We sat in the dark

We sat in the dark, chilly dress circle of a New York Theater one morning, a dozen of us, including a few vaudeville actors, and three or four men of the press, waiting for the first stage rehearsal of a Kinetophone play. This and others of the wonderful new talking-picture pieces had been tried out at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, and had been pronounced by Mr. Edison as “a little raw”. Some of the rawness had been ascribed to the size of the room and its acoustic effects. “It will be all right when we get it in a big theater,” the wizard had promised.

So it was now in a big theater and here was the first stage trial of it. Well, you may be sure that the thrill of anticipation was prickling our nerves and that we little minded the chill of the great empty auditorium. “All right Jim!” called Chief Engineer M.R. Hutchinson of the Edison works, to the man away up in the little lantern loft; “let her go!”

The machine began to sputter and the light to flicker fitfully, after a fashion painful to weak eyes, on the white curtain above the middle of the stage. We knew that the show was about to begin.

Forth upon the screen in front of us strode Brutus and Cassius, eyeing each other with looks of scorn. The two old Romans paused. Cassius bent his manly brow and made a stately gesture. Then his lips parted and moved and out of his mouth came in clear, distinct bass tones, these words:

“That you have wronged me doth appear in this:

You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella

Of taking bribes here of the Sardians,

Wherein my letters, praying on his side,

Because I knew the man, were slighted off.”

To the thrill of anticipation succeeded the thrill of surprised delight. Surprised? Yes; because not only was here the vivid, swaying, gesturing picture of a man talking, but he was talking in the even, natural albeit somewhat stilted, tones of that familiar Cassius whom I had seen strutting the boards in this very scene time and again in years of play-going. In other words, though I had expected realism, I had not expected any such realism as this. And this novel feeling of amused satisfaction over a “movie” show deepened as the dialogue ran on and Brutus, with looks and shrugs of deprecation and austere disdain, declaimed:

“You wronged yourself to write in such as case;

Let me Tell You, Cassius, you yourself

Are much condemned to have a itching palm.”

Then Cassius:

“I an itching palm?

You know that you are Brutus that speak this,

Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.”

The ‘itching palm” was extended and the words came with the lip motion in a flawless flow. So, too, when Brutus raising a warning voice:

“Remember March the ides of March remember!

Did not great Caesar bleed for justice’s sake?”

And when Cassius blew from between his teeth the reply, which all we schoolboys have spouted after him, there was the same happy harmony of sound and motion that created the almost perfect illusion:

“Brutus bay not me,

I’ll not endure it: you forget yourself,

To hewdge me in; I am a soldier, I,

Older in practice, abler than yourself

To make conditions.”

While they talked and their voices rang through the empty auditorium, the two tragedians changed places that stage tradition might be conserve, and then Brutus moved his pictured lips to exclaim:

“You say you are a better soldier:

Let it appear so; make you vaunting true.”

The voice that replied fitted the facial movement and gesture perfectly:

“I said an elder soldier, not a better:

Did I say better?"

And so the ancient quarrel ran on, the two Romans swinging their hands as their speeches became more passionate, while their voices rang out boldy so they they could easily have been heard in the top gallery. As their lip movements slowed, the lones slowed with them. I am quite sure that the keenest lip reader would not have detected any lack of syncrhonism between the labial and the enunciatory performance. The illusion was complete. In fact it was the kind of illusion that makes one forget its existence. It was far better than the work of any ventriloquist I ever have heard. One accepted the effect without thought of how it was produced. Only during the brief pause did it occur to the auditor than a concealed talking machine was a t work behind the screen as a component part of a complete mechanism that concurrently produced the moving imagery, the play of the lips and the resounding vocables.

That mechanism was the Kinetophone upon which Edison had been working for four years but which was now perfected. This talking-picture idea, so vainly striven with by other inventors is based upon two comparatively old machines---the motion picture machine and the phonograph, but up to within a month of the time when I witnessed this first stage rehearsal, the two never had been harnessed so as to work together in perfect harmony. Clever people had the actors talk into recording machines and then play the piece, separately, but the illusion held good only in spots, the whole making what was really a farcical performance.

I had been out at the Edison studios in the Bronx the day before the rehearsal and had seen the actors and mechanics make ready for the Kinetophone play of “Faust”. One scene was

“Faust”. One scene was that in the infernal regions, and before it the recorder and camera, with its reel of film were placed, but the synchronizer, the most important part of the invention, (there was a second equally important device not mentioned in the article: the amplifying pantographic dubber, which enabled relatively free movement of the actors on the stage, and wide shots----Art Shifrin, May, 2004) I was not permitted to see. This synchronizer times the acting and talking, just as a metronome times and musical performance. No outsider has been permitted to examine the new machine. Mr. Edison knows that if this were allowed it would be only a matter of time when someone would pirate it, just as the phonograph and other inventions have been pirated.

I had been out at the Edison studios in the Bronx the day before the rehearsal and had seen the actors and mechanics make ready for the Kinetophone play of “Faust”. One scene was that in the infernal regions, and before it the recorder and camera, with its reel of film were placed, but the synchronizer, the most important part of the invention, (there was a second equally important device not even mentioned in the article: the amplifying pantographic dubber, licensed by Edison from Daniel Highman that enabled relatively free movement of the actors on the stage, and wide shots----Art Shifrin, May, 2004) I was not permitted to see. This synchronizer times the acting and talking, just as a metronome times and musical performance. No outsider has been permitted to examine the new machine. Mr. Edison knows that if this were allowed it would be only a matter of time when someone would pirate it, just as the phonograph and other inventions have been pirated.

When Brutus and Cassius had made it up and shaken hands, they disappeared and there was another eye-teasing series of flashes upon the curtain.

Then there stared forth from the screen the crazy miser of “The Chimes Of Normandy”. The demoniacal man waved his skinny arms, poured his gold upon the table and sang in his wild way. The chink of the coins, the rattle of them upon the floor, the weird song and then the clanging bells, all mingling with the orchestral accompaniment, made a medly of sounds each of which came distinctly to the ear as if they proceeded from the operatic stage. The frenzied movements of the miser, his wild eyes ranging furtively about, lent themselves to a kinetophonic performance as few other pieces might have done. “That’s great, cried on of the vaudevillians”, clapping his hands appreciately. “Rather hear that then Eva Tanguay!”

And then a reel was slipped in that was intended as a prologue to the show, but had been side-tracked in this haphazard rehearsal. A lecturer appeared, advancing “out front” in the picture, bowing to the audience and announcing in a clear voice that he was going to tell about the wonders of Kinetophone. He declared that he would prove to the audience the perfect synchronism between the motion pictures and the phonograph, and proceded to do so, though the try-out claim as an anti-climax to us auditors of the dress-circle. After the lecturer had been talking a while he dropped a dinner plate to the floor. It fell with a crash and the fragments were seen rattling about. There was no appreciable lapse of time between the action and the sound. You could hear the pieces clatter as they rolled about, and, as before, there was no feeling of illusion, but a perfectly natural concurrence of sound and motion. Whistles and horns were blown and some dogs there were called in opened their mouths and barked. There were short barks and long ones, but that did not matter. What might be called the registry of effects was in each case simultaneous or a nearly so as would appear under natural conditions. The lecturer wound up with a eulogy of Edison, in which he said

click here to hear it

A pretty little melodrama called “Her Redemption” was then produced, followed by another, “Dick The Highwayman.” Then an Irish orator delivered a political speech during which there were cat-calls and other demonstrations by the audience. A brick was thrown at t he speaker, missing him and breaking a pane of glass. The crash and tinkle of the falling shards were so real that one could not escape the idea of being an actual witness to the uproarious scene.

And then I recalled the words of an old actor uttered the night before at the club when I told him I was going to see a kinetophonic show next day.

“The only way the thing can be done is to anticipate the motion with the sound, because those sitting back among the audience would see the picture before the sound came to them. This is bound to result in confusion. I don’t see how it can possibly be made to work.” (Shiffy’s note: would this not have been a problem with all live performances prior to electronic distribution of sound through speakers? I wonder if the cited actor had a bias against anything that he perceived might threaten his profession.)

But it did work and it worked wonderfully well. There can be no cavil about it. True, defects may develop in future performances, but the ones I saw and heard were wholly satisfactory.

Nothing upon which Mr. Edison has worked has required so much of patient, plodding effort as the Kinetophone. When I went to see him last November on another errand he was in the throes of this labor. For six weeks he had been “sleeping on the job”, as the laboratory men call it. “When the old man sleeps on the job,” they said, “Something is bound to come off.” And something has come off. But at that time the Kinetophonewas not a harmonious entity.

Not only did the synchronizer fail to synchronize, but the great inventor was not satisfied with his phonographic records. He sat in his laboratory, with his ear strained toward a wonderfully clear sounding transmitter that was pealing forth a vocal solo, “Ever Of Thee,” in such a sweet, womanly voice that I thought I never had heard anything coming from the phonograph that was half so fine.

“That won’t do! That won’t do!” he kept repeating. “Do you hear the pedal of that harp?” he asked, turning to me. I could hear no pedal, but the wizard’s splendidly attuned ear could detect it as well as other imperfections. “Yes; I can make out such things better than most people”, he said. “I have a peculiar ear, one that takes in everything that comes from the machine. What I am trying to do is to eliminate all the non-essentials, which are bound to result in crudity of a greater or less degree. Phonographic reproductions must be painstakingly selective”.

He had been having stacks of operatic and other music sung and played for him in order to get what he considered really suitable pieces and from those stacks few had been chosen.

As to the Kinetophone he said: “It isn’t exactly what I want it to be yet, but it will soon come as close to perfection as these inventions generally come, from my point of view, for I am never satisfied.”

In a later interview on his great invention he said: “You can see how this is going to put the best operas and dramas within the reach of poor people. The poor man will be able to see for a nickel performances which the rich man now sees for a high price. It is going to help to educate the poor. (sic)

“To a certain extent it will take the place of the actual flesh-and-blood play. I believe that, in a certain way, it will be better to sit and watch a play where the scenery is not merely painted canvas, but actual photographs of the street or farmyard. (sic)

“Then too, there is the historic value to be considered. By this means the inauguration of a President or other important event can be preserved in act and sound for future generations. (sic)

“In many other ways the invention is going to interest, instruct and help to uplift mankind.”

It was out of that phonographic and moving picture work in the midst of which I saw and talked with him in his laboratory that has come the perfected Kinetophone. There is a picture that always impresses me---a group of Bohemians in a bare studio listening to a Beethoven sonata. The rapt faces of the listeners each makes its separate appeal. But I keep in mind a more impressive, a more haunting picture than that---the vividly visualized scene of a white-haired ruddy-faced, slouchily clothed old man, with his ear inclined toward a cabinet-shaped affair and his face alive with critical interest----Edison listening to the phonograph.