Talkies 1930

Learn About Public’s Reaction to the First Talking Movies with These Old Movie Magazine Articles. Find information on Early Talkies in the 1930s.

‘STAY HOME!” (Hollywood Magazine, 1929)

The advent of talking pictures has enormously increased the number of those who vision a fairyland of fame and fortune if they can only reach Hollywood… Rumor had it that voice was important for the new Talkies, and every female whose misguided family had ‘cultivated’ Mamie’s vocal resources, usually without the faintest reasonable excuse, realized where her destiny lay. The rush was on… Several organizations in Hollywood find it possible to send girls back home before the tragedy point is reached… Periodically the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce broadcasts warnings.

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The News from Talkie Town (Theatre Magazine, 1931)

To a regular cinema-goer in the era of silent films, attendance at the motion-picture playhouse today is a continuously disturbing experience…The discovery that the shadowy images of the screen could be made articulate was as fruitful for exploitation to the captains of the cinema industry as was the realization that women would wear long skirts to the couturiers. …Paramount alone has already announced 243 releases for next season, double the number issued this year, and other companies are following suit.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

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The Audience Laughed at the First Talkies (Film Spectator, 1930)

Upon viewing one of the earliest sound movies this film reviewer did not find it odd in the least as to why the audiences laughed uproariously while listening to perfectly ordinary dialog during the viewing of one of Hollywood’s newest offering War Nurse (directed by Edgar Selwyn):

It was not so much [that they chortled] at these isolated bits of dialogue that the audience laughed, as it was a resort to laughter caused by the absurdity ceaseless chatter that prevails throughout the entire production.


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Some British Opinions About the First Talking Movies (Literary Digest, 1929)

Attached are excerpts from a few 1929 British newspapers that condemned all efforts made in Hollywood to produce talking pictures; one snide reviewer went so far as to insist that rather than calling the films talkies, they should be referred to as dummies:

The majority of films in the future will be made stupidly for stupid people, just has been the case with the silent movies for twenty years…


•Read About the First Talkie Movie Star•

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Various Remarks About the First Talkies (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Assorted quotes addressing some aspects of the 1930 Hollywood and the entertainment industry seated there. Some are prophets who rant-on about the impending failure of talking pictures, others go on about the obscene sums of money generated in the film colony; a few of the wits are well-known to us, like Thomas Edison, George M. Cohan and Walter Winchell but most are unknown – one anonymous sage, remarking about the invention of sound movies, prophesied:

In ten years, most of the good music of the world will be written for sound motion pictures.


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The Inter-Sound System (Pathfinder Magazine, 1930)

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Rudy Vallee: ‘Vagabond Lover’ (Film Spectator, 1929)

It is not surprising to think that one of the first sound movies to be made had to consist of a plot that involved a musical number, and when put to the task of writing his review of VAGABOND LOVER (1929: RKO Pictures) the well respected film critic Welford Beaton dished-out some lukewarm opinions concerning it’s star, crooner/teen-idol Rudy Vallee (1901 – 1986):

The laddie’s face is set in a sort of perpetual sorrow which, added to the fact that he seldom looks the camera in the eye, makes him seem like the wraith of some calamity walking through the scenes. Only the voice is virile…

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The Year of Sound (Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)

The oddballs who read old Hollywood magazines from the year 1929 seem to all be in agreement that these magazines all shared the same frenzied, enthusiastic energy; something new and wonderful and unpredictable had been introduced and it was going to cause an enormous shake up in every movie capitol under the sun: sound.

But it was in the past year that the newest art, that of the silent drama, like prehistoric Man, stood up on it’s hind legs and began to talk. Like prehistoric man, it talked badly at first. But soon it’s words came a shade more fluently, and gradually they began, when arranged, to make a small degree of sense.

Read about the first talkie movie star: Mickey Mouse…

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