Goldens3 Reviews

Finding His Voice (1929)

corrections and additions

[8 April 2006]

"Vitaphone" does not appear in any of the credits or drawings in this delightful and educational film. Nor is "Vitaphone" spoken in the soundtrack. In the context of sound films, "Vitaphone" originally referred to the sound on disk system that Warner Brothers licensed from Western Electric. The system depicted in "FHV" is Western Electric's variable density sound on film system. During and after Warner's transition from the sound-on-disk to sound-on-film systems, "Vitaphone" continued to be used as a trademark.

There is a third voice in the film: that of Dr. Western. Because of the manner in which his lines are delivered, I suspect that this might be the voice of a Western Electric employee. I surmise this because the film was produced by Western Eletric to explain and publicize the process.

The writer credit needs to be clarified. W.E. Erpi is a pseudonym and an inside joke. ERPI: Electrical Research Products Inc. was at that time the marketing and sales division of Western Electric, which in turn was the manufacturing division of AT&T.

Troopers Three (1930)

I only have a lobby card for this film.

[12 October 2005]

The information contained in it is: -"an ALL TALKING production recorded by RCA Photophone" -"Tiffany Production" -the still is hand colored in the foreground with Lease and Gulliver seated in a railroad passenger car; they face the camera with Lease (on Gulliver's right) playing a ukulele and presumably singing.

I wonder if any soundtrack disks were made for this film and survive. It's my understanding that a majority of theaters wired for sound circa 1930 could only accommodate the disk method. Optical tracks were dubbed in such cases. Victor offered these dubbing services. I've examined some 12" pressings in "Victrolac" (Victor's name for the flexible plastic). They were typically cut at lower levels than their 16" (typically shellac) counterparts. Thusly they were able to reduce the land between the grooves and therefore accommodated a full reel's soundtrack. Presumably these sonically inferior (due to the lower levels) pressings (as compared to the 16" shellacs) were much less costly to ship (no doubt a concern as the Depression was not yet even bottomed) and certainly, were not as easily broken.

I've provided this additional information to satisfy the minimum ten line requirement so that the details of the card could be shared with you.