In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was a myth that the cigarette-smoking, short-skirt-wearing, free-love-talking girls of the Jazz Age were promiscuous. They were as prudish as their mothers. So I avoided those stylish creatures and kept company with the girls who frequented Paddy’s bar. Some of them had fathers in jail. No one was looking out for them, and no one was watching over me, either. We did as we pleased in whatever rooms we could find. But I have drawn the curtain over this aspect of my middle twenties. What was happening at work was more interesting.

Mr. Fox believed that talking pictures were the future, and he invited me and some of his other producers to witness a sound system that might solve the problem of equipment that was too heavy to be portable. He wanted compact equipment that could be carried on a truck and rapidly transported to the site of important events. He wanted his audiences to hear the sound of breaking news.

An inventor from upstate New York managed to record sound directly on film, so it was no longer necessary to synchronize separate discs with the film. Theodore Case had been experimenting with photographing sound waves since his undergraduate days at Yale. His father, also a scientist, converted one of the greenhouses on the familys estate into a laboratory, and it was in that space, with no pressure to earn a living, that Ted Case, at thirty-six, invented what Mr. Fox called us together to see. Selling his invention to Mr. Fox was not Case’s first choice. His device has been rejected by both General Electric and Western Electric.

 In the screening room, he showed us his demo reels: “Miss Martin and Her Pet Squirrel,” “Gus Visser and His Singing Duck,” “Bird in a Cage” and “Chinese Man with a Ukulele.” The sound was perfectly synchronized with the action. When the bird opened its beak, tweets came out. When the Chinese man plunked his uke, we heard music at the exact same time. Lights up, Mr. Fox sprang from his seat and shouted, Charlatan! Do you think me stupid, fella? Do you think me so easily fooled? Does William Fox, the founder of the Fox Film Corporation and Fox News, look like a jackass to you?

 Bewildered, Case said nothing. Dont be impudent with me! Mr. Fox barked. What is the trick? I demand to know how it is done. You are in my place of business—I  have a right to know.

 Case, though surprised by the outburst, remained composed. Sound waves, he said in his mild voice, have been changed into electrical vibrations, which in turn were changed into light variations that we photographed onto the edge of the film. When the film was projected, the process was reversed and the re-created sound waves were transmitted from amplifying speakers behind the screen.

Nonsense!

Case tried again. We photograph variations of light intensity on moving-picture film. This is accomplished by collecting the sounds to be recorded through the use of a microphone, which has the property of changing sound variations into electrical variations. These electrical variations are amplified and, in turn, vary the intensity of the recording light. The light contains a filament and a plate, similar to the two-element vacuum tubes we used many years ago in radio reception. The filament is coated with an alkaline earth oxide. The filament and plate are sealed in a small quartz tube from which the air has been removed and helium gas has been substituted. This tube is connected in the output circuit of a transformer, the input of which is connected to…”

It wouldnt work outside of this room! Mr. Fox yelled as he strode across the room to the screen, which he pushed aside. Where is he? Where is the ventriloquist?

Now Case understood, and his face relaxed. Oh, he said.

After seeing another demonstration of the system at his own home in Woodmere, Long Island, Mr. Fox bought the patents to the sound-on-film process and set up the Fox-Case Corporation to develop what became known as Movietone. He Movietoned his California studio and, thereafter, only produced sound pictures. Now, instead of working for Fox News, I worked for Fox-Movietone News, and we changed our slogan from The Mightiest of Them All to It Speaks for Itself.