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98 ш Chapter Six THE COMING OF SOUND The sound era is generally defined as beginning with The Jazz Singer in 1927, despite this not being the first sound film or even the first sound featurelength production. Because of its star, Al Jolson, and because of interest in the film, producer Warner Bros. had little difficulty in finding extras for some of the sequences. The studio brought one hundred from Hollywood for the filming of scenes at New York’s Winter Garden Theatre on June 26, 1927, during which Jolson was to exit the stage door. However, between 7:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., several thousand New Yorkers assembled on Broadway between 50th and 51st Street, happy to appear, without payment, on camera, and rendering the extras shipped in by the studio superfluous. The situation vis-à-vis the producer and the unpaid crowd as extra was an anomaly, but a new era was dawning not only for the film industry, but also for the extra. As Murray Ross has pointed out, the coming of sound “created a sharp division between those with speaking parts and those without . This division did not exist in the silent-picture days, when a number of prominent screen stars rose from the ranks of the extras.”1 Now, producers looked not to the extras for potential new talent, but to the legitimate stage. “The extra girl is gone,” announced Photoplay in 1929. With the coming of sound, “[a] new era has dawned. It is heralded with sound effects. And the new extra girl is a pair of dancing feet, a lithe, hardy body and a throat that can sing ‘Mammy.’”2 With the coming of sound came the advent and overabundance of the musical, with its demand for chorus girls. Some five hundred were used by Warner Bros. for The Show of Shows (1929). Such chorus girls came not from the ranks of the extras of the silent era, but rather from local dancing schools and the choruses of theatrical musicals playing across the United States. It was no longer a matter of looking French, German, or Greek, but a question of whether an extra could actually speak French, German, or Greek. Marian L. Mel, in charge of female talent at Central Casting, noted: T H E C O M I N G O F S O U N D / 99 It isn’t beauty that counts half as much as the ability to sing and dance and make noises. We have all sorts of strange registrations. One man can make a noise like a wolf’s howl. Now the company could get a real wolf, but it’s better to have a man because he will howl when he’s told. Wolves are not so accommodating.3 Photoplay listed the requirements of the 1929 extra as: 1. A pretty face 2. A pretty figure 3. Ability to dance 4. A voice 5. Youth 6. Personality 7. Excellent health4 The ideal movie “chorine” was identified by First National as Maxine Cantway, with a thirty-two and one-half inch bust, a twenty-three inch waist, thirty-four inch hips, twelve-and-a-half inch calves, and seven-anda -half inch ankles.5 Chorus lines on the Broadway stage would be no more than thirty-six in number, whereas a typical Hollywood musical of the late 1920s and early 1930s could need between 120 and 250 members. Because of the numbers involved, it was reported, “Individuals lose their identity.”6 As Larry Ceballos, who emphasized effect and few dance steps, explained it: On the stage, you remember, the eye focuses on one girl or one group. That corresponds to the camera close-ups. But the stage audience may choose its point of interest, whereas the camera does the choosing. The eye concentrating on a figure keeps it still a part of a moving unit.A careless closeup jerks one out of a scene and separates the eye from the rest of the action . I try to have my ensemble or my group look like one figure, each a part of the other.7 The camera had always made players appear older than they actually were. Now, suddenly, extras had to look young and be young. Reportedly, the chorus line in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929) consisted entirely of dancers sixteen years of age or younger. This requirement meant that local [13.59.36.203] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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