The Authenticity of Song Performance in Early American Sound Cinema.pdf

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“To Sustain Illusion is All

That is Necessary”: The

Authenticity of Song

Performance in Early

American Sound Cinema

Katherine Spring

n the second half of Radio Rhythm , a one-reel film

released by Paramount Pictures on 10 August

1929, popular radio crooner Rudy Vallee and his

band, the Connecticut Yankees, launch into a

performance of the number “You’re Just Another

Memory”. The popular song had been recorded by

Vallee and released on the Victor record label in June

of that year, and, as in that recording, Vallee in Radio

Rhythm takes up a solo on the clarinet. His onscreen

solo performance is rendered through formal strate-

gies typical of musical shorts produced during the

coming of sound: frontal staging, medium-to-long

shot scales, and minimal editing strengthen our un-

derstanding of this passage as an unadulterated

presentation of a musical performance, a direct tran-

scription of a pro-filmic event that transpired and was

recorded on a sound stage with minimal mediation. 1

Yet toward the end of the solo, our impression of an

unmodified performance comes under threat when,

after Vallee removes the instrument from his lips and

places it on the ground beside him, the sounds of the

clarinet continue on the soundtrack for nearly five

seconds.

This brief fissure in the synchronization of im-

age and audio nonetheless eludes the attention of

most audience members and in so doing fulfills the

objectives of what likely is playback, a technique

employed during the transition to sound that entailed

the prerecording of a song to which a performer

lip-synched during shooting. Playback had been

used in the production of cinema’s earliest

(pre–1920) sound films, but its introduction to Holly-

wood studios can be dated to October 1928, when

Douglas Shearer, a sound engineer at MGM, was

given producer Irving Thalberg’s blessing to institute

the practice during production of The Broadway

Melody . 2 Although playback became the conven-

tional method for recording song numbers in musical

films of subsequent decades, it was only one of three

practices of non-synchronous recording that Ameri-

can studios employed during the coming of sound.

The other two were dubbing, in which a voice was

added in post-production to a recorded image, and

voice-doubling, in which an actor lip-synched to a

song sung simultaneously by a vocalist located be-

yond the purview of the camera’s viewfinder but

within earshot of the microphone. Although each of

these three practices entails a different temporal

relationship between the recording of sound and that

of the image, they all produce the same pair of

illusions: embodiment, the illusion that the body seen

onscreen is the source of the voice emanating from

Katherine Spring is an Assistant Professor in the

Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid

Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. Her book,

Saying it with Songs: Popular Music and the Coming

of Sound toHollywood Cinema , is forthcoming through

Oxford University Press.

Correspondence to kspring@wlu.ca

286 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011)

Katherine Spring

the soundtrack, and simultaneity, the illusion that the

filming of the image and the recording of the voice

occurred concomitantly and in the same space. 3 The

combined effect of these illusions is an impression

of a performance’s authenticity; the final film is

deemed to have respected the spatial and temporal

integrity of a preexisting, pro-filmic event. 4

Notwithstanding the importance of the theo-

retical questions generated by practices of non-syn-

chronous recording (exemplified by the writings of

Michel Chion and Mary Ann Doane), the illusion of

authenticity served an important commercial func-

tion during the transition to sound, when the avowed

capacity for sound film to represent a preexisting

event constituted a vital component of marketing the

new medium. 5 Studio publicity and the films them-

selves positioned and promoted the singing star’s

voice as an attraction unto itself, a strategy especially

pronounced in musical shorts, whose commercial

appeal and aesthetic form derived from the onscreen

presentation of songs performed by established vo-

calists and musicians. The allure of what Donald

Crafton has dubbed “virtual Broadway” – the “simu-

lacrum of an in-person appearance” – yielded a set

of formal strategies for the translation of stage per-

formances into onscreen filmic renditions that could

circulate across the country. 6

While others have articulated these strategies

especially as they differ from the feature-length film’s

tendency to “harness” song performances to narra-

tive fiction, I am interested in considering more spe-

cifically how they position the onscreen presentation

of songs as authentic transcriptions of celebrity vo-

calists and musicians, and how the stylistic strate-

gies developed for the short film were modified to suit

the demands of feature-length narrative films that did

not necessarily showcase musical talent. Two ques-

tions guide this study. First, what formal techniques

of the medium were deployed in the service of signi-

fying the authenticity of musical performances? To

answer this question, I have selected for study a

sample of musical shorts produced by Paramount

Pictures between 1929 and 1931, primarily shot at

the company’s studio in Astoria, Queens. The prox-

imity of the studio to Broadway facilitated the casting

of musical personalities in early sound shorts, and

the resulting corpus of films suggests that the formal

devices described by Charles Wolfe in his study of

Vitaphone shorts were characteristic industry-wide

norms. 7 Like the Vitaphone shorts, the Paramount

films were organized around discrete, self-contained

song performances, what I call “star-song attrac-

tions”. This aesthetic, which I have elsewhere argued

profited the film and popular music industries alike,

was imported by feature-length films belonging to

musical and non-musical genres. 8

The translation of the star-song attraction to

non-musical features was not unproblematic, how-

ever, for the dramatic actors who starred in these

films did not perforce possess musical talents. In

order to accommodate the musical shortcomings of

dramatic actors, feature films necessarily violated the

conditions of performative authenticity deemed so

essential to song performances in short subjects.

With this in mind, my second question considers how

audiences responded to violations of authenticity

normally attributed to the star-song attraction. Here

the focus is not the failure of the illusion of simulta-

neity, as is the case in the aforementioned passage

of Radio Rhythm , but rather that of embodiment. If,

as scholars have claimed, the suppression of audi-

ence knowledge of technology is essential to main-

taining the illusions of embodiment and simultaneity,

one would expect a scandal of sorts to emerge

following the revelation of that technology to the

public. 9 Historians who describe the public’s anxiety

over practices of lip-synching and voice-doubling

during the transition to sound often cite a pseudo-ex-

posé titled “The Truth about Voice Doubling”, pub-

lished in the July 1929 issue of Photoplay and

revealing a handful of cases in which doublers were

used on Hollywood sets. 10 However, a case study of

a broader sample of public discourse, represented

by newspaper clippings in the Richard Barthelmess

scrapbook collection at the Margaret Herrick Library

in Los Angeles, illuminates a more heterogeneous

set of responses offered up by reviewers and fans.

Clippings extracted from local and syndicated news-

papers ranging from the Portland Oregonian to North

Carolina’s Greensboro Record demonstrate not only

filmgoers’ acquiescence to the practice of voice-

doubling but also their conviction in the value of

narrative plausibility and coherence over the discrete

star-song attraction, at least where non-musical fea-

ture-length films were concerned. 11

A number in narrative: the star-song

attraction

Following the release of Radio Rhythm , a reviewer for

Variety wondered “why Rudy Vallee dropped [his

trademark] megaphone to sing straight” in the film.

The answer is obvious: the film’s appeal lies in its

“To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary”

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 287

alleged transmission of the star’s image and voice,

the latter seemingly unhampered by visible appara-

tuses such as the megaphone. 12 Heard, ostensibly,

is Vallee’s “true” voice, a cultural ideal that, as Neepa

Majumdar points out, derives from modern concep-

tions of the human voice as the “key to the interiority

or to the ‘true’ self of the speaker”. 13 The transmission

of a celebrity’s authentic voice possessed commer-

cial value as well, demonstrated by the culture of the

star vocalist cultivated by media industries during the

early twentieth century across a variety of platforms,

notably Broadway, vaudeville, phonograph record-

ings, and radio. By the late 1920s, the proven appeal

of the singing star meant that, as Richard Koszarski

notes, celebrity vocalists were “better prospects for

screen stardom” than were other kinds of musicians,

like bandleaders. 14

Paramount’s musical shorts capitalized on the

established appeal of the singing star by utilizing a

range of formal devices to highlight the star-song

attraction, a self-contained unit of performance that

translated into material formats for sale (sheet music

and phonograph records) beyond the movie theater.

The prototypical approach for rendering the star-

song attraction preserved visual and sonic continuity

by way of long takes, medium-long shots, and frontal

staging. 15 A fastidious example is the one-shot film,

Favorite Melodies Featuring Ruth Etting , released 16

March 1929. 16 At the time of its release Etting was

known as the “Sweetheart of Columbia Records”,

having recorded numerous top-selling songs for the

label. Since November 1928 she had been starring

alongside Eddie Cantor in the Broadway hit,

Whoopee! , at the 1800-seat New Amsterdam Thea-

tre, where she introduced the torch song, “Love Me

or Leave Me”. 17 The filmic presentation of Etting’s

vocal performance seems to be the sole purpose of

the six-minute Favorite Melodies , which consists of a

single take that frames the star in a doorway of a

sparsely decorated set. The camera tracks briefly

toward her before settling on a medium-long shot,

where it rests for the short’s remainder. Singing in

direct address to the camera, and with minimal ges-

tures of her hands and arms, Etting performs two

songs: a ballad titled “My Mother’s Eyes” (which

audiences likely recognized as vaudevillian George

Jessel’s theme song) and a peppy dance tune,

“That’s Him Now”. During a brief pause between the

songs, Etting clears her throat, a gesture that draws

attention to the source of the film’s sound at the same

time that, in its capacity as a sonic “blemish” on the

soundtrack, it augments the impression of authentic-

ity inherent to the star-song attraction. While the

visual austerity with which the star-song attraction is

presented in Favorite Melodies might have been

owed in part to the studio’s attempt to prevent Etting

– a musical performer who never promoted herself

as an actress – from dialogue-based acting, it also

demonstrated a tendency to promote popular songs

as self-contained, purchasable commodities, a point

underscored by a reviewer for Film Daily who noted

that Etting “knows how to sell the numbers”. 18

Although the absence of even a token narrative

framework in Favorite Melodies defines the film as a

model star-song attraction, the integration of song

numbers into narrative contexts rarely threatened

their articulation of authenticity. For example, in Ethel

Merman in Her Future (released 6 September 1930),

self-contained song performances are flimsily moti-

vated by a fiction that casts Merman as a nameless

defendant in a courtroom occupied by a prosecutor,

defense attorney, and a judge whose bench towers

impossibly high above Merman’s character. The

courtroom setting gives pretext to the introduction of

two songs. The first is prompted when the defense

attorney requests of the judge, “May I ask [the de-

fendant] to tell the court in her own way just why she

is here?” The judge turns to Merman and states,

“Defendant, proceed”, and Merman launches into

“My Future Just Passed”, the lyrics of which provide

at best a feeble explanation for her ending up in a

courtroom. When she finishes singing, the judge

orders Merman’s release and adds, “Before you go,

I want you to tell me how you intend facing life. What

Fig. 1. The

camera in the

one-shot Favorite

Melodies

Featuring Ruth

Etting

(Paramount,

1929) records

the star from a

single vantage

point.

288 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011)

Katherine Spring

will you do? Where will you go?” Merman answers in

song with the lyrics, “Gonna take a train …” – an

improvised introduction to her performance of “Sing,

You Sinners”. 19 Throughout both song perform-

ances, any semblance of a subjectified narrative

space is attenuated by a static camera set-up that

frames Merman in a medium-long shot and planar

staging. Half of the film’s eight-minute duration is

rendered through this single set-up. During “My Fu-

ture Just Passed”, the film cuts to a slightly longer

shot for twelve seconds before it reverts to the origi-

nal camera position, and no editing is used through-

out the entirety of “Sing, You Sinners”. Notably, the

film also avoids cutting to images of the three char-

acters whom we assume are witnessing Merman’s

performance, resulting in the further weakening of a

narrative space that was tenuous to begin with. Fol-

lowing the performance of “Sing, You Sinners” the

short ends abruptly with a fade to black and the

appearance of the end title card without ever return-

ing to an establishing shot of the courtroom. In these

ways, the form of Ethel Merman in Her Future clearly

demarcates the boundary between the discrete star-

song performance and its narrative container.

In films that attempted to better integrate song

performances within narrative frameworks, the use of

different stylistic strategies contrasted those frame-

works with the star-song attraction as a discrete unit

of performance imbued with authenticity (and laid the

groundwork for the formal distinction between narra-

tive and numbers in musical films of ensuing dec-

ades). An illustrative example is Office Blues

(released 22 November 1930), in which Ginger Ro-

gers, then the nineteen-year-old star of the Broadway

musical comedy Girl Crazy , plays a stenographer

pining for the affections of her boss. The 29-shot film

alternates two stylistic patterns: an edited construc-

tion of narrative space, motivated mostly by the pres-

ence of an office coworker, and static long takes and

planar staging that are reserved for song perform-

ances (even when these performances are seated).

The film’s first minute, wherein Miss Gravis (Rogers)

is accosted by her coworker, Gregory (E.R. Rogers),

comprises eight shots with an average shot duration

of seven seconds and editing that is consistent with

norms of analytical and continuity editing. When Gre-

gory invites Gravis to lunch, for example, the film cuts

to her reaction in a more closely scaled medium shot.

A brief appearance by Gravis’s boss, Jimmy (Clair-

borne Bryson), gives the stenographer sufficient rea-

son to launch into “We Can’t Get Along”. 20 With the

exception of a three-second cutaway to an image of

Gregory gazing at Gravis as she sings, the entirety

of the song’s duration (2:09) is presented through a

single medium shot of Gravis.

The second song sequence removes us fur-

ther from the narrative space established in the film’s

opening minutes. Alone in the office after Gregory

leaves for lunch, Gravis begins to sing a fantasy

letter, “Dear Sir”, and the film dissolves to a surreal

set displaying a chorus line of women standing on a

stage built to resemble a notepad. In medium-long

shot, Gravis sings while standing in front of the

women; Jimmy then enters from stage left, singing

“Dear Miss, I just received your note”, and joins in the

fantasy song that codes romance as a business

transaction (“I’d like to take your tip and form a

partnership”). At the end of the song, the couple

kisses and the film dissolves back to Gravis seated

at her desk. As though to suggest that her fantasy

was shared with the object of her affection, Jimmy

appears with a letter in hand and, after some confu-

sion on Gravis’s part, announces, “Perhaps we’d

better discuss this in my office”. The couple exit and

– in a move that betrays the film’s pre-Code vintage

– we cut to the film’s final image, a door sign that

reads, “Busy Dictating”. The resolution provided by

this final event, in which Gravis’s wishes are fulfilled,

imparts a degree of dramatic unity that resonates

with the classical, unified construction of feature-

length films. But couched within this unified frame-

work resides a stylistic template for maintaining the

illusion of authenticity of song performance.

Signature instruments: musical

tools of authenticity

The early soundtrack comprised not just singing, of

course, but also the sounds of musical instruments,

and those sounds aided in the construction of

authenticity. An oft-cited account penned by Max

Steiner recalls the necessary onscreen depiction of

musical instruments whose sounds were heard on

the soundtrack:

Music for dramatic pictures was only used

when it was actually required by the script. A

constant fear prevailed among producers, di-

rectors and musicians, that they would be

asked: Where does the music come from?

Therefore they never used music unless it

could be explained by the presence of a

source like an orchestra, piano player, phono-

“To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary”

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 289

graph or radio, which was specified in the

script. 21

Steiner’s recollection was shared by film histo-

rian Irene Kahn Atkins:

[The coming of sound marked] the beginning

of the era of a shot that was to be repeated in

countless films: when an excuse for music was

needed, someone was seen turning on a pho-

nograph, putting the needle on the record, and

listening as the appropriate song or instrumen-

tal was heard on the soundtrack. 22

Perhaps because they did not operate under

the demands of classical narration, musical shorts

seem to have been exempted from the requisite

onscreen depiction of instruments. For example, al-

though the sounds of a piano and strings are heard

clearly on the soundtrack of Favorite Melodies Fea-

turing Ruth Etting , nary an instrument is seen; the

same observation holds for Office Blues and Ethel

Merman in Her Future , even when a relatively full

orchestration appears on the soundtrack. Instru-

ments also are absent from the images of Insurance

(August 1930), an Eddie Cantor sketch set in an

insurance office, although the star’s presentation of

“Now That the Girls Are Wearing Long Dresses” is

accompanied by the sounds of a jazz orchestra

including a string and horn section.

Since they did not necessarily supply a visual

pretext for music heard, what functions did musical

instruments serve when they appeared onscreen in

musical shorts? I suggest two, each of which en-

hanced the authenticity of song performance. First,

the display of instruments on screen facilitated audi-

ence identification with celebrities whose star perso-

nas were predicated at least in part on their use of

instruments. Like the voice, the musical instrument

could serve to signify a star’s authentic presence.

Radio Rhythm is a case in point. By the time the film

was released in August 1929, Vallee had become a

radio sensation, having signed earlier that year an

exclusive contract with NBC that resulted in weekly

national broadcasts sponsored by Fleischmann’s

Yeast. On the Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour program,

Fig. 2(upper). Rudy Vallee poses with saxophone for a news

photographer, ca. late 1920s/early 1930s. [Courtesy Library of

Congress.]

Fig. 3(lower). Rudy Vallee faces the camera in direct address

in the third shot of Radio Rhythm (Paramount, 1929).

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