequences doesn't move the plot forward at all but halts the flow of the picture almost completely. In many cases the talking sequences were shot without the lead players and contained very banale dialogue, or simply a song with no connection to the movie what so ever.
Noah's Ark, one of Warner's bigger productions towards the end of 1928 was turned into a part talkie well after its initial premiere. For it's rerelease in the 1950's the talking sequences were considered so odd that they were cut from the film. In the recent print that airs on TCM from time to time most of the talking sequences has been restored. The brilliant MGM comedy A Lady Of Chance starring Norma Shearer had talking sequences added but according to my information Norma didn't get to talk. A Lady Of Chance only exists as silent today.
Another quite bizarre movie that was in production for so long it had to be made in to at least a part-talkie was The Mysterious Island (1929). Production started in 1926 and it was intended to be MGM’s high-budget answer to First National’s hit The Lost World (1925) and UFA’s Metropolis (1927). It was originally budgeted at a million dollars, shot in two-strip Technicolor and was to feature extended sequences of cutting-edge undersea cinematography. But the production was seemingly cursed — churning through countless rewrites that led it ever further from its source material, originally Jules Vernes books. It came to have three very different directors, one of then the Danish rather excentric Benjamin Christensen. The production suffered from very difficult weather conditions that thoroughly destroyed the expensive underwater sets on location in the Bahamas. As it limped to completion, the advent of sound changed everything and necessitated a cast change and still more rewrites and reshooting. Talking scenes were added, other scenes lifted. It was a complete mess.
When it finally premiered as a part-talkie in October 1929 it was way behind its time technically, a reported $3 million over budget, just a few weeks before the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression. The worst timing possible. Despite positive reviews in the popular and industry press, The Mysterious Island bombed at the box office and earned back only a tiny fraction of its production costs. Believe it or not, it didn't turn out a total failure artistically. In many ways it's a fascinating film. Too bad no color prints survive.
Jane Daly is getting some help putting on her swimming suit
when filming The Mysterious Island sometimes 1928.
The part-talkie was an overgoing fad that soon was replaced by all talking pictures. There is however an example of a silent picture that was turned into a full talkie, The Canary Murder Case from 1929 starring Wiliam Powell and Louise Brooks. Most of the film was re-shot for sound but Louise Brooks was filming Pandora's Box in Germany when reshooting took place. She refused to return to Hollywood for re-takes and dubbing. She couldn't be replaced so the people at Paramount had to be very creative when they had Brooks silent scenes dubbed by Margaret Livingston. The editing is not the best but it works. Paramount spread the rumor that Louise Brooks didn't have a voice and with that her career in pictures was over.
The last movie that can be considered a part talkie was Chaplin's Modern Times from 1936. It contains some talking scenes, none by Chaplin but he get to sing his famous gibberish song "Je Cherche après Tétine" in synchronized sound.
“No man knew what she really was. And no man could resist her exotic beauty. A famous Russian spy, moving through the lives of men, in a maze of intrigue, passion and love. “
I just saw The Mysterious Lady starring Greta Garbo and Conrad Nagel, a splendid MGM production that originally opened in august of 1928. Here in Stockholm, Garbo’s hometown, it was released January 31st 1929. In my opinion it’s one of director Fred Niblo’s best works. Niblo is mostly known for his other Garbo movie - The Temptress, and even more so for Ben Hur with Ramon Novarro. The Mysterious Lady is beautifully photographed by William Daniels who did so many of the really stylish MGM productions during the late 20’s and early 30’s, The Kiss and Their Own Desire to name a few. The sets are naturally signed by MGM’s house designer, the magnificent Cedric Gibbons. The Mysterios Lady is more or less a run of the mill MGM production of 1928 with the exception that it was MGM’s first movie to be released with a synchronized score. MGM was the last of the big studios to be wired for sound. Some say The Mysterious Lady served as a blueprint for Mata Hari which is basically the same story.
The movie is set in pre-First World War Vienna. An Austrian Captain, Karl von Raden (Conrad Nagel) attends the opera one evening and finds himself being seated next to a woman, Tania Fedorovna (Garbo) expecting the arrival of her cousin who never comes. After the opera, Karl notices the attractive woman he sat next to now standing in the rain. She informs him that she has no money for taxi fair, so he agrees to escort her home himself. While at her apartment, they immediately embrace and have a romantic affair. They even spend the next day on a romantic outing. That evening, Karl must deliver some important plans to Berlin. Just before boarding his train, he learns that Tania is really a Russian spy. She comes to see him aboard the train, and admits that she set things up on purpose so as to meet him, but she also insists that she truly has fallen in love with him. When Karl rebuffs her coldly, she steals the plans, which leads to him being court-martialed and imprisoned. Karl's influential uncle is able to provide him with one last chance to clear his name…
I was really surprised Conrad Nagel was such a good silent actor. I haven’t seen much of his early work. He has a minimalist style I really like and one can read his small expressions like a book. I always find Garbo a bit overly theatrical with a lot of "patent expressions" and sometimes she poses more than she acts. But here she's great, and really beautiful to. Her late silents are fantastic, she never was better than in those. A funny thing struck me, when making period pictures it's always important to get costumes and hairstyles right for the period. But usually the times when the film was made always shines through in some way, don't they? In this film however, they didn’t seem to have bothered with that at all. It's set just before the First World War which sets it no later than summer 1914. But Gilbert Clark’s magnificent gowns have 1928 written all over them! Brilliant!
I just love the silent movies use of historical and litterary references sneaked in here and there to emphasize the story. This picture of Tania betraying her emperor the tzar, just like Brute betryed Ceasar.
As a whole, The Mysterious Lady is a treat indeed, very nice camera work and an all over lush feeling about it. The print I have access to is frightfully scratchy at times. I guess this is the Turner “restored” version. Well, they certainly didn’t overdo it this time. To be honest, I find it hard to spot any signs of restoration at all apart from the music. The new soundtrack by Vivek Maddala is quite pleasing, but I must make one remark. When Conrad and Greta meet at the opera, the performance they attend seems to be Puccini's Tosca. Good choice, it makes sense to the plot. I think adding some Puccini music would have been appropriate. It could have added further to the story. Conrad is repeatedly playing tunes from the Opera throughout the movie, first at Garbo's home and later at the reception when he's an undercover musician. We even get to see a glimpse of sheet music from the opera in those scenes. The theme is love and betrayal, in the Opera as well as in the movie. Furthermore, the Puccini music lies in the public domain and could be used without restrictions. I don’t know whether the original score included any Puccini music. It would have been great to have the original score as an option but maybe it didn’t survive to our times. Luckily the movie did.
Let's try a few scenes with some music from the second act of Puccini's Tosca. I think it works really well.
A movie blog celebrating the late silent movies and early talkies. My goal is to educate, entertain and spread some light on a sadly forgotten era of entertainment. It's so sad so few of these movies are preserved for us to enjoy. About 75% of all the movies from the years 1925-35 are lost forever. The early musicals made in color before 1934 have an even greater loss-percentage. Some actors and actresses work has almost been totally erased due to this.
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