The year 1926 marked the advent, in The Torrent, of the Swed ish actress, Greta Garbo, who has remained the pre-eminent Holly wood star from the foreign field.
Chaplin's The Gold Rush; the silent version of The Merry Widow, with Mae Murray and John Gilbert; the spectacular Ben Hur, with Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman ; the silent version of Beau Geste, with Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, Ralph Forbes, Alice Joyce, Mary Brian, Noah Beery, William Powell, and Victor McLaglen, a veritable all-star cast ; UFA's Metropolis; the wistful Seventh Heaven, with Janet Gaynor and Charles Far rell, and the lusty What Price Glory, with Victor McLaglen, Ed mund Lowe, and Dolores Del Rio, must all be listed for merit, due to their popular reception.
At the close of the 1927-28 season, the Academy of Motion Pic ture Arts and Sciences inaugurated its system of annual awards, representing the industry's vote upon the year's most meritorious work in acting and the technical fields. First to receive the sym bolical statuettes were Janet Gaynor and Emil Jannings. In 1928 29, the winsome radiance of Mary Pickford in Coquette, the cavalier bravado of Warner Baxter in In Old Arizona made them the recipients. But more epochal was the release of Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, the first film with sound. Sound caused the greatest revolution which the screen had yet known.
Temporary chaos reigned. Careers tottered. Some silent stars dropped almost immediately to oblivion. Fear of the microphone or inability to master its technique had crushed them. Again, those who could adapt themselves to the mechanics of the new medium survived and prospered. An invasion of stage stars and directors was the immediate result of the new medium. The screen, however, rapidly reorganized itself. Within a year, more progress was made, technically and artistically, than had been accomplished in the twenty years preceding.
The new recruits from the stage found a strange environment in talking pictures. Instead of playing to the figurative tenth row, as they had been wont to do behind the footlights, and keying their voices and gestures to that distance, they were now playing to a camera and microphone which had the effect of placing them un der two enormous microscopes. Their first care had to be to
avoid overemphasis. On the sound stage, moreover, was no audi ence to applaud and inspire their performance, no sympathetic response to indicate the success of the characterization. They were forced to conjure up a complete picture of the role despite the distractions of the work of the crew, the limitations of camera range, the breaking up of the drama into tiny episodes not filmed chronologically, the frequent discomforts of working in natural settings, and the crowning difficulty of giving a smooth and sus tained performance when the film might require a month or more to complete, as contrasted to the stage play's two or three hours. The effectiveness of the portrayal might be governed by the ability of the director to maintain a flowing continuity, by the genius of the camera-man in lighting the scene most effectively, or by the exigencies of footage, determined in the cutting room. Oppor tunities for extensive rehearsal were not available, but on the other hand there was the advantage of repeated "takes" to im prove quality of the work, and retakes where scenes proved un satisfactory when seen in the daily "rushes." Before the flexibility of the microphone was discovered—the fact that it could be moved around to follow the players—there was always a restriction of the actor's movements lest he walk out of sound range. But when the terrifying "mike" was found to he just a "tin ear" which could listen in at any spot, the actor was free to forget sound mechanics and concentrate on the develop ment of his portrayal to the nearest possible approximation of the natural characteristics of such a personality. The directional microphone, which can pick up the sounds in its immediate range and shut out extraneous noises, further aided in this development by permitting even whispers to be recorded.