Lillian left her mother in the sanatorium, where apparently she was improving, and with Josephine, her maid,—booked as a “fellow artist” (she was really that, for she would serve as model for Austrian peasant girls in the picture),—Lillian sailed on the _Île de France_, for New York. Reinhardt presently followed, with the play itself, which von Hofmannsthal had completed. Young von Hofmannsthal came as Reinhardt’s assistant. These two, with Lillian, and Josephine the “fellow artist,” descended upon Hollywood.
Alas, for the beautiful, silent picture play of “The Miracle Girl of Konnersreuth.” They were just a year too late!
For now it was that the long-unexpected-inevitable had happened: All in a brief summer and autumn—in a night, really—a change had come over the flicker of the photographic dream ... it SPOKE!
The film with a voice—a possibility for twenty years or more—hardly taken seriously except by the inventors—now, all at once, had arrived. Rather doubtfully at first—a crude thing, but of instant popularity. The writer of these pages remembers a fierce summer day in ’28, when he slipped into a jammed and darkened house on Broadway, and sat on the floor in a remote corner, fascinated, watching the moving phantoms, silent heretofore, as they shouted wildly at each other in the _mise en scène_ of a haunted house. After that, when he heard friends say: “It is just a novelty—it will not last,” he was not convinced. If he knew anything at all, he knew better than that. If they could do so much, they would presently do more. They did. The Warners put out Al Jolson in “The Singing Fool,” and the doom of the silent film was not only written, but sounded very loud. The play itself was hardly a classic—it didn’t need to be. Jolson’s speaking and singing voice was up to microphone requirements—sound and vision were synchronized. The record was miles beyond anything attempted before. The “Talkie” had come!
A huge shudder ran through the ranks of movie actors. Many of them did not even speak English. Many of them did it very badly—provincially, nasally, flatly, indistinctly, or with an impossible accent. Of those who spoke it well enough, not all had voices suited to the microphone—(“Mike,” as they irreverently named it)—they recorded poorly. Their voices had to be “placed.” Voice culture became a new Hollywood industry. Some, even, began learning to sing.