12/10/2023 0 Comments Funny voiceGarbo was already considered foreign and so her accent was accepted.Īuthor Scott Eyman does a wonderful job of explaining the Garbo/Banky conundrum in The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. American audiences wanted their sweet heroine to sound like she was from Massachusetts, not Budapest. She made exotic romances ( Son of the Sheik, Night of Love) but she was not the exotic one. Banky swung between princesses, wholesome sweethearts and all-American girls. Banky’s accent was no thicker than Garbo’s but Garbo was cast as exotic temptresses and tragic literary characters. Vilma Banky’s Hungarian accent is blamed for her demise but the real problem was the American perception of foreign stars and the roles in which she was cast. Note that his career was not really damaged, he simply had to switch gears. A Denny hero was urban or suburban.) After the talkies, with his English accent on display, those parts were no longer part of his main repertoire. (One article described Denny’s parts as “corn-fed American boys” which is wrong on so many levels. Denny played very American roles: suburbanites, wage slaves, general middle class everymen and the occasional spunky rich eccentric. Initially known for boxing pictures, he later discovered a gift for subtle, everyday comedy. Reginald Denny took a while finding his niche. They had been acting for 20+ years and were entering the third decade of their careers And, of course, going back to Russia was simply not an option for many. Sound severely limited the parts these talented performers could play as they either did not speak French or did so with a Russian accent. For example, France had a large community of Russian performers who had fled the revolution in their home country. This problem was not exclusive to Hollywood either. Please note that these actors did not fail in the talkies, they simply returned to their home countries. (He hated Nazis and they hated him, which made a change of location imperative in the 1930s.) Veidt later picked up English and made his return to English language cinema. Hanson made The Informer in which he was dubbed but subsequently returned to Sweden. Some stars, such as Conrad Veidt, Emil Jannings and Lars Hanson, had successful careers in Europe and chose to return to their native lands. The silent cinema meant that a Swede could play a Texas cowpoke, a Hungarian could play a California rancher and a Dane could play an American doughboy. Most Hollywood silent film stars fell into one of a dozen categories when talking pictures took over and some fit into more than one category. Why the heck would the star keep quiet about this obvious sabotage?) Thing is, Gilbert hated Mayer and Mayer hated Gilbert. Presumably while stroking a white Persian cat and attempting to kill James Bond. Some enthusiastic writers even suggest that Mayer used his heretofore unknown skills as a sound technician to do the job personally. Mayer arranged to have sound techs fiddle with the knobs and make Gilbert’s voice sound silly. (Oh, and this also kills the equally ridiculous myth that MGM studio head Louis B. A real, live recording of John Gilbert sounding completely normal. The poor man has been the target of more than his share of nastiness and petty rumors. In fact, I have a whole series, After the Silents, dedicated to covering the careers of silent veterans in sound films.īefore we begin with the debunking, let’s lay the whole “John Gilbert had a squeaky voice” thing to rest. On the other hand, if you are motivated by curiosity or you just saw a movie or read an article that tried to tell you silent stars had weird voices, you have come to the right place. This article is not going to give you what you want. What is the point of all this meanness and negativity toward people who have been dead for decades? So, if your purpose in asking this question is to snicker at dead people, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. That being said, I really find it odd that folks fixate on this myth so doggedly. Instead, a whole crop of newly minted stars were in charge. Adding to the myth is the fact that a very large number of silent stars were not visible after the 1930s when, for the most part, talkies were the only kind of movie playing in America.
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