"To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary": The Authenticity of Song Performance in Early American Sound Cinema

In musical shorts, song performances were rendered through a set of stylistic techniques emphasizing performative authenticity and synchronicity. By contrast, the integration of song performances into feature-length films of the same period led to the use of non-synchronous recording practices, such as voice-doubling, for dramatic actors who did not possess musical talent. Newspaper clippings in the Richard Barthelmess scrapbooks (Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library) indicate that film audiences generally accepted voice-doubling as a necessary element of cinematic artifice.