Scott Eyman,
The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
ISBN 0801861926 (pb)
432pp
US$18.06
(Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press)
Uploaded 30 June 2000

Scott Eyman’s latest book revisits the tumultuous period of the late 1920s in order to dispel the myths surrounding the coming of sound to the American cinema. He demonstrates that the transition to permanent commercial sound took much longer than previously believed, focussing on the resulting production challenges, disasters, and success stories the American industry faced between 1926 and 1930. Rather than using an economic or a technological approach, Eyman undertakes an industrial history. He assembles an impressive collection of primary and secondary sources: oral interviews, first hand accounts, screenings of rare early sound films, unpublished memoirs, corporate archives, other historians’ files, production histories, and archives at UCLA, USC, BYU, and MOMA. The book’s eclectic amalgamation of anecdotes is wrapped around production histories and technical descriptions which reveal the thoughts, attitudes, and business decisions of the mythical figures (both within and outside Hollywood) who were driving the innovation, adoption, and diffusion of sound technology. Eyman’s story reveals how the American motion picture industry adjusted to and facilitated the change to the production and distribution of permanent sound films. While this is not an entirely new subject, it is one that warrants considerable attention; Eyman’s book is engrossing, insightful, and enjoyable to read for both the lay and the academic reader.

Eyman aims to revisit the chronological events involving the coming of sound in order to illustrate how much more complicated the change was compared either to the cliches re-enacted in MGM’s 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain, or the accounts of the The Jazz Singer (Warner Brothers, 1927) – the feature film usually cited as inaugurating the conversion to permanent commercial sound. Eyman claims that a more significant moment was the success of Warner Brothers’ partially synchronised sound film Don Juan (1926), which had a musical score. (Interestingly, this is a point that Jonathan Tankel made in his 1976 University of North Carolina Masters thesis titled: “The Jazz Singer and the Conversion to Sound: A Revisionist View.”) Eyman reveals the intimate details of how the use of commercial sound-on-disc technology helped the Warner Brothers achieve a 4,600% increase in growth between 1925 and 1930 from what began as a small chain of Nickelodeons in 1903.(360) The book’s chapters and sections dealing with William Fox’s relentless pursuit of a monopoly over sound patents are equally compelling. Fox believed that he had exclusive rights over all sound-on-film systems after his American patent rights for the German Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system were recognised by US courts in December 1931.(354) Eyman also illustrates the ways in which other studios such as Columbia, United Artists, MGM, and Paramount, as well as key directors (King Vidor and F.W. Murnau) engaged with the conversion to sound.

While Eyman clearly demonstrates that the technological innovation of motion picture sound did not emerge overnight, he still seems to underestimate the true duration of the sound revolution. This is perhaps the primary conundrum researchers and historians face when discussing the coming of sound. Where should we begin to conceptualise beginnings of sound? It may be that the coming of commercial motion picture sound to the cinema industry in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere had everything but speed; sound had coexisted alongside of film since film’s conventional beginnings. In fact, the entire Film History Special Domitor Issue: Global Experiments in Early Synchronous Sound (vol. 11, no. 4, 1999) was recently devoted to this very topic. As early as April 1894, individuals in New York could view Edison Kinetoscope and Kinetophone peep-show films while listening to accompanying unsynchronised music. Four years later in 1898, according to 80 years of Australian Cinema (11), Australian audiences in Melbourne watched the Salvation Army’s early multimedia film, sound, and slide programs. Yet, for the last sixty-one years, historians have often suggested that in 1929, the motion picture industry adopted sound with a fury overnight. (Eyman seems to get caught up in the confusion and the oversimplification of the speed of sound when he refers to the five sections of his book, each spanning a year of change, as “four short years.” [Eyman 21])

Furthermore, in which direction does sound travel? Can we be sure that this history is linear? For the film historian, Eyman’s book largely revisits the triumph of the Warner Bros. and Fox crusade toward fully integrated studios with sound recording and sound projection technology. As so many preceding historical accounts have represented, Eyman’s version of the expansion of the coming of sound and the anecdotes surrounding its significant impact are explicitly bound within the confines of the Hollywood studio system. It may seem to the intelligent reader that Warner Bros. and Fox were mere pawns for the large American electrical giants Western Electric-AT&T Bell Labs and RCA-General Electric/Westinghouse, which were the corporations that dedicated huge research and development budgets to perfect sound technology and amplification quality. The Hollywood studios eventually embraced the conversion by recording with and installing Western Electric and RCA’s sound-on-disc and sound-on-film technology (and Pacent equipment to a lesser degree).

The book also seems to marginalise the extensive experiments, inventions, and innovations that came from outside of the Hollywood studio system even before Eyman’s starting point. For Eyman, precursors to the transition, or the “deluge”, came in 1926; a date later than Lee De Forest’s 1923 American and 1925 Australian Phonofilm exhibitions of synchronised sound films, as well as other lesser known experimental sound projection systems. Although Eyman briefly recognises these early attempts with sound, De Forest’s experimentation, promotion, and diffusion of sound technology and amplification capabilities were perhaps more than a minnow before the Hollywood whales.

Furthermore, what about the smaller suburban and country exhibitors? Other research suggests that geographical considerations need to be taken into account as well. Smaller and independent exhibitors adopted sound much later than the larger independent and studio-owned chains. In Australia, for example, one could argue that the coming of sound to the Australian cinema took nearly ten years to become fully integrated across the industry. According to a 10 December 1930 article in Everyones, 641 theatres in Australia were equipped with sound gear. However, it was not until 16 June 1937 that Everyones reported all 1,420 Australian theatres were wired for sound. Here, Australian sound companies created a market niche for themselves by wiring these marginalised cinemas with their alternative local, regional, and national sound systems. Australian inventors and engineers either promoted their “home-made” equipment on an individual basis, or were fortunate enough to be represented or bought out by an established electrical or wireless supply company or a newly formed corporation. The Australian MPPA and MPDA (under heavy influence from Hollywood studios) reacted to the introduction of other sound systems by attempting to inhibit Australian-made systems from being bought, sold or installed. Hence, the transition to sound in the Australian industry and the battle between American and Australian sound systems was labelled by the Film Weekly and Everyones trade magazines as a “Talkie war,” something that Eyman’s book doesn’t quite grasp. Local intervention in support of American and Austrtalian technology was limited, but steady over a decade. According to the 1930 Film Daily Year Book (12th edition, p.873), at the end of 1929 there were at least 94 alternative sound-on-disc and sound-on-film devices vying for installation contracts in the US. This is but one case of Hollywood’s international campaign to dominate the deployment of sound technology in foreign markets.

The Speed of Sound is a noteworthy contribution to film history. Although Eyman’s chapters jump haphazardly from topic to topic at times, the numerous stories and first hand accounts of the transition are engrossing. However, the book’s lack of footnoting may annoy the academic film historian. The absence of a substantial discussion of early short sound films also highlights the need for further study and research into how these short sound films were used to perfect the technology. The innovation, adoption, and diffusion of sound was a significant turning point in motion picture history that took at least a decade to fully mature and settle in terms of U.S., Australian, and world standards and an acceptable level of synchronisation and amplification quality. As Eyman claims: “Sound changed everything. It changed how movies were made, of course, but more importantly, it changed what movies were.” (20)

Brian Yecies