The Innovation of Re-Recording in the Hollywood Studios

In the 1930s, radio and phonographic sound relied on broadcasting or recording in real time. In contrast, the cinema afforded extended opportunities for the recombination of sounds after the recording stage thanks to the relative ease of cutting optical sound and the salient model of cutting picture track. This account of the development of film sound editing and re-recording considers advances throughout the 1930s, with special emphasis on the effects of the two major improvements in the control of surface noise: the development of noiseless recording for both variable-density and variable-area track in 1931, and RCA's development of the push-pull track in 1935. The account is based upon a review of the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, American Cinematographer, technical bulletins from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and oral-history interviews with sound personnel such as James Stewart, George Groves and Murray Spivak.