Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?


The Story of the Kelly Gang is thought to be the first feature length film ever made. At between 65 and 70 minutes running time, it was the longest film ever made at that time. It went around Australia for nine years and was a huge success. Today only fragments survive, and it’s hard to judge the film's artistic benefits. About nine minutes of footage still exists - some found on a rubbish dump in Melbourne. This footage could be just out-takes. The footage is in the possession of ScreenSound Australia (the National Screen and Sound Archive) in Canberra. The remaining parts show some enthusiastic acting, although the camera is still the whole time (like most movies from that period). It is a momentous film of extreme historical importance. Australia’s film industry was one of the most thriving and innovative in the world up until World War I, when the originally neutral America began to its domination of film distribution.


The Jazz Singer triggered the sound revolution in the film industry. It was based on Alfred Cohn's story The Day of Atonement and Samson Raphaelson's prominent Broadway play of the same name. The film featured Al Jolson as a Jewish kid who endeavors to become a Broadway star. Though The Jazz Singer was not the first film to have sound, it was the first to use spoken language. The blending of Jolson, America's most well known artist, and the new medium of sound served to draw in a profit of $3.5 million, causing Warner Bros. to start its run as one of the top studios in Hollywood. When Warners Bros follow-up sound movies, for example The Lights of New York also proved successful in box offices, the rest of Hollywood converted to sound with extraordinary speed, hoping to assimilate the new technology. A year after its release, Hollywood recognised the importance of The Jazz Singer concerning film history by awarding the film with a special Academy Award.

Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry by making the car affordable to the average person. In order to accomplish this, he refused to allow workers to unionize, instituted an eight-hour workday, raised workers’ wages, promoted equal pay for black and white workers and for women; and used assembly lines to facilitate production. The automobile thus became a symbol of middle-class life, rather than a luxury good available only to the wealthy.

Foundations of the Prolific Film Industry:

Films really blossomed in the 1920s, expanding upon the foundations of film from earlier years. Most US film production at the start of the decade occurred in or near Hollywood on the West Coast, although some films were still being made in New Jersey and in Astoria on Long Island (Paramount). By the mid-20s, movies were big business (with a capital investment totaling over $2 billion) with some theatres offering double features. By the end of the decade, there were 20 Hollywood studios, and the demand for films was greater than ever. Most people are unaware that the greatest output of feature films in the US occurred in the 1920s and 1930s (averaging about 800 film releases in a year) - nowadays, it is remarkable when production exceeds 500 films in a year.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Throughout most of the decade, silent films were the predominant product of the film industry, having evolved from vaudevillian roots. But the films were becoming bigger (or longer), costlier, and more polished. They were being manufactured, assembly-line style, in Hollywood's 'entertainment factories,' in which production was broken down and organized into its various components (writing, costuming, makeup, directing, etc.).

Even the earliest films were organized into genres or types, with instantly-recognizable storylines, settings, costumes, and characters. The major genre emphasis was on swashbucklers, historical extravaganzas, and melodramas, although all kinds of films were being produced throughout the decade. Films varied from sexy melodramas and biblical epics by Cecil B. DeMille, to westerns (such as Cruze's The Covered Wagon (1923)), horror films, gangster/crime films, war films, the first feature documentary or non-fictional narrative film (Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922)), romances, mysteries, and comedies (from the silent comic masters Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd).

The Major Film Studios: The Big Five

1920-1930 was the decade between the end of the Great War and the Depression following the Stock Market Crash. Film theaters and studios were not initially affected in this decade by the Crash in late 1929. The basic patterns and foundations of the film industry (and its economic organization) were established in the 1920s. The studio system was essentially born with long-term contracts for stars, lavish production values, and increasingly rigid control of directors and stars by the studio's production chief and in-house publicity departments. After World War I and into the early 1920s, America was the leading producer of films in the world - using Thomas Ince's "factory system" of production, although the system did limit the creativity of many directors. Production was in the hands of the major studios (that really flourished after 1927 for almost 20 years), and the star system was burgeoning.

Originally, in the earliest years of the motion picture industry, production, distribution, and exhibition were separately controlled. When the industry rapidly grew, these functions became integrated under one directorship to maximize profits, something called vertical integration. There were eight major (and minor) studios (see below) that dominated the industry. They were the ones that had most successfully consolidated and integrated all aspects of a film's development. By 1929, the film-making firms that were to rule and monopolize Hollywood for the next half-century were the giants or the majors, sometimes dubbed The Big Five. They produced more than 90 percent of the fiction films in America and distributed their films both nationally and internationally. Each studio somewhat differentiated its products from other studios. See History of Film Studio Logos.

The Big-Five studios had vast studios with elaborate sets for film production. They owned their own film-exhibiting theatres (about 50% of the seating capacity in the US in mostly first-run houses in major cities), as well as production and distribution facilities. They distributed their films to this network of studio-owned, first-run theaters (or movie palaces), mostly in urban areas, which charged high ticket prices and drew huge audiences. They required blind or block bookings of films, whereby theatre owners were required to rent a block of films (often cheaply-made, less-desirable B-pictures) in order for the studio to agree to distribute the one prestige A-level picture that the theatre owner wanted to exhibit. This technique set the terms for a film's release and patterns of exhibition and guaranteed success for the studio's productions. [Monopolistic studio control lasted twenty years until the late 1940s, when a federal decree (in U.S. vs. Paramount) ordered the studios to divest their theatres, similar to the rulings against the MPPC - the Edison Trust.]

The Minor Film Studios: The Little Three

Three smaller, minor studios were dubbed The Little Three, because each of them lacked one of the three elements required in vertical integration - owning their own theaters:

"Poverty Row" Studios and Other Independents:

Other studios or independents also existed in a shabby area in Hollywood dubbed "Poverty Row" (Sunset Blvd. and Gower Street) where cheap, independent pictures were made with low budgets, stock footage, and second-tier actors. It was the site of Harry and Jack Cohn's new business, the C.B.C. Film Sales Company (later becoming Columbia Pictures). Many of the films of the independents were either horror films, westerns, science-fiction, or thrillers:

  • Disney Studios - specializing in animation; Walt and Roy Disney originally opened their first studio in 1923 in Los Angeles in the back of the Holly-Vermont Realty office, and called it Disney Bros. Studio; in a few years, they opened a new facility in downtown LA; in the late 30s, they relocated to a 51-acre lot in Burbank, and changed their name to Walt Disney Productions
  • the Monogram Picture Corporation - Rayart Pictures, which had taken over the old Selig Studio in Echo Park in 1924, became Monogram Pictures in 1930; it was founded by W. Ray Johnston to make mostly inexpensive Westerns and series (Charlie Chan, the Bowery Boys, etc.)
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Selznick International Pictures / David O. Selznick
    - it was formed in 1935 and headed up by David O. Selznick (previously the head of production at RKO), the son of independent film producer Lewis J. Selznick, the founder of Selznick Pictures
  • Samuel Goldwyn Pictures - headed up by independent film producer Samuel L. Goldwyn
  • Republic Pictures - founded in 1935 by the merger of smaller 'poverty row' studios: Consolidated Film Industries, Mascot, Monogram and Liberty, and headed by Herbert Yates of Consolidated

Extravagant Movie Palaces:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The major film studios built luxurious 'picture palaces' that were designed for orchestras to play music to accompany projected films. The 3,300-seat Strand Theater opened in 1914 in New York City, marking the end of the nickelodeon era and the beginning of an age of the luxurious movie palaces. By 1920, there were more than 20,000 movie houses operating in the US. The largest theatre in the world (with over 6,000 seats), the Roxy Theater (dubbed "The Cathedral of the Motion Picture"), opened in New York City in 1927, with a 6,200 seat capacity. It was opened by impresario Samuel Lionel "Roxy" Rothafel at a cost of $10 million. The first feature film shown at the Roxy Theater was UA's The Love(s) of Sunya (1927) starring Gloria Swanson (she claimed that it was her personal favorite film) and John Boles. [The Roxy was finally closed in 1960.] The Roxy was unchallenged as a showplace until Radio City Music Hall opened five years later.

Grauman's Theatres:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Impresario Sid Grauman built a number of movie palaces in the Los Angeles area in this time period:

  • Million Dollar Theater (on S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles),
    The first movie palace in Los Angeles, opened in February, 1918 with 2,345 seats, and premiered the William S. Hart western film The Silent Man (1917)
  • Egyptian Theatre (on Hollywood Boulevard)
    Opened in 1922 with 1,760 seats; it was the first major movie palace outside of downtown Los Angeles, and noted as having Hollywood's first movie premiere; its opening film was Robin Hood (1922) that starred Douglas Fairbanks; the theatre's creation was inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb that same year
  • Chinese Theater (on Hollywood Boulevard)
    With 2,258 seats, opened in Hollywood in May, 1927 with the premiere of Cecil B. De Mille's King of Kings (1927)

Star Imprints at Grauman's:

Grauman, dubbed as "Hollywood's Master Showman," established the tradition of having Hollywood stars place their prints in cement in front of the theater to create an instant tourist attraction ever since. (Legend has it that during the theatre's construction, silent screen actress Norma Talmadge accidentally stepped into wet cement and inspired the tradition. Grauman immortalized his own footprints, and invited Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to do the same.) Listed below are the first 10 stars, beginning in the spring of 1927, to imprint themselves (with handprints, footprints, or signatures) in the concrete of the Chinese Theatre's forecourt:

    1. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Apr. 30, 1927
    2. Norma Talmadge, May 18, 1927
    3. Norma Shearer, Aug. 1, 1927
    4. Harold Lloyd, Nov. 21, 1927
    5. William S. Hart, Nov. 28, 1927
    6. Tom Mix and Tony (his horse), Dec. 12, 1927
    7. Colleen Moore, Dec 19, 1927
    8. Gloria Swanson, 1927 (specific date unknown)
    9. Constance Talmadge, 1927 (specific date unknown)
    10. Charlie Chaplin, Jan, 1928

Pickford and Fairbanks:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Two of the biggest silent movie stars of the era were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. America flocked to the movies to see the Queen of Hollywood, dubbed "America's Sweetheart" and the most popular star of the generation - "Our Mary" Mary Pickford. She had been a child star, and had worked at Biograph as a bit actress in 1909, and only ten years later was one of the most influential figures in Hollywood at Paramount. In 1916, she was the first star to become a millionaire.

She was married to another great star, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Their wedding in late March, 1920 was a major cultural event, although it was highly controversial since both of them had to divorce their spouses so they could marry each other. She was presented with a wedding gift - "Pickfair" [the first syllables of their last names], a twenty-two room palatial mansion (former hunting lodge) in the agricultural area of Beverly Hills - marking the start of the movement of stars to lavish homes in the suburbs of W. Hollywood and the making of Hollywood royalty. [The couple remained married from 1920-1935.] Strangely, Mary Pickford's downfall began after she bobbed her long curly hair, one of moviedom's first fashion trends, in 1928.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. also became an American legend after switching from light comedies and starring in a series of exciting, costumed swashbuckler and adventure/fantasy films, starting with The Mark of Zorro (1920), soon followed with his expensively-financed, lavish adventure film Robin Hood (1922) with gigantic sets (famous for the scene in which he eluded death from sword-wielding attackers by jumping off a castle balcony and sliding down a 50 ft. curtain), and the first of four versions of the classic Arabian nights tale by director Raoul Walsh, The Thief of Bagdad (1924). This magical film used state of the art, revolutionary visual effects (for its smoke-belching dragon and underwater spider, the flying horse, the famed flying carpet, and magic armies arising from the dust) and displayed legendary production design.

Another first occurred in 1926 - a Hollywood film premiere double-featured two films together: Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926) with early two-color Technicolor (and the superstar's most famous stunt of riding down a ship's sail on the point of a knife) and Mary Pickford's melodramatic film Sparrows (1926). Fairbanks scored again at the close of the decade with The Iron Mask (1929). The first and only film that co-featured both stars was a talkie version of The Taming of the Shrew (1929). Pickford's Coquette (1929), her first all-talking film, won her an Academy Award, but she retired prematurely four years later.

Other 1920s Box-Office Stars:

The top box-office stars in the 1920s included Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Tom Mix, Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Lon Chaney, Sr., Clara Bow, and "Little Mary" Pickford.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Hauntingly mysterious and divine, Greta Garbo's first American film was The Torrent (1926), followed quickly by The Temptress (1926). Her first major starring vehicle was as a sultry temptress in torrid, prone love scenes with off-screen lover John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil (1926). MGM renamed Broadway actress Lucille Le Sueur and christened her "Joan Crawford" in 1925. And Louise Brooks made her debut film in mid-decade with Street of Forgotten Men (1925). Glamorous MGM star Norma Shearer insured her future success as "The First Lady of the Screen" by marrying genius MGM production supervisor Irving Thalberg in 1927.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Clara Bow, a red-haired, lower-class Brooklyn girl was subjected to a major publicity campaign by B. P. Schulberg (of Preferred Pictures (1920-1926) and then Paramount's head of production in the late 20s and early 30s). He promoted his up-and-coming, vivacious future star as his own personal star, after grooming and molding her for her star-making hit film The Plastic Age (1925) as a flirtatious flapper - the "hottest Jazz Baby in Film." Bow was also exceptional in Dancing Mothers (1926) and in her smash hit Mantrap (1926), and was further promoted with teaser campaigns for It (1927). She soon became known as "The It (sex appeal) Girl" (in the high-living age of flappers) after its February 1927 release. She was boosted to Paramount Studios' super-stardom in the late 1920s by more publicity campaigns, fan magazine glamorization, and rumor-spreading. Bow also starred in the epic WWI film Wings (1927), and in 1928 became the highest paid movie star (at $35,000/week). But by 1933, after years of victimizing exploitation, she had gone into serious decline and retired due to hard-drinking, exhaustion, gambling, emotional problems, a poor choice of roles, the revelation of a heavy working-class Brooklyn accent in the talkies, and a burgeoning weight problem.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Lon Chaney, Sr., the "man of a thousand faces," starred in the earliest version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), and then poignantly portrayed the title character of the Paris Opera House in The Phantom of the Opera (1925) in his signature role. The unveiling of the phantom's face, when Christine (Mary Philbin) rips off his mask - was (and still is) a startling sequence.

Young screen actress, platinum blonde starlet Jean Harlow was also 'discovered' and soon contracted with aviation millionaire/movie mogul Howard Hughes to replace the female lead in his soon-to-be-released, re-made sound version of Hell's Angels (1930), another exciting WWI film about British flying aces.

Janet Gaynor:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Another famous screen couple, dubbed "America's Lovebirds" or "America's Sweethearts" were romantic film stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell who were eventually paired together in twelve films. [The fact that Farrell was homosexual was kept from the public.] Their first film was Seventh Heaven (1927), a classic romantic melodrama. For their work in Seventh Heaven, Janet Gaynor received the first "Best Actress" Academy Award and director Frank Borzage received the first "Best Director" Academy Award.

Janet Gaynor was also honored in the same year with an Academy Award for her exquisite acting in German director F. W. Murnau's first American film - the beautiful Fox-produced Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), often considered the finest silent film ever made by a Hollywood studio. Murnau's succeeding films were The Four Devils (1928) and Our Daily Bread (1930), with his last film the sensual semi-travelogue documentary Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) shot with documentarist Robert Flaherty. (A week before Tabu's premiere in early March 1931, Murnau died in a car accident.)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1920s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 2

Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926):

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The greatest male attraction in exotic, adventurous romantic pictures was handsome, hot-blooded Italian-born import Rudolph Valentino, after his breakthrough appearance in the famous tango scene in director Rex Ingram's spectacle The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Dubbed the "Latin Lover," the matinee idol symbolized the forbidden and mysterious eroticism denied to American women in the 1920s in such films as The Sheik (1921), Camille (1921), the successful Blood and Sand (1922), The Eagle (1925), and The Sheik's popular sequel The Son of the Sheik (1926). The Son of the Sheik was a tremendous hit, released at the time of Valentino's funeral.

In 1926, his death came at the untimely age of 31, due to a perforated ulcer and peritonitis. Crowds in New York, mostly female mourners, verged on mass hysteria as they tried to view his body. [One of Valentino's legacies was that a brand of popular condoms was named after his role in one of his most famous films.] Native-born director Clarence Brown, who had directed Valentino in The Eagle (1925) also directed imported actress Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1927), Woman of Affairs (1928), and turn-of-the-decade Anna Christie (1930).

German Expressionism and Its Influence:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
An artistic movement termed Expressionism was established in the prolific European film-making industry following World War I. It flourished in the 1920s, especially in Germany in a 'golden age' of cinema (often termed 'Weimar Cinema'), due to fewer restrictions and less strict production schedules.

Expressionism was marked by stylization, dark shadows and dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, visual story-telling, grotesque characters, distorted or slanted angular shots (of streets, buildings, etc.) and abstract sets. Leading directors utilizing these new unconventional, atmospheric and surrealistic dramatic styles included G.W. Pabst (known later for directing American actress Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929)), Paul Leni (who directed the 'old dark house' film The Cat and the Canary (1927) and Universal's The Man Who Laughs (1928) with Conrad Veidt), F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.

In the early 1920s, three nightmarish, German expressionistic films were to have a strong and significant influence on the coming development of U.S. films in the 30s-40s - notably the horror film cycle of Universal Studios in the 30s, and the advent of film noir in the 1940s:

  • Robert Wiene's surrealistic fantasy/horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919-20, Germ.) (aka Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari) starring Conrad Veidt - the earliest and most influential of German Expressionistic cinema
  • F. W. Murnau's classic vampire film (the first of its kind) with actor Max Schreck - an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel titled Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horrors (1922, Germ.) (aka Nosferatu, Symphonie des Grauens)
  • Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922, Germ.) (aka Doktor Mabuse der Spieler) introduced the director's evil genius character
  • -- Lang's Metropolis (1927, Germ.) has generally been considered the last of the classic German Expressionistic films

Imports From Abroad:

Destined to encourage the viewing of foreign-language films, English subtitles were put on the German musical Two Hearts in Waltz Time (1930) (aka Zwei Herzen im Dreiviertel-Takt) by Herman Weinberg. It was the first film to be subtitled for release in the United States.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Some of the best artists, directors, and stars (such as Pola Negri, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre and Greta Garbo) from European film-making circles were imported to Hollywood and assimilated there as emigrants. A number of early directors in Hollywood were hired artists from abroad - including successful German directors F. W. Murnau (invited to Hollywood by William Fox for his first Fox film - the critically-acclaimed Sunrise (1927)), Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg and Ernst Lubitsch (he directed his first American film, Rosita (1923) starring Mary Pickford), the great Swedish director Victor Seastrom (famous for The Wind (1928) - the last silent film of Lillian Gish), Austrian-born director Erich von Stroheim, producer Alexander Korda, director Michael Curtiz (recruited by Warners from Hungary), German cinematographer Karl Freund, and Russian-born director Rouben Mamoulian.

Director Ernst Lubitsch's first American comedy The Marriage Circle (1924) about marital infidelity in Vienna, was later remade as the musical One Hour With You (1932). With his classic, sophisticated "touch," Lubitsch boldly confronted the pre-Hays code of censorship with So This Is Paris (1926).

Later in Germany, Fritz Lang's last major silent film was the futuristic drama Metropolis (1927) - the expensive film enriched cinema in years to come with its innovative techniques, futuristic sets and Expressionistic production design, and allegorical study of the class system. Murnau's notable silent film weepie classic The Last Laugh (1924) told its entire story about a proud but demoted hotel doorman (Emil Jannings) through visualization, innovative camera movements (with only one inter-title), stylized mis-en-scene, a subjective point-of-view, and optical effects. Both Lang's Metropolis and Murnau's The Last Laugh were filmed by the pioneering German cameraman Karl Freund.

Murnau also filmed Moliere's 17th century satire Tartuffe (1925) as a movie within a movie, and Goethe's tragedy Faust (1926) with stunning chiaroscuro, images of medieval castles, huge mountains and Faust (Gosta Ekman) flying with Mephisto (Emil Jannings). Faust was the film that gave Murnau a contract with Hollywood's Fox Studios. The dark films of Josef von Sternberg in the late 1920s ushered in the gangster film: Underworld (1927), The Drag Net (1929), and The Docks of New York (1929).

Austrian-born director Erich von Stroheim's style was more harsh and European than the works of other imported directors. He had begun as an assistant director to D. W. Griffith. His specialty was the melodramatic portrayal of a decadent Europe with audacious scenes of sexuality. His brooding and expensive Foolish Wives (1922) was the longest commercially-made American film to be released uncut at 6 hours and 24 minutes in Latin America, but it was severely edited to a 10-reel version for general release. Von Stroheim's admired nine-hour, 42-reel silent masterpiece Greed (1924) (a detailed adaptation of Frank Norris' novel McTeague) was screened only once in its original form for newly-formed MGM executives including Irving Thalberg, and then severely cut down to its current length of 133 minutes (about 10 reels). Reportedly, the 32 reels of edited negatives were melted down by MGM to extract the valuable silver nitrate from the film stock. The same difficulties of extravagant over-spending and interminable length also plagued his film The Wedding March (1928).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Legendary Russian auteur director Sergei Eisenstein's classic landmark and visionary film, Battleship Potemkin (1925, Soviet Union) was released in the US in 1926, advancing the art of cinematic storytelling with the technique of montage (or film editing). Its most celebrated film scene, with superb editing combining wide, newsreel-like sequences inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details - to increase tension, was the Odessa Steps episode. It was based upon the incident in 1905 when civilians and rioters were ruthlessly massacred. In the scene (with 155 separate shots in less than five minutes), the Czarist soldiers fired on the crowds thronging on the Odessa steps with the indelible, kinetic image of a baby carriage careening down the marble steps leading to the harbor, and the symbolism of a stone lion coming awake. [Note: The scene was parodied in a number of films, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Brian DePalma's The Untouchables (1987).]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Another technological cinematic achievement was attained by experimental French filmmaker Abel Gance in his film Napoleon (1927, Fr.), a visually revolutionary picture originally six hours long and partially filmed with panoramic, "triptych" Polyvision (three-screens side-by-side to create a wide-screen effect, later known by future generations as Cinerama) at its climax. This meant that the film had to be shot with three synchronized cameras, and then projected on a gigantic, 3-part screens. [Within a few years, Fox's Grandeur wide-screen system was an early attempt at 70 mm. film gauge.]

And at the end of the decade, the influential and creative film The Man with the Movie Camera (1929, Soviet Union) from experimental cameraman/director Dziga Vertov, employed some of the first uses of the split screen, montage editing, and rapidly-filmed scenes in its view of Moscow.

Comedy Flourished: Arbuckle, Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton and More

It was a great era for light-hearted silent comedy, with the triumvirate of humorists: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, and the early popularity of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle until a scandal destroyed his career in 1921.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
"Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the earliest silent film comedians (as well as director and screenwriter). He started out with the Selig Polyscope Company in 1909 (his first film was Ben's Kid (1909)), and then went onto Universal Pictures in 1913 and also appeared in several of Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies films, noted for fast-paced chase sequences and 'pie-in-the-face' segments. Arbuckle was the first of the silent comedians to direct his own films, starting with Barnyard Flirtations (1914). His teaming with Mabel Normand at Keystone, in a series of "Fatty and Mabel" films, were lucrative for the studio.

In 1917, Arbuckle formed his own production company ("Comique Film Corporation") with producer Joseph Schenck which afforded more creative control, hiring Buster Keaton to star in his first film The Butcher Boy (1917). He used his 'fatness' as part of his sight gags, and his slightly-vulgar but sweet and playful character became extremely popular with younger audiences. By 1919, he had secured at $3 million/3-year contract with Paramount Pictures to star in 18 silent films - the first multi-year, multi-million dollar deal for a Hollywood studio. It has been little mentioned that Arbuckle mentored and aided Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin as they entered the film business, before his own downfall in the early 1920s.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
While Arbuckle's latest comedy was playing across the country, Crazy to Marry (1921), he was celebrating in San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel over a three-day Labor Day weekend. During the bash in the hotel with liquor freely flowing (during Prohibition!), he was accused of the rape and murder of young 25 year-old starlet and 'party girl' Virginia Rappe in a widely-publicized case - Rappe died a few days later in a hospital of a ruptured bladder. Arbuckle was thoroughly and unfairly chastised by Hearst's 'trial-by newspaper' (with soaring sales) and public condemnation. One of the partygoers interviewed by the prosecution was an unreliable witness named Maude Delmont, known in LA as a blackmailer and as "Madame Black" - with a criminal history of fraud and extortion (she would lure young women to parties in order to entrap wealthy males). She claimed that Arbuckle assaulted Rappe, although other witnesses disputed her assertions. Fatty's career was substantially over, although he was eventually fully acquitted of the act after three trials in the spring of 1922.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The popularity of Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp soared in movies after his initial films with Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual. As already stated, he co-founded United Artists studios in 1919 with Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks. His first silent feature film was First National's 6-reel The Kid (1921) (with child star Jackie Coogan), in which he portrayed the Tramp in an attempt to save an abandoned and orphaned child. (35 year old Chaplin married his underage, 16 year-old The Kid co-star Lita Grey in 1924).

Chaplin also appeared in The Pilgrim (1923) - in which he mimed the David and Goliath story, and in the classic The Gold Rush (1925), a story with pathos and wild comedy about a Lone Prospector in Alaska. Chaplin was presented with a special Academy Award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing, and producing" for The Circus (1928). Chaplin's comedies were matched by the acrobatics and dare-devil antics of silent comic Harold Lloyd, who appeared as a gallant, 'never-say-die' All-American "Boy" (with glasses) in Safety Last (1923) - famous for his harrowing climb up the side of a tall building, Girl Shy (1924), The Freshman (1925), and The Kid Brother (1927).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
There was also the inspired comedic work of passively-unsmiling, sardonic Buster Keaton (The Great Stone Face) in Sherlock Jr. (1924) (Keaton's first solo directorial work), The Navigator (1924), the Civil War epic The General (1927) (Keaton co-directed with Clyde Bruckman) about a runaway train with spectacular sight gags, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) - his last independent film, and The Cameraman (1928), Keaton's first film for MGM that also marked the beginning of his decline.

Baby-faced Harry Langdon's best feature film in a short four-year film career, The Strong Man (1926), was director Frank Capra's feature-film debut. The film predated Chaplin's City Lights (1931) by several years with its plot of a meek man in love with a blind woman. Langdon also starred in two other hits: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) and Capra's Long Pants (1927) that would place him the same league as his three other comic contemporaries: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared in their first film as a slapstick comedy team - a Hal Roach studio comedy Duck Soup (1927), and then performed in director Clyde Bruckman's Putting Pants on Philip (1927). The Marx Brothers debuted in their first film together in 1929, The Cocoanuts (1929).

And bulbous-nosed master comic W. C. Fields first juggled in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway in New York City from 1915-1921. In the mid-20s, he moved to Hollywood and wrote, directed, and starred in films. His first film was the one-reel Pool Sharks (1915). After appearing in the Broadway musical Poppy, he starred in D.W. Griffith's screen version of the circus film, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925). (It was later remade as Poppy (1936), with Fields in the same role.)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1920s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 3

Griffith, Vidor, and Gish:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In 1919, the population of Hollywood was 35,000, but by 1925, had swelled to 130,000. The Hollywood sign (originally advertising and spelling out HOLLYWOODLAND) was built above the Hollywood Hills in 1923 for $21,000 by a real estate developer. It was not an advertisement to promote the major film studios, but was actually put up to advertise a local real estate development in nearby Beachwood Canyon - and was only supposed to be installed for 18 months. The sign lost its suffix "LAND" in 1949 when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce began a contract with the City of LA Parks Department to repair and rebuild the sign.

[After being declared an historic landmark in 1973, it was rebuilt in the late 70s by funds established by singer/cowboy Gene Autry, rocker Alice Cooper, and Playboy head Hugh Hefner.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
D. W. Griffith continued to be successful (his earlier Birth of a Nation (1915) remained the most popular film until another war saga Gone with the Wind (1939) was filmed at the end of the 30s). One of Griffith's last commercial blockbusters, his classic melodrama of a morally-ostracized young woman, Way Down East (1920), was famous for its daring sequence of Lillian Gish in a blizzard and on a floating ice, rescued at the last minute by Richard Barthelmess. Griffith's next film, Orphans of the Storm (1922), starred sisters Dorothy and Lillian Gish in a semi-factual drama of the French Revolution.

The largest grossing silent film up to its time was King Vidor's WWI tale - an epic, anti-war film and romance story from MGM The Big Parade (1925), starring matinee idol John Gilbert. Vidor's enduring classic silent film of Everyman, The Crowd (1928), a realistic "slice-of-life" tale of a faceless, underpaid, hard-working clerk who never seemed to get ahead in the big city of New York during the Jazz Age, was under-appreciated at the time of its release. Lillian Gish collaborated with Swedish director Victor Seastrom for two films: Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928), one of the last great silent films.

Expensive Epics and Cecil B. DeMille:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Interestingly, some of the biggest successes of the 1920s were similar to the wide-screen epics of the 50s, such as:

  • Rex Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) (that launched Valentino's career as a star)
  • master showman Cecil B. DeMille's Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927)
  • the expensive spectacle of MGM's and Fred Niblo's colossal Ben-Hur (1926)

All of these lavish and grand films foreshadowed their epic remakes during the mid-fifties and early sixties and in later years. The silent era Ben-Hur (1925) was the greatest and most legendary spectacular of its kind, budgeted at a record $3.9 million - the most expensive silent film ever (it made $9 million at the box-office) and the most expensive film made in the 1920s. Hollywood experimented with an early form of Technicolor for some color sequences in DeMille's big-budget, $1 million epic The Ten Commandments (1923) and also in Ben-Hur (1925).

Always noted as a showman, Cecil B. DeMille's name was forever associated with extravagant production values and biblical spectacles (with rich doses of orgies and bathing scenes) that he first filmed in the 1920s. He also adapted to the times with patriotic war-time films, such as Till I Come Back to You (1918), sophisticated romantic comedies such as Old Wives For New (1918) and the racy romantic farce Don't Change Your Husband (1919) with Gloria Swanson, and sexy melodramas such as the risque The Affairs of Anatol (1921).

Westerns and Prototypes of Other Genres:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The western film genre was uniquely American and became popular in the early days of the cinema. The first major Western, a landmark film, was director James Cruze's epic pioneer saga filmed on-location, The Covered Wagon (1923), an authentic-looking 83 minute film advertised as "the biggest thing the screen has had since The Birth of a Nation." Legendary director John Ford directed his first major film, a seminal Western titled The Iron Horse (1924), the sweeping tale of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. The last film the old rugged Western hero, William S. Hart, appeared in was King Baggot's Tumbleweeds (1925). Famed cowboy actors, in addition to William S. Hart, included Tom Mix and Harry Carey.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Other prototypical films were also released in the 1920s. The first science-fiction film (with early examples of stop-motion special effects) about prehistoric dinosaurs in a remote South American jungle The Lost World (1925), adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tale, premiered during the silent era. Willis O'Brien, who would later be responsible for the success of King Kong (1933), came of age as a stop-motion animator for this film. [In 1925, Imperial Airways presented it as the first in-flight movie on a flight from London to Europe.]

The prototype standard for later spooky, haunted "old dark house" mysteries was The Cat and the Canary (1927), a film re-made numerous times in future years. And one of the first in the gangster film genre was Josef von Sternberg's Prohibition-era Underworld (1927). Famous American movie dog, German shepherd Rin Tin Tin starred in over 20 films during the 20s silent era, including Warners' Rinty of the Desert (1928) and the transitional talkie-film Frozen River (1929). Detective Charlie Chan's introduction (as portrayed by Japanese actor George Kuwa) was in the 10-part serial House Without a Key (1926).

The Birth of the Talkies:

By the late 1920s, the art of silent film had become remarkably mature. Although called silents, they were never really silent but accompanied by sound organs, gramophone discs, musicians, sound effects specialists, live actors who delivered dialogue, and even full-scale orchestras. There would be two competing sound or recording systems developed during the early 'talkie' period: sound-on-disc, and sound-on-film.

In 1925-26, America technologically revolutionized the entire industry, with the formation of the Vitaphone Company (a subsidiary created by Warner Bros. and Western Electric). Warner Bros. launched sound and talking pictures, with Bell Telephone Laboratory researchers, by developing a revolutionary synchronized sound system called Vitaphone (a short-lived sound-on-disc process developed in 1925 that quickly became obsolete by 1931). This process allowed sound to be recorded on a phonograph record that was electronically linked and synchronized with the film projector - but it was destined to be faulty due to inherent synchronization problems. Originally, Warner Bros. intended to use the system to record only music and sound effects - not dialogue. The process was first used for short one- and two-reel films, mostly comedies and vaudeville acts.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical soundtrack (canned music and sound effects recorded on large wax discs), but without spoken dialogue, was Warner Bros.' romantic swashbuckler adventure Don Juan (1926). The prestigious production was premiered in New York on August 6, 1926, and starred John Barrymore (nicknamed "The Great Profile") as the hand-kissing womanizer (the number of kisses in the film set a record). Director Alan Crosland's expensive film failed to create the sensation that Warners had hoped for. The second Vitaphone production was The Better 'Ole (1926), featuring musical comedy and recording star Al Jolson, among others.

Most of the studios started to convert from silent to sound film production - a tremendous capital investment. Thousands of existing theaters had to be rewired for sound at great expense. In the mid 1920s, Warners invested over $3 million in outfitting its 'picture palaces' to show Vitaphone films, and went into debt because of it.

In 1926, William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation responded to Warners' success with its own similar and competing, advanced Movietone system - the first commercially successful sound-on-film process developed in conjunction with General Electric. It added a 'soundtrack' directly onto the strip of film and would eventually become the predominant sound technology. [This system would soon replace the inflexible Vitaphone system because it was easier to synchronize the sound.]

The first feature film released using the new Fox Movietone system was Sunrise (1927), directed by F. W. Murnau -- the first professionally-produced feature film with an actual soundtrack. Fox's Movietone system was also premiered in early 1927 with the showing of director Raoul Walsh's 12-reel comedy-drama war film What Price Glory? (1926) (originally released in November, 1926, and then re-released in January, 1927 with synchronized music and sound effects). They also released a Fox-Movietone News newsreel of the Lindbergh takeoff on May 20, 1927 from New York for his flight across the Atlantic toward Paris - the first sound news film. The first talking picture made in Hollywood was a Fox-Movietone 5-minute short titled They're Coming to Get Me (1927).

The Jazz Singer: The World's First 'Talkie'

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In April, 1927, Warners built the first sound studio to produce a feature film with sound. Another sound feature released on October 6, 1927, and directed by Alan Crosland for Warner Bros. revolutionized motion pictures forever. Producer Sam Warner died one day before the film's premiere at Warners' Theatre in New York City. It was the first feature-length talkie (and first musical), The Jazz Singer (1927), adapted from Samson Raphaelson's successful 1925-26 musical stage play (that starred George Jessel in the Broadway role). It was also the most expensive film in the studio's history, at a budget of about $500,000. Here was a revolutionary film that was mostly silent - with only about 350 'spontaneously spoken' words, but with six songs (in the film's partly-synchronized musical soundtrack). The film was about an aspiring Jewish cantor's son who wanted to become a jazz singer rather than a cantor in the synagogue.

The sound era was officially inaugurated when audiences saw Russian-born American vaudeville star Al Jolson, and first heard him improvise a song's introduction: "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet," after the film's first musical interlude - a song called Dirty Hands, Dirty Face. Jolson proved his boast by continuing to sing Toot, Toot, Tootsie. They were further astonished by his talking to his mother (Eugenie Besserer) in an extemporaneous way after singing Blue Skies, and the film's final song Mammy. Jolson was chosen for the role (after it was turned down by Eddie Cantor) since he had already performed three songs in Warners' experimental short film April Showers (1926), and because he was, in real-life, a cantor's son who had first sung in a synagogue as a child.

The other major film studios (Paramount, Loew's, First National and UA) realized the expensive and challenging ramifications of the sound revolution that was dawning, and that talkie films would be the wave of the future. In May 1928, to avoid an inevitable patent war, they signed an agreement with Western Electric to analyze the competing sound systems within the next year and jointly choose a single, standardized sound system.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1920s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 4

The Golden Age of Hollywood: From 1930 to 1948

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The 1930s decade (and most of the 1940s as well) has been nostalgically labeled "The Golden Age of Hollywood" (although most of the output of the decade was black-and-white). The 30s was also the decade of the sound and color revolutions and the advance of the 'talkies', and the further development of film genres (gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, historical biopics, social-realism films, lighthearted screwball comedies, westerns and horror to name a few). It was the era in which the silent period ended, with many silent film stars not making the transition to sound (e.g., Vilmy Banky, John Gilbert, and Norma Talmadge). By 1933, the economic effects of the Depression were being strongly felt, especially in decreased movie theatre attendance.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
As the 1930s began, there were a number of unique firsts:

  • young 'platinum blonde' star Jean Harlow appeared in her first major role in Howard Hughes' World War I aviation epic, Hell's Angels (1930); the "Blonde Bombshell" was signed by MGM in 1932 and soon became a major star
  • enigmatic silent star Greta Garbo (originally named Greta Lovisa Gustafsson), part of MGM's galaxy of stars and nicknamed "The Divine Garbo" and "The Swedish sphinx," spoke her first immortal, husky, Swedish-accented words in director Clarence Brown's MGM film Anna Christie (1930). (As a floozy, she spoke: "Gimme a vhiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby") - it was Garbo's first talkie (advertised as "GARBO TALKS!")
  • the first of Hollywood's dramatic prison dramas (a new subgenre) was produced by MGM, The Big House (1930), directed by George Hill
  • B-actor John Wayne made his debut in his first major role in a western directed by Raoul Walsh,
    Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    The Big Trail (1930) - one of the first films shot in Grandeur, Fox's experimental wide-screen 70mm format. Both the film and the new process flopped; it would be nine more years before his star-making appearance in Stagecoach (1939)
  • Broadway actress Helen Hayes made her screen debut in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and won the Best Actress Academy Award for her first talkie
  • MGM stars Clark Gable and Joan Crawford starred together in the risque pre-Code film Dance, Fools, Dance (1931), the first of eight features that teamed them together
  • the best-known Charlie Chan actor, Warner Oland, played the detective for the first time in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
  • RKO won its sole Best Picture Academy Award for the western Cimarron (1931)
  • in 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code, administered by Joseph I. Breen (and former Postmaster General Will Hays) set film guidelines regarding sex, violence, religion, and crime (not yet strictly enforced until the Production Code Administration (1934))
  • the first daily newspaper for the film industry had its debut in 1930, The Hollywood Reporter
  • Katharine Hepburn made her screen debut in A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
  • Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller made his screen debut as the vine-swinging ape-man in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932)
  • Curly-topped, dimpled child star Shirley Temple appeared in her first films, an Our Gang type series of shorts titled Baby Burlesks (1933)
  • the first appearance of the cartoon character Popeye was in the Betty Boop cartoon from Paramount and Max Fleischer, Popeye the Sailor (1933)

  • the world's first drive-in theatre opened in Camden, N.J. in June, 1933; the fourth drive-in was located on Pico in Los Angeles, CA and opened in September, 1934
  • the first Three Stooges comedy film (the first of their 190 slapstick comedy films that lasted through 1959) with Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard, was released by Columbia, the short Woman Haters (1934) (with all the dialogue in rhyme)
  • Walt Disney's 8-minute The Wise Little Hen (1934) featured the first appearance of Donald Duck
  • the longest Hollywood talkie released up to that time, MGM's The Great Ziegfeld (1936), at 2 hours, 59 minutes
  • MGM star Spencer Tracy won consecutive Best Actor Oscars in the late 30s for his appearances in Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938) - this wouldn't happen again until Tom Hanks won back-to-back Oscars in the 90s for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994)

Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Although Austrian-born director Josef von Sternberg's best works were in his silent films (Underworld (1927), The Last Command (1928), and The Docks of New York (1929)), he acheived greatest notoriety during the 30s. Exotic German actress Marlene Dietrich's stardom was launched by von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (Germany, 1930) with her role as the leggy Lola Lola, a sensual cabaret striptease dancer and the singing of Falling in Love Again. It was Germany's first all-talking picture.

Dietrich would soon go on to star in many other films - usually with characters that were variations on Lola - jaded femme fatales. Dietrich was 'discovered' and appeared in her first Hollywood feature film, Morocco (1930), again as a nightclub singer with co-star Gary Cooper as a French legionnaire. Dietrich was subsequently promoted by Paramount Studios as a 'continental' German rival to MGM's imported star Greta Garbo. A few years later, Dietrich collaborated further with von Sternberg in Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932) (with Dietrich as a demure wife who is transformed into a cabaret star), The Scarlet Empress (1934) (with Dietrich as Russia's Catherine the Great), and in The Devil is a Woman (1935) (as a money-hungry, seductive vamp). Dietrich and von Sternberg made a total of seven films together. By 1946, von Sternberg was the uncredited assistant to director King Vidor for Duel in the Sun (1946).

The Sound Era's Coming-of-Age:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Most of the early talkies were successful at the box-office, but many of them were of poor quality - dialogue-dominated play adaptations, with stilted acting (from inexperienced performers) and an unmoving camera or microphone. Screenwriters were required to place more emphasis on characters in their scripts, and title-card writers became unemployed. The first musicals were only literal transcriptions of Broadway shows taken to the screen. Nonetheless, a tremendous variety of films were produced with a wit, style, skill, and elegance that has never been equalled - before or since.

Rouben Mamoulian, a successful Broadway director, refused to keep the cumbersome sound cameras pinned to the studio floor, and demonstrated a graceful, rhythmic, fluid, choreographed flowing style in his films - first with his directorial debut 1929 film Applause (1929) (and later with Love Me Tonight (1932)), one of the first great American musicals starring legendary Roaring 20s torch singer Helen Morgan in her first film role. Applause also introduced a revolutionary sound technique: a double-channel soundtrack with overlapping dialogue.

Mastery of techniques for the sound era were also demonstrated in the works of director Ernst Lubitsch, who advanced the action of his films with the integrated musical numbers. The first filmic musical was Lubitsch's first talkie, the witty and bubbly The Love Parade (1929/30) with Jeanette MacDonald (in her debut film) and Maurice Chevalier (in his second picture) - the recipient of six Academy Awards nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor). After directing three more musical comedies in the next three years, including Best Picture-nominated One Hour with You (1931/32) with the same leads, Lubitsch filmed his last musical, The Merry Widow (1934) with equally naturalistic musical expressions and the winner of the Best Art Direction Academy Award.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Also, in the first filming of the Ben Hecht-MacArthur play, Lewis Milestone's The Front Page (1931), a mobile camera was combined with inventive, rapid-fire dialogue and quick-editing. Other 1931 films in the emerging 'newspaper' genre included Mervyn LeRoy's social issues film about the tabloid press entitled Five Star Final (1931) (with Edward G. Robinson and Boris Karloff in a rare, non-monster role), Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde (1931) (with Jean Harlow), and John Cromwell's Scandal Sheet (1931).

After 1932, the development of sound-mixing freed films from the limitations of recording on sets and locations. Scripts from writers were becoming more advanced with witty dialogue, realistic characters and plots. Hecht adapted Noel Coward's work for Lubitsch's Design for Living (1933), starring Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins, and Dudley Nichols adapted Maxwell Anderson's play for director John Ford's screen version Mary of Scotland (1936).

Two-Color and Three-Color (Full-Color) Technicolor Development:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
One of the first 'color' films was Thomas Edison's hand-tinted short Annabell's Butterfly Dance. Two-color (red and green) feature films were the first color films produced, including the first two-color feature film The Toll of the Sea, and then better-known films such as Stage Struck (1925) and The Black Pirate (1926). It would take the development of a new three-color camera, in 1932, to usher in true full-color Technicolor.

The first film (a short) in three-color Technicolor was Walt Disney's animated talkie Flowers and Trees (1932) in the Silly Symphony series. [However, others claim that the first-ever color cartoon was Ted Eschbaugh's bizarre Goofy Goat Antics (1931).] In the next year, Disney also released the colorful animation - The Three Little Pigs (1933). Its optimistic hit theme song: "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" (based upon the tune of Happy Birthday) became a Depression-era anthem. It was one of the earliest films displaying 'personality animation' - each of the three pigs had a distinctive personality.

In 1934, the first full-color, live-action short was released - La Cucaracha (1934).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Hollywood's first full-length feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935) - an adaptation of English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray's Napoleonic-era novel Vanity Fair. The first musical in full-color Technicolor was Dancing Pirate (1936). And the first outdoor drama filmed in full-color was The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936).

In the late 30s, two beloved films, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), were expensively produced with Technicolor - what would the Wizard of Oz (with ruby slippers and a yellow brick road) be without color? And the trend would continue into the next decade in classic MGM musicals such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Easter Parade (1948). Special-effects processes were advanced by the late 1930s, making it possible for many more films to be shot on sets rather than on-location (e.g., The Hurricane (1937) and Captains Courageous (1937).) In 1937, the Disney-produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the first feature-length animated film - a milestone. The colorful Grimm fairy tale was premiered by Walt Disney Studios - becoming fast known for pioneering sophisticated animation.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 5

The Domination of the Studio System:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The American film industry was dominated by five major corporate-style studios in the 1930s (and into the 40s). Some of them had originally rebelled against the MPPA (Motion Picture Patents Company) - see their development in the previous sections. The Hollywood studios with their escapist "dream factories" and their "Front Office" studio head, production chief, producers, and other assistants, were totally in control and at full strength. They exerted their influence over choice of films, budgets, the selection of personnel and scripts, actors, writers, and directors, editing, scoring, and publicity:

  • 20th Century Fox (formed in 1935 from the merger of Twentieth Century Pictures, founded by Joseph Schenk, and the Fox Film Corporation)
  • MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) (led by Louis B. Mayer)
  • Paramount
  • Warner Bros.
  • RKO Radio

Three other minor studios were close behind:

  • Columbia (headed by Harry Cohn from 1932)
  • Universal
  • United Artists

Republic Pictures (founded in 1935) and Monogram were relegated to B-picture status, and Disney was a specialized studio for animation. [The stylized logos of some of the studios have remained similar over many decades: Warners (shield), Universal (globe), and Fox (searchlights).]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Most of the late 20's and 30's studio chiefs relied on their production heads for story decisions: 'Boy Wonder' Irving Thalberg (first at Universal, then MGM), David O. Selznick (RKO, MGM), and Darryl Zanuck (Fox). Until his death in 1936, gentleman production executive/tycoon Irving Thalberg was responsible for high-powered, prestigious, Best Picture-winning films that served as star vehicles, e.g., Grand Hotel (1932), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and The Great Ziegfeld (1936). However, iron-fisted, stubborn Thalberg was known for clashes with extravagant silent film actor-director Erich von Stroheim over his films, such as Foolish Wives (1922) and Merry-Go-Round (1923).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The beginning of the decline of the major studio system in the late 30s was signaled by various aggressive producers who split off and became independent. For example, David Selznick resigned from MGM in 1935 and established his own independent company - Selznick International Pictures. As an independent producer, David O. Selznick served as a "one-man" film industry with tremendous authority and power over the selection of stars and decisions of directors. Their first film production, an adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), starred Freddie Bartholomew.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The top-grossing Gone With the Wind (1939) was the most expensive film of the decade at $4.25 million. It was also Selznick's biggest triumph (and after the film's success he spent the rest of his life attempting to repeat the feat), winning a record eight Academy Awards. He purchased film rights to the best-selling novel from first-time author Margaret Mitchell for $50,000 (an astronomical, unprecedented cost at the time), cast the stars for the film (gambling on Vivien Leigh as the fiery Scarlett O'Hara), conflicted with and bullied director George Cukor and finally dismissed him, and insisted on using the audacious words of Rhett Butler's farewell ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn") in defiance of the Hays Office - he was allegedly fined $5,000 for using the word "damn." Although he had originally intended to make the film his own independent production, the fact that highly-paid contract super-star Clark Gable was borrowed from MGM and the subsequent high price of the film forced Selznick to agree to let MGM release the film (and receive half the profits). The film was memorable in that Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award (as Best Supporting Actress).

MGM's Studio Dominance in the 30s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The 'star system' flourished with each studio having its own valuable 'properties', and Irving Thalberg was responsible for promoting MGM's stars like no other. The 30s was the age of lavish glamour and sex appeal, and MGM became the biggest, most predominant and most star-studded studio of all, making it "The Home of the Stars." It promised "more stars than there are in heaven," and brought Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy films to the screen. And the studio also had high quality productions due to its great craftsmen, including King Vidor, Victor Fleming, and George Cukor.

By 1934, MGM had over 60 big-name actors under contract. MGM had the largest 'stable' of stars of all the studios, including: Joan Crawford (originally a shopgirl named Lucille Le Sueur), Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, William Powell, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Robert Montgomery, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, the Barrymores, and Spencer Tracy.

One of its greatest early hits was the star-driven, profitable Best Film-winning Grand Hotel (1932), set in an opulent hotel in Berlin with extravagant art direction by Cedric Gibbons. The characters in the popular melodrama included the following highly-paid contract actors: Swedish star Greta Garbo as a ballet dancer, John Barrymore as a jewel thief, Joan Crawford as a young stenographer, Wallace Beery as a tyrannical, braggart businessman, and Lionel Barrymore as a terminally-ill bookkeeper. It also thrived with its Tarzan series of adventure/jungle films, Tom and Jerry cartoons, Gone With the Wind (1939), and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Other Major Studios:

20th Century Fox was known for its musicals (especially in the 40s with Betty Grable), and prestige biographies (such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)). Fox Studios also capitalized on its association with Shirley Temple after the mid-30s - singlehandedly, she made over $20 million for Fox in the late 30s.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
RKO was the locale for the first films of Orson Welles (Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)), the sophisticated dance films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, comedies, and its seminal monster film King Kong (1933).

Universal prospered with noted director Tod Browning, westerns, W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello comedies, the Flash Gordon serials, and its archetypal, low budget horror films such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Wolf Man (1941).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Columbia's best director was Frank Capra, known for his folksy, fairy-tale "Capra-corn" pictures. He directed many of this era's best populist and homespun tales with grass-roots heroes, that did surprisingly well once they were screen in small-town theatres. His romantic comedies made at the height of the Depression included the unprecedented hit It Happened One Night (1934) about a struggling hack reporter and a rich heroine thrown together, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), about a millionaire who attempted to give away his newly-acquired inheritance.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Paramount Studios on the other hand, with a more European, continental sophistication and flavor, boasted husky-throated Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, and director Ernst Lubitsch with his 'sophisticated' comedies: Trouble in Paradise (1932), Angel (1937), and Ninotchka (1939). They also featured comedies from Mae West, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby, musicals starring Maurice Chevalier, and films from Cecil B. DeMille.

Warner Bros. was male-dominated and fast-moving, and noted for gritty, cutting-edge, realistic films or biopics, war films, Westerns, and socially-conscious, documentary-style films. The studio also churned out Golddiggers musicals almost every year (beginning in 1929) in the decade, and in the 40s - Bugs Bunny and other cartoons. In the early 30s, Warners also inaugurated the crime-gangster film, with its Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932), and The Roaring Twenties (1939). The studio thrived with director Michael Curtiz, and famous "tough guy" stars including: James Cagney, Paul Muni, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson. Its female stars were equally forbidding, and included Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall, and Ida Lupino.

The Biggest 30s Stars:

Films were made with specific stars in mind who often played familiar character types, including the decade's biggest stars: Clark Gable, Paul Muni, Janet Gaynor, Eddie Cantor, Wallace Beery, Mae West, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Astaire and Rogers, Claudette Colbert, Dick Powell, W. C. Fields, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, James Cagney, Bing Crosby, Jeanette MacDonald, Barbara Stanwyck, Johnny Weismuller, Gary Cooper, Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, Myrna Loy, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Veronica Lake, and Katharine Hepburn. Many audiences enjoyed the juvenile company of Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney. There were also a number of British stars in the decade, including Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone (the Sherlock Holmes of the screen), Charles Laughton (an Oscar-winner in 1933 as King Henry VIII), C. Aubrey-Smith, and Leslie Howard.

The Greatest Directors of the Era:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Despite censorship and strict studio control, many of cinema's best films were produced in this decade. Under the studio system, certain directors achieved a distinctive style or genre pattern. MGM's directors (George Cukor, King Vidor, Jack Conway, Sidney Franklin, Fritz Lang, Clarence Brown, Sam Wood, and Victor Fleming) were the best filmmakers in the 1930s. Craftsman-director George Cukor directed Dinner at Eight (1933) with a galaxy of MGM stars including Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore and more. Also he directed W. C. Fields in David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) with an older Norma Shearer (Irving Thalberg's own wife) and Lesley Howard, and screen goddess Greta Garbo in one of her last great roles in the exquisite romance Camille (1936) - a magically-romantic melodrama opposite up-coming MGM star Robert Taylor. Cukor also directed Katharine Hepburn in three classics: Little Women (1934), Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Jack Conway directed Viva Villa! (1934) (co-directed with Howard Hawks), Tarzan and His Mate (1934), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Libeled Lady (1936), Saratoga (1937) (Harlow's last film), and Too Hot to Handle (1938). Before coming to Hollywood, German director Fritz Lang's first 'talkie' was the chilling M (1931), with Peter Lorre's film debut as a deviant serial killer (child murderer) who whistled Grieg's Peer Gynt while stalking his next victim. Sam Wood's best 30s films were Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) and two Marx Brothers films, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937). King Vidor directed The Champ (1932) and Stella Dallas (1937) - among others.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Frank Capra, for Columbia, collaborated with Robert Riskin, who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his marvelous script and its characters (played by Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) in the romantic comedy and on-the-road adventure It Happened One Night (1934). This was the first film to win all the top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director), and one of the first screwball comedies. Riskin went on to write other nominated screenplays for Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) (with Gary Cooper), Lost Horizon (1937) - a classic tale of a long-lost Shangri-La stumbled upon by a group of disparate travelers, and for Oscar-winning Best Picture You Can't Take It With You (1938) - a loveable film adaptation from the stage classic. Capra also directed James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), an inspiring film about a crusading Senator that garnered eleven Oscar nominations (and one win for Lewis R. Foster's Best Original Story).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Fox's long-reigning production chief from the 30s onward was Darryl F. Zanuck and its finest film director was John Ford, whose films in the 30s included The Lost Patrol (1934), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), the travelers-in-peril tale Stagecoach (1939) (marked by Ford's first filming in his favorite Monument Valley, and John Wayne's break-out role as the Ringo Kid), and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). The success of Max Steiner's composed musical score for Ford's The Informer (1935) encouraged the future development of musical soundtracks and accompaniment.

Producer Samuel Goldwyn's most fruitful collaboration was with director William Wyler. Examples of their "quality cinema" and stylish melodramas include: Dodsworth (1936), These Three (1936), Dead End (1937) (that introduced the Dead End Kids), and Wuthering Heights (1939) (and The Little Foxes (1941) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) in the next decade).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 6

Early Gangster Films at Warners:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Warner Bros. developed its own style by producing gritty narratives, social problem pictures and a succession of tough, realistic gangster movies in the sound (and Depression) era, reflecting the era's shaken confidence in authority and the country's social traditions. The major stars of Warners to emerge in the 30s were: Muni, Flynn, Edward G. Robinson, Cagney, Bogart, and Davis (with Warners from 1931-1949).

Always an early adopter, Warners launched the gangster genre with Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930) - a star-making role for Edward G. Robinson as snarling, fast-talking mobster Caesar Enrico Bandello who met his inevitable fate with the words, "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) starred a swaggering, cocky urban gangster portrayed by James Cagney (in his first film after a stint as a song-and-dance man in vaudeville) - in a film most-remembered for the scene in which the hoodlum abusively stuffed a grapefruit half into Mae Clarke's face, and the scene of Cagney's death at his mother's door.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Billionaire Howard Hughes' and United Artists' hard-hitting gangster film Scarface (1932), directed by Howard Hawks and produced outside the Hollywood system, was delayed for two years due to censorship, and was required to add the qualifying sub-title "The Shame of the Nation" to its main title. With a script from hard-hitting newspaperman Ben Hecht, it starred Paul Muni (who was better known for playing historical characters such as Emile Zola and Louis Pasteur) as a psychopathic Chicagoan crime boss (based upon Al Capone). The spectacular and controversially-violent film (with incest in a sub-plot) included a record number of killings - 28, and inventively used a visual "X" motif throughout to signal that a murder was imminent.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
After the previous three gangster films, the genre branched out to other uncompromising, "serious" social drama films, including Best Picture-nominated I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) that dealt with such subjects as chain gangs and prison reform (an expose specifically referring to Georgia's brutal treatment) and promoted social reform of a corrupt court system. William Wellman's social problem film Wild Boys of the Road (1933) told the story of two disillusioned teens forced to travel cross-country rails to find work during the height of the Depression. Michael Curtiz' hard-hitting melodrama Black Fury (1935) also starred Paul Muni as a coal miner caught in the middle of a labor dispute. In one of his first important screen roles, Humphrey Bogart re-created his stage role as gangster Duke Mantee in a starring film role opposite Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest (1936). James Cagney starred as a gangster who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, in Michael Curtiz' Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). At the end of the decade, Cagney was gunned down in the finale of The Roaring Twenties (1939) in another gangster role.

Universal's Horror Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Escapist entertainment emerged at Universal, one of the minor film studios during the "Golden Age of Hollywood." Universal produced a Best Picture winner in the second Academy Awards ceremony - a serious anti-war polemic, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) - the controversial, landmark film was denounced and banned in numerous European countries. It was a remarkable film that used 'advanced' sound dubbing techniques - incorporating sound effects, dialogue, and music on one soundtrack.

The studio had its greatest success with its cycle of classic horror films. Actually, the horror film releases were the first modern horror movies (a resurrected genre), beginning with Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) (expressionistically filmed by Karl Freund). The film starred Bela Lugosi in a star-making role as the vampire Count Dracula, a creation of Irish writer Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula. [Dracula would become the most frequently-portrayed character in horror films.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Universal's next feature was James Whale's gothic Frankenstein (1931) with an unbilled Boris Karloff as the MONSTER, and then Karloff also starred as the unforgettable Egyptian corpse in German Karl Freund's directorial debut film The Mummy (1932).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
To capitalize on Universal's success with their horror films in 1931, Browning's next film was MGM's shocking, bizarre and unsettling Freaks (1932) - deliberately casting real-life pinheads (microcephalics), circus freaks and mis-shapen dwarves to sensationalize its content. Two of its taglines proclaimed: "Do the Siamese Twins make love?" and "Can a full-grown woman truly love a midget?" In the vengeful, unforgettable ending of the grotesque film, the cruel Cleopatra is mutilated and changed into a legless, chicken-like creature as revenge. MGM was so horrified by the film's premise that it sold off the film to exploitative, second-rate distributors who toured it and renamed it Nature's Mistakes. To the studio's dismay, the film was both a financial disaster and a critical failure.

The first of eight films to co-star Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff was the surrealistic The Black Cat (1934). James Whale was coerced into making more horror films for Universal, including The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and then in 1935, the now-talking MONSTER was presented with a Bride Monster (but she screeched her rejection of a Mate) in director Whale's superior horror-comedy sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Clark Gable - Example of a Mega-Star:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
MGM stars Clark Gable and Joan Crawford (who were paired in eight films - the first of which appeared in 1930) were crowned the "King and Queen" of Hollywood (Tinseltown) in 1937 at the El Capitan Theater, after a popularity poll. (Leading lady Myrna Loy was also crowned with Gable). After a few small roles in silents, Clark Gable, the future King of Hollywood, was first noticed by the public in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931) with co-star Greta Garbo, then in a hot romantic pairing opposite Joan Crawford in Possessed (1931), and next co-starring with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in the sensationally steamy drama Red Dust (1932). Famed gangster John Dillinger was gunned down outside Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934 after viewing Gable in the crime drama Manhattan Melodrama (1934). The Hollywood community (and world) were stunned when in June of 1937, sexy actress Jean Harlow passed away from a serious bladder infection, in the midst of filming Saratoga (1937) for MGM with Gable.

Tragically, Gable appeared in only one film - No Man of Her Own (1932) - with his own wife Carole Lombard (she died in an airplane crash in early 1942). Among the films that increased Clark Gable's popular pre-eminence in films was director Frank Capra's hit It Happened One Night (1934) (in which his removal of a shirt revealed his bare chest and the absence of an undershirt - setting the US underwear industry into a tailspin). In a strange twist of fate, Gable had been loaned out to Columbia to make It Happened One Night (1934) and ended up winning his first (and only) Best Actor award with the rival studio.

Other films that propelled Gable further into stardom, upon his return to MGM, were Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Call of the Wild (1935), one of MGM's most successful films and one of the earliest 'disaster' films - San Francisco (1936) (known for its spectacular 20-minute earthquake sequence), Test Pilot (1938), and of course, Gone with the Wind (1939) with Gable's most famous leading role as roguish Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's best-selling story.

The Effects of the Depression on the Film Industry:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The Great Depression hit hard. Nearly all of the Hollywood studios (except MGM) suffered financially during the early 30s, and studios had to reorganize, request government assistance, cut budgets and employees, and close theatres when profits plummeted. Attendance at theatres was drastically affected, although during even the darkest days of the Depression, movie attendance was still between 60-75 million per week. Special incentives and giveaways (such as 2-for-1 features, dish nights, and other contests and attractions) helped to maintain a patronizing audience. The balancing act for film-making was to both reflect the realism and cynicism of the Depression period, while also providing escapist entertainment to boost the morale of the public by optimistically reaffirming values such as thrift and perseverance (without offending the censors).

During most of the Depression Era, Hollywood responded with expensive, mass-produced entertainment or escapist entertainment. The best example of an all-star production heavily bankrolled by the studios was MGM's Best Picture-winning Grand Hotel (1932), with "Garbo" (speaking her oft-quoted line: "I want to be alone"), John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore. The film set a pattern for future films, telling stories about the lives and destinies of several individuals - including a vivacious office stenographer, a brusk unethical businessman, a ballerina dancer, a gentleman jewel-thief, and a lowly terminally-ill bookkeeper - that were woven together into a whole.

The Decline - and Resurgence of Musicals: The Emergence of Busby Berkeley

By 1932, Hollywood studios had glutted the public's tired appetite and their overexposed song-and-dance epics (often sacrificing plot and character development) went into a commercial decline, coinciding with the height of the Great Depression. Audiences bypassed many of the musical films that were being cranked out, and preferred to watch other genre creations, such as the early gangster films: Public Enemy (1931) and Little Caesar (1930), the comedy film Min and Bill (1930), or the Best Picture-winning western film Cimarron (1931). The novelty of sound had worn off and the popularity of musicals suffered.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Fortunately, musicals produced at Warner Bros. reached their full flowering by capturing the unique, innovative surrealistic choreography of Busby Berkeley, who arranged dancers and chorus girls in geometric, kaleidoscopic displays. Two of master choreographer Busby Berkeley's earliest films (and the most popular of star Eddie Cantor's six films for Samuel Goldwyn) were Whoopee (1930) and UA's The Kid From Spain (1932). Berkeley's last choreographic work before leaving for Warner Bros. was Roman Scandals (1933) - notorious for totally-nude, long-haired slave girls (portrayed by the Goldwyn Girls).

The first of Berkeley's choreographed-directed musicals for Warner Bros. was Lloyd Bacon's backstage show 42nd Street (1933). The successful musical inspired the Gold Diggers series of films with more of Berkeley's trademark choreographing: Mervyn LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) (that included "We're in the Money" with coin-clad chorus girls, "The Shadow Waltz" with swirling chorines playing neon violins, and the moving, anti-Depression number "Remember My Forgotten Man"), Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) (famous for Berkeley's "Lullaby of Broadway"), and In Caliente (1935).

The first of three film versions of A Star is Born (1937) was the non-musical one in the late 30s - it starred Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the poignant, weeper/melodrama. [The best of all three versions was the musical re-make A Star is Born (1954) starring Judy Garland and James Mason.]

The romantic pairing of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the first of their eight films together began in 1935 with their performances in Naughty Marietta (1935).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 7

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: The Dance Duo

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's first teaming was in RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933), famous for its image of a plane wing holding dancing girls. From then on, their films combined light sophistication, misunderstandings and mistaken identity, stylish backdrops, witty wisecracks, and - of course, incomparable, expressive dance numbers. They danced the 17 minute 'The Continental' in RKO's The Gay Divorcee (1934). [The film might have been called The Gay Divorce, but the Hays Production Code disapproved with the argument that divorces couldn't be 'gay'.]

The best dance/musicals of RKO's famed dance team for RKO in the 1930s (of their 9 films for RKO) included:

  • Top Hat (1935) (featuring the music of Irving Berlin)
  • George Stevens' Swing Time (1936) (featuring the music of Jerome Kern, "Never Gonna Dance," "The Way You Look Tonight," "A Fine Romance," "Pick Yourself Up," and Astaire's only film/dance number performed in blackface as a tribute to black dancer Bill Robinson: "Bojangles of Harlem")
  • Follow the Fleet (1936), with their serious dance number, "Let's Face the Music and Dance"
  • Shall We Dance? (1937) (featuring the music of George Gershwin)

Astaire and Rogers collaborated together in ten films during their immortal dance era.

Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Young Katharine Hepburn appeared in her Hollywood film debut, co-starring with John Barrymore in a serious drama entitled A Bill of Divorcement (1932). In the mid 1930s, Hepburn starred in Alice Adams (1935), famous for its painful-to-watch dinner scene. Later in the decade, she would star with Ginger Rogers in Stage Door (1937), a backstage look at prospective New York theatrical actresses living together in a boarding house.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Bette Davis emerged as a star at Warner Bros. only after being loaned out to RKO and starring as a sluttish, wicked Cockney waitress in the studio's Of Human Bondage (1934). Snubbed for an Academy Award for her performance, she was given a consolation Oscar for Best Actress in Warners' Dangerous (1935), a lesser role.

In 1938, Bette Davis again demonstrated her star status with her portrayal of a selfish Southern belle in William Wyler's Jezebel (1938), a role she was given (again as consolation) after failing to win the coveted role of Scarlett O'Hara in the following year's epic, Gone With The Wind. For Davis' performance, she won her second Best Actress Award. In the following year, she starred in two of her best-known roles: in Dark Victory (1939), and The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex (1939). One of the most famous weepers of all time, King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937) starred Barbara Stanwyck as the sacrificial-mother figure.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Charlie Chaplin:

Comedian-director Charlie Chaplin survived the arrival of sound by deliberately remaining silent in his two comedy films in the 30s. [He did not perform in a film with a speaking role until the 1940s.] One of his finest films as The Tramp, City Lights (1931) featured a soundtrack and sound effects, but its dialogue was provided by title cards. Chaplin, again as the pantomiming Little Tramp with co-star Paulette Goddard, satirized the dehumanizing industrial society in his still-silent production of Modern Times (1936) - considered the last great silent film. It had synchronized sounds (various noises) and included a nonsense song that Chaplin actually sang with gibberish. The masterful film symbolized how technology, mass production, and machinery could literally suck victims into its gears. Other silent film comedians, such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd did not survive into the 30s.

Other 30s Comedians:

Mae West

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The 30s also saw the bawdy suggestiveness of the innuendo-rich dialogue and body language of busty actress/comedienne Mae West, who was brought westward from Broadway by Paramount and made her first major appearance in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and then in I'm No Angel (1933), both with co-star Cary Grant. Her performances, displaying a classic combination of sex, verbal lust, comedy, and suggestiveness, spurred the movement for greater movie censorship by the mid 1930s through the Hays Office. Her suggestive double-entendres, such as in these classic lines: "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better," and "Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men," offended the conservative Production Code.

W. C. Fields

Silent film star and vaudeville comedian W. C. Fields often portrayed an iconoclastic, hen-pecked, put-upon, middle-aged husband, who would imbibe to escape from his troubles. His opponents includes wives, girlfriends, children, bankers, and various minority groups. He starred in two of his greatest films in this decade, both low-budget films:

The Marx Brothers

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The mad-cap, anarchic comedians, the Marx Brothers dominated the 1930s. Their first films were made by Paramount Studios (first on the East Coast and then in Hollywood) - the Marxs' second film comedy in the sound era was Animal Crackers (1930). They also starred in Norman McLeod's Horse Feathers (1932), a take-off on college education and football. Their last film for Paramount was Leo McCarey's critically-acclaimed, surrealistic, anti-establishment, anti-war classic Duck Soup (1933) - a flop in the year of its release. Their biggest hit, their first film for MGM, was Sam Wood's classical music/comedy A Night at the Opera (1935), teaming them with the legendary Margaret Dumont. At the peak of their success, the Marx Bros. repeated their comedic formula in Sam Wood's A Day At The Races (1937), an enjoyable film - but the last of their great comedies.

Laurel and Hardy

The popular comedic pair Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy first appeared together in the two-reel comedy short A Lucky Dog (1922), filmed in 1917, although they were not the typical Laurel and Hardy pair - yet. Under contract to Hal Roach, they made their feature film debut as prisoners in the 56 minute comedy Pardon Us (1931). They also starred in the Oscar-winning short subject The Music Box (1932). Their best film is often considered to be Sons of the Desert (1933) in which they starred as loyal lodge members and hen-pecked husbands who fail to deceive their wives. Among their many films, they also portrayed two sets of twins in the comedy of errors Our Relations (1936), and starred in a delightful slapstick western Way Out West (1937).

The Popular Thin Man Series:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first of six popular comedy/mysteries from 1934 to 1947 in The Thin Man series, based on the Dashiell Hammett novels, opened in 1934 - The Thin Man (1934). It starred the married, sophisticated detective duo William Powell and Myrna Loy (as Nick and Nora Charles, a happy and fun-loving couple), famous for their witty quips, clever bantering, wisecracks, sophisticated humor, and romance. [The two were first paired in director W.S. Van Dyke's previous Manhattan Melodrama (1934), and he convinced MGM to put them together again. Ultimately, Powell and Loy appeared in 14 feature films together (from 1934 to 1947), one of Hollywood's most prolific on-screen pairings.] Their six-film Thin Man series included the following (the first four films were directed by W.S. Van Dyke):

  • The Thin Man (1934), d. W.S. Van Dyke - with four Academy Award nominations (no wins)
  • After the Thin Man (1936), d. W.S. Van Dyke - a Best Picture nominee (the first sequel nominated for Best Picture)
  • Another Thin Man (1939), d. W.S. Van Dyke
  • Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), d. W.S. Van Dyke
  • The Thin Man Goes Home (1945), d. Richard Thorpe
  • The Song of the Thin Man (1947), d. Edward Buzzel

The Sherlock Holmes Series: Beginning Late in the Decade

Fox Studios was responsible for launching the classic Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes mystery series, popularized in the 1940s by Universal Studios with almost a dozen further installments. The first of fourteen appearances, pairing Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, was in Fox's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and soon after in Fox's follow-up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).

Screwball Comedy: (See the comedy film genre)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Sophisticated comedy also reached its peak during the 1930s, due in part to the burgeoning restrictions of the Hays Production Code. The battle of the sexes could be humorous, teasing, imaginative, and affectionate without depictions of passionate sex, kissing, and couples in bed together. In fact, some of the cleverest lines of dialogue (with verbal wit and camouflaged double-entendre) could be found in screwball comedies.

The best screwball comedies (madcap farces), with their typical frenetic pace, physical slapstick humor, and quick one-liners, included four films from Howard Hawks:

  • Twentieth Century (1934), adapted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur from their Broadway play hit, with stars John Barrymore and Carole Lombard
  • the very funny battle-of-the-sexes Bringing Up Baby (1938)
  • His Girl Friday (1940), with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, another comedic remake of The Front Page (1931)
  • I Was a Male War Bride (1949), with Cary Grant in hapless pursuit of an Army Lieutenant (Ann Sheridan)

The best performers in the screwball comedy genre were: Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, and Cary Grant.

Other examples of great screwball films include Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living (1933), Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936), Richard Boleslawski's Theodora Goes Wild (1936) (Irene Dunne's first starring comedy), William Wellman's Nothing Sacred (1937), Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937) with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, and George Cukor's Holiday (1938).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 8

Young Stars:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In 1933, Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year-old Shirley Temple. Much to their financial delight, the studio provided audiences with their pint-sized star radiating optimism and singing and dancing in hits like Stand Up and Cheer (1934), Bright Eyes (1934), Heidi (1937), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and The Little Princess (1939). From 1935 to 1938, Shirley was the number one box-office attraction in the world, out-doing even Gable, Tracy, Robert Taylor, Myrna Loy, Will Rogers, and the dancing team of Astaire/Rogers. She was overtaken in 1939 by another young star, MGM's rascally Mickey Rooney (see more below).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Universal's young teen singer-star 15 year old Deanna Durbin made her feature film debut in the musical comedy Three Smart Girls (1936) that gathered up three Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and helped save the studio from bankruptcy. The studio followed with the family 'comedy of errors' sequel - Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), and a second sequel a few years later, Hers to Hold (1943).

Young star Mickey Rooney appeared only in the supporting cast as a character in the first film featuring the 'Hardy Family' of Carvel (a small, idealized American town) - A Family Affair (1937). The Hardy Family household was led by Judge Hardy played by Lionel Barrymore. After two more films, You're Only Young Once (1937) and Judge Hardy's Children (1937), Rooney's character was spring-boarded to leading man status in the first of the long-running Andy Hardy film series for MGM, beginning with Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). It was the first of the Hardy films to have Andy's name in the title, and it was the fourth of sixteen films stretching over more than two decades (until 1958) that now starred Mickey Rooney (as a well-to-do teen who would often get into trouble). As the major star of the series, Rooney had various young teenage co-stars including Lana Turner and Judy Garland.

The same year, Rooney (as a reformed juvenile delinquent) co-starred with Spencer Tracy (as a kindly priest) in the classic MGM drama, Boys' Town (1938). In 1938, Rooney won one of two Oscars given that year to young stars, the other going to Deanna Durbin.

The Dead End Kids:

In contrast to the cheerful and effervescent antics of well-to-do teen Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) and co-star Judy Garland, the street punks (or juvenile delinquents) named the Dead End Kids (Gabriel Dell, Leo Gorcey, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley) were from the other side of the tracks - in NYC's urban tenements and waterfront slums, although they were actually professional actors. The scampish teens were known for their unruly wisecracking, and their toughness (with a soft heart). After their introduction in Dead End (1937), they also appeared in six full-length features for Warner Bros. from 1938-1939:

  • William Wyler's and Goldwyn's Dead End (1937) - their first film, with Humphrey Bogart (who appeared in three of the Kids' films through 1938); Sidney Kingsley's caustic drama about young hoodlums was translated from the Broadway stage to the screen (with a screenplay by Lillian Hellman), with the stage cast of "Dead End" kids reprising their roles; nominated for four Academy Awards
  • Warner Bros.' Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)- with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien as two slum boys who grew up and took very different directions in their lives
  • Crime School (1938) - with the kids in a reform school run by a mean and sadistic superintendent
  • The Angels Wash Their Faces (1939), with Ronald Reagan as a crusading DA
  • They Made Me a Criminal (1939) - well-known choreographer/director Busby Berkeley's second film for MGM
  • Hell's Kitchen (1939)
  • On Dress Parade (1939) - the final entry in the long-running series

The Kids also made numerous movies for other studios, evolving into Monogram Pictures' The East Side Kids (in 21 pictures), Universal's Little Tough Guys (in 12 movies), and of course, their most famous role as The Bowery Boys (in 48 films).

Adventure Films, Epics, and Westerns:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
1920s Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller portrayed a vine-swinging, jungle-calling ape man called Tarzan (the 10th incarnation) in the first of his twelve films as "Lord of the Jungle" in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), which was then quickly followed with Tarzan and His Mate (1934). [In the first six of these films, his co-star was the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan.]

Adventure films stirred audiences like Best Picture Award winner Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (the first (and best) of three film versions), a commercially-successful film shot on location, brought a merciless Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton) into conflict with Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), producing the popular catch-phrase: 'Mr. Christian - Come here!' The most expensive serial to date, Universal's Flash Gordon (1936), starring Buster Crabbe, premiered its first chapter in 1936.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
One film had everything, and was perhaps cinema's most original creation - RKO's spectacular, campy adventure/fantasy film by producer-directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest G. Schoedsack King Kong (1933), a phenomenal film that raised the bar for special effects for many decades - due to the genius of special effects man Willis H. O'Brien. It utilized stop-motion animation and one of the earliest uses of back-projection, and it was accompanied by Max Steiner's emphatic score.

The film, the first to be heavily promoted on the radio, starred Fay Wray as the love interest - an attractive object of the giant ape's desire, held in his clutching hands just before he met his spectacular death in a last stand on top of New York's Empire State Building. The classic, futuristic sci-fi film from British producer Alexander Korda's London Films - Things to Come (1936), envisioned the future from the perspective of the 1930s.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
One of the greatest swashbucklers of all-time came in the late 1930s Technicolor adventure film - Warner Bros.' The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland playing Robin Hood and Maid Marian respectively - it was the costliest film ever made by the studio up to that time. Flynn was also featured in many classic costumed adventure films in the decade, including his star-making role in Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1938), and The Sea Hawk (1940).

The western film genre was honored when the panoramic pioneering film Cimarron (1931) won the Best Picture Academy Award - the first and only Oscar RKO Studios ever received. By the late 1930s, Gene Autry became the cinema's most popular cowboy, after appearing and starring in his first B-western feature film, Republic Pictures' Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Claudette Colbert starred as the famed Egyptian queen in Cecil B. DeMille's opulent production of Cleopatra (1934). Norwegian Olympic skating star Sonja Henie had her film debut in Fox's musical One in a Million (1936). After her discovery at the age of 15 at Schwab's Drugstore in Hollywood and her recommendation to director Mervyn LeRoy, young teenaged Lana Turner launched her career with her memorable "tight sweater" debut - a 75-foot tracking shot in Warners' They Won't Forget (1937). Ronald Reagan first appeared in a feature film in 1937, in Warner Bros.' Love Is On the Air (1937). Hedy Lamarr made her American film debut in the late 1930s, co-starring with Charles Boyer in Algiers (1938), following her scandalous nude appearance in the Czech film Ecstasy (1933).

The Hays Production Code: The Hays Office

Backed by the Catholic church and their Catholic Legion of Decency (founded in 1934 by a council of Catholic American Bishops), and the Wall Street financiers who supported the studios, former Postmaster General Will Hays headed up Hollywood's self-regulatory Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) that was founded in 1922. It created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) in 1927 (under the command of stringent Catholic Joseph Breen), issued a definitive Motion Picture Production Code in March, 1930, and created the Production Code Administration (PCA) (also headed by Breen) in 1934. The "Pre-Code" years refers to the five years before the Code took effect, between 1930 and mid 1934. When the code became official, Hollywood would operate under the constraint of a rigid set of mandates.

Regulations of the code included censorship of language, references to sex, violence, and morality. The conservative and repressive code required, among other things, no promiscuity, no venereal disease, no excessive violence or brutality, twin beds for married couples, no ridicule of ministers of religion, the prohibition of various words ("sex", "hell", and "damn"), and no clear depictions of rape, seduction, adultery or passionate, illicit sex. There was to be no "excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures." Sinful activity (such as criminality or sex outside marriage) could often exist in a film IF it was punished or if it ended in misery.

All films would be submitted for a "seal of approval" - and if a film was unacceptable and denied a seal, it was not to be exhibited in theaters, and the studio would be fined $25,000. Many films were either suppressed, or severely mutilated or censored to fit the seal's requirements, but until 1934, restrictions on content were mostly evaded and ignored. In the early days of the Depression in the early 1930s, the desperate Hollywood studios used the open sexuality of platinum blonde Jean Harlow and the outrageous bawdiness of Mae West to increase their profits. The Hays Office and church leaders would soon interpret their screen behaviors as obscene and lacking in morals.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The steamy Red Dust (1932) caused controversy for its heated-up love triangle between adulterous Mary Astor, Clark Gable, and prostitute Jean Harlow (and for her nude bathing scene in a rain-barrel). Beginning in mid-year 1934 (until challenges in the mid-1950s and the abolition of the code in 1968), films felt the cold effects of strict enforcement, vigilance and censorship of the (Hays) Production Code of the MPPDA.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Film studios submitted their films for review before release in order to be awarded an MPPDA seal of approval - if they met strict standards of decency. Without a seal, films were threatened with negative publicity and potential box-office failure. The era of separate beds and squeaky-clean morality was just beginning with the enforcement of the Code after mid-1934, and would remain for over 30 years.

The Code Challenges Gangster Films:

Especially after Warners' early cycle of gritty crime and gangster films, including Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932), this distinctive genre of films was required to be cleaned up, to display social consciousness, to combat the depiction of the criminal as a folk hero, and to include platitudes that crime-does-not-pay. They were also supposed to show no details of how crimes were committed, and criminals were not allowed to be seen killing lawmen (including bank guards or detectives). The "classical" gangster film was forced to evolve into other genre variations including: "gangster-as-cop" films (typified by G-Men (1935)), and "Cain-and-Abel" sagas (such as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) in which swaggering gangster Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney), who was the 'bad guy' product of his environment, was executed in the final chilling scene for his crimes).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

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Directors from Foreign Shores:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
From the mid-30s onward, non-English language films were beginning to be shown in greater numbers in the United States, including the divergent works of Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, and Francois Truffaut; Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean; Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini and Vittorio DeSica; Ingmar Bergman; Sergei Eisenstein; and Akira Kurosawa. Little-known British director Alfred Hitchcock, who had already directed over a dozen films before 1935, became more widely-known in the US with the release of his stylish, spy-chase thrillers in the middle and end of the decade: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), the superb thriller with an innocent man on the run manacled to a trademark cool blonde in The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). In 1938, Hitchcock signed to make his first US film with producer David O. Selznick - Rebecca (1940).

The first major non-American Oscar recognition was for Hungarian-born director-producer Alexander Korda's British-made costume drama entitled The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) - the ground-breaking biopic film received a Best Picture nomination and won the Best Actor award (for Charles Laughton). Consequently, the success helped to resurrect England's film industry and led to other Korda classics with his newly established London Films (an offshoot of UA Studios): The Four Feathers (1939), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), and The Jungle Book (1942), but the director was unable to garner any further Best Picture Oscars.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
German director Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film (after exiling himself from his homeland due to Nazi persecution), MGM's thought-provoking, socially-aware Fury (1936) treated the psychology of a lynch mob and its impact on an innocent victim (Spencer Tracy). And French director Jean Renoir's classic WWI POW drama Grand Illusion (1937) idealistically expressed the 'grand illusion' and hypocrisy of men at war.

Following the British success of the historical-biographical film The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), other studios (both in the UK and in Hollywood) followed suit with similar biopic films - treatments of historical characters in the mid to late 30s:

  • Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1933)
  • John Adolfi's Voltaire (1933)
  • Paul Czinner's Catherine the Great (1934)
  • Alexander Korda's Rembrandt (1936)
  • Michael Curtiz' costume drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

William Dieterle's Best Picture-winning The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Best Actor-winning The Story of Louis Pasteur (1937), with Paul Muni's memorable performances in both character studies, initiated a series of engrossing screen biographies of famous scientists, doctors, and inventors into the late 30s and 40s.

Literary Works Made into Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Stars appeared in any number of expensively-made films that brought classic novels and literary works to life:

  • William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1932) with Myrna Loy
  • Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1934) from director Victor Fleming with Wallace Beery as Long John Silver
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) with Basil Rathbone as the detective and Nigel Bruce as his assistant Dr. Watson
  • Henry Hathaway's Peter Ibbetson (1935) based on George du Maurier fantasy-romance novel
  • MGM's The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) about the romance between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
  • Tom Brown's School Days (1940) based on Thomas Hughes' classic novel about life in a Victorian boys school
  • Shakespeare films (the famed Max Reinhardt version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), and MGM producer Irving Thalberg's and director George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet (1936) with aging Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer as the two star-crossed lovers)
  • MGM's Best Actress-winning The Good Earth (1937) based on Pearl Buck's story
  • The last of Thalberg's productions, two Dickens classics (Cukor's marvelous adaptation of David Copperfield (1935) and producer David O. Selznick's A Tale of Two Cities (1936))
  • Producer Samuel Goldwyn's Wuthering Heights (1939) and Selznick's Gone with the Wind (1939) (see below)
  • Four Rudyard Kipling-inspired stories (Wee Willie Winkie (1937) with Shirley Temple, Captains Courageous, George Stevens' action-adventure classic Gunga Din (1939) inspired by Rudyard Kipling, and director William Wellman's The Light That Failed (1939))

The Greatest Year for Films Ever: 1939

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The most distinguished, pinnacle year in the movies has to be 1939, with many of the greatest, most diverse and superlative movies ever produced in one year. There were ten films nominated for Best Picture that year (not five) for Academy Awards, and four of them were independent productions - (1) Hal Roach's Of Mice and Men (1939), (2) Walter Wanger's Stagecoach (1939) - director John Ford's only Western during the 1930s - a frontier classic that revitalized the A-budget Western, emphasized characterizations, and catapulted the career of John Wayne out of routine, small-scale roles, (3) Sam Goldwyn's and William Wyler's tale of ill-fated lovers in Wuthering Heights (1939) [the Yorkshire moors were realistically re-created on land 50 miles from Hollywood], and the eventual winner (4) David O. Selznick's and MGM's Gone With the Wind (1939) with Victor Fleming credited as director among others. The Best Picture winner sold more tickets than any other picture - and Hattie McDaniel's Best Supporting Actress Oscar win (for her role as Mammy) made her the first African-American Oscar winner. It was also the first color film to win the 'Best Picture' award.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The other six nominated films in 1939 were MGM's big-budget The Wizard of Oz (1939) (credited as directed by Victor Fleming) with emerging star Judy Garland in the colorful magical Munchkinland and land of Oz, MGM's Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson, Columbia's and Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), MGM's Ninotchka (1939) - Garbo's first starring comedy in which she "laughs," WB's Dark Victory (1939), and RKO's Love Affair (1939). Two other lesser-known Westerns, besides Ford's, also contributed to the rebirth of the Western in the 30s: Dodge City (1939), an Errol Flynn Western-style swashbuckler, and Cecil B. DeMille's epic, Union Pacific (1939).

1939 boasted other great classic films of enduring quality: The Roaring Twenties (1939), Destry Rides Again (1939) - Marlene Dietrich's come-back film, Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Beau Geste (1939), the all-female The Women (1939), a re-make of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) with Charles Laughton, and The Old Maid (1939) with Bette Davis.

As a footnote to the decade, three of the best directors in the decade of the 1970s were born in the year 1939: Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, and Peter Bogdanovich.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1930s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

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Hollywood During the War Years:

The early years of the 40s decade were not promising for the American film industry, especially following the late 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, and the resultant loss of foreign markets. However, Hollywood film production rebounded and reached its profitable peak of efficiency during the years 1943 to 1946 - a full decade and more after the rise of sound film production, now that the technical challenges of the early 30s sound era were far behind. Advances in film technology (sound recording, lighting, special effects, cinematography and use of color) meant that films were more watchable and 'modern'. Following the end of the war, Hollywood's most profitable year in the decade was 1946, with all-time highs recorded for theatre attendance.

The world was headed toward rearmament and warfare in the early to mid-1940s, and the movie industry, like every other aspect of life, responded to the national war effort by making movies, producing many war-time favorites, and having stars (and film industry employees) enlist or report for duty. The US government's Office of War Information (OWI), formed in 1942, served as an important propaganda agency during World War II, and coordinated its efforts with the film industry to record and photograph the nation's war-time activities. Tinseltown aided in the defensive mobilization, whether as combatants, propagandists, documentary, newsreel or short film-makers, educators, fund-raisers for relief funds or war bonds, entertainers, or morale-boosters. Films took on a more realistic rather than escapist tone, as they had done during the Depression years of the 30s.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Hollywood Canteen (1944), the West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen (1943), was typical of star-studded, plotless, patriotic extravaganzas, one of several during the war years which featured big stars who entertained the troops. [Originally, the Hollywood Canteen was a nightclub for off-duty servicemen, founded in 1942 by movie stars Bette Davis, John Garfield, and others. It provided free meals and entertainment, and was located at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard, off Sunset Boulevard.] Big name stars and directors either enlisted, performed before soldiers at military bases, or in other ways contributed to the war mobilization. Many of the leading stars and directors in motion pictures joined the service or were called to duty - Clark Gable, James Stewart, William Wyler, and Frank Capra to name a few, and male actors were definitely in short supply. Rationing, blackouts, shortages and other wartime restrictions also had their effects on US film-makers, who were forced to cut back on set construction and on-location shoots.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
A new breed of stars that arose during the war years included Van Johnson, Alan Ladd, and gorgeous GI pin-up queens Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. (Betty Grable had signed with 20th Century Fox in 1940 and would soon became a major star of their musicals in the 1940s.) Some of Hollywood's best directors, John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston and William Wyler, made Signal Corps documentaries or training films to aid the war effort, such as Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942-1945) documentary series (the first film in the series, Prelude to War was released in 1943), Ford's December 7th: The Movie (1991) (finally released after being banned by the US government for 50 years) and the first popular documentary of the war titled The Battle of Midway (1942), Huston's documentaries Report From the Aleutians (1943) and The Battle of San Pietro (1945), and Wyler's sobering Air Force documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944).

The Quintessential 40s Film: Casablanca

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The most subtle of all wartime propaganda films was the romantic story of self-sacrifice and heroicism in Michael Curtiz' archetypal 40s studio film Casablanca (1942). It told about a disillusioned nightclub owner (Humphrey Bogart) and a former lover (Ingrid Bergman) separated by WWII in Paris. With a limited release in late 1942 (and wider release in 1943), the resonant film was a timeless, beloved black and white work originally based on an unproduced play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's. The quintessential 40s film is best remembered its superior script, for piano-player Dooley Wilson's singing of As Time Goes By, and memorable lines of dialogue such as: "Round up the usual suspects" and Bogart's "Here's looking at you, kid." Its success (it was awarded Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay) made Humphrey Bogart a major star, although his character reflected American neutrality with the famous line: "I stick my neck out for nobody."

War-Related Films Abound:

The 40s also offered escapist entertainment, reassurance, and patriotic themes, such as William Wyler's war-time film Mrs. Miniver (1942), starring Walter Pidgeon and Oscar-winning courageous heroine Greer Garson as husband and wife. It was a moving tribute and account of courageous war-besieged Britishers reliving the trauma of Dunkirk and coping with the war's dangers in a village. Alfred Hitchcock, who had recently migrated to the US, directed Foreign Correspondent (1940), ending it with a plea to the US to recognize the Nazi menace in Europe and end its isolationist stance.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
A variety of war-time films, with a wide range of subjects and tones, presented both the flag-waving heroics and action of the war as well as the realistic, every-day boredom and brutal misery of the experience: Dive Bomber (1941), A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941), Wake Island (1942), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Bataan (1943), Winged Victory (1944), and Objective, Burma! (1945). Warner Bros.' Sergeant York (1941), directed by Howard Hawks, was typical of Hollywood offerings about the military - the story of a pacifist backwoods farmboy (Best Actor-winning Gary Cooper) who became the greatest US hero of World War I by single-handedly killing 25 and capturing 132 of the enemy. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) (featuring a US bomber named Ruptured Duck) starred Spencer Tracy as Lieut. Col. James Doolittle who carried out the first US bombing raid on Japan.

William Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) - immortalized WWII Pulitzer Prize-winning combat correspondent Ernie Pyle (Burgess Meredith) and his experiences with the men of Company C of the 18th Infantry and their role in the invasion of Italy, John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945) with star John Wayne in a story about the Pacific Ocean's PT boats, Delmer Daves' Destination Tokyo (1943), Zoltan Korda's exciting epic Sahara (1943) (with Humphrey Bogart as heroic desert tank driver Sgt. Gunn), and Lewis Milestone's intense, unglamorous war films of struggle, resistance, and occupation: Edge of Darkness (1943), The North Star (1943), The Purple Heart (1944) and the excellent A Walk in the Sun (1945).

British director Michael Powell and Oscar-winning scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger joined forces for the war drama 49th Parallel (1941), the war adventure One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1941), and the superb character study classic The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). The Royal Navy (and Lord Mountbatten) was paid tribute in writer/co-director and star Noel Coward's WW II drama In Which We Serve (1942), co-directed with David Lean in his first directorial effort. It was the most celebrated and patriotic British war film of the era. Director Carol Reed's pseudo-war documentary The Way Ahead (1944) followed the training of soldiers to fight against Rommel's Afrika Korps.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Since You Went Away (1944) was the American homefront version of 1942's biggest hit film, Mrs. Miniver (1942) about the perserverance of a British middle-class family during the Blitz. George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943) reflected the housing shortage in the nation's capital city during the war years. This is the Army (1943), a 'show-within-a-show' account of Irving Berlin's Broadway stage revue, introduced Kate Smith singing the patriotic song God Bless America - the US' alternate national anthem.

After the war, William Wyler directed a provocative, dramatic Best Picture-winning film about the plight of three returning G.I. veterans (Dana Andrews, Fredric March, and Harold Russell) to the homefront. The multi-Oscar winning picture The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was produced by Samuel Goldwyn and photographed by Gregg Toland. Non-professional, disabled veteran Harold Russell won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the film. In two of the film's memorable scenes, Hoagy Carmichael taught double-amputee Russell to play Chopsticks on the piano, and Russell displayed his vulnerabilities to his fiancee (Cathy O'Donnell). Lightening up the wartime mood was Cary Grant who portrayed Captain Henri Rochard, a French soldier in Howard Hawks' gender-bending farcical comedy I Was a Male War Bride (1949), who was obliged to dress as a woman to marry an American female soldier (Ann Sheridan).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

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Anti-Fascist Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in his first talking picture, The Great Dictator (1940), almost five years after the release of his last silent film, Modern Times (1936). It was a war-time, anti-fascist, satirical, thinly-veiled lampooning of the Third Reich and its dictatorial leader (rare among American films) in which a Hitler-like, despotic tyrant named Adenoid Hynkel ruled the kingdom of '(P)Tomania.' Its most memorable scene was the one in which Hynkel danced and tossed around a giant world globe/balloon.

Chaplin's next film was another departure from his Little Tramp character - Monsieur Verdoux (1947) (in which Chaplin directed, produced, wrote, scored, and starred). A satire about a woman-murdering Parisian bank cashier, it received a Best Original Screenplay nomination. It bombed at the box-office upon release due to anti-Communist hysteria directed at Chaplin and the film's banning - Chaplin pulled it out of circulation for many years.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
German star Marlene Dietrich, after becoming a US citizen in 1938, made a number of morale-boosting films, and other German and/or Austrian expatriates (Conrad Veidt, Sig Ruman, and Walter Slezak) risked personal popularity by playing roles as detestable Nazis in such well-known films as Casablanca (1942), To Be or Not to Be (1942), and Hitchcock's allegorical war-time survival tale Lifeboat (1944). The Spanish Civil War served as the backdrop for Hemingway's romantic drama adaptation For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.

German-born Ernst Lubitsch directed the anti-Nazi farce of a theatre couple outwitting the Nazis in To Be Or Not To Be (1942). It starred Jack Benny as Polish actor Joseph Tura, and was noted for the line: "So they call me 'Concentration Camp' Ehrhardt." Shortly before the film's release, one of its stars, Hollywood's beloved Carole Lombard (blonde wife of Clark Gable), died at the age of 33 in a tragic airplane crash near Las Vegas on January 16, 1942.

Biggest Box-Office Stars and Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The most popular box-office stars of the entire decade were: James Cagney, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Wallace Beery, Gene Autry, Gary Cooper, Greer Garson, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman. In 1946, five of the year's top ten box-office films starred Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman - two wholesome and likeable stars.

Twelve-year-old child actress Elizabeth Taylor (born in the UK in 1932 to American parents) became a star after making Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944), her fifth film. The latter film featured a long-shot horse named Pie and Mickey Rooney as a homeless, stubborn ex-jockey. In her first major film role, Jennifer Jones became a star and won an Oscar for her portrayal of a pious St. Bernadette Soubirous who experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Tyrone Power gave an outstanding performance as heroic Don Diego Vega, son of a 19th century aristocrat and better known as Zorro, combating villainous Captain Esteban Pasquale (Basil Rathbone) in The Mark of Zorro (1940). And in the same year, Errol Flynn starred as swashbuckling privateer Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, better known as The Sea Hawk (1940) in director Michael Curtiz' rousing film. Errol Flynn also starred as pugnacious Irish boxer James J. Corbett, based on his autobiography The Roar of the Crowd in director Raoul Walsh's biopic Gentleman Jim (1942). In another version of Alexander Dumas' novel, Gene Kelly made a foursome as D'Artagnan, joining Athos (Van Heflin), Aramis (Robert Coote), and Porthos (Gig Young) in the Technicolored costume adventure The Three Musketeers (1948).

The most-remembered and career-best film ever made by actor/future President Ronald Reagan was Kings Row (1942). After losing his legs from amputation after a train yard accident, his character posed the famous, horrifying question: "Where's the rest of me?" Humphrey Bogart didn't become a major Hollywood star until 1941, until after he had played the role of a gangster in The Petrified Forest (1936) (in a role he had played on Broadway), and then when he appeared in his first starring role in High Sierra (1941), and also in director John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941). Angela Lansbury made her film debut in Gaslight (1944) (aka The Murder in Thornton Square), with Ingrid Bergman slowly being driven insane by her husband Charles Boyer.

Basil Rathbone regularly starred in the 1940s as the popular, modernized fictional detective originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as in Universal's Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942), Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), and The Scarlet Claw (1944) - with his loyal sidekick Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce).

The Tarzan franchise of films, begun in the early 30s, continued into the 40s. Johnny Weissmuller appeared only twice more with Maureen O'Sullivan in MGM's Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) and Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942). Weissmuller's further exploits in only six more RKO films included: Tarzan Triumphs! (1943), Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943), Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), Tarzan and the Huntress (1947), and Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948).

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred as Marie and Pierre respectively in Madame Curie (1943), about the discovery of radium. Master showman Cecil B. DeMille directed hunk Victor Mature in the Biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949), also starring Hedy Lamarr. Britain's biggest sex-symbol in the late 1940s was Diana Dors, whose first notable screen performance (as Charlotte) was in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) with Alec Guinness as Fagin. And Best Actress-winning Olivia De Havilland starred as the title character in William Wyler's The Heiress (1949), adapted from Henry James' novel Washington Square, with Montgomery Clift as a jilted, inheritance-seeking suitor.

In 1947, Elia Kazan and others formed the Actors Studio in New York City - a rehearsal group to produce the first generation of "method" actors under the direction of Lee Strasberg. Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean were soon to emerge from this approach to acting. In the same year, Universal Pictures Studios merged with the independent production company International Pictures, forming the new Universal-International Studio. The new studio pledged higher-quality productions by eliminating serials and B-movies, and it introduced greater use of Technicolor and double features.

A Brief History of the B-Movie:

The term B-Movie refers to an off-beat, low-budget, second-tier film, usually from an independent producer. The low-prestige films were usually shot quickly with little-known, second rate actors or directors. Traditional B-films are characterized by short run times, reduced budgets, recycled actors and footage, and cheap production values. They were created as a contrast to A-pictures, characterized by first-class, big-budget films with high-level production values and star-power.

Standard B-Movies were predominent from the 1920s to the late 1940s, at a time when the studios owned their own theaters. (In the late 40s, the studios began to lose control of their theaters.) The independent or Poverty Row studios (such as Monogram and Republic) made B-movies almost exclusively. The less expensive B-movies were often the the second film (or the 'lower half') of a double-feature, and paired with an A-feature.

The vintage B-movie began to decrease in the 50s, or morphed into inferior B/W TV series. When drive-in theaters and cheap cinemas arose in the 1950s, a whole new group of grindhouse B-pictures emerged, with sensational and catchy titles, campy acting, cheesy special effects, and gratuitous violence and sexuality (especially after the Hays Code production restrictions began to be lifted in the late 60s). Some B-movie production devolved into exploitation films with increased nudity and violence. B-movies are not to be confused with cult films, although some B-films attained cult status (such as Edgar G. Ulmer's film noir Detour (1945)).

Examples of the Enduring Effects of B-Movies:

  • Promising actors also often began their careers in B-movies, such as John Wayne; other western stars in B-films included Roy Rogers, Hoot Gibson, and Gene Autry
  • B-movie serials, such as Flash Gordon, the series of Universal horror films (The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)), Fox's Charlie Chan mysteries, Monogram's Bowery Boys comedies, and Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle and Sherlock Holmes were all prominent and notable examples
  • B-movies were often influential on future filmmakers, such as Jacques Tourneur's and RKO director Val Lewton's Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) from the 40s
  • Typical low-budget, sci-fi B-movies of the 50s included The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes (1955) and Teenagers From Outer Space (1959)
  • They were often testing grounds for up-and-coming directors, such as Fred Zinnemann, Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Edward Dmytryk, Robert Wise, and Richard Fleischer. Some of the more recent directors got their start in exploitation B-movies, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, and Ron Howard. Many B-movie products were made by producer Roger Corman of American International Pictures (AIP) and New World Pictures

Mostly B/W Films in the 40s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Technicolor became more and more popular during the decade following the success of the richly-colorful The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939), and British producer Alexander Korda's fantasy adventure The Thief of Bagdad (1940). During the war years, however, technicolor was severely limited and rarely used by studios (except for use in some musicals) in an effort to cut costs. Films often represented authentic, serious, and real subject areas, and a number of B & W films won Best Picture in the 40s:

At the end of the decade, acetate-based film was replacing unstable cellulose nitrate stock (which had already caused the deterioration of many older films).

Orson Welles: Boy Wonder and The Greatest Film Ever: Citizen Kane

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
After causing quite a sensation with his Mercury Theatre on the Air performance of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds in 1938, twenty-three year old boy-wonder Orson Welles was given an RKO Studios contract in 1939. That led to the making of probably the greatest American film of all time - his innovative masterpiece entitled Citizen Kane (1941), in which he served as director, co-writer (with Herman J. Mankiewicz), and star. The mosaic-structured film with multiple flashbacks included a memorable musical score (by famed Bernard Hermann) and absorbing photographic techniques such as close-ups, moving camera, low-key lighting, overlapping dialogue and innovative sound editing, deep focus, optical effects, ceilinged sets and innovative camera angles - due mostly to the genius of cinematographer Gregg Toland. It was largely made in secret, due to harsh criticism by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (Kane's character loosely resembled the newspaper tycoon's life) who made every effort to stifle the film's release and distribution. [It was rumored that Rosebud, the final deathbed words of Kane and the name of his boyhood sled burned in the furnace in his Xanadu palace, was the pet sexual nickname Hearst had for his movie star/mistress Marion Davies.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Welles followed Kane as writer, producer and director of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), another great film that was adapted from a Booth Tarkington novel to evoke nostalgia for America's turn-of-the-century past. After its premiere, RKO ordered the severe editing and butchering of the film by editor Robert Wise and tacked on an artificial ending, but the film still failed financially and led to the demise of the studio. Joan Fontaine starred as the title character heroine opposite Welles as the definitive Rochester in an adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's best-loved gothic romantic novel, Jane Eyre (1943), co-scripted by Aldous Huxley.

Welles also acted as the enigmatic Harry Lime character, and provided the famous "cuckoo clock" speech, in director Carol Reed's British noir classic The Third Man (1949) (produced by Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick). It was set in war-ravaged Vienna and featured unsettling zither music. Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948) was another of his adaptations of Graham Greene stories. After the financial failure of Welles' film noir The Lady from Shanghai (1948), he moved to another studio (Republic Pictures) to star in, produce, and direct Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth (1948). After the release of the low-budget, expressionistic film that wasn't entirely successful, Welles left for Europe and exiled himself away from Hollywood for ten years.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 12

The Birth of Film Noir:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
By World War II's end, the genre most characteristic of the era and most associated with 1940s Hollywood was film noir. The film noir 'genre' reflected the way Hollywood felt as it faced its greatest challenges during the war and post-war periods - darker and more cynical. The somber, pessimistic 'genre', literally meaning "black film," was already germinating and evolving from 30s gangster films - with dark plots, untrustworthy femme fatales, and tough, but cynical, fatalistic heroes.

The first, clearly definitive example was one of the best hard-boiled detective pictures ever made - director John Huston's remarkable debut film The Maltese Falcon (1941). [This was the third version of the film mystery.] The film about a treasure search for a black bird, adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel, marked a turning point for actor Humphrey Bogart - it made him a star as private eye gumshoe Sam Spade. The chiaroscuro lighting of Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) by cinematographer Gregg Toland, and the Neo-realism of European film-makers also had an influence on the burgeoning stylistic art form. Film noir became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960 - marked by Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958).

The Most Notable Film Noirs in the 'Classic' Period of the 40s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
There were many excellent film noirs in the 40s, including the following:

  • Frank Tuttle's This Gun For Hire (1942), a dark revenge film that made Alan Ladd a star and spotlighted his 'peek-a-boo' blonde co-star Veronica Lake
  • Billy Wilder's classic thriller/film noir Double Indemnity (1944), from crime novelist Raymond Chandler's adaptation of James M. Cain's novella about insurance fraud, corruption and adulterous murder, with Barbara Stanwyck as a deadly blonde, Fred MacMurray as the agent, and Edward G. Robinson as a dogged insurance investigator
  • Laura (1944) with its haunting theme song and alluring Gene Tierney
  • Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944), with musical song/dance actor Dick Powell playing against type as world-weary private detective Philip Marlowe
  • Edgar G. Ulmer's "Poverty Row" Detour (1945)
  • director Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce (1945) - this 'women's' noir gave Joan Crawford her first (and only) career Oscar as Best Actress for her role as a self-sacrificing mother, and a revitalized career
  • Gilda (1946) with Rita Hayworth's notorious black-glove strip-tease "Put the Blame on Mame"
  • Howard Hawks' plot-convoluted and impenetrable The Big Sleep (1946) with Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled detective hero Philip Marlowe (in his second film with off-screen young wife Lauren Bacall) in an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's first novel involving blackmail, murder, and more
  • director/star Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake (1946) - another tale about detective Philip Marlowe in a story adapted for the screen by Raymond Chandler
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) was an adaptation of James M. Cain's novel about a plot to murder the cafe-owner husband of Lana Turner by her lover John Garfield
  • Fritz Lang's Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1946)
  • Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) (with the screen debut of actor Burt Lancaster and a star-making role for actress Ava Gardner) and Cry of the City (1948)
  • Robert Rossen's boxing noir Body and Soul (1947) with John Garfield as a champion boxer forced to decide whether to throw a big fight
  • Edward Dmytryk's noirish political drama Crossfire (1947) told about the social issue of anti-semitism prejudice, in its flashback story regarding an investigation (by Robert Mitchum and Robert Young) into the mysterious murder of a Jew by a bigoted GI soldier (Robert Ryan)
  • Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947), with Bogart as the main character (again paired opposite Lauren Bacall) who has undergone plastic surgery - the film was noted for its 'subjective camera' (viewing through the 'eyes' of the bandaged patient) for the first half of the film
  • Henry Hathaway's crime-noir Kiss of Death (1947) - with the screen debut of Oscar-nominated Richard Widmark as a homicidal psychopath
  • Jacques Tourneur's intricate double-cross murder/romance - the penultimate noir thriller Out of the Past (1947) with femme fatale Jane Greer
  • Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil (1948) with John Garfield
  • the classic boxing drama, Champion (1949) - a star-making film for Kirk Douglas
  • Raoul Walsh's film noirish gangster film White Heat (1949) with James Cagney as a mother-fixated, sadistic killer who blew himself up on an oil tank in the fiery climax, screaming: "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"
  • Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949), with Robert Ryan as an aging boxer, dealt with corruption in the sport of boxing
  • Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949)

Gangster Films Revival:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The gangster movie was revitalized with one of Warner Bros. finest examples of the genre - director Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart (in his first starring role) as an aging gangster with a heart of gold. [The "on-screen" "off-screen" romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, during the filming of director Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not (1944), Bacall's first film, culminated in their marriage in 1945. The romantic war-time drama was adapted from Ernest Hemingway's short story, and noted for Bacall's sizzling come-on: "You know how to whistle, don't you?...Just put your lips together and blow."]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Later in the decade, the gangster was not romanticized, but portrayed as a bullying psychopath (i.e., Edward G. Robinson in John Huston's Key Largo (1948), and James Cagney in White Heat (1949)). John Huston's mastery of film directorship as one of the most skilled adapters of classic material was revealed in more Humphrey Bogart collaborations in the decade. In a film starring his own father Walter, director Huston revealed the treacherous effects of greed for three prospectors (including Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - famous for the oft-quoted (and usually misquoted) line: "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"

The "Road" Comedies:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The famous Paramount Studios' "Road" films (a total of seven films stretching out until 1962), starred a wise-cracking Bob Hope and his comedy partner Bing Crosby as two hapless musicians, and their colorful heroine Dorothy Lamour. The series began at the start of the decade:

  • Road to Singapore (1940)
  • Road to Zanzibar (1941)
  • Road to Morocco (1942) - the best of the series
  • Road to Utopia (1946)
  • Road to Rio (1947)
  • Road to Bali (1952)
  • The Road to Hong Kong (1962)

Comedy Films: Comedy Teams and Pairs

Ski-nosed Bob Hope also starred in some of his best comedies during the decade, including My Favorite Blonde (1942) with Madeleine Carroll, the spy spoof They Got Me Covered (1943), The Princess and the Pirate (1944) with Virginia Mayo, The Paleface (1949) (Hope's first color film) with Jane Russell as Calamity Jane, and its sequel The Son of Paleface (1952).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In 1941, comedians Abbott and Costello made their film debut in Buck Privates (1941), a comedy about their enlistment into World War II, and the pair would go on to make many more hit films for Universal Studios, following the decline of Deanna Durbin's popularity. Abbott and Costello's most famous classic routine "Who's On First?" was performed in their film The Naughty Nineties (1945). They also starred in the comedy horror film Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), scared by the Monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.). The comedic team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made their film debut, the first of their sixteen films together, in My Friend Irma (1949).

The famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers were to retire from the movies as a screen team in 1941 with their last film, MGM's The Big Store (1941). However, they later signed with United Artists to make the independent feature A Night in Casablanca (1946), and they also appeared in a 'comeback' film, their final film as a team - Love Happy (1949) with a little-known Marilyn Monroe. And bawdy screen siren Mae West made her last film (for over 25 years) with the satirical musical The Heat's On (1943). Laurel and Hardy's last Hollywood film was The Bullfighters (1945), capping a career stretching back to their first film, Slipping Wives (1926). Film comedy lost one of its classic masters with the death of W.C. Fields in 1946. His last scripted film and starring role in a feature-length film was in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and he made his final film cameo appearance in the musical comedy Sensations of 1945 (1944) - also the final starring film role for dancer Eleanor Powell.

The romantic comedy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) starred Claude Rains in the title role and Robert Montgomery as Joe Pendleton, a sax-playing prize fighter who was supposed to survive a plane crash, but was prematurely sent to Heaven - and needed to find a new body on Earth. Similarly, Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (1943) was the story of a 70 year-old playboy (Don Ameche) who would have to tell his life story to the devil, including his unfaithfulness to his forgiving wife (Gene Tierney).

Cary Grant played the 'son of a sea cook' with lethal Brewster family aunts Abby and Martha in Frank Capra's macabre comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). One of Cary Grant's most under-rated film was Mr. Lucky (1943), as a gambling casino boat owner, who redeems himself by his love for a virtuous young woman (Laraine Day). He was also miscast as a playboy sentenced by judge Myrna Loy to date her sister - an infatuated teenaged Shirley Temple in the romantic comedy The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). In the next year, he played the role of a New York adman who moves to the Connecticut countryside to do some disastrous home improvement in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell co-starred and battled together in Howard Hawks' fast-talking romantic comedy His Girl Friday (1940) - one of the all-time great screwball comedies. [This was a wild and innovative retooling of director Lewis Milestone's The Front Page (1931).]

Hepburn and Tracy:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first of nine films teaming Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy together was George Stevens' Woman of the Year (1942). Other comedic pairings of the watchable duo in the decade included State of the Union (1948) and their sixth collaboration together - in George Cukor's marvelous Adam's Rib (1949).

Katharine Hepburn also played the role of socialite Tracy Lord opposite hand-picked Cary Grant as estranged husband C. K. Dexter Haven in the romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940) - her comeback film (from being seen as 'box-office poison') that she had originally performed on the Broadway stage.

Escapist, Nostalgic Entertainment:

Other films either provided escapist entertainment or nostalgically seemed to look back to a lost era in America, such as the biographical story of the song-and-dance team of the Cohans, featuring Best Actor-winning James Cagney as legendary vaudevillian George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). The musical comedy Holiday Inn (1942) featured Bing Crosby's first crooning of White Christmas, and Fred Astaire's and Bing Crosby's first screen appearance together. Director Vincente Minnelli's third film Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) was the first of three films he made to showcase Judy Garland. Bing Crosby reprised his earlier, Best Actor-winning Catholic priest role as Father Chuck O'Malley of Going My Way (1944) in the sequel The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), with Ingrid Bergman as Sister Benedict.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
June Allyson (as Jo), Janet Leigh (as Meg) and Elizabeth Taylor (as Amy) played sisters in the remake adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women (1949), set in New England in the 1860s. Two films from MGM in 1940 portrayed the early youth and inventive genius of Thomas Edison: Young Tom Edison (1940) (with Mickey Rooney), and Edison, the Man (1940) (with Spencer Tracy). Fredric March portrayed the author of Tom Sawyer, Samuel Clemens, in The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). Stars abounded in Boom Town (1940), an adventure story of wildcat drillers with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr. Child stars Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney were also paired in the popular family classic film Lassie Come Home (1943). The Christmas favorite, Miracle on 34th Street (1947) starred a young Natalie Wood as skeptical Susan Walker, and Edmund Gwenn as the Santa character in the flagship Macy's department store in NYC.

British actor Charles Laughton starred as a haunting, restless ghost walled up in a castle in MGM's comedy The Canterville Ghost (1944), from an Oscar Wilde fantasy story. Life with Father (1947) followed the exploits of the Day family (headed by strict William Powell) in a turn-of-the-century household, and George Stevens directed the feel-good drama I Remember Mama (1948). Audiences thrilled to see Mighty Joe Young (1949) - a semi-remake of the classic gorilla movie King Kong (1933) with the same special-effects production team of the original (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote and/or directed a number of acidic comedy/dramas in the 1940s, such as the charming fantasy The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) with Rex Harrison as ghostly Captain Gregg in a haunted seaside cottage who develops a relationship with a widow (Gene Tierney), and the amusingly-clever but neglected A Letter to Three Wives (1949) with Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, and Jeanne Crain as recipients of a letter informing them that one of their husbands has skipped town with another woman. At the start of the next decade, he was responsible for the acclaimed, biting backstage drama All About Eve (1950). One of the most memorable romances and tearjerkers of the decade, Now, Voyager (1942), featured Bette Davis as a transformed ugly duckling spinster who was offered a lit cigarette [a metaphor for sex] by a suave Paul Henreid.

Frank Capra's "Capra-Corn" Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Frank Capra, who had won three Best Director Academy Awards in the 30s (1934, 1936, and 1938), idealized the "common man" in his first independent production titled Meet John Doe (1941) starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. His most "Capra-esque" film was his irresistible, sentimental, perennially-favorite Christmas holiday film, It's A Wonderful Life (1946) - but this sleeper film was surprisingly a major flop at the time of its original release. It only became popularized after repeated Christmas-time TV viewings. James Stewart (as George Bailey) contemplated suicide but after viewing the evil vision of Pottersville (and being aided by angel Clarence) decided to be reunited with his family in the sentimental ending.

Three Controversial Films:

The steamy box-office success of Forever Amber (1947), a colorful costume romance-drama with brunette star Linda Darnell as a bleached blonde 17th century English beauty (Amber St. Clair), was severely 'condemned' by the Legion of Decency for glorifying "immorality and licentiousness." And director Victor Fleming's final film - the Technicolored Joan of Arc (1948), noted as the most expensive film of the 40s decade at $8.7 million and also a major flop, was also controversial because its lead star (32 year-old Ingrid Bergman) - playing a teenaged peasant girl/saint - was revealed to be having an affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She was blacklisted and driven from Hollywood to live abroad - until making her return to the screen in the mid-50s with Anastasia (1956).

Producer/promoter Kroger Babb's (self-dubbed as "America's Fearless Young Showman") low-budget, heavily-promoted Mom and Dad (1944) was one of the most successful exploitation films of all time. Besides being socially-significant as a sex-hygiene film about the dangers of venereal disease and the results of premarital sex, it was the 3rd highest grossing film during the 1940s, and easily recouped its $62,000 in expenses. About 300 prints of this feature drama were made and road-showed for more than two decades, with screenings divided by gender. Each print (with a tacked-on live-birth sequence) traveled with a lecturer named Elliot Forbes -- an "eminent sexual hygiene commentator" -- (and two assisting nurses) who promoted the film's "educational" value, lectured during intermission about the importance of contraception ("sensible sex"), and profitably sold sex manuals in the theaters. Time Magazine remarked that the ad campaign for Mom and Dad "left only the livestock unaware of the chance to learn the facts of life."

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 13

Val Lewton and Horror:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Beginning in 1942 for RKO, producer Val Lewton (the head of RKO's 1940s 'horror unit') breathed new life into the horror genre by initiating a series of literate, intelligent, low-budget, understated, moody B-movie films that suggested more than showed the horror. His collection of films were more noirish and subtle than true horror films. Director Jacques Tourneur's The Cat People (1942) was the first of Lewton's produced films - a low-key, shadowy horror film about a frigid Serbian girl who could be transformed into a threatening, man-eating panther when aroused. Examples of its atmospheric horror included two jolting scenes: one in Central Park in which feline fright was actually the sound of a bus braking, and the second one, a scary swim in an indoor pool with eerie reflections and sounds.

Further horror masterpieces pairing the talents of Tourneur and Lewton included one of their earliest productions - the modestly-budgeted, artistic horror thriller I Walked With a Zombie (1943). It was set on the voodoo-infested island of Haiti and derived from the classic Jane Eyre tale. The last film in Tourneur's trio of films with Lewton was the truly terrifying The Leopard Man (1943) with a frightening off-screen 'leopard' attack on a young girl. Lewton also went on to produce The Seventh Victim (1943) (directed by Mark Robson) and the sequel The Curse of the Cat People (1944) (directed by Gunther Von Fristch and Robert Wise).

Universal's Horror Films and More:

The frightening horror film Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942) featured two of Universal Studios' classic monsters, portrayed respectively by a miscast Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr.. Universal's House of Dracula (1945), the sequel to House of Frankenstein (1944), starred Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man (again), and John Carradine as the vampire. There were four sequels to the original 1932 Mummy film (starring Boris Karloff as Kharis) between 1940 and 1944, with Lon Chaney, Jr. in three of the four films: The Mummy's Hand (1940), The Mummy's Tomb (1942), The Mummy's Ghost (1944), and The Mummy's Curse (1944).

One of the scariest films of the 40s was the haunted house classic The Uninvited (1944), starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey as a brother and sister who move into a mysterious house on the Cornish coast and soon detect cold spots and the smell of mimosa.

The First Appearance of Major Cartoon Characters:

Animated films' cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, and Casper (among many others) made their film debuts in the 40s decade. The short film A Wild Hare (1940) introduced the wise-cracking, carrot-chomping Bugs Bunny, soon to be one of Warner Bros' biggest stars. Tom & Jerry, created by Hanna & Barbera, were debuted by MGM in Puss Gets the Boot (1940). (Tom was called Jasper and Jerry didn't have a name yet.) Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the cartoon Knock, Knock (1940) distributed by Universal Studios, in which he bedeviled another Lantz character Andy Panda. The next year, the popular Woody became a starring character in The Cracked Nut (1941), and began to replace the waning Oswald the Rabbit. A caped super-rodent named Mighty Mouse was introduced in the Terrytoons short The Mouse of Tomorrow (1942), noted for saying: "Here I come to save the day!" Paramount's theatrical cartoon The Friendly Ghost (1945), debuted the character of Casper. The characters of the RoadRunner ("Accelerati Incredibulis") and the Coyote ("Carnivorous Vulgaris") were debuted in the short animated film Fast and Furry-ous (1949).

The Golden Age of Disney Feature Film Animation:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Technical achievements were many. Disney released more animated feature films in the 40s, including some of its most timeless classics. The golden decade of Disney animation was heralded by Pinocchio (1940) (with a puppet-boy who had a penchant for lying, and a cricket-narrator who sings "When You Wish Upon a Star"), and the wildly-experimental film Fantasia (1940) that blended classical music (from Leopold Stokowski's Philadelphia Orchestra) with animated sequences (including The Sorcerer's Apprentice with Mickey Mouse). It was the first film with stereophonic sound ("Fantasound"). Other Disney feature-length animations included Dumbo (1941) - about a flying, big-eared baby elephant delivered by a stork and tutored by a mouse named Timothy, and Bambi (1942) - an adaptation of Felix Salten's story about a young, beloved deer in the deep forest with friends Thumper (rabbit) and Flower (skunk), with its indelible shocking scene of the off-screen shooting of Bambi's mother.

Disney's charming live-action feature film (with animated sequences) Song of the South (1946), was based on the Uncle Remus' tall-tale stories of Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris. Although it was a commercial success, the film was criticized by the NAACP in 1946 for "the impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship", but was still nominated for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and received an Oscar for Best Song ("Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah") - and an honorary Oscar to African-American James Baskett for his portrayal of Uncle Remus.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Following an animator-artist's strike in 1941, a group of Disney animators with new individualized styles - who wanted to make a radical departure from the classic style of Disney animation - broke away and formed the UPA (United Productions of America) in 1943, under the direction of Stephen Bosustow. Among their creations were the series that featured Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing.

Captain Marvel:

Also appearing in 1941 was the first film appearance of a comic strip and comic book hero - Captain Marvel (Tom Tyler), in an episodic serial entitled The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941). It was one of the finest comic-to-film adaptations ever made.

Preston Sturges' Social-Comedy Satires:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Writer/director Preston Sturges (1898-1959) was the first Hollywood scriptwriter to direct his own work. Earlier in the 30s, he had gained notoriety with his screenplays for William Wyler's The Good Fairy (1935) with Margaret Sullavan, and for Mitchell Leisen's Easy Living (1937) with Jean Arthur and Edward Arnold. He directed his own screenplay for the first time (and won the Academy Award for his original screenplay) in The Great McGinty (1940) and was able to retain greater control over and exercise greater protection of his own creations. He signaled the days when a writer could also be the director and/or producer.

Sturges made a string of brilliant screwball comedies and witty satires including eight signature films (seven were comedies) between 1940 and 1944, his peak period of production:

  • The Great McGinty (1940), a political satire with Brian Donlevy; noted for its Oscar-winning Best Original Screenplay [it was the first time a film in Hollywood opened with the credit: "Written and Directed By"]
  • Christmas in July (1940), a screwball comedy of errors tale with Dick Powell and Ellen Drew, skewering advertising and consumerism
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    The Lady Eve (1941)
    , Sturges' great masterpiece - a tale of sexual politics, starring worldly, gold-digging con artist Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) and her masculine prey - a naive millionaire explorer named Charles Pike (Henry Fonda); sometimes considered the last classic screwball romantic comedy of Hollywood's Golden Age
  • Sullivan's Travels (1941), Sturges' most ambitious and best film, a reflexive critique of Hollywood film-making in its story of a big-time director (Joel McCrea) of comedies who took a road-trip as a tramp with a wise-cracking peekaboo blonde (Veronica Lake) to experience life among the downtrodden poor; in a chain gang, he experiences an epiphany while watching a cartoon, and returns to Hollywood to realize his comedic calling
  • The Palm Beach Story (1942), a sophisticated story about an independent, luxury-loving wife (Claudette Colbert) who left her struggling, poor inventor-husband (Joel McCrea) for a trip to Palm Beach to enjoy the good life with a millionaire (crooner Rudy Vallee)
  • The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), an irreverent and iconoclastic film (during the heyday of the Hays Code!) about an unwed pregnancy; it riskily told the scandalous story of Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), a small-town party girl impregnated after an drunken encounter with a soldier, who can't remember the soldier's name beyond the recollection of Ratsky-Watsky; her meek boyfriend Norval's (Eddie Bracken) attempts to save her reputation put him in jail; the film ended with Trudy giving birth to sextuplets on Christmas Eve - a great media event; this was the first film advertised on TV in a 30-minute promotion in 1944; comedian Jerry Lewis remade the film as Rock-a-bye Baby (1958)
  • Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), the first of Sturges' two most authentic portraits of war-time America (both with Oscar-nominated screenplays), a satirical comedy of heroism and patriotism -and Sturges' own personal favorite film; about a rejected Marine recruit (Eddie Bracken) and war hero who is erroneously welcomed home and can't admit the truth
  • The Great Moment (1944), an out-of-character, serious historical biopic with Betty Field and Joel McCrea as the dentist who pioneered anesthesia - the off-beat film was shot two years earlier and then drastically re-edited by Paramount, leading to a dispute and falling-out between the film-maker and the studio

After Sturges left Paramount in 1944 to find independence, he became embroiled with financial difficulties and suffered creative exhaustion. He only completed four more pictures (until his death in 1959). He also directed/wrote the box-office flop The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) (aka Mad Wednesday), co-produced with Howard Hughes (and the first and only film by California Pictures), starring silent film star Harold Lloyd (after almost a ten-year hiatus and in his final film) in the lead role portraying an unemployed, inhibited clerk who was enlivened and redeemed by a special alcoholic drink termed the Diddlebock. One of Sturges' final films was the successful comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948), about a symphony conductor (Rex Harrison) who fantasized about killing his allegedly unfaithful wife (Linda Darnell). Sturges' last American/Hollywood film was the western comedy The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949) with Betty Grable, and he directed his final film in Europe, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1956).

1940s Westerns:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Errol Flynn played the role of General George Armstrong Custer, uncharacteristically sympathetic to native Americans (including Anthony Quinn as Chief Crazy Horse) in Warners' largely fictitious bio They Died With Their Boots On (1942), directed by Raoul Walsh. It popularized the theme song march "Gary Owen." Gary Cooper starred as the title character Cole Hardin in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940), opposite Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean.

Howard Hughes' notorious and independently-produced adult-western The Outlaw (1943) faced close scrutiny by the Hays Office (and Joseph Breen), due to its exploitation of star Jane Russell's prominently-uncovered 36D" chest in her debut film by Hollywood huckster Russell Birdwell. Salacious advertising with lines such as: "What are the two great reasons for Jane Russell's rise to stardom?" added to the lurid sensationalism and kept the film from being widely circulated. In addition, pin-up shots of big-busted Russell rolling around in the hay had the desired effect at the box office (especially among WWII GIs). One of the film's most vulgar stunts, also orchestrated by Birdwell, was to have skywriting planes fly over San Francisco where they spelled the film's title followed by two giant circles -- each dotted in the center. Hughes defied the Hayes Production Code (reportedly this was the first US film to do so), and sued the MPAA organization, but eventually backed down. Hughes postponed its opening until 1943 when it was given a limited release (one-week run), then withdrew it, and re-released it three years later in 1946 in a cut version, and then again in 1947. The eventual release of the mediocre, fictional film ended up as an example of triumphant ballyhooing and film marketing.

A Cecil B. DeMille Western-style "Gone With The Wind" epic with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones as libidinous rivals/lovers, Duel in the Sun (1946), nicknamed "Lust in the Dust," was released by David O. Selznick. At seven million dollars, it was the costliest film to date. A Western-style "Mutiny on the Bounty," Howard Hawks' Red River (1948), often considered one of the greatest westerns ever made, was a straight-forward, visually-striking tale of a cattle boss father/adopted son controversy (John Wayne vs. Montgomery Clift) during the first cattle drive up the newly-opened Chisholm Trail. Another of the best westerns ever made was William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) about two drifters (Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan) who witness the vigilante lynching of three innocent men.

John Ford's Westerns:

During the 1940s, director John Ford embarked on his most prolific era with an expanded string of classic Westerns to chronicle America's pioneer past. His award-winning (and most-nominated) films were his three social dramas in the 40s, not his westerns:

  • The Long Voyage Home (1940)
  • an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about a Depression-era migrant family The Grapes of Wrath (1940) (with Ford winning the Best Director Oscar)
  • the Best Picture-winning, Welsh mining, family-based drama How Green Was My Valley (1941) with Roddy McDowall as a young Huw in a hard-working South Wales family

Ford then filmed a classic western about Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and the OK Corral titled My Darling Clementine (1946) featuring Victor Mature as Doc Holliday. His three entries at the end of the decade, in a celebrated "Cavalry Trilogy" each with his favorite male lead (John Wayne) were:

  • Fort Apache (1948)
  • She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), with a sole nomination and win for its cinematography (Winton Hoch)
  • Rio Grande (1950)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 14

40s Musicals:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In the 1940s, the panacea for escape from the horror and weariness of the war years was provided by film musicals and their elaborate production numbers, simplistic plots, and music. Post-war films reflected the desire of audiences to put the war behind them. In 1945, the year of the war's end, six of the top ten box-office champs were musicals - in order:

  • Thrill of a Romance (1945) with aquatic star Esther Williams
  • Anchors Aweigh (1945), with Frank Sinatra's first major screen appearance and featuring Gene Kelly's dance with an animated mouse
  • The Harvey Girls (1945), a musical set in a 19th century Fred Harvey Restaurant with Angela Lansbury and Judy Garland as stars, and with an Oscar-winning song: "Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe"
  • State Fair (1945)
  • The Dolly Sisters (1945)
  • Up in Arms (1945)

Hollywood enjoyed its greatest financial year in history in 1946. An all-time peak in annual box-office receipts, at $4.5 billion, was achieved. The best of Broadway revues was remembered in Ziegfeld Follies (1946), with William Powell reprising his role as the great Broadway impresario. Cameos and appearances by many stars, such as Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Red Skelton and Lucille Ball, populated the film.

Arthur Freed was the driving force behind MGM studios and the growth of the musical genre in the 40s and 50s. Gene Kelly made his official screen debut as a song-and-dance man in director Busby Berkeley's (and producer Freed's) hit musical For Me and My Gal (1942), opposite Judy Garland (her first film with her name billed alone above the title in the credits).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (1943) and the nostalgic, charming turn-of-the century Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) (with its immortal standards "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "The Boy Next Door" and "The Trolley Song" by Judy Garland) were both produced by Arthur Freed and directed by former Broadway director Vincente Minnelli (lured by Freed to MGM in 1940), who would soon marry his star in 1945 and produce one daughter - Liza Minnelli. Freed and Minnelli were responsible for giving birth to the total musical film experience and big-budget studio musicals. Freed's successes continued with Rouben Mamoulian's Summer Holiday (1947), Minnelli's The Pirate (1948), Busby Berkeley's Take Me Out To The Ball Game (1949), and Stanley Donen's/Gene Kelly's On The Town (1949) - filmed mostly on location in New York City.

Entertainer Al Jolson and bandleader Paul Whitehead starred as themselves in Rhapsody in Blue (1945), the life story of American composer George Gershwin (played by Robert Alda - Alan Alda's father), noted for writing An American in Paris. The musical biography Night and Day (1946) was the life account of songwriter Cole Porter (Cary Grant), and featured Mary Martin singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." Cornel Wilde starred as the Polish composer Frederick Chopin in Columbia Pictures' hit musical biopic A Song to Remember (1945), with Merle Oberon as George Sand and Stephen Bekass as Franz Liszt.

The hugely-successful The Jolson Story (1946) was an energetic film biography of one of America's most popular vaudeville entertainers of the 1920s, known for singing: "Mammy!", "California, Here I Come," and "Swanee". The film was followed by a sequel: Jolson Sings Again (1949) with Larry Parks again in the lead role.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Fred Astaire danced for his second and final time with Rita Hayworth in Columbia's You Were Never Lovelier (1942). The famed dancer also starred with Judy Garland in Easter Parade (1948) featuring Irving Berlin songs (such as "(We're) A Couple of Swells"). And then Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in their tenth and final film together, MGM's The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).

The hit Broadway comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) was adapted for the screen and directed by William Keighley for Warners - it starred Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, and Monty Woolley (as the unwelcome title character Sheridan Whiteside). Claude Rains starred in Universal's Technicolor musical remake of the original horror film The Phantom of the Opera (1943) as the title character violinist Enrique Claudin, forced to wear a mask to cover his disfigurement, and madly in love with opera singer Christine (Susanna Foster). Betty Grable's legs were prominently displayed in the musical Mother Wore Tights (1947), a turn-of-the-century story about a vaudeville family, starring Dan Dailey.

A non-musical version of the future The King and I (1956), the romantic drama Anna and the King of Siam (1946), starred Irene Dunne as Western teacher Miss Owens and Rex Harrison (in his screen debut) as the Thai monarch. [This film was remade with Jodie Foster as Anna and the King of Siam (1999).]

The biggest hit film of 1944 was the heart-warming, Oscar-winning musical comedy Going My Way (1944), starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald as conflicting members of the Roman Catholic clergy. [The film was first screened on 65 different military bases on April 27, 1944, as a way to support the war effort.] Its equally-popular sequel released the following year, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), starred Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. Life With Father (1947) was a screen version of the hit Broadway play of a turn-of-the-century New York family. Danny Kaye starred as the title character - a hapless daydreamer who imagines himself in heroic adventures, in the fantasy musical comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) - known for the sound of his imaginary life-saving machine ("ta-pocketa, pocketa"). Judy Garland was at the height of her talents in MGM's In the Good Old Summertime (1949), a musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), about two anonymous pen pals.

"Soundies":

From 1940-1946, soundies (short black and white musical films) were produced. They were pre-cursors to present-day music videos, and were designed to be played on coin-operated, 16 mm rear-projection machines like jukeboxes, called Panorams, that were located in nightclubs, diners, roadhouses, bars, restaurants and other public places. Besides musical numbers representing many different musical styles (swing, big band, jazz, blues, country and western, hillbilly, Gospel, Latin American, Hawaiian, dance, musical comedy, and more), soundies would often include cheesecake sequences of women in bathing suits, vaudeville acts, or strip-tease/burlesque routines. Because they were produced during the war years, they also featured war bonds appeals and other patriotic jargons.

Films of Social Concern and Realism:

"Liberal" Hollywood crusaded against injustices and inequities in moving films of social concern:

  • John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), based on John Steinbeck's novel, was beautifully filmed by cinematographer Gregg Toland; it told of the struggle of a displaced, poverty-stricken American migrant family (including ex-con Tom Joad played by Henry Fonda) who left Oklahoma's dustbowl for California
  • in the comedy The Talk of the Town (1942) with a serious edge and social conscience, Cary Grant played the role of a man unjustly framed for murder by a corrupt local government
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    the ground-breaking drama of a tormented alcoholic writer named Don Birnam (Best Actor-winning Ray Milland) with writer's block was presented in Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945)
  • William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) provided a view of the difficulties confronted by a cross-section of returning American veterans
  • Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947) was a powerful indictment of anti-Semitism in America as was Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947)
  • The Snake Pit (1948), starring Olivia De Havilland as a patient suffering from paranoia and amnesia, was a socially-conscious melodrama and controversial expose concerned with the treatment of the insane in an overcrowded mental asylum
  • the touching drama Johnny Belinda (1948) treated the story of the rape of a deaf-mute woman with honesty
  • social demagoguery and dirty politics were confronted in Robert Rossen's Best Picture-winning All The King's Men (1949) - about the rise and fall of the corruptible politician Willie Stark (Oscar-winning Broderick Crawford)

There were four gripping Hollywood dramas in particular that dealt seriously with the subject of contemporary race relations, that were released in 1949:

  1. Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust (1949)
  2. Alfred Werker's Lost Boundaries (1949) featured white actor Mel Ferrer as a light-skinned African-American
  3. director Mark Robson's The Home of the Brave (1949) told the story of a guilt-ridden black veteran (James Edwards) in psychiatric treatment after a traumatic war experience
  4. director Elia Kazan's Pinky (1949) tackled the subject of racial prejudice and inter-racial romance for a light-skinned black woman named Pinky (white actress Jeanne Crain)

Hitchcock and Other British/Foreign Influences:

After many great British films in the 1930s (The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), for example),

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
British director Alfred Hitchcock ventured to Hollywood in 1939, and many of his films were premiered in the US (and backed by studios such as Selznick International, Fox and RKO) in the opening years of the decade:

  • the atmospheric Rebecca (1940) (produced by David O. Selznick), was Hitchcock's first American film; the film was Hitchcock's only film to win the Best Picture Academy Award; it was famous for its opening line: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," and for its pairing of Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier
  • Foreign Correspondent (1940)
  • Suspicion (1941)
  • Saboteur (1942) with a suspenseful war theme
  • Lifeboat (1944), adapted from a John Steinbeck story, about the stranged survivors of a torpedoed freighter, including Tallulah Bankhead (as a fashion journalist)

Hitchcock also made some superb psychological thrillers: the favorite of all of his films was Shadow of a Doubt (1943) about a psychopathic 'Merry Widow' killer named Charlie (Joseph Cotten) in a small California town. Hitchcock's psychoanalytic, post-war mystery Spellbound (1945) (produced by David O. Selznick) contained Dali's surrealistic dream sequence and featured psychiatrist Gregory Peck suffering from amnesia. The spy thriller Notorious (1946) was a dark foreboding story of an espionage scheme to trap a Nazi agent. These films reflected post-war acceptance of a darker style of film-making. It wasn't until Rope (1948) that Hitchcock switched to color, in an experimentally-ambitious film seamlessly put together with ten-minute extended takes.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
British film distributor J. Arthur Rank, in cooperation with Universal Studios and International Pictures, assured the production and importation of more British films into the U.S. (and vice versa), including both of David Lean's superb screen adaptations of the literary works of Charles Dickens:

  • Great Expectations (1946)
  • Oliver Twist (1947)

Lean's melodramatic tear-jerker Brief Encounter (1946), heightened by Rachmaninoff's piano concerto, told a story of unfulfilled romance between a married middle-class woman (Celia Johnson) and a doctor (Trevor Howard) - at a railway station tearoom.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
British director Carol Reed filmed an adaptation of Graham Greene's script - for the classic, post-WWII noirish suspense thriller The Third Man (1949) set in a divided Vienna and starring American actors Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles (as black marketeer Harry Lime). Reed's earlier crime drama and tense character study Odd Man Out (1947), set in Belfast, starred James Mason as an IRA gunman wounded in a robbery gone awry.

French director Jean Cocteau directed the classic live-action, love drama La Belle et La Bete (Beauty and the Beast) (1946) - a remarkable, visually surrealistic, and unique re-telling of the fairy tale. And Marcel Carne's post-war romantic drama masterpiece Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945), a bittersweet tale set in 19th century Parisian theatre and secretly filmed during the Nazi occupation, was acclaimed for its lyrical beauty and doomed passion.

British Comedy Stars and Ealing Studios:

The most popular British film star comic of the late 1930s and early 1940s (of the pre-TV era from the mid-30s to the mid-40s) was George Formby, noted for playing a ukulele, morale-boosting during the war years, singing songs with double-entendres, and repeating the catchphrase: "Turned out nice again." His notable films included Keep Your Seats Please (1936), Keep Fit (1937), and It's In the Air (1938). Another of the most favorite British comedians was Will Hay. In films from Ealing Studios, his most famous character was an incompetent school master with a pince-nez, often playing opposite toothless Moore Marriott and fat Graham Moffatt. The last film Will Hay co-directed was My Learned Friend (1943) before his death at the end of the decade.

British film comedy reached its creative zenith in the 40s with productions made by the short-lived Ealing Studios. One of Ealing's most whimsical political satires in the late 1940s was Passport to Pimlico (1949), starring Margaret Rutherford and Stanley Holloway in a tale about a district in South London that was determined to belong to Burgundy, France. Another British black comedy from Britain's Ealing Studios, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) featured Alec Guinness in eight roles in the film, and was considered the best comedy of its year. Director Alexander Mackendrick's Ealing release of Whiskey Galore! (1949) (aka Tight Little Island) was also well-revered. The independent studio would become well-known for its late 40s and early 50s comedies, such as The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Ladykillers (1955).

Laurence Olivier and Other Prominent British Stars:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Laurence Olivier adapted, produced/directed (his first and most successful effort), and starred as the title character in one of the greatest Shakespearean adaptations ever made: Henry V (1944) - the tale of Britain's victory over the French at Agincourt (and famous for the line: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"). During England's besieged condition against the Nazis, the Technicolor epic was dedicated to the fighting forces and stiff resolve of Britons. He masterfully merged the set of the Globe Theatre with on-location set-pieces. The film wasn't released in the US until 1946, when Olivier received a special Honorary Academy Award for "his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen." After the war ended, another Olivier adaptation Hamlet (1948) was awarded Best Picture and Olivier won the Best Actor Oscar.

British actress Deborah Kerr's first Hollywood success was in her debut US film The Hucksters (1947).

Powell and Pressburger:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The partnership duo of British director Michael Powell and scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger produced six of their best pictures in the mid to late 40s:

  • the whimsical The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
  • A Canterbury Tale (1944), set not in the 14th century, but in wartime Britain
  • the surreal Scottish romance I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
  • A Matter of Life and Death (1946) (aka Stairway to Heaven)
  • the provocative and rich-colored Black Narcissus (1947) about a group of sexually-repressed nuns in a convent in the Himalayas
  • the tragic love story and ballet film The Red Shoes (1948), one of the greatest films ever made in the UK

Later, their psycho-voyeuristic horror-thriller film Peeping Tom (1960) was controversial for its twisted view of a homicidal, psychopathic photographer.

Italian Neo-Realism:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Roberto Rossellini's influential, documentary-like landmark film Open City (1945) formally introduced Italian Neo-realism - it was the first film in a Rossellini 'war trilogy' of post-war Neo-realistic films. It was a gritty and realistic post-war film set in the underworld of war-time resistance, with the use of on-location cinematography, grainy low-grade black-and-white film stock and untrained actors in improvised scenes. The first indication of Neo-realism came with Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943) two years earlier. Italian director Vittorio De Sica filmed the neo-realistic classic The Bicycle Thief (1948) on location in post-war ravaged Rome - the humanistic, anguished father-son story of an impoverished bill-poster and his young son (both non-actors) in search of his stolen bicycle.

Other representative Neo-realism examples included: Rossellini's Paisan (1946), De Sica's Shoeshine (1946), Rossellini's Germany, Year Zero (1947), Visconti's La Terra Trema (1948), Rossellini's Stromboli (1949), and De Sica's Umberto D (1952). Italian Neo-Realism, portrayed by film-makers Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica, lasted until 1952.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 15

The Hollywood Ten and Blacklisting:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Paranoid witch-hunt investigations conducted by the House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), beginning in 1947, were ostensibly aimed at rooting out suspected Communists and political subversives within the Hollywood/Tinseltown community and film industry, and ended up repressing liberal themes in films as well. The "Hollywood Ten" screenwriters, producers, and directors, who refused to testify before the committee in 1948 and confess alleged un-American participation in or sympathy with communist activities, included:

  • Lester Cole - screenwriter
  • Dalton Trumbo - screenwriter
  • Edward Dmytryk - director
  • Herbert Biberman - director/producer
  • Alvah Bessie - screenwriter
  • Ring Lardner Jr. - screenwriter
  • John Howard Lawson - screenwriter
  • Albert Maltz - screenwriter
  • Samuel Ornitz - screenwriter
  • Robert Adrian Scott - producer/writer

For their refusal to cooperate, the Ten were considered criminals and jailed for up to one year, and fined $1,000 for contempt of Congress. They were also unofficially 'blacklisted' by the US film industry.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, Elia Kazan, Bud Schulberg, Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan (President of the Screen Actors Guild since 1947), testified on communism in the industry. Actors, writers, and directors that were 'blacklisted' by unfriendly testimonies were banned from working in the film studios, ultimately shortening or ending their careers unless they could manage to work under assumed names or work in Europe.

Over 300 movie industry figures and blacklisted stars had their careers ruined between 1947 and 1952, when the HUAC investigation ended in the mid-1950s. Film stars and industry figures such as Myrna Loy, Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Sterling Hayden, Zero Mostel, Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Larry Parks, Joseph Losey, Frank Sinatra, John Garfield, Paul Muni, Sylvia Sydney, Anne Revere, Arthur Miller, Howard Da Silva, Robert Rossen, Lionel Stander, Fredric March, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Holliday, Jose Ferrer, Charlie Chapin, and Melvyn Douglas were either:

  • falsely accused of having Bolshevik connections or being Communist sympathizers
  • investigated as suspected "communists"
  • alleged to be part of a Hollywood "Communist Fifth Column" for refusing to answer questions

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
For example, film director Joseph Losey, whose first US feature film was The Boy With Green Hair (1948), was labeled a member of the Communist party by HUAC (after failing to comply), moved to Europe in the early 1950s, and there directed such great films as The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).

In 1957, Robert Rich (later discovered as a pseudonym for blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for The Brave One (1956) - under his real name, Trumbo was officially presented with the award in 1975. Blacklisted industry members were not eligible for Oscar nominations until 1959. And it wasn't until 1960 that Dalton Trumbo (one of the original "Hollywood Ten" who was declared an "unfriendly witness", jailed for "contempt of Congress," and forced to use a pseudonym after being released from jail) was openly hired by executive producer Kirk Douglas to script and receive screenwriter credits for writing the screenplay for Kubrick's film Spartacus (1960). Otto Preminger also gave Trumbo a chance to adapt Leon Uris' novel for the film Exodus (1960) and to receive proper credit as screenwriter.

The End of the Decade, and the Beginning of the End of the Studio System:

At the end of this decade, reeling from depression, war, problems of the return to peacetime, and the ominous arrival of the atomic bomb, the world was a more cynical, chaotic, economically-unsure and film-noirish place. Studios were also forced to re-evaluate their roles and approaches, with lawsuits that stripped the studios of their lucrative practices. By the late 1940s, the motion picture industry surely faced its period of greatest crisis and challenge, with the depressing bleakness of the Cold War on the horizon.

Hollywood suddenly found itself with many threatening forces at the close of the 40s and the start of the next decade:

  • the coming of television forcing potential moviegoers to remain at home
  • blacklisting and McCarthyism
  • a 1945 studio labor union strike that raised salaries 25% for studio employees
  • a short-lived 75% import duty, from 1947-1948, that restricted the import of all US films into the UK
  • the gradual decline of theatre-attending audiences
  • inflation that raised film production costs
  • anti-trust rulings by the US government against the studios

Block-booking of films was declared illegal and studios were forced to divest themselves of their studio-owned theatre chains by the Paramount Decrees (an action of the US Justice Department and an anti-monopoly decision of the US Supreme Court in 1948 against the Big Five major film studios and three minor studios). The court's anti-trust decision in U.S. vs. Paramount mandated that the production and exhibition functions of the film industry had to be separated.

Now that the studios would have to achieve box-office success based not on their marketplace strength but on the quality of their films - now sold by a film-by-film and theater-by-theater basis - the stability of the studio system of marketing was severely threatened and began to crumble. Studios would be gradually reduced to production and distribution organizations, forced to give up or divest themselves of their vast theater holdings, and prohibited from 'block booking', fixing admission prices, and forcing their lesser products onto independent exhibitors. They were pressured to usher in an era of competition, free agent stars and auteur directors, and many of them were forced to begin selling film rights to pre-1948 films to television to bolster profits.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1940s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 16

The Dawning of the 50s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The 50s decade was known for many things: post-war affluence and increased choice of leisure time activities, conformity, the Korean War, middle-class values, the rise of modern jazz, the rise of 'fast food' restaurants and drive-ins (Jack in the Box - founded in 1951; McDonalds - first franchised in 1955 in Des Plaines, IL; and A&W Root Beer Company - formed in 1950, although it had already established over 450 drive-ins throughout the country), a baby boom, the all-electric home as the ideal, white racist terrorism in the South, the advent of television and TV dinners, abstract art, the first credit card (Diners Club, in 1951), the rise of drive-in theaters to a peak number in the late 50s with over 4,000 outdoor screens (where young teenaged couples could find privacy in their hot-rods), and a youth reaction to middle-aged cinema. Older viewers were prone to stay at home and watch television (about 10.5 million US homes had a TV set in 1950).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In the period following WWII when most of the films were idealized with conventional portrayals of men and women, young people wanted new and exciting symbols of rebellion. Hollywood responded to audience demands - the late 1940s and 1950s saw the rise of the anti-hero - with stars like newcomers James Dean, Paul Newman (who debuted in the costume epic The Silver Chalice (1954)) and Marlon Brando, replacing more proper actors like Tyrone Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor. [In later decades, this new generation of method actors would be followed by Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino.] Sexy anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe - an exciting, vibrant, sexy star.

One of the decade's best comedies was Harvey (1950), with James Stewart as a lovable, eccentric drunk named Elwood P. Dowd whose best friend was an imaginary, six-foot-tall rabbit. Another of the most popular films in the late 50s was Leo McCarey's romantic drama An Affair to Remember (1957), the story of an ill-fated romance between Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant due to an automobile accident, delaying a rendezvous at the top of the Empire State Building in New York City. It was a remake of the director's own tearjerker film Love Affair (1939) with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. The same story would inspire the making of Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993) with leads Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (who had first appeared together in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)), and Love Affair (1994) with real-life couple Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

The New Teenage, Youth-Oriented Market:

The 50s decade also ushered in the age of Rock and Roll and a new younger market of teenagers. This youth-oriented group was opposed to the older generation's choice of nostalgic films, such as director Anthony Mann's and Universal's popular musical biopic The Glenn Miller Story (1954), starring James Stewart as the big band leader, duplicated in Universal's follow-up musical biography The Benny Goodman Story (1956) with Steve Allen (his film debut in a serious dramatic role) as the talented clarinet player. They preferred Rock Around the Clock (1956) that featured disc jockey Alan Freed and the group Bill Haley and His Comets (singing the title song) and many others (such as the Platters, and Freddy Bell and The Bell Boys) - it was the first film entirely dedicated to rock 'n' roll. It was quickly followed by two more similar films featuring Alan Freed (as Himself) -- Don't Knock the Rock (1956) and Rock, Rock, Rock (1956). Both films argued that rock-and-roll was a new, fun, and wholesome type of music. However, the adult generation continued to regard the new youthful generation (and the rise of juvenile deliquency) with skepticism and fear, as illustrated in the film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's stage play, The Bad Seed (1956). The thriller demonstrated that evil could reside in a young, cute serial killer (played by Patty McCormack).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Bandstand first began as a local program for teens on WFIL-TV (now WPVI), Channel 6 in Philadelphia in early October, 1952. In mid-1956, the new host chosen for ABC-TV's American Bandstand was 26 year-old Dick Clark. By the time the show was first aired nationally, in mid-1957, it had became a mainstay for rock group performances.

The rock and roll music of the 50s was on display, along with big-bosomed star Jayne Mansfield as a talentless, dumb blonde sexpot in writer/director Frank Tashlin's satirical comedy The Girl Can't Help It (1956). Marilyn Monroe's foil Tom Ewell starred in the film as the protagonist. It was the first rock and roll film to be taken seriously, with 17 songs in its short 99 minutes framework. Great rock and roll performers included Ray Anthony, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard and his Band (featured in the title song), Gene Vincent and His Bluecaps, Eddie Cochran (with his screen debut) and others. American youth wanted to hear their popular groups in their films that they chose to view, including Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Ritchie Valens, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Gene Vincent, and The Platters.

Sometimes, to appeal to the new juvenile market, actors were miscast, such as clean-cut crooner Pat Boone in April Love (1957), playing a juvenile delinquent who was sent to his uncle's Kentucky farm for rehabilitation. The title song, however, became a big hit for the singer/actor. By the last year of the decade, the youth market in all its forms was worth $10 billion a year. Tragedy also struck in the last year of the decade, when pop idols 22 year old songwriter and singer Buddy Holly, 17 year old Latino singer Ritchie Valens, and 28 year old J.P. Richardson (aka radio DJ "The Big Bopper") were killed in a light plane crash on February 3, 1959 in an Iowa cornfield, while on a "Winter Dance Party" tour. [Both singers were later honored with biopics: The Buddy Holly Story (1978) and La Bamba (1987), and also by Don McLean's 1972 hit song American Pie.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Hollywood soon realized that the affluent teenage population could be exploited, now more rebellious than happy-go-lucky - as they had been previously portrayed in films (such as the Andy Hardy character played by Mickey Rooney). The influence of rock 'n' roll surfaced in Richard Brooks' box-office success, Blackboard Jungle (1955). It was the first major Hollywood film to use R&R on its soundtrack - the music in the credits was provided by Bill Haley and His Comets - their musical hit "Rock Around the Clock." The film also starred Glenn Ford as a war veteran and clean-cut All-American novice teacher at inner city North Manual HS (New York), where the students, led by a disrespectful, sneering punk (Vic Morrow), test his tolerance. [One of the other persuasive youths was a young Sidney Poitier.]

Another film, that came later in the decade, that also exploited the new teenage market's non-conformist attitudes, was Jack Arnold's exploitative juvenile delinquent film, High School Confidential (1958), featuring drugs in a high school dope ring, lots of 50's slang words and hep-talk, Russ Tamblyn as an undercover cop posing as a student, switchblade fights, drag races, Mamie Van Doren as Tamblyn's nympho aunt, and Jerry Lee Lewis singing the title song in its opening.

Two Early 50's Youth Films and Their Influential Actors:

Two other youth-oriented actors and their films in the mid-50s would portray the potentially-scary, self-expressive, and rebellious new teenage population.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
1. Marlon Brando: A Symbol of Adolescent, Anti-Authoritarian Rebellion

A young Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was trained by Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio in New York in raw and realistic 'method acting,' and influenced by Stella Adler. He starred in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway (opposite Jessica Tandy as Blanche) in 1947, and would later repeat his work on film in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and receive an Oscar nomination. He also contributed a memorable role as a self-absorbed teen character. He played Johnny - an arrogant, rebellious, tough yet sensitive leader of a roving motorcycle-biking gang (wearing a T-shirt and leather jacket) that invaded and terrorized a small-town in Laslo Benedek's controversial The Wild One (1954) (banned in Britain until a decade and a half later). The film was noted for one line of dialogue, typifying his attitude: "What are you rebelling against?" Brando's reply: "Whadda ya got?" A nasty Lee Marvin led a rival gang of bikers named The Beetles.

[Brando's photo as biker Johnny later appeared on the front-sleeve of the famed mid-late 60s Beatles' album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Brando's new style of acting would be forever emulated by future generations of actors, including Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, and later Russell Crowe.)]

2. James Dean: The 'First American Teenager'

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The anguished, introspective teen James Dean (1932-1955) was the epitome of adolescent pain. Dean appeared in only three films before his untimely death in the fall of 1955. His first starring role was in Elia Kazan's adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden (1955) as a Cain-like son named Cal vying for his father's (Raymond Massey) love against his brother Aron.

It was followed by Nicholas Ray's best-known melodramatic, color-drenched film about juvenile delinquency and alienation, Warner Bros.' Rebel Without a Cause (1955). This was the film with Dean's most-remembered role as mixed-up, sensitive, and defiant teenager Jim Stark involved in various delinquent behaviors (drunkenness, a switchblade fight, and a deadly drag race called a Chicken Run), and his archetypal scream to his parents: "You're tearing me apart!"

Dean also starred in his third (and final) feature, George Stevens' epic saga Giant (1956) set in Texas, and also starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Dennis Hopper. (The 24 year-old actor was killed in a tragic car crash on September 30th 1955 while driving his Silver Porsche 550 Spyder -- affectionately nicknamed 'The Little Bastard', around the time that Giant was completed and about a month before Rebel opened. Dean was on his way to car races in Salinas on October 1st. The crash occurred at the intersection of Routes 41 and 46 near Paso Robles at Cholame, and he died enroute to the hospital.) [Note: Dean's two co-stars in the film also experienced untimely deaths: Sal Mineo (as Plato) was stabbed to death at age 37, and Natalie Wood (as Judy) drowned at age 43.] In his honor, James Dean was awarded two post-humous Best Actor nominations: for his role as rebellious Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and as oil-rich ranch-hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956).

Elvis 'The Pelvis' Presley: The King of Rock 'N Roll

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Elvis' first record was That's All Right Mama, cut in July, 1954 in Memphis and released on the Sun Records label. At the time of his first hit song Heartbreak Hotel, singer Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance in January 1956 on CBS' Tommy (and Jimmy) Dorsey's Stage Show, although he is best remembered for his controversial, sexy, mid-1956 performance of Hound Dog on the Milton Berle Show, and for three rock 'n roll performances on the Ed Sullivan Show from September 1956 to January 1957 - his last show was censored by being filmed from the 'waist-up'.

He was also featured as an actor in many money-making films after signing his first film deal in 1956. His screen debut was in Fox's Civil War drama Love Me Tender (1956) (originally titled The Reno Brothers), with a #1 single hit song ballad. He also appeared in Paramount's Loving You (1957) (noted for his first screen kiss, and for being his first Technicolor film), and then in his MGM debut film Jailhouse Rock (1957) - generally acknowledged as his most famous and popular film. Next came director Michael Curtiz' and Paramount's King Creole (1958) (his third and last B/W film and his own favorite) in a role as a New Orleans teen rebel (acclaimed as one of his best acting roles) before the decade ended. His induction into the Army in 1958 was a well-publicized event. After his Army stint, he also starred in G.I. Blues (1960), in Don Siegel's western Flaming Star (1960) (with only two songs) as a half-breed youth, in the southern melodrama Wild in the Country (1961), and in other formulaic 60's films (i.e., Blue Hawaii (1961), Kid Galahad (1962), and his biggest box-office hit Viva Las Vegas (1964)). By the 70s, his film roles had deteriorated, and although he returned to stage performances and revived his singing career, he was physically on the decline until his death in August, 1977 of heart disease and drug abuse.

American Releasing Corporation (ARC) - Renamed American International Pictures (AIP) (1956): Roger Corman

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

ARC (1954-1956)
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

ARC (1954-1956)
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

AIP (1956- )

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In its first few years starting in 1954, American International Pictures (AIP) was originally named American Releasing Corporation (ARC). It was known as a low-budget, exploitative film company. The studio's executive producers were James Nicholson and Samuel Arkoff, while its most notable and successful film producer was Roger Corman. Corman became one of the most influential film-makers of the 50s and 60s (he was dubbed the "King of the Drive-In and B-Movie") for his production of a crop of low-budget exploitation films at the time. The studio was largely responsible for the wave of independently-produced films of varying qualities that lasted into the decade of the 70s.

The first release from ARC was the B-movie crime thriller-drama The Fast and the Furious (1954) (Corman's second production) that featured a car chase and starred Dorothy Malone and John Ireland. Another early ARC release was the western Outlaw Treasure (1955) - in fact, a number of the earliest Corman ARC releases were westerns, including Five Guns West (1955), Apache Woman (1955) with Lloyd Bridges, The Oklahoma Woman (1956) and Gunslinger (1956).

Cheap Teen Movies

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Teenagers were Corman's dominant target audience in exploitative films following The Fast and the Furious (1954), such as Teenage Doll (1957) (aka The Young Rebels) - about juvenile delinquency, the first rock & roll horror film I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) (Michael Landon's first feature film). and Sorority Girl (1957). As was the case with most AIP films, they were aggressively marketed with publicity campaigns and lurid posters. There were often double-features (black and white double-bills), for example, Not of This Earth (1957) - an alien invasion film was originally released as part of a double-bill with Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). [Note: Not of This Earth was remade by Jim Wynorski as Not of This Earth (1988) with ex-porn star Traci Lords in her first post-adult film appearance, in the Beverly Garland role.]

[Note: It must be acknowledged that not all cheap teen movies were made by AIP in the 50s, for example, The Blob (1958), featuring Steve McQueen in his first starring role as a high-schooler, was about a meteorite that oozed a disgusting, gooey substance that ate people. There was also Ed Wood's debut transvestite shock film Glen or Glenda (1953).]

Other significant film subjects for ARC and Corman were science fiction/horror films, such as The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955), and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). ARC only released one film noir during this early period: Female Jungle (1955) - notable as sexpot Jayne Mansfield's first film.

Once ARC changed its name to AIP, Corman and other major producers specialized in lots of sensational science-fiction/horror films, teen-oriented exploitation films, and B-film crime dramas, such as:

The Threat of Television:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Hollywood was obviously fearful of television's dawning in the early 1950s. Indeed, the studios forbade their movies and stars from appearing on the small screen at all. Fearful of losing audiences to the screens in their living rooms, Hollywood enticed filmgoers with expensive epics, gimmicky 3D releases, stereo sound, enhanced color technology and widescreen formats such as CinemaScope, VistaVision and Panavision. Bwana Devil (1952) was the first full-length 3D talkie.This is Cinerama (1952) was the first to use a wrap-around, widescreen format, and The Robe (1953), the first movie released in CinemaScope, was recorded in four-track stereo.

All of the major Hollywood studios fought television with what they called "theater television": closed-circuit screenings of TV programs in movie theaters. Since the Big Five studios owned extensive theater chains, this strategy was easily implemented. The Theater Television Network, founded in 1951, aired shows in participating theaters where audiences were provided with costlier programs incorporating political news coverage, prizefights, NCAA games, etc. Although over 100 U.S. theaters had installed theater television by 1952, the phenomenon faded shortly thereafter. And years before HBO, Cinemax or Showtime, an early version of subscription/pay television (called "pay-see" or "toll-video" by Variety) in the late 40s to early 60s equipped regular TV sets with coin-boxes or punch-card systems that, when activated, allowed customers to unscramble the relevant broadcast signal to view special content. Technological and financial issues combined with the threat of government regulation doomed this direct-pay system to failure.

Film attendance declined precipitously as free TV viewing (and the increase in popularity of foreign-language films) made inroads into the entertainment business. In 1951, NBC became America's first nationwide TV network, and in just a few years, 50% of US homes had at least one TV set. In March of 1953, the Academy Awards were televised for the first time by NBC - and the broadcast received the largest single audience in network TV's five-year history. By 1954, NBC's Tonight Show was becoming one of the most popular late-night TV shows. Expensive promotional TV advertising for the scifi flick The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) marked one of the first times that film advertising successfully exploited television to drive people to movie theaters nationally.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Inevitably, the studios came to see that TV wasn't going away and that collaboration could be mutually beneficial. With a steep decline in weekly theatre attendance, studios were forced to find creative ways to make money from television - converted Hollywood studios were beginning to produce more hours of film for TV than for feature films. [In mid-decade, the average film budget was less than one million dollars.]

A number of Hollywood's independent producers created television shows in the late '40s and early '50s. Low-budget westerns (The Roy Rogers Show, The Lone Ranger, etc.), crime/mystery shows (Mark VII Production's Dragnet, MPTV's Adventures of Superman, etc.), and sitcoms (I Love Lucy and Our Miss Brooks). At first, filmed programs ran second to high-quality live dramas, but eventually, pre-recording became the standard mode of production thanks to the profitability of reruns and syndication. By 1953, many major studios became actively involved - notably Disney (with its weekly ABC Disneyland in 1954 promoting the Disneyland theme park and recycling already-released products, and its afternoon TV show The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955). Other TV shows became popular:

  • the early sitcom I Love Lucy (on CBS, beginning in 1951); its stars Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz had founded Desilu Productions in 1950
  • the family show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (on ABC, from 1952-1966)
  • The Donna Reed Show (on ABC, from 1958-1966)
  • The Honeymooners (from 1951 and after)
  • Lassie (on CBS, from 1954-1971)
  • Gunsmoke (on CBS, from 1955-1975) with James Arness as Matt Dillon
  • This is Your Life (on NBC, from 1952-1961)

In the 1955-56 season, the ABC TV show Warner Brothers Presents was the first television program produced by Warner Brothers Pictures, and marked the introduction of the major Hollywood studios into television production. It was a survival tactic for the studios to pioneer in television series production. In the same year, Twentieth Century-Fox Hour played on CBS (from 1955-1957) and MGM's documentary series MGM Parade on ABC. And later, in the mid- to late 50s, Warner Bros. studios produced more TV shows, such as their first hit series Cheyenne (1955-1963 with Clint Walker), Maverick (1957-1962, first with James Garner) and 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964). By the end of 1957, more than 100 Hollywood-produced television series were being broadcast or in production. By 1960, Hollywood dominated prime time.

In the mid-1950s, major studios began to sell and release older black-and-white B-movies (and film rights) to television for broadcast and viewing, albeit primarily to individual stations, not networks. The first Hollywood feature film to be broadcast on US television (on November 3, 1956), during prime-time, was The Wizard of Oz (1939). In 1961, NBC became the first network to premiere recently released, major studio films on the tube. Its popular weekly show Saturday Night at the Movies, was immediately duplicated by the other networks, and by 1968, every night of the week featured a prime-time movie. This phenomenon lasted through the ’70s, triggering Hollywood to produce its own made-for-TV movies and miniseries beginning in the mid-’60s. The first made-for-TV movie, broadcast on NBC, was See How They Run (1964).

TV stars became cross-over film stars - the first was Charlton Heston. In early 1950, Western cowboy star Gene Autry was the first film star to announce his appearance in a sponsored TV series. The feature-length, color version of Dragnet (1954), with popular detective TV star Jack Webb (serving as director, producer, and star) as dead-pan LAPD Sgt. Joe Friday, was the first film based on a TV show - the then-popular B/W TV show of the same name ran from 1951-1959. It was memorable for its "Dum, de Dum Dum" theme music (that first made an appearance in the Miklos Rozsa soundtrack for the film noir The Killers (1946)), and the disclaimer: "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In 1956, the studios lifted the ban against film stars making TV appearances. Fast-talking, cigar-smoking, and quick-witted Groucho Marx (of the famed Marx Brothers) brought his popular radio show You Bet Your Life to television (NBC) as a game show in 1950, with a duck that would descend with $100 if one said the secret word. It lasted until 1961 - its theme music "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" was taken from the Marx Bros.' second film Animal Crackers (1930).

One positive side-effect of the growing influence of American television in the 50s was that it was becoming the proving ground for many aspiring directors. Some of the directors who began in TV in this decade were to make some of Hollywood's best movies in the 60s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Because of the emergence of television as a major entertainment medium, many studios converted their sound stages for use in television production. Because labor was cheaper abroad, many producers were taking their film production overseas.

Delbert Mann's direction of Paddy Chayefsky's script (initially written as a TV play and produced for NBC Television Playhouse and aired in 1953 with Rod Steiger) for the black and white Marty (1955) about a romantically-insecure and lonely Bronx butcher (Best Actor-winning Ernest Borgnine) who found love with someone his friends called a 'dog'. It was a big winner on the film screen - it was the first American film chosen at the Cannes Film Festival as Best Picture since the award was instituted, and it won four major Academy Awards, including Best Picture from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Because television (a small black and white screen) had become affordable and a permanent fixture in most people's homes, the movies also fought back with gimmicks - color films, bigger screens, and 3-D. Bigger and more colorful films and screens, and big scale, profitable box-office epics, such as Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), the popular Biblical story starring long-haired
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
and virile Victor Mature and the beautifully-bewitching Hedy Lamarr with exposed belly-button, and MGM's expensive romantic adventure King Solomon's Mines (1950), filmed on location in Africa, were designed to lure movie-goers back into the theatres. By the mid-50s, more than half of Hollywood's productions were made in color to take Americans away from their B/W TV sets.

Coincidentally, two of the biggest films at the start of the decade, director Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High (1949) about the stress experienced by American bombing units in England, and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow (1950), an "adult-Western" of the blood-brother relationship between an Indian agent (James Stewart) and Apache chief Cochise (white actor Jeff Chandler), would both become episodic TV series in future years.

Along with Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow (1957), Broken Arrow was notable for having a sympathetic depiction of the Native American culture and concerns - the first film to be shot from the Indians' point-of-view for many years. This revisionist effort would be followed years later by the politically-correct, award-winning Dances With Wolves (1990).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 17

Hollywood's War Against Television:

The width-to-height aspect ratio of most Hollywood films before the 50s was 4:3 (or 1.33:1), similar to the boxy-size of a television screen. [However, it should be noted that there were early experiments in wide-screen formats as early as the late 1920s, such as in French director Abel Gance's epic Napoleon (1927), with its Polyvision and 3-screen projection, or in Fox's 70mm. wide-gauge "Grandeur" system first used in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930). Both systems were aborted attempts, and turned out to be uneconomically viable at the time.]

So in its war against television, the film industry had three major campaigns involving technical advances with wide-screen experiences, color, and scope:

  • Cinerama
  • 3-D and Smell-O-Vision
  • CinemaScope
  • Other Widescreen Formats and Processes

Cinerama (1952-1962)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Paramount's wrap-around, big-screen Cinerama debuted in 1952, a break-through technique that required three cameras, three projectors, interlocking, semi-curved (at 146 degrees) screens, and four-track stereo sound. It made audiences feel that they were at the center of the action.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first film using the three-strip cinerama process was This is Cinerama (1952), a travelogue of the world's vacation spots, with a thrilling roller-coaster ride. Although there were a few successful box-office Cinerama hits in the 1950s, the process was ultimately abandoned because its novelty wore off and the equipment and construction of special theatres was too cost-prohibitive and cumbersome:

  • Cinerama Holiday (1955)
  • The Seven Wonders of the World (1957)
  • the Lowell Thomas production of Search for Paradise (1958)
  • The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
  • the last Cinerama-released film, How the West Was Won (1962)

[In the 60s, MGM and UA also produced films including Khartoum (1966), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1965), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) in 70 mm. Ultra Panavision for Cinerama screens, dubbed Super Cinerama or Cinerama 70mm. In 1963, the world's largest Cinerama screen - Cinerama Dome - was 90 feet wide and unveiled in Hollywood.]

3-D Movies

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In the same year as the debut of Cinerama (1952), showmanship and gimmicks like 3-D were used to bring audiences back. Special polarized, 'stereoscopic' goggles or cardboard glasses worn by viewers made the action jump off the screen - in reality, the glasses were unpopular, clunky and the viewing was blurry, although it was difficult (and expensive) for theatre owners to get cinema-goers to give them back. The 3-D effect was unable to compensate for the inferior level of most of the films.

The first full-length 3-D feature sound film was UA's cheaply-made jungle adventure Bwana Devil (1952)) by writer/director Arch Oboler, and starring Robert Stack - its taglines advertised: "A Lion in Your Lap" and "A Lover In Your Arms." The film depicted man-eating lion attacks upon the builders of the Uganda Railway. [Note: The first feature-length 3-D film was The Power of Love (1922).]

The 3-D effect was also used in many different genres:

  • in horror films (Warners' and B-film maker Andre de Toth's House of Wax (1953) with horror master Vincent Price, a remake of Warners' The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)) - the first 3-D horror film to be in the top ten box office hits in its year of release, Vincent Price portrayed the owner of a macabre wax museum in his first horror film, House of Wax (1953)
  • in musicals (George Sidney's Kiss Me Kate (1953))
  • in romantic musical comedies (The French Line (1953) starring busty Jane Russell) - one provocative tagline touted: "It'll knock BOTH your eyes out"
  • in westerns (Douglas Sirk's Taza, Son of Cochise (1954))
  • in science fiction (the cheaply-made Robot Monster (1953), and It Came From Outer Space (1953) - the first 3-D science fiction film) - and shortly thereafter, in The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), a story of a Gill-Man set in the Amazon
  • in thrillers (Hitchcock's 3-D version of Dial M For Murder (1954))

Aroma-Rama and Smell-O-Vision

Other short-lived film fads in this decade and afterwards, that were designed to tear viewers away from their TVs, included Charles Weiss' 1959 system of pumping "Oriental" scents into the theatre through the air-conditioning system - it was dubbed Aroma-Rama. Aroma-Rama was prominently used in Carlo Lizzani's Behind the Great Wall (1959), an Italian documentary about Red China narrated by Chet Huntley. In fact, this olfactory approach to expanding the movie-going experience actually had lesser-known precedents in 1906 (rose oil permeated Forest City Pennsylvania's Family Theatre during a Rose Bowl game newsreel), in 1929 (lilac oil was spread through the ventilation system of a Boston theater during the opening credits of the love story Lilac Time (1928)), and in the 1940s (various scents were distributed during the double-bill The Sea Hawk (1940) and Boom Town (1940) in a Detroit theater).

Smell-O-Vision was a similar process that came slightly later in 1960, developed by the Swiss-born Hans Laube, in which 30 different smells were injected into a movie theatre's seats when triggered by various points in the film's soundtrack. Only one film was made with this gimmicky process - Michael Todd Jr.'s' Scent of Mystery (1960) (aka Holiday in Spain). [Two decades later, director John Waters paid homage to this concept with his patented system dubbed Odorama for his B-film melodrama Polyester (1981). It used scratch-and-sniff cards and a number-system on-screen to alert an audience member when to respond.]

CinemaScope

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
When Cinerama and stereoscopic 3-D died almost as soon as they were initiated, 20th Century Fox's CinemaScope became cheaper and more convenient because it used a simple anamorphic lens to create a widescreen effect. The aspect ratio (width to height) of CinemaScope was 2.35:1. The special lenses for the new process were based on a French system developed by optical designer Henri Chretian. The first film released commercially in CinemaScope was 20th Century Fox's and director Henry Koster's Biblical sword-and-sandal epic The Robe (1953). It debuted in New York at the Roxy Theater in September of 1953.

The dramatic costume epic told the story of a Roman tribune Marcellus (Richard Burton) who was converted to Christianity by Pythagoras (Victor Mature), his slave. Two other early efforts in CinemaScope were Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (1953) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). The CinemaScope wide-screen system would last for the next fourteen years.

Other Wide-Screen Formats and Processes - Milestones

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Various wide-screen processes attracted audiences and monopolized the big-screen market for most of the 1950s. There were numerous optical techniques that widened the theatrical screen with effects that couldn't be duplicated on the TV screen:

  • - Paramount's VistaVision (used in Hitchcock's well-known thrillers To Catch a Thief (1955), his own re-make The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), and North by Northwest (1959), and in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956))
  • - SuperScope (RKO's answer to Fox's CinemaScope), and WarnerScope (Warners' answer to Fox's CinemaScope)
  • - MGM's Camera 65 (later called Super Panavision-70 and Ultra Panavision-70)
  • - Panavision
  • - TechniScope
  • - Todd-AO 70 mm (producer Mike Todd's pioneering, independently-owned system); Super Technirama 70 mm. was a Todd-AO-compatible 70mm format

The following are milestones in the wide-screen formats:

  • first VistaVision film - director Michael Curtiz' and Paramount's hit film White Christmas (1954), an Irving Berlin musical with its most-famous scene of Bing Crosby singing the title song; in the story - a follow-up remake of the earlier hit Holiday Inn (1942), Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and song-and-dance partner Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) put on a Christmas show to save a Vermont lodge while paired up with the Haynes Sisters: Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy (Vera-Ellen)
  • first film in SuperScope - the western Vera Cruz (1954), and later, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
  • first film in WarnerScope - Santiago (1956) (aka The Gun Runner , and later Raoul Walsh's The Naked and the Dead (1958)
  • first film in MGM's Camera 65 (or Ultra Panavision 70) - Raintree County (1957)
  • Ben-Hur (1959) was a Camera 65 picture - the first film shot with Panavision lenses to win the Best Cinematography Academy Award
  • first Todd-AO used successfully in Fred Zinnemann's Oklahoma! (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Josh Logan's South Pacific (1958), and Porgy and Bess (1959)
  • first film in Super Panavision-70 - The Big Fisherman (1959), followed by Exodus (1961) and West Side Story (1961)
  • first films in Super Technirama - Sleeping Beauty (1959), Solomon and Sheba (1959), Spartacus (1960), King of Kings (1961), and El Cid (1961)
  • first film in Ultra Panavision-70 - Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
  • first film in TechniScope - A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

However, Hollywood definitely lost the struggle, because wide-screen films were enormously expensive and risky to make. And it could not find a perfect antidote to reverse TV's capture of movie audiences. The number of feature films released fluctuated each year and often declined - reflecting the financial woes of the movie industry. Eventually, Hollywood gave up the idea of shooting films on 65 or 70 mm film, and reverted back to cheaper alternatives, such as shooting on 35 mm and using special lenses for projection.

Low-Budget Showman: William Castle (1914-1977)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
50s B-horror film director and impresario schlockmeister William Castle was known as the "King of Ballyhoo" - taking his direct inspiration for promotion from trickster P.T. Barnum. Castle's gimmicky ad campaign for Macabre (1958) promised a $1,000 Lloyds of London insurance policy for each patron who might die of fright during a screening of the film. Its taglines were: "See it with someone who can carry you home!" and “If it frightens you to death, you'll be buried free of charge!" One of the most outrageous effects he created for movie audiences was his "Percepto" format for The Tingler (1959), that consisted of installing small electric motors under the theatre seats and shocking viewers with a mini-jolt of buzzing vibration when Vincent Price appeared on screen or when blood-curdling screams were desired. The context of the film was that there was a docile creature, living in the human spinal cord, that became activated by fright and could only be destroyed by screaming ("Scream - scream for your lives").

The horror genre was enhanced with his House on Haunted Hill (1959) with Vincent Price as the eccentric host of the haunted house with a vat of acid in the basement. [By the time the film was remade about 40 years later by director William Malone as House on Haunted Hill (1999), the offer to guests to spend a night in the house was upped from $10,000 to $1 million.] One of Castle's outrageous techniques for this film, his "Emergo" 3-D system, pulled an inflatable plastic, glow-in-the-dark skeleton over film audiences to scare viewers during the film's conclusion. Castle promoted "Illusion-O" for his production of 13 Ghosts (1960), advertised as "13 Times the Thrills! 13 Times the Chills! 13 Times the Fun!" Audience members were given red-and-blue colored 'ghost-viewers' (hand-held pieces of cardboard) in order to see (or not see) the ghosts on-screen in the haunted house. His film Homicidal (1961) was promoted with a "Fright Break," a 45-second timer during the film's climax. The voice-over advised the audience of the time remaining in which they could leave the theatre and receive a full refund if they were too frightened. However, those who wished to leave had to endure the humiliations of a "Coward's Corner" set up in the lobby and bathed in yellow light - something even worse than remaining to watch the rest of the film.

At the start of Castle's Mr. Sardonicus (1961), he personally introduced the tale as "full of gallantry, graciousness and ghouls," and then reappeared in the film's conclusion to ask the audience about their preference for the evil Sardonicus' fate. The gimmick allowed audiences to vote in a “Punishment Poll" - each audience member was given a card with a glow-in-the-dark thumb they could hold either up or down to decide if Mr. Sardonicus would be cured or die at the end of the film. [Joe Dante's Matinee (1993), a tale set in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was about a Castle-like showman (portrayed by John Goodman) named Lawrence Woolsey who was promoting his latest gimmicky horror film, Mant!, in Key West, Florida.]

Extravagant, Expensive, Hollywood Epics:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Risks were taken with lavish, overstated, spectacular epic films in this decade - more films were over three hours in the 50s, with studio support for musicals and epics. Most of the Hollywood spectaculars were Greek, Roman, or Biblical, or otherwise, beginning with The Robe (1953). Pioneering movie director Cecil B. DeMille, known for his larger-than-life, expensive films, lavish productions, and spectacular stunts, staged the greatest hit of 1952 in a circus Big Top setting with multiple stars and cameo roles - the film was Best Picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).

Other epics in mid-decade were Michael Curtiz' Biblical spectacle The Egyptian (1954) and Desiree (1954) with Marlon Brando as an inept Napoleon. Producer/director Howard Hawks' larger-than-life Land of the Pharaohs (1955), co-scripted by William Faulkner and starring Joan Collins as an evil Egyptian princess, was designed to lure television viewers away from their sets with its extravagance and cast of thousands. The exotic adventure film King Solomon's Mines (1950), based on a novel by H.R. Haggard, starred Stewart Granger as diamond-hunting Allan Quartermain with husband-seeking Deborah Kerr in the African jungle (filmed on location). Two films based on Jules Verne's novels starred James Mason: Disney's sci-fi adventure 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), with Kirk Douglas as a 19th-century whaler and James Mason as Captain Nemo in a submarine named the Nautilus, and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) with Mason as a professor leading an expedition into an Icelandic volcano that led them to an underground world where living dinosaurs still existed.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Three Monumental Epics in 1956:

(1) DeMille remade his own 1923 silent film for his final powerful film, re-creating the solemn Biblical epic with special effects such as the miraculous parting of the Red Sea (with 300,000 gallons of water), Charlton Heston as Old Testament prophet Moses, Yul Brynner as the stubborn Pharaoh ("So let it be written, so let it be done"), and a cast of thousands - The Ten Commandments (1956). [Former falsely-accused, blacklisted actor Edward G. Robinson performed in a comeback role as Dathan in the film.]

(2) George Stevens' Giant (1956) was a sprawling epic about a wealthy Texas family of cattle ranchers spanning a twenty-five year period, with big name stars James Dean (in his final film release), Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor.

(3) And Mike Todd's epic travelogue film version of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1956), the second Todd-AO production, was reportedly one of the largest film projects ever made in Hollywood. It employed every means of transportation for wagering Phileas Fogg (David Niven) to circle the globe in 80 days to win a bet, including trains, boats, and a balloon. The film included scores of cameo roles, thousands of extras and costumes, a cavalcade of animals (and their animal handlers), and a whirlwind global journey - and it won five Academy Awards (including Best Picture - and in retrospect has been widely considered one of the poorest Best Picture winners).

Other lengthy, wide-screen, full-color blockbuster epics were guaranteed to follow: War and Peace (1956) (with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda) and Anthony Mann's El Cid (1961) (featuring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
David Lean's epic The Bridge On the River Kwai (1957) was another big-budget spectacular famous for its whistling Colonel Bogey March - a story of heroism and survival in a Japanese POW forced labor camp during World War II (filmed on location in Sri Lanka). A more traditional epic, a colorful, gritty tale of the Vikings, The Vikings (1958), starred Kirk Douglas as the fierce and brutal Norse conqueror. [One of the alleged results of the Howard Hughes-produced The Conqueror (1956) with John Wayne miscast as Genghis Khan, was that the filming in the Utah desert near A-bomb test grounds in Nevada contributed to the cancer deaths of director Dick Powell and stars Wayne, Agnes Moorehead and Susan Hayward.]

William Wyler directed the award-winning remake of Ben-Hur (1959) with its celebrated, live-action chariot race, a much-celebrated film in 65 mm big-screen format that won 11 Oscars out of twelve nominations (more than any other movie in Academy Award history to that time). At $15 million, it was the most expensive film ever made up to its time, and the most expensive film of the 50s decade. It told the story of Prince Judah (Charlton Heston) who was cruelly sent into slavery after an accident, and returned to seek revenge on his oppressors. A similar Roman epic at the end of the decade, Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) starred Kirk Douglas in the title role as a gladiator and the leader of a slave revolt.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 18

Films About Hollywood Itself and the Stage:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
After his successes of the 1940s with a film noir masterpiece (Double Indemnity (1944)) and a bold drama about an alcoholic (The Lost Weekend (1945)), director/writers Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz released the scathing, acidic, subversive Gothic comedy Sunset Boulevard (1950), with an unforgettable come-back performance by once-great, aging silent film star Gloria Swanson, her young, opportunistic hack screen-writer lover (portrayed by William Holden) who narrated the flashbacked film as a dead man, her butler (former director Erich von Stroheim), and director Cecil B. DeMille as himself. It remains the best movie ever made about Hollywood -- years later, it was made into a Broadway musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Another 'behind-the-scenes' melodrama about Hollywood was Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) with Kirk Douglas in a strong performance as a ruthless, maverick Hollywood producer/studio head, who summoned a writer (Dick Powell), a director (Barry Sullivan), and an actress (Lana Turner) - all with careers he launched - to help save his studio. In the same year, the musical Singin' in the Rain (1952) reflected the difficulties experienced by the Hollywood film industry during the transition from silents to sound.

Nicholas Ray directed the brooding, biting film noirish story of a borderline, often-violent, hot-tempered Hollywood screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) suspected of murder in In a Lonely Place (1950). And George Cukor's widescreen A Star is Born (1954), the second version of this classic film, contrasted the rising Hollywood stardom of a singer/actress (Judy Garland in her own comeback from depression and drug abuse) and the decline of her washed-up alcoholic husband/mentor (James Mason).

Robert Aldrich's The Big Knife (1955), a screen adaptation of Clifford Odets' 1949 stage play, presented a devastating look at Hollywood's ruthless search for fame and power in its tale of actor Charles "Charlie" Castle (Jack Palance), struggling with his personal life and estranged wife Marion (Ida Lupino). He was forced by his domineering, tyrannical, blackmailing studio boss Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) (and his slimy assistant Smiley Coy (Wendell Corey)) to renew a 7-year contract. The dark film noir ended with tortured Castle's extra-marital affair, the studio's silencing-murder of starlet Dixie Evans (Shelley Winters), and his own suicide (off-screen).

Although not about Hollywood, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's literate satire about backstage intrigue, All About Eve (1950), with Marilyn Monroe in a bit role as an aspiring starlet, starred Bette Davis as aging theatre star Margo Channing. The film was noted for its witty, barb-infested script, and famous for Davis saying: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night", and Anne Baxter as the ambitious assistant title character. It was honored with a record 14 nominations (5 of which were acting nominations) and six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And Tony Curtis starred in two films about performers: magician Houdini (1953) opposite his real-life wife Janet Leigh as wife Bess Houdini, and director Carol Reed's Techni-colored Trapeze (1956) - about two acrobatic rivals (ex-real-life acrobat Burt Lancaster against aerialist Tony Curtis) in a competitive romantic love triangle with Gina Lollobrigida.

Ingrid Bergman gave an Oscar-winning performance (it was her second Oscar) as the lost princess in Anastasia (1956), claiming to be the last survivor of the Russian royal family. The film represented a comeback for Bergman, who had been exiled from Hollywood after a scandalous, overblown affair with Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini.

United Artists Corporation:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
United Artists, originally founded in 1919 by pioneering film-makers (stars and directors including D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.), encountered debts and financial difficulties and was forced to sell off and reorganize in 1951. The production studio was sold to a syndicate headed by two NY entertainment lawyers, and United Artists became solely a financing and distributing facility. At first, the new administration released modestly-budgeted films, but by the mid-1950s rebounded with the independent films of Stanley Kramer and Otto Preminger. It was very successful and competitive with all the major studios because of the release of its influential films in the decade, such as:

Marilyn Monroe: Sex Symbol and Movie Star

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Innovations in wide-screen technologies weren't the only weapon that Hollywood studios used against television. Starlet Marilyn Monroe was born in 1926, as Norma Jean Mortenson, and earlier known as Norma Jean Baker - Baker was the last name of her mother's first husband-boyfriend. She posed for pin-up artist/painter and photographer Earl Moran beginning in the late 40s. She appeared in a bit-role (with a sexy walk and the line: "Some men are following me") in UA's Love Happy (1949) - with the Marx Brothers in their last film as a team, and in lots of B-movies in bit roles, usually as a dumb blonde. Ultimately, she would become the century's most enduring pop icon and sex symbol. In 1999, Marilyn was named the Number One Sex Star of the 20th Century by Playboy Magazine and the Sexiest Woman of the Century by People Magazine.

She had her first screen test and signed her first studio contract with Twentieth Century Fox in mid-1946 for one year and appeared in bit roles (including the musical comedy The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948) and the juvenile delinquent melodrama Dangerous Years (1947)), and then in 1948 for six months with Columbia Pictures - where she experienced her first co-starring role as a showgirl in the low budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (1949). Eventually, Monroe returned to 20th Century Fox, signing a seven-year contract with the studio in 1950. She had two early memorable bit roles as the naive "niece" (mistress) of a corrupt lawyer in John Huston's superb crime-noir drama The Asphalt Jungle (1950) from MGM, and as an ambitious would-be Hollywood actress in Joseph Mankiewicz's acclaimed All About Eve (1950) from Fox. Her first lead role was in the Fox thriller Don't Bother to Knock (1952) as a mentally-unstable babysitter.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
1953 was a momentous year for Monroe - she appeared in the December 1953 undated, premiere issue of Playboy as the first centerfold and as the cover girl. [Hugh Hefner purchased the "Red Velvet" nude photos that were taken in late May 1949 by Tom Kelley. Embarrassed by posing nude in 1949 for Playboy and to hide her true identity, she signed her photo release as 'Mona Monroe.' Her mother's maiden name was Monroe.] She was voted the Best New Actress of 1953 by Photoplay Magazine, and also appeared in three feature films:

  • in Henry Hathaway's Technicolor film-noir thriller Niagara (1953), Marilyn starred as a sexy, murderous honeymooner named Rose Loomis; the film's tagline advertised: "A raging torrent of emotion that even nature can't control!"
  • in Howard Hawks' musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), she appeared (with Jane Russell) as a delightfully-scheming blonde showgirl and gold-digger named Lorelei Lee, and performed the classic "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"
  • in Jean Negulesco's comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), she was one of three husband-hunting, gold-digging glamour girls (with Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable) who rented a penthouse to attract wealthy suitors

Director/co-writer Billy Wilder cast the blossoming blonde sex symbol of the 1950s in two excellent comedies: the slightly salacious The Seven Year Itch (1955) as a lust-fantasy object (known as The Girl) for Tom Ewell, and enduringly known for the billowing white skirt scene above a breezy subway grating (publicized as much more risque in press shots), and then as ditzy, busty ukelele-strumming singer Sugar Kane in the hilarious classic, screwball, gender-bending farce Some Like It Hot (1959) - one of the sharpest, best-casted films of all time with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as dress-wearing band members named Daphne and Josephine (and Monroe won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy).

[Marilyn, who had previously been married to James Dougherty in 1942 (and divorced in 1946) eloped with baseball player Joe DiMaggio in 1954 in a short-lived union, and then married playwright Arthur Miller in mid-1956 (a four-year marriage that ended with a Mexican divorce in 1961).]

After starting her own motion picture company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, in 1956, she appeared in two of the company's productions as a kind, but no-talent saloon singer floozie in Bus Stop (1956) (with another Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress) and in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) opposite Sir Laurence Olivier as an icy Eastern European monarch. She also starred in George Cukor's third musical Let's Make Love (1960) (Marilyn's 27th picture) with Yves Montand (with whom she had an affair during filming), and her last completed film was director John Huston's troubled production of The Misfits (1961) opposite aging star Clark Gable. One film was left unfinished, Fox's and director George Cukor's Something's Got To Give (1962), a remake of the Cary Grant film My Favorite Wife (1940) co-starring Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. [The film has since been reconstructed from existing film footage at 37 minutes. It includes her nighttime skinny-dipping scene in a backyard pool - it would have been the first nude scene in an American film by a major star. It was revamped and recasted with Doris Day and James Garner as Move Over, Darling (1963).] She died at age 36 on August 5, 1962 in her Los Angeles bedroom, presumably from a drug overdose, but circumstances surrounding her death have proved mysterious, with some claiming 'foul-play' due to alleged affairs with the Kennedys.

Combat-War Films and Anti-Communist Films in the 50s:

At the dawn of the decade, several dramatic World War II films made a comeback: Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Battleground (1949) an action film about American infantryman fighting during the Battle of the Bulge, and John Wayne as a tough, stereotypical Marine Sergeant in The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). The Desert Fox (1951) starred James Mason as German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ("The Desert Fox"), the famed tank commander in war-torn North Africa who was ultimately defeated by Montgomery.

By the time the Korean War was over by mid-decade and the peaceful Cold War period continued, more combat and war-related films were box-office hits:

  • Battle Cry (1954) - based on Leon Uris' novel about Marines on their way to war in the Pacific
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    The High and the Mighty (1954)
    , a gripping, airplane-in-flight-disaster film starring John Wayne (who whistled the theme song) as the copilot and Robert Stack as the Captain; it prophetically invented the disaster film genre and foreshadowed its craze in the 1970s
  • Herman Wouk's novel was adapted as The Caine Mutiny (1954), with Humphrey Bogart on trial as an incompetent Lt. Comm. Queeg, defended by attorney Jose Ferrer
  • co-directors John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy and Joshua Logan made the comedy/drama Mister Roberts (1955) about life on-board a World War II cargo ship named The Reluctant; the film was based on the Broadway play of the same name, and starred lots of acting veterans (James Cagney, Henry Fonda, and William Powell in his last film role) and a young up-and-coming Jack Lemmon
  • To Hell and Back (1955) with decorated World War II GI and war hero Audie Murphy playing himself as an infantryman on the battlefront
  • James Stewart as a US Air Force pilot in Strategic Air Command (1955)
  • The Sea Chase (1955), a World War II adventure with John Wayne as the captain of a German freighter

The fear of the Communists continued to appear on-screen, mostly in blatantly anti-Communist, propagandistic films that are mostly fascinating from a social-historical point of view: R. C. Springsteen's The Red Menace (1949), Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952), Jerry Hopper's The Atomic City (1952) - a thriller set in Los Alamos, and Lewis Allen's A Bullet for Joey (1955). At the end of the decade, the story of a young girl in hiding before being discovered with her family and sent to a concentration camp was filmed in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

The Musical Genre Reached New Heights in the 50s:

This decade also witnessed the prodigious rise of colorful, escapist, lavish, classic musicals (mostly from MGM and its production genius Arthur Freed, and from directors Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli) that benefited from wide-screen exposure, including such films as:

  • Irving Berlin's smash-hit musical Annie Get Your Gun (1950) with Betty Hutton as the legendary sharp-shooting character Annie Oakley, and numerous Irving Berlin songs: "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better"
  • An American in Paris (1951)
  • the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat (1951), with the story of an inter-racial marriage that causes friction on-board the riverboat, and the singing of "Ol' Man River" by William Warfield
  • Singin' In The Rain (1952), the classic film noted for Gene Kelly's dance in a downpour, and Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh"
  • The Band Wagon (1953)
  • Calamity Jane (1953), with Doris Day as the tomboyish title character opposite Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok, honored with a Best Song Oscar for "Secret Love"
  • Kiss Me Kate (1953), a play within a play and musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, with songs including "Too Darn Hot" and "Brush Up Your Shakespeare"
  • Lili (1953) with its hit song "Hi Lili, Hi Lo"
  • Brigadoon (1954), a Lerner and Loewe musical starring Gene Kelly, about a Scottish village that appeared only once every 100 years
  • Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) with its exuberant dancing
  • Guys and Dolls (1955), the screen adaptation of Frank Loesser's 1950 Broadway hit (based upon Damon Runyon's stories) with Marlon Brando cast in the unlikely lead role as Sky Masterson, and Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit
  • Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955) - with Gordon MacRae as Curley and in love with Shirley Jones as Laurey
  • The King and I (1956) - the filmic version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951Broadway musical hit, with Best Actor-winning Yul Brynner as the bald King of Siam ("Etcetera"), and Deborah Kerr as the Western teacher Anna
  • High Society (1956) - the musical remake of The Philadelphia Story (1940) that featured Cole Porter songs and Grace Kelly in her final film
  • Carousel (1956), a delightful Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, with Gordon MacRae as a carnival barker who must come back from Heaven to redeem himself and see his teenaged daughter's graduation - and
  • South Pacific (1958) - another R & H showcase; this one included the songs "Happy Talk," "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," and "Some Enchanted Evening"
  • Damn Yankees (1958) (originally titled What Lola Wants in the UK), based on the story of Faust, and starring male heart-throb Tab Hunter as a baseball fan who made a deal with the Devil
  • Porgy and Bess (1959) - directed by Otto Preminger, with George Gershwin music, and African-American stars including Sammy Davis, Jr. as Sportin' Life, and Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge in the title roles

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Gene Kelly, in a continuing collaboration/partnership with choreographer-turned director Stanley Donen made probably his greatest musical ever (and possibly the most popular Hollywood musical of all time) - the exuberant Singin' in the Rain (1952). It was a pleasurable parody of Hollywood's shaky transition from the silent era to the talkies, and most famous for Kelly's stomping and singing through a downpour and spinning around a lamppost, and Donald O'Connor's slapstick somesault-against-a-wall acrobatics. Other Stanley Donen-Gene Kelly team creations were On the Town (1949) (Kelly's co-directorial debut film) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955).

Some of director Vincente Minnelli's best musicals were made in the 50s:

  • An American in Paris (1951), the award-winning musical with a climactic "jazz ballet" finale brilliantly choreographed by Gene Kelly
  • The Band Wagon (1953)
  • Brigadoon (1954)
  • Gigi (1958) - a Best Picture and Best Director victor starred Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, and Maurice Chevalier ("Thank Heaven for Little Girls")

Although Fred Astaire had ended his dancing partnership with Ginger Rogers, he danced with other partners in The Band Wagon (1953) (with Cyd Charisse), in Daddy Long Legs (1955) (with Leslie Caron), in Funny Face (1957) (with Audrey Hepburn), and in Silk Stockings (1957) (again with Cyd Charisse).

Adult Themes Explored:

With television aimed at family audiences, the movies were freer to explore realistic adult themes and stronger or previously taboo subjects, such as in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) with veiled hints at homosexuality, or voyeurism in Rear Window (1954) (with James Stewart as a wheel-chair bound photographer). George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951) demonstrated the tragic struggle of class differences, as social-climbing Montgomery Clift was convicted of the murder of his pregnant, working-class girlfriend (Shelley Winters) while romancing rich socialite Elizabeth Taylor. Thought daring at the time of its release, Josh Logan's Picnic (1955) starred attractive drifter William Holden who arrived in a Kansas town and romanced Kim Novak at the start of Labor Day picnic celebrations. A Summer Place (1959), with Percy Faith's recognizable theme song, was infamous for its scene of Sandra Dee's mother dragging her to the doctor for a pregnancy test after a beach overnight with lover Troy Donahue.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Columbia's multiple-Oscar winner From Here To Eternity (1953) was considered 'questionable' and ultimately sanitized due to its well-publicized, sensationalized, on-the-beach love-making scene and adulterous relationship between stars Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. The Caine Mutiny (1954) effectively adapted Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with Humphrey Bogart in a memorable role as a crazed, paranoid naval officer named Queeg. The melodramatic soap opera Peyton Place (1957) adapted Grace Metalious's novel about scandalous activity in small-town New Hampshire. Joseph Mankiewicz directed Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift in Tennessee Williams' intriguingly unpleasant Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Another potent adaptation of a Tennessee Williams' stage hit, Richard Brooks' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) was forced to dilute its references to homosexuality, but it still contained frank exchanges about sex.

Marlon Brando Revolutionized the Screen with Method Acting:

Other films with adult-oriented content in the 50s included the stage-to-screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) set in New Orleans, with Oscar-nominated Marlon Brando (he had performed in the successful 1947 Broadway play) in a star-making, emotional role as dirty, sweaty and erotic T-shirt-wearing Stanley Kowalski. (Jessica Tandy, who had played fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois in the stage production, was replaced by Vivien Leigh - a perfect counterpart to Brando's animalistic, swaggering role.)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Brando's acting genius was also portrayed in the gritty organized crime drama On the Waterfront (1954) that won eight Oscars (and 30 year-old Brando's first Best Actor award), in which he portrayed informant, waterfront dockworker and pigeon-tender Terry Malloy (with his famous taxi cab speech: "I could've been a contender" and the scene of his retrieval of Eva Marie Saint's dropped glove). The political theme of Malloy's honorable ratting against the crime boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) helped to explain Kazan's own, self-justifying testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952. [Brando even made an impact in his first film, Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950), as a bitter, hospitalized paraplegic soldier showing hostility toward his pre-war fiancee Teresa Wright.]

In his films of the early 50s, Brando brought a raw naturalistic realism to the screen - a new style termed Method Acting that he had acquired at the Actors Studio in New York, also exemplified in the acting of Montgomery Clift and James Dean in the era. (Although A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) was condemned by the Legion of Decency for its bold content, it pushed back the boundaries of the Production Code while hinting at homosexuality, nymphomania, and rape. Brando would forever be identified with the iconic tight T-shirt he wore in the film.)

Brando's greatness as an actor in the early 50s was honored with four successive Best Actor nominations:

  • Best Actor nomination: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), famous for his bellowing of "Stella-a-a-a" at the foot of the stairs, and for his brutish, masculine performance
  • Best Actor nomination: Viva Zapata! (1952), with Brando as the Mexican revolutionary; also directed by Elia Kazan from John Steinbeck's screenplay
  • Best Actor nomination: for director Joseph L. Mankiewicz' Julius Caesar (1953) with Brando as a mumbling Marc Antony
  • Best Actor nomination and win (Brando's first): On the Waterfront (1954) - director Kazan also won an Oscar; with Brando as a failed boxer and stooge for a corrupt longshoreman's union

In the late 50s, Brando was also nominated a fifth time for his performance in Sayonara (1957), an early film with the theme of intermarriage between an Asian and American and the resulting prejudice, with Brando as a Korean War major romantically involved with a Japanese Kabuki dancer (Miiko Taka).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 19

Films With a 'Social Conscience': Stanley Kramer

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In the early 1950s, when McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist had taken a firm hold, scrappy independent producer/director Stanley Kramer was producing the classic, Best Picture-nominated western High Noon (1952) directed by Fred Zinnemann, a veiled anti-McCarthy allegorical film about a marshal (Oscar-winning Gary Cooper) in a showdown against evil threats to the community.

Other powerful films from the fearless director/producer Kramer, exhibiting a strong social conscience and a serious 'message' about sensitive subjects were:

  • Champion (1949), directed by Mark Robson, a boxing expose-drama with Kirk Douglas (who earned his first Oscar nomination)
  • Home of the Brave (1949), a ground-breaking film exposing racial prejudice and racism in an Army platoon during WWII
  • The Men (1950), directed by Fred Zinnemann, produced by Kramer, noted for the screen debut of Marlon Brando as a disabled veteran
  • Death of a Salesman (1951), directed by László Benedek but produced by Kramer, a screen adaptation of Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, with Fredric March in an Oscar-nominated performance as the tragic middle-aged title character Willy Loman; blacklisted Broadway play actor Lee J. Cobb was denied the role, although Mildred Dunnock recreated her stage role as Willy's wife Linda
  • The Caine Mutiny (1954), directed by Edward Dymtryk and produced by Kramer, starring Humphrey Bogart in his Oscar-nominated role as paranoid Captain Queeg
  • The Wild One (1954), about youth rebellion in the guise of black-jacketed bikers led by the iconic Johnny (Marlon Brando)
  • The Defiant Ones (1958), another film about racism, about a black and white prisoner (Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to star in mainstream Hollywood films in non-stereotyped roles, and Tony Curtis) who escaped from a prison chained together; the film's award-winning script was co-written by blacklisted writer-actor Nedrick Young; the film brought Kramer his first Best Director nomination
  • the thought-provoking, grim, anti-nuclear film about the futility of nuclear war, On the Beach (1959), a doomsday account (based on Nevil Shute's novel) of survivors (Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire) in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack, with Gregory Peck as a stalwart submarine commander
  • Inherit the Wind (1960) - a dramatization of the John Scopes 'Monkey Trial' regarding evolution, religious conservatism, and creationism, pitting courtroom figures (Fredric March and Spencer Tracy) against each other

Later, Kramer also tackled anti-Semitism and the atrocities of Nazi war crimes (the Holocaust) with Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and race relations (and inter-racial marriage) with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Another Kramer film, Bless the Beasts and the Children (1971), was about animal rights. In his entire career, Stanley Kramer's 35 pictures received much critical and financial acclaim, and received 85 Oscar nominations (and 16 Academy Awards).

Director John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) was a suspenseful, modern-day western/drama about a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) confronting a town's awful, racist secret. Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957) (with Andy Griffith and Lee Remick in their screen debuts) examined how easily the media could manipulate and dupe the public. And Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) satirized 50s morals, advertising, sex, and the growing power of television.

Hitchcock's sombre and noirish The Wrong Man (1956) examined the plight of Henry Fonda as a family man unjustly accused of armed robbery. Another definitive film noir was Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953) - it was an example of a sub-genre of criminal/gangster-syndicate films, along with Joseph H. Lewis' The Big Combo (1955), Phil Karlson's The Brothers Rico (1957), and Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg's CinemaScope Murder, Inc. (1960).

Censorship Challenges: Otto Preminger

Since the mid 1930s, films exhibited a seal and number, showing that they were in compliance with the Motion Picture Production Code Administration (better known as the Breen Office because of the PCA's head Joseph Breen). The Hays Production Code was amended in 1951 (its first major revision since 1934!) with content restrictions for the film subjects of drugs, abortion, prostitution, and kidnapping. The constraints of the system were increasingly criticized by the mid-1950s, because filmmakers were forced to make changes in their films in order to qualify for a seal of approval, but some filmmakers were willing to take risks.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first studio-produced film from Hollywood that was released without the seal, deliberately, was producer/director Otto Preminger's daring The Moon is Blue (1953), a dated sex comedy about seduction and chastity that was also condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, in part because of its offensive use of prohibited words such as "virgin," "seduce," "pregnant," and "mistress" in the dialogue. Nonetheless, the film received three Academy Award nominations (Best Actress, Best Song, and Best Film Editing) and great viewer curiosity and box-office publicity due to the controversy. Director Henry Cornelius' I Am A Camera (1955), the pre-cursor to the Broadway musical hit Cabaret, was also denied an approval seal for its subject matter of abortion.

UA's stark black and white The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), under director/producer Otto Preminger's direction and starring Frank Sinatra, was also denied a production seal by the Motion Picture Association of America because the film dealt with the forbidden subject of drug (heroin) addiction. It was a test of the 'morals code' ruling on drugs. UA Studios resigned from the MPPDA and submitted the film to state censorship boards instead. Otto Preminger's legal drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) (with Stewart as a crafty defense lawyer) dealt with another taboo subject - rape. It featured real-life lawyer Joseph Welch (famous for asking in the Army-McCarthy hearings - "Have you no decency at last, sir?") as the presiding Judge Weaver. [By the beginning of the next decade, Preminger was able to release the controversial Advise and Consent (1962), a drama about power politics and homosexuality (and Charles Laughton's last film).]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The release of director Elia Kazan's version of Tennessee Williams' steamy Southern tale Baby Doll (1956) brought condemnation by the National Legion of Decency (although released with a seal of approval) - it was especially controversial for its gigantic Times Square billboard promoting the film with its star Carroll Baker curled up on a cot sucking her thumb (based on one of the earliest scenes in the film). The film was about a young teen bride nicknamed "Baby Doll" (Carroll Baker) who had only two days left until her 20th birthday when she had to give up her virginity to her older husband (Karl Malden). Yet the film, along with Preminger's challenges and other lessening of restrictions on film-makers in 1956, was instrumental in breaking the back of the Production Code and bringing in a new era of frank Hollywood movie-making.

Darryl Zanuck's first independent production, Island in the Sun (1957) was daring for its time, since the Hays Code banned miscegenation. It offered two inter-racial romances between John Justin and Dorothy Dandridge, and Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine. The film provided the first scene in a US film where a white woman (Joan Fontaine) was kissed by a black man (Harry Belafonte). As the 50s progressed, there were other indications that the production code was weakening. Best Supporting Actress nominee Carolyn Jones played the role of a "nympho" in The Bachelor Party (1957), and four consecutive Best Actress Oscar winners portrayed "easy women" or prostitutes:

  • Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), about a patient with several distinct personalities (one a loose party girl) suffering from a rare and controversial psychiatric condition, and being treated with hypnosis by doctor Lee J. Cobb
  • Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! (1958)
  • Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
  • Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 (1960)

Doris Day's Films and Other Romantic Musicals and Comedies:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Besides Marlon Brando, James Dean, and other rebellious characters in the 1950s, there were also squeaky-clean and wholesome stars such as Doris Day. She appeared with Gordon MacRae in the musical Tea For Two (1950), in Roy Del Ruth's and WB's musical romance On Moonlight Bay (1951) based upon Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams and the Penrod stories, and its sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953). She also had lots of roles in similar musicals in the period, such as It's a Great Feeling (1949), The West Point Story (1950), The Lullaby of Broadway (1951), I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), April in Paris (1952), Calamity Jane (1953), Lucky Me (1954), and The Pajama Game (1957).

The first in a long line of fluffy, light-hearted adult sex comedies in the early 60s appeared in the final year of the decade. The light-hearted, witty Pillow Talk (1959) starred the steadfastly-virginal Doris Day and Rock Hudson (the first of their three films together) - portraying two perfectly matched people who battled it out in a war between the sexes. Delbert Mann's Lover Come Back (1961) and Norman Jewison's Send Me No Flowers (1964) were other vintage Hudson-Day comedies. Doris Day also starred with other leading men in romantic comedies or dramas, such as Ronald Reagan in The Winning Team (1952), James Cagney in Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Richard Widmark in The Tunnel of Love (1958), an aging Clark Gable in Teacher's Pet (1958), David Niven in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960), and Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink (1962).

The romantic drama Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), with Frank Sinatra singing the film's Oscar-winning theme song, told the story of three secretaries (Maggie McNamara, Jean Peters, and Dorothy McGuire) who traveled to Rome looking for romance with Louis Jourdan, Clifton Webb, and Rozanno Brazzi. Rosalind Russell starred as the title character in Auntie Mame (1958), recreating her stage role in a play that was based on Patrick Dennis' book about his eccentric relation. It was noted for her statement of her life's philosophy: "Life is a banquet—and some poor suckers are starving to death." A witchy Kim Novak with a cat named Pyewacket cast a love spell on publisher James Stewart in the fantasy comedy Bell, Book and Candle (1958).

Intelligent 50s Westerns:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Low-budget Westerns turned brooding, intelligent, widescreen and psychological in the 1950s, emphasizing well-drawn, complex and ambiguous characters rather than blazing action. Three new directors replaced traditional Westerns with creative, dramatic, "adult" Westerns:

  • Delmer Daves
  • Budd Boetticher
  • Anthony Mann

Writer/director Delmer Daves filmed Broken Arrow (1950) - one of the first Westerns to show the Indian perspective (although white actor Jeff Chandler played the role of Cochise), the first-rate 3:10 To Yuma (1957) (the best of the High Noon imitations), Cowboy (1958), and The Hanging Tree (1959).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Budd Boetticher made some of the best Westerns in the late 50s starring actor Randolph Scott, including Decision at Sundown (1957), the little known classic The Tall T (1957), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960).

The third new director was Anthony Mann who typically teamed up with James Stewart in five films including the episodic, 'psychological' western Winchester '73 (1950) (the film that helped popularize Westerns for the entire decade), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954), and The Man From Laramie (1955). Other excellent Mann westerns included The Tin Star (1957) and The Man of the West (1958), with Gary Cooper as a former outlaw plagued by his past.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Two of Howard Hawks' landmark westerns book-ended the decade: Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). The top male star of 1950, John Wayne, starred in both films.

Three other intelligent and popular Westerns were Fred Zinnemann's anti-HUAC western High Noon (1952) for which Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar by portraying an archetypal loner/marshal taking a showdown stand for justice against the bad guys as the clock tensely ticked towards noon. [Ironically, he was one of Hollywood's actors who cooperated with the HUAC and targeted "Communist sympathizers" in the industry.] High Noon was marked by Grace Kelly's first starring role as the lawman's new bride, and an innovative real-time structure. The second Western film was George Stevens' mythic classic Shane (1953), a new kind of Western which featured an individualistic, existential loner/hero gunslinger. The third Western was John Ford's greatest masterpiece The Searchers (1956), possibly the greatest Western ever made.

At the end of the decade before his classic The Magnificent Seven (1960), John Sturges directed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Last Train from Gun Hill (1958). And from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa came The Seven Samurai (1954) - a 16th century style 'western' tale of seven hired professionals commissioned to defend a small farming village.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 20

The Cold War Era and Its Influence on Science Fiction Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Science fiction films, horror films, and fantasy films (flavored with Cold War paranoia) flourished and dominated the box-office hits of the early to mid-50s (sometimes called the "Monster Movie" decade), when aliens were equated with Communist fears (due to the McCarthy Era's Soviet witch hunt). George Pal's pioneering Destination Moon (1950) was the first in the long series of 50s sci-fi films about outer space travel and other worlds. It won an Oscar for Best Special Effects.

Another popular hit was Robert Wise's intelligent and pacifistic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with the tagline: "From Out of Space, a Warning and an Ultimatum" - a story about a spaceship that landed on the Ellipse in Washington, DC. Emerging from the strange craft were two aliens: a pacifist named Klaatu and robotic enforcer-assistant Gort - with a clear warning. [The film was remade in 2008 by director Scott Derrickson, starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu.] Rudolph Mate's and producer George Pal's When Worlds Collide (1951) featured more special effects in a race-against-time and the world's extinction. Byron Haskin's The War of the Worlds (1953) (another George Pal-produced film) was adapted from H.G. Wells' 1898 book about a Martian invasion that was finally defeated by lowly bacterial germs. (It also was a sensational radio show in 1938 when Orson Welles adapted it for that medium.) Director William Cameron Menzies' Invaders From Mars (1953) was about a 12 year-old boy (Jimmy Hunt) who saw people disappear into the ground (where Martian aliens had set up a base) and whose parents had been reprogrammed into strange-acting zombies. Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) showed the destruction of the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building by alien spacecraft, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Christian Nyby's classic sci-fi/monster film The Thing (From Another World) (1951) featured a hostile space visitor (James Arness from TV's famed Gunsmoke) at an army research base situated in the North Pole's Arctic. Its closing line broadcast America's 50s-style suspicions of the world: "Watch the skies, everywhere, keep looking - keep watching the skies!" It Came From Outer Space (1953) was the first of director Jack Arnold's well-regarded science-fiction adventures in the 1950s (that included Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) - about a radioactive mist that caused Grant Williams to shrink and become dwarfed by a spider and a cat).

The first in a long series of Britain's Hammer Studios low-budget, horror films was the internationally-successful The Quatermass Experiment (1955) - it inspired a boom and revival of the classic horror and sci-fi genre that was being threatened by a glut of teen-oriented horror films. At the other end of the spectrum of 'serious' science fiction was Ed Wood's campy, hilarious classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The first of 1950s films about giant monsters aroused by atomic bomb weapons tests was Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). The science-fiction thriller Them! (1954) featured giant ants mutated because of atomic testing and radiation and threatening Los Angeles. Don Siegel's unforgettable, classic science-fiction melodrama Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) told of fears of an extra-terrestrial plot (symbolic of Communism) to replace humans with emotionless duplicate pods. [The film was remade and updated by Phil Kaufman in the late 70s as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and also remade again in 1994.]

MGM's ambitious science-fiction film inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, Fred Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956), featured marvelous production values and a much-loved sci-fi icon, Robby the Robot on the planet Altair-IV, where the Krell civilization was destroyed by creatures from the Id. The original sci-fi horror-film The Fly (1958) effectively told of matter teleportation experiments that went awry, and the capture of the fly-sized human in a spider web crying "Help me, help me."

Godzilla (or Gojira):

Japan's contribution, following the Hiroshima bombing - and Harryhausen's inspiring Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), was to create the rampant, giant green, four-hundred foot monster Godzilla, who debuted in Toho Studios' and Ishirô Honda's Gojira - King of the Monsters (1954). [The name of the monster was a combination of "gorilla" and "kujira," meaning whale.] It was a cautionary story about the effects of nuclear weapons following the dropping of bombs on the Japanese homeland at the end of WWII, and during a time of underwater nuclear testing in the South Pacific. The film led to an American release a few years later (Godzilla - King of the Monsters (1956)) with significant alterations, after renaming, dubbing in English and recutting (removing all political content), and starring American actor Raymond Burr (before gaining fame for Perry Mason) as reporter Steve Martin.

Other science fiction monsters would soon follow from the team of Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, such as Rodan (1956) - a giant pterodactyl, Ghidrah (a three-headed monster), and Mothra (1962) - a giant caterpillar. The two did not make another Godzilla movie until King Kong vs Godzilla (1963), in which the two gargantuan monsters fought with each other in Tokyo. Godzilla also fought against Mothra in Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964), and against a 3-headed monster named Gidrah in Monster Zero (1965) (aka Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster (1965)). The ultimate monster film was Honda's Destroy All Monsters (1968) with all of Earth's giant monsters (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Angilas and Minya) threatening the cities of the world.

Due to its success, Honda was also called upon to direct the next year's All Monsters Attack (1969) (aka Godzilla's Revenge) - a 'best-of' compilation. The Godzilla monster would later return in the mid-80s as Gojira (1984) (aka Godzilla 1985: The Legend is Reborn) - a remake of the 1956 classic, in the mid-90s as Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), and at the turn of the century with Godzilla 2000 (1999) (the first Japanese Godzilla movie since the 1985 installment to receive a US theatrical release). The ultimate films in the US series were Roland Emmerich's big-budget Godzilla (1998), and the 50th Anniversary film Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) - reprising the giant monster's battles with many of its old foes.

Disney's Feature-Length Animations and All-Live Feature Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Disney Studios returned to feature-length 'story' animations this decade with its production of the charming, fairy-tale Cinderella (1950), one of their best examples of the genre. The rags-to-riches story told of evil and jealous sibling step-sisters, a Fairy Godmother, a glass slipper, a cat named Lucifer, and a pumpkin that turned into a riding carriage. Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) was a nightmarish interpretation of Lewis Carroll's storybook. Another popular animated feature, Peter Pan (1953), was based on Sir J. M. Barrie's fantasy book, with trademark pixie fairie Tinkerbell (legendarily based on Marilyn Monroe's figure) and villainous Captain Hook. Disney's first 3-D cartoon was Melody (1953). In 1954, Disney began to distribute its films through its own new company, Buena Vista Film Distributing. The Lady and the Tramp (1955) was the studio's first animated feature in CinemaScope, and featured a spaniel and mongrel who romantically shared a spaghetti strand in an alleyway. To conclude the decade, Disney released another animated feature Sleeping Beauty (1959), with music by Tchaikovsky.

Disney Studios' first all-live action feature film was Treasure Island (1950) - an adventure tale of gold and pirates based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel. They also produced the exciting Jules Verne fantasy with Captain Nemo (James Mason) and innovative, Academy Award-winning special effects in Richard Fleischer's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Its live-action, family film hit, Old Yeller (1957) was a popular, sentimental boy-and-dog tale with Tommy Kirk. Their final live-action fantasy of the decade was the hit family comedy The Shaggy Dog (1959) with Fred MacMurray.

Fairy tales, such as The Ugly Duckling, The King's New Clothes and Thumbelina, were creatively blended into RKO Radio's Hans Christian Andersen (1952), with Danny Kaye in the title role as the village cobbler and famed Danish writer and storyteller.

Greatest Stars of the 50s:

The biggest box-office stars of the 1950s were: John Wayne, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, James Stewart, Abbott and Costello, Clifton Webb, Esther Williams, Spencer Tracy, Randolph Scott, the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, Gary Cooper, Doris Day, Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Alan Ladd, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, June Allyson, William Holden, Clark Gable, Glenn Ford, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, Burt Lancaster, Glenn Ford, Kim Novak, Frank Sinatra, Jane Wyman, Yul Brynner, Cary Grant, Debbie Reynolds, Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, and Rock Hudson.

James Stewart:

Studio control of stars significantly eroded when James Stewart signed a precedent-setting independent (or free-lance) contract to share in the box-office profits (45% of the net profits) of the Anthony Mann western Winchester '73 (1950), and for the film version of the stage comedy Harvey (1950). In fact, for all his Universal Studios films (including Bend of the River (1952), and The Far Country (1954)), Stewart took no salary in exchange for a large cut of the profits -- a very lucrative deal. As a result, he earned increasingly high salaries, became a pioneer of the percentage deal (a performer accepted a reduced or non-existent salary in exchange for a percentage of the box office profits), and was the industry's top box-office star by mid-decade. For Winchester '73 (1950) alone, Stewart earned between $500,000 and $600,000.

Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
24 year old Audrey Hepburn became a star and won the Best Actress Oscar in William Wyler's captivating comedy/romance Roman Holiday (1953) when she played a princess traveling incognito in Rome - and falling in love with reporter Gregory Peck. She then starred in Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Sabrina (1954) with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, in Funny Face (1957) opposite Fred Astaire, and in the noteworthy drama The Nun's Story (1959) as tested novitiate and missionary Sister Luke in the Belgian Congo where she meets a handsome surgeon (Peter Finch).

The lovely, just-married (to hotelier Nicholas Conrad Hilton, Jr.), 18 year-old violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor appeared in Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride (1950). [Taylor divorced Hilton in early 1951 and married actor Michael Wilding in early 1952.] She also co-starred opposite Montgomery Clift and experienced illicit love in director George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951) (adapted from Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy), and mid-decade reunited with the director for Giant (1956). Toward the end of the decade, she starred in two Tennessee Williams' adaptations, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) as a sexually-deprived Maggie (the "Cat") opposite Paul Newman as husband Brick, and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) as a lobotomy-threatened New Orleans debutante. [In early 1957, Elizabeth Taylor divorced Michael Wilding and married Mike Todd - who died in a New Mexico plane crash in March, 1958. She soon married the recently-divorced Eddie Fisher (from Debbie Reynolds) in 1959 (and divorced in March, 1964).]

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The powerhouse combo-comedy team of Dean Martin (the dead-pan straight man) and Jerry Lewis (the goofy, hyper misfit) had many box-office smashes in the 1950s from their total of sixteen films together, including such forgettable films as At War With the Army (1950), Sailor Beware (1951), That's My Boy (1951), Jumping Jacks (1952), Living It Up (1954), and Artists and Models (1955). After the duo split their partnership in 1956, Lewis went solo in the 60s, directing and starring in The Bellboy (1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963).

The Golden Age of British Comedy:

England experienced a "Golden Age of Comedy" in the 50s following the war, with a series of celebrated, intelligent and whimsical comedies, many with superb character actors Alec Guinness or Peter Sellers in the starring roles. They were produced by Michael Balcon's Ealing Studios and called "Ealing comedies." [Balcon took over the studio in 1938 and ran the independent, craft-oriented studio until 1955.] Almost all of the comedies portrayed a slightly rebellious, small-time crook interested in mocking the authoritarian establishment. The social commentary films included the following four works, all starring Alec Guinness:

  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    director Robert Hamer's black-hearted comedy about inheritance, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) with the versatile Guinness (in his third film) playing the parts of all eight D'Ascoyne family victims, and Dennis Price as the unscrupulous murderer intent on acquiring the family fortune
  • director Charles Crichton's light-hearted caper comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) (winner of the Academy Award for Best Screenplay) again with Alec Guinness as the unsuspecting bank clerk Mr. Holland who masterminds a scheme to rob the Bank of England, melt down the gold bank bars and cast them into miniature Eiffel Towers - but his plan is thwarted by a group of French schoolgirls; the film also featured a brief appearance by a young Audrey Hepburn
  • director Alexander Mackendrick's satirical comedy The Man in the White Suit (1951) with Guinness as an absent-minded, obsessed amateur inventor in the textile industry
  • Mackendrick's droll and farcical comedy The Ladykillers (1955) with Guinness as bumbling criminal mastermind Professor Marcus planning a train robbery with a gang of thieves (Peter Sellers in an early role, Herbert Lom, and Danny Green), all living in the boarding house of octogenarian Katie Johnson; this was the last of the great Ealing comedies; [the film was remade by the Coen brothers in 2004 with the same title, featuring Tom Hanks as the eccentric 'brain' of the larcenous outfit]

In 1954, the British film companies (Ealing, Rank, and London Film Productions-Korda) began to supply their feature films to US television networks - they were the first films to be made available. [Ealing Studios closed in 1955. A plaque at the studio described what Ealing Studios had accomplished over almost two decades: "Here during a quarter of a century, many films were made projecting Britain and the British character.] Small US producers, such as Monogram and Republic, followed suit and before long thousands of B-pictures and serials like Flash Gordon became available to American TV audiences.

The first in a long-running series of low-budget British comedies, Carry On Sergeant (1958), inspired the institution of middle-class, low-brow, wacky humor (with double entendres and one-liners) that finally stretched out to over 30 films in the next few decades. A few of the prominent actors who would reappear in later installments included Charles Hawtrey and William Hartnell.

Other British Influences:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The very-quotable British theatrical work from Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), was filmed in the early 50s with stalwart UK actors Dame Edith Evans, Margaret Rutherford, and Michael Redgrave. English actor Charles Laughton's one and only film as a director, the nightmarish, stark black and white The Night of the Hunter (1955), became a cult classic with its tale of a homicidal preacher (Robert Mitchum), with his knuckles tattooed with the words "LOVE" and "HATE," terrorizing and pursuing two small children, and with silent star Lillian Gish in a supporting role. (Laughton also starred as a cobbler in David Lean's Hobson's Choice (1953), a satirical comedy set in Lancashine in the 1890s that was adapted from Harold Brighouse's famous play.) Britisher Alexander Mackendrick, in his American debut film, evoked a noirish, brutal view of New York City and its moral decay in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), exemplified in the roles of a megalomaniac, syndicated newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster) and a seedy Broadway press agent (Tony Curtis).

UK-born Peter Sellers' popularity was enhanced in the United States after he starred in Jack Arnold's comedy The Mouse That Roared (1959). John Osborne's groundbreaking, popular British play was brought to the screen by director Tony Richardson as Look Back in Anger (1959), with Claire Bloom, Edith Evans, and Richard Burton (as an "angry young man") in the cast. This UK film led to a 'new wave' decade of realistic, "kitchen sink" British dramas in the 60s. The famed Universal monster Frankenstein appeared for the first time in color, in Hammer Studio's version The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) directed by Terence Fisher, with Peter Cushing as Baron Victor Frankenstein, and Christopher Lee as the Monster. This film marked the advent of a long cycle of the studio's stylistic gothic horror films, with Lee also playing the famed Dracula vampire, as in Fisher's Horror of Dracula (1958) the next year.

In the same year as Hitchcock's ground-breaking and disturbing Psycho (1960), master British cinema-maker Michael Powell made a dark, disturbing and shocking thriller Peeping Tom (1960) in vivid Technicolor, one of the earliest "slasher" films. It was about a voyeuristic, psychopathic cameraman with a phallic-knife in the foot of his tripod that he used to kill young women. The film's tagline was: "Terror Meets Art in a Deadly Game of Cat and Mouse."

Notable Directors of the 50s and Their Cinematic Masterpieces:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Some of Hollywood's greatest directors made some of their masterpieces during this decade. In continuing collaboration with John "The Duke" Wayne, director John Ford made three exceptional films:

  • Rio Grande (1950), the third cavalry film in Ford's famed trilogy
  • The Quiet Man (1952), Ford's own favorite film, a gloriously photographed film in the director's native Ireland
  • The Searchers (1956), possibly the greatest Western ever made, and Ford's greatest film in the Western genre. John Wayne (famous for repeating: "That'll be the day") played the lead role as a fanatical, racist searcher and loner seeking revenge during an obsessive quest over many years for his Comanche-kidnapped niece (Natalie Wood)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Maverick and oft-times self-indulgent director Orson Welles filmed the expressionistic Macbeth (1948) for Republic Pictures. Then exiled, he devoted four years of his life to produce, direct, write, and star in another Shakespearean work filmed in various European locales, the classic tragedy Othello (1952). He was brought back to the US to direct and star in his first film in America in 10 years - Universal's classic B film noir Touch of Evil (1958) with its legendary tracking shot opening the film. Unfortunately, it was a financial disaster and spelled the end of Welles' American film-making.

In the decade, versatile producer/director Howard Hawks was uncredited as director for Christian Nyby's sci-fi The Thing (1951), directed sex symbols Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in the musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Joan Collins in the grandiose historical epic Land of the Pharaohs (1955), and then made Rio Bravo (1959) with a combination of established western stars (John Wayne, Walter Brennan, and Ward Bond) and newcomers (Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, and Claude Akins).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
For most of the 50s, Austrian-born director Billy Wilder - after the dark Sunset Boulevard (1950), turned out a variety of enduring classics and lighter comedies, including the brilliant skewering of the press in Ace in the Hole (1951), the POW camp comedy/drama Stalag 17 (1953) with Best Actor-winning William Holden, the modern-day fairy tale Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955) with Marilyn Monroe's famous stance astride a subway grating, the sophisticated Love in the Afternoon (1957) (with aging Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn as the romantic leads), the inspiring biopic The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) with James Stewart as solo pilot Charles Lindbergh, the courtroom thriller Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), and then at the close of the decade, Wilder was awarded his second Best Director Oscar for the Best Picture-winning The Apartment (1960).

Established director/actor/writer John Huston made a number of fine dramas of various genre types in the 50s:

  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    the crime caper classic The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
  • the successful adventure/romance The African Queen (1951), adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, was set mostly on a jungle river in Africa during World War I and featured a prim missionary woman (Katharine Hepburn) and a booze-soaked river rat (Humphrey Bogart) in an odd-couple relationship
  • the Civil War battle tale The Red Badge of Courage (1951), a veiled anti-Korean War treatise based on Stephen Crane's novel, with real-life hero Audie Murphy as reluctant soldier Henry Fleming
  • the biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec (Jose Ferrer) in Moulin Rouge (1952) with a celebrated can-can sequence in a French nightclub
  • Beat the Devil (1953), an off-beat comedy (with Humphrey Bogart's final role for Huston)
  • an adaptation of Herman Melville's whale-story Moby Dick (1956) with Gregory Peck as the crazed Captain Ahab
  • Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) with Robert Mitchum as a WWII sergeant and Deborah Kerr as a Catholic nun stranded on a South Pacific island
  • a remake of A Farewell to Arms (1957) with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones

George Cukor's priceless comedy Born Yesterday (1950) was an update of the best-loved stage production featuring Oscar-winning Judy Holliday as dumb blonde Billie Dawn. [Through the decade, Holliday also starred in Cukor's It Should Happen to You (1954) (with Jack Lemmon in his screen debut) and Vincente Minnelli's The Bells Are Ringing (1960).] In his latter years, prolific director Michael Curtiz was still making films in the mid-50s, such as the buddy film and black comedy We're No Angels (1955), with Humphrey Bogart (his final film with Curtiz), Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray as three escaped convicts from Devil's Island. (The film was remade with Robert De Niro and Sean Penn in 1989.) And John Sturges directed The Old Man and the Sea (1958), an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's brief novel starring Spencer Tracy as a fisherman off the coast of Cuba who struggled with a hooked marlin bigger than his boat.

Chaplin's Swan Song Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Favorable film reviews bypassed Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) in his later years, and his status as an actor and director was severely diminished by Red Scare accusations during the McCarthy era by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Setbacks for the unorthodox but gifted film-maker also included his box-office failure Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a dark comedy about a cold-blooded Bluebeard-like murderer. The film was poorly received by the US press (although it received a Best Original Screenplay nomination), causing Chaplin to pull it out of circulation for many years. Chaplin attended the premiere of his own poignant film Limelight (1952) in the UK, but the film about an aging dance hall tramp clown didn't play in the US until 20 years later due to false rumors against Chaplin and boycotts of the film. The film was noted for its sole teaming of filmdom's two greatest silent clowns, Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Surprisingly, when the bittersweet film was shown in the US and became 'eligible' for an Academy Award in 1972, it won the Best Score Oscar.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
In 1952, when Chaplin's passport was revoked, he was harrassed by US tax collectors, and he was to be denied re-entry if he returned to the US, he permanently relocated in self-imposed exile to Switzerland. Finally, he produced his final starring film, A King in New York (1957), a biting diatribe against American life and anti-Communist hysteria, causing him to be freshly accused of communism by some. His angry film wasn't allowed to be released in America until 1973.

In his final film in which he served as writer and director, Universal's unfunny romantic comedy A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), Chaplin appeared with only a short cameo (as a nameless, seasick, white-haired elderly steward). It allowed him to direct Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, but the romantic comedy was a large flop. It was the first (and only) color film (and widescreen film) that Chaplin ever made, and the only one funded by a major studio. It featured a worldwide smash song, "(Love) This Is My Song," written by Chaplin and sung by Petula Clark. His first return visit to the US was to attend a 1972 tribute ceremony at the Academy Awards, where he was honored with a special Honorary Oscar for his lifetime career of achievement ("for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century").

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 21

Hitchcock in the 50s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Britisher Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), the "Master of Suspense," made some of his very best suspense/thrillers during the 1950s, and also found success in the new medium of TV in the mid-50s. He premiered his television series anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents in October, 1955, to bring his macabre sense of humor to the small screen. Each show was prefaced by his ominous, droll greeting "Good Evening" and short, introductory, on-screen comments. Hitchcock employed most of his TV crew to produce his black and white cinematic masterpiece at the end of the decade, the low-budget Psycho (1960).

Hitchcock became well-known and a noted film-maker for two fundamental reasons: his clever cameos called attention to himself, and his films often did well at the box-office. Although his late 1940s films, The Paradine Case (1947) and Under Capricorn (1949) (Hitchcock's second film in Technicolor) fared poorly, his 50s films flourished:

  • Under Capricorn (1949) - a serious, historical melodrama set in 1830s Australia (with some similarities to Hitchcock's earlier work, Rebecca (1940)) about a romantic triangle between wealthy landowner and grim ex-convict murderer Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten), his mentally-unstable, reclusive, alcoholic and fragile wife Lady Henrietta Flusky (Ingrid Bergman) (shunned by Australian society and cared for by meddling and scheming housekeeper Milly (Margaret Leighton)), and debonair Irishman Charles Adare (Michael Wilding); eventually, the tragic reason for the Flusky's move to Australia was revealed - Sam had been imprisoned when he took the blame for Henrietta's killing of her brother, who was angered over their elopement and marriage.
  • Strangers on a Train (1951) - adapted from Patricia Highsmith's first novel about an amoral murderer who proposed a 'trade' or 'exchange' of crimes; used as a springboard for director/star Danny DeVito's satirical Throw Momma From the Train (1987) with Billy Crystal
  • the effective, voyeuristic suspenseful classic Rear Window (1954) about a neighbor-spying photojournalist (James Stewart) with a broken leg and his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) who believe that one of his apartment dwellers may be a wife murderer
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Dial M for Murder (1954) - a murder thriller filmed in 3-D but not required to be shown that way, with Ray Milland as an ex-tennis pro who masterminds to commit the "perfect" crime - the murder of his unfaithful wealthy wife (Grace Kelly) for having an affair with a TV mystery writer (Robert Cummings)
  • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955) - a remake of Hitchcock's own 1934 film, with Doris Day looking for her kidnapped son, and noted for the song "Que Sera Sera" as a key element
  • The Trouble With Harry (1955)
  • To Catch a Thief (1955) - a lightweight stylish thriller filmed in the south of France, and noted as being Grace Kelly's last film for Hitchcock, before marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco in mid-April 1956 and giving up her film career forever; Kelly's last film was the Technicolor musical comedy High Society (1956) with Cole Porter tunes, a reworking of George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940); at the age of 52, in mid-September 1982, Princess Grace suffered a stroke while driving on the same stretch of highway in Monaco that she had driven in To Catch a Thief, and soon died as a result of her injuries
  • Vertigo (1958) - a tale of masculine romantic obsession and disorientation (using a revolutionary cinematographic technique of zooming out and tracking forward simultaneously to visualize the 'vertigo' effect) for a retired San Francisco detective (James Stewart), and with Kim Novak as a woman who 'returned' from the dead
  • the classic North by Northwest (1959), exploring the director's favorite theme of an innocent man (Manhattan businessman Cary Grant) caught in a complex series of circumstances after being mistaken for a secret agent, and climaxing at Mount Rushmore

New Directors in the 50s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
New directors like Robert Aldrich made striking impressions with early films like the apocalyptic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) (an adaptation of a Mickey Spillane pulp with private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker)). Stanley Kubrick directed the track heist thriller The Killing (1956) and the anti-war drama Paths of Glory (1957) with Kirk Douglas. Sidney Lumet's first feature film was the brilliant jury-room drama 12 Angry Men (1957) with Henry Fonda standing along against conviction. One of Joseph Lewis' best-known films was the noir, cult crime film Gun Crazy (1949) - a forerunner of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Independent-minded Sam Fuller, director of hard-edged, tabloid-ish films, led off the decade with the nasty, suspenseful thriller Pickup on South Street (1953) about a pickpocket (Richard Widmark) and a roll of top-secret Communist microfilm.

Nicholas Ray:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
During the post-war years, two directors who later achieved cult status emerged. The first was one of the most original 50s directors - Nicholas Ray, most famous for his best film Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Ray also directed other interesting films including a Bonnie-and-Clyde, lovers-on-the-run crime film They Live By Night (1949) - (his first feature film), the murder mystery about a suspected homicidal Hollywood screenwriter trying to begin a romance with his alibi-providing neighbor in In a Lonely Place (1950), the noirish On Dangerous Ground (1951), the quintessential rodeo film The Lusty Men (1952), the bizarre cult Western Johnny Guitar (1954), Bigger Than Life (1956) with James Mason as a cortisone-addicted schoolteacher, The True Story of Jesse James (1957) (a re-make of the 1939 classic), and the crime drama Party Girl (1958).

Douglas Sirk:

The second talented and influential director of the 50s, known for visually striking, feverish, highly polished, exaggerated, big budget, emotional soap opera - melodramas, was Douglas Sirk. His best-known glossy films, with innovative production design and a dramatic use of garish color, often featured Rock Hudson:

  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Magnificent Obsession (1954) - a remake of the successful 1935 blockbuster
  • All That Heaven Allows (1955) - about a middle-aged widow's unacceptable affair with her bohemian gardener in a small town
  • the soapy Written on the Wind (1956) about an alcoholic Texas oilman and his sexy, trampish sister (Robert Stack and Oscar-winning Dorothy Malone)
  • Interlude (1957)
  • The Tarnished Angels (1957)
  • A Time to Love and A Time to Die (1958)
  • Imitation of Life (1959), Sirk's last film, from the novel by Fannie Hurst

Declining Strength of the Studio System:

In the 1950's, the after-effects of the 1948 Paramount Decrees (federal trust-busting laws that forbade studios to be linked with theatre chains) were devastating. The courts ordered that the film industry's vertically-integrated structure of production, distribution, and exhibition had to be separated into distinct corporate entities, and studios were ordered to sell off their theatres.

There were many other indications of the upheavals in the film industry:

  • once-powerful MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer resigned from the studio in 1951 (to be replaced by producer Dore Schary, who was fired in 1956) and died in 1957; MGM became an independent studio in 1959
  • Columbia Pictures established Screen Gems, a subsidiary for making TV programs in 1951; it leased its pre-1948 films to television in 1955; and both founding rulers, the Cohn brothers, died in the mid- to late-50s
  • Darryl F. Zanuck resigned from 20th Century Fox in 1956 to become an independent producer; as a result, the studio started to lose money and was forced to sell its famous backlot and release its post-1949 color films to NBC Television
  • Universal International (formed in 1946 from the merger of Universal Pictures and International Pictures) was sold to Decca Records in 1952; it released its films to television in 1957
  • Warner Bros. sold the film rights to its pre-1950 films to an investment group in 1956
  • millionaire Howard Hughes, who had been in charge of RKO Studios since 1948 and sole owner of the studio since 1954, sold off the studio's theatres (now a part of the Cineplex Odeon group). By 1953, RKO Studios' losses totaled $20 million, and in 1954, Hughes began the sell-off of the studio's film library to television, and fired hundreds of employees. The studio was sold to the General Tire and Rubber Corporation in 1955, and ceased the production of feature films altogether in 1957. It announced plans to close and distribute/release its remaining pictures through other companies, primarily Universal-International. The studio that had made two of the greatest films ever, King Kong (1933) and Citizen Kane (1941) and was responsible for the cycle of Astaire-Rogers dance musicals, was no more
  • Paramount sold the rights to its films (pre-1948) to MCA in 1958
  • film newsreels were discontinued in the mid-50s - they were obvious victims of TV's reigning influence; the average US film ticket price fell to $.51 in 1959 to compete with television
  • the effects of nitrate-based film stock, discontinued in the early 1950s because of its instability, began to be realized with the gradual disintegration of many thousands of US films

The studios became depleted with the exit rush by both directors, artists and technicians - mostly to the burgeoning television industry. Some of Hollywood's greatest directors, George Stevens, John Ford, and Leo McCarey, made half-hour dramas for the Screen Directors Playhouse (1955) on television, and others (actors, editors, and cameramen) followed suit. As a consequence, many of television's directors in the 50s, e.g., John Frankenheimer, George Roy Hill, Sidney Lumet, Sam Peckinpah, Blake Edwards, Michael Ritchie, Robert Altman, Robert Mulligan, Arthur Penn, and Franklin Schaffner became the new wave of the film industry's directors into the 60s after the decline of the studio system.

The system of studio-contracted players (the star system) began to lose some of its power and grip on movie stars in the early to mid-50s as well, and the decline would steadily reach into the next decade. Many of the stars went independent and operated as free-lance agents, moving from studio to studio for individual pictures and ushering in the age of the independent superstar. In the early 1950s, James Stewart decided to free-lance, and became a precedent-setting pioneer of the percentage deal, in which he would receive up to half the profits of his movies (he received a share of the profits for the film Bend of the River (1952)). Other stars followed suit and demanded payment on an individual film basis (in single-film deals), beginning the trend toward huge star salaries and the formation of their own production companies. Some superstars groomed themselves and guided their own careers, appearing in their own starring vehicles.

Directors charged that the demands of high-salary stars would ruin the business. In fact, by 1959 the production of films in the US dropped to about 250 films a year - a 50% drop from only a decade earlier, and only 42 million Americans were attending theatrical films on a weekly basis (as compared to more than double that amount during 1948). In contrast, more and more imported European and Asian films (such as Rashomon (1950), The Seven Samurai (1954), Pather Panchali (1955) and The 400 Blows (1959)) were being showcased in art houses and in burgeoning film festivals.

The "Red Scare" and Various Propaganda Films:

The aftermath of studio blacklists and Communist Party fears, following Senator Joseph McCarthy's HUAC witch-hunt that targeted Hollywood and smeared hundreds of film people in the early 50s, had wide-spread effects for years to come. Communist and "Cold War" paranoia and fears of Communist infiltration were reflected in a number of films of the early and mid-50s. Allegorical science fiction films reflected the collective unconscious and often cynically commented upon political powers, threats and evils that surrounded us (alien forces were often a metaphor for Communism, e.g., Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)), and the dangers of aliens taking over our minds and territory.

Other examples of semi-exploitative, anti-communist films helped to fuel the perceived threat of Communist spies and sympathizers, and contributed to the propagandistic political temperament of the time:

  • I Married a Communist (1949) (aka The Woman on Pier 13), the first of several anti-Communist films made by Howard Hughes at RKO
  • Guilty of Treason (1950), a propagandistic docudrama from director Felix E. Feist about courageous Hungarian Joszef Cardinal Mindzhenty (Charles Bickford) who stood up to the Communist regime in his native land and was imprisoned; the film included graphic scenes of torture for those who resisted and were enemies of the State
  • The Whip Hand (1951), from director William Cameron Menzies, about a small town harboring Communists who planned biological germ warfare by unleashing a deadly virus
  • Big Jim McLain (1952), from director Edward Ludwig, a dreadful political thriller and message film featuring John Wayne as an HUAC agent who pursued subversive pro-Reds in Hawaii; with guest appearances from actual members of the committee
  • The Hoaxters (1952), the sole Hollywood film about communism presented as a documentary; the MGM film indicted Fascists, Nazis, and Communists as damaging to the American way of life; nominated as Best Documentary Feature (producer Dore Schary)
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Invasion, U.S.A. (1952), from director Alfred E. Green, a low-budget sci-fi disaster film about a Russian nuclear attack on the West Coast; Hedda Hopper exclaimed about the paranoid film, "It will scare the pants off you!"
  • My Son John (1952), an exaggerated anti-Communist melodrama about a small-town couple who were shattered by the revelation that their son (Robert Walker, who died before the film was completed) was a Communist agent; nominated for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Leo McCarey)
  • Red Planet Mars (1952), one of the most notorious and bizarre films during the period, from director Harry Horner, about an embittered ex-Nazi scientist working for the Communists (intent on destroying American democracy) by bouncing radio signals off the ionosphere and making them appear to be coming from advanced extraterrestrials on Mars, and then interpreted as being the voice of God
  • Walk East on Beacon! (1952), a dramatic espionage story (based on an article written by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover) about a Boston-based Communist spy ring
  • The 27th Day (1957), directed by William Asher, about aliens who distributed boxes to five representatives of nations, giving them the power to destroy the world
  • Rocket Attack, USA (1961), an hysteria-producing, alarmist, pseudo-documentary propagandistic film made during the early years of the space race that contributed to fears of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack by the Russians, and argued for a defense system to protect the US from a nuclear launch; almost half the film consisted of stock footage of the construction and test of American ICBMs
  • Red Nightmare (1962) (aka The Commies Are Coming! The Commies Are Coming!), from director George Waggner, an infamous propaganda short, narrated and hosted by Jack Webb, about a nightmarish takeover of the US by Communist forces

The legacy of HUAC's blacklisting was also felt in this decade by Best Screenplay nominee Michael Wilson for Friendly Persuasion (1956), a Civil War tale about a Quaker pacifist family (with actor Anthony Perkins' film debut). His nomination for writing the film's screenplay (uncredited in the film) was declared ineligible and his name was prohibited from a listing in the final awards ballot, because of his invoking of the 5th Amendment before the committee in 1952. Finally, by 1959, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) determined that blacklisted film industry members could be nominated for Oscar awards.

By the advent of the 60s, anti-Communist films took a more satirical edge, evidenced in a backlash of black comedies and serio-comic films, such as Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Or:... (1964), and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). And they became bolder with other such critical films as Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962), Fail-Safe (1964), and Seven Days in May (1964).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1950s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 22

The New Decade's Major Changes:

Cinema in the 1960s reflected the decade of fun, fashion, rock 'n' roll, tremendous social changes (i.e., the civil rights era and marches) and transitional cultural values. This was a turbulent decade of monumental changes, tragedies, cultural events, assassinations and deaths, and advancements, such as:

  • 1959 - Barbie Doll and the Microchip invented
  • 1960 - Introduction of the Twist dance by Chubby Checker
  • 1962 - Death of Marilyn Monroe
  • 1962 - First TV broadcasts in color
  • 1962 - Spacewar, the first computer video game, invented
  • 1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis
  • 1963 - TouchTone telephones introduced
  • 1963 - President John F. Kennedy's assassination
  • 1963 - Women's Liberation, signaled by the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
  • 1964 - Beatlemania, the Beatles 'invaded' US
  • 1964 - Boxer Cassius Clay joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali
  • 1965 - Miniskirt made first appearance
  • 1965 - Watts (LA) race riots
  • 1965 - Protests of racial stereotyping against 'Amos and Andy' TV show forced it off the air
  • 1966 - One Million Years BC made Raquel Welch a sex symbol in a two-piece fur bikini
  • 1967 - "Hair" opened off-Broadway
  • 1967 - Human Be-In (Golden Gate Park), and Summer of Love in San Francisco
  • 1967 - First Heart Transplant
  • 1967 - Anti-Vietnam War Protests Escalated as War Deaths Multiplied
  • 1968 - "60 Minutes" debuted on CBS-TV
  • 1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr's and Robert Kennedy's assassinations
  • 1969 - Woodstock Musical Festival in upper-state New York
  • 1969 - Introduction of the indoor-safe NERF ball
  • 1969 - "Sesame Street" debuted on TV
  • 1969 - Mai Lai
  • 1969 - Arpanet (first Internet) invented
  • 1969 - The brutal and 'ritualistic' murder of 26 year-old actress Sharon Tate (Roman Polanski's pregnant wife) and others in Los Angeles (Bel Air) by Charlie Manson's hippie 'cultic' family
  • 1969 - First Man on the Moon with Apollo 11 space flight
  • 1970 - Kent State Massacre
  • 1971 - Charlie Manson and three of his female followers in their 20s were convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders, after the longest murder trial in US history

However, 1963 was the worst year for US film production in fifty years (there were only 121 feature releases). And the largest number of foreign films released in the US in any one year was in 1964 (there were 361 foreign releases in the US vs. 141 US releases).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
With movie audiences declining due to the dominance of television, major American film companies began to diversify with other forms of entertainment: records, publishing, TV movies and the production of TV series. For example:

  • in July of 1961, TWA Airlines began the first regular in-flight movies in first-class during a NYC to LA flight, with a Bell and Howell projector aimed at a screen to show the glossy soap opera By Love Possessed (1961), starring Lana Turner
  • in September of 1961, Saturday Night at the Movies premiered on NBC with the first wide-screen comedy, How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - it marked the start of the trend to broadcast Hollywood movies on TV
  • in 1965, Columbia released folk/rock singer Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited
  • separate awards for Black and White and Color Cinematography were eliminated by AMPAS for 1967 (and after) films, because most films were being made in color

Financial Difficulties Within the Film Industry:

Increasingly in the 60s, the major studios financed and distributed independently-produced domestic pictures. And made-for-TV movies became a regular feature of network programming by mid-decade. Many "runaway" film productions were being made abroad to save money. By mid-decade, the average ticket price was less than a dollar, and the average film budget was slightly over one and a half million dollars. And by the end of the decade, the film industry was very troubled and depressed and experiencing an all-time low that had been developing for almost 25 years.

Studio-bound "contract" stars and directors were no longer. And most of the directors from the early days of cinema were either retired or dead. Some of the studios, such as UA and Hal Roach Studios, had to sell off their backlots as valuable California real estate (for condominiums and shopping centers). Some sold props (MGM was selling various film artifacts in 1970, including Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (1939)), offered tours of back lots (Universal began its famed studio tours in 1964), or created theme parks (DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
To aid the tourist industry and create another attraction, in 1960, the Hollywood Chamber of Congress inaugurated the Hollywood Walk of Fame (bronzed stars in pink terrazzo and surrounded by charcoal terrazzo squares that were embedded in the sidewalks along sections of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street). The first star, placed on February 9, 1960, was for Joanne Woodward. However, by the mid-70s, Hollywood was better known for its adult bookstores, prostitutes, and run-down look.

The Birth of the Multiplex and the Demise of Theatre Palaces:

Stanley H. Durwood became the father of the 'multiplex' movie theater in 1963 when he opened the first-ever mall multiplex, composed of two side-by-side theaters with 700 seats at Ward Parkway Center in Kansas City. Three years later, Durwood introduced the world's first four-plex and then in 1969, he built a six-plex with automated projection booths. Durwood went on to head up AMC Entertainment, making it the third-largest movie theater company in the nation.

Meanwhile, the creation of and flight to the suburbs, the studios' divestiture of their theatre holdings after 1948, and the impact of television in the 1950s meant the demise and razing of the benchmark, downtown movie palaces of the 20s. Architectural wonders, such as the Paramount Theater in Times Square (New York), projected its last scheduled film in 1964. The RKO (Hill Street) Theatre in Los Angeles was destined to become a parking garage soon after. And the RKO Orpheum Theatre in downtown San Diego, built in 1924, was demolished to make room for a bank.

Studio Take-Overs:

Due to various insecurities and financial difficulties, the studios were quickly taken over by multi-national companies, especially after the deaths of pre-war, entrepreneurish movie-studio moguls such as Louis B. Mayer of MGM and Harry Cohn of Columbia, the ousting of Darryl F. Zanuck from 20th Century Fox in 1971, and the sale of one-third of Warner Bros. stock by Jack Warner to Seven Arts in 1967. The traditional, Hollywood studio era would soon be history, as more and more studios were acquired by other unrelated business conglomerates. The age of "packaged" films and the independent company and producer were beginning.

In the mid- to late 60s, there was a buying/selling frenzy of the major conglomerates who invested and traded in studios and networks:

  • In 1962, the growing entertainment conglomerate MCA (the Music Corporation of America) acquired Universal-International Studios (actually Universal-International-Decca), a merger that would have lasting influence on show business; it developed its strength as a TV production company
  • In 1966, Gulf+Western Industries bought the floundering Paramount, and made Robert Evans head of the studio's production; Evans would soon be responsible for some of the studio's most influential films, such as Rosemary's Baby (1968), Love Story (1970), The Godfather (1972), and Chinatown (1974) which Evans produced
  • In 1967, New Line Cinema was founded by Robert Shaye as a privately-held distributor of art films, such as John Waters' trash comedy classic Pink Flamingos (1972)
  • In 1967, Bank of America absorbed United Artists through its Transamerica Corporation subsidiary
  • In 1967, Jack Warner (co-creator of the famous studio) sold his controlling interest in Warner Bros. to a Canadian production and distribution corporation called Seven Arts, and the company was re-named Warner Bros-Seven Arts. The new company acquired Atlantic Records, but debt-laden, was sold in 1969 to Kinney National Services Incorporated, a New York conglomerate whose interests included parking lots and funeral homes; the studio was later renamed Warner Communications in 1971
  • In 1968, Avco, an aviation equipment and financial services company, bought Embassy Films from founder Joseph E. Levine
  • In 1969, MGM was acquired by the Las Vegas hotel financier and airline mogul Kirk Kerkorian, who won control of the studio in a proxy battle with Seagram's Edgar Bronfman, Sr.; it temporarily suspended film-making for over ten years, until acquired by United Artists and relaunched in 1981
  • the original, large-screen IMAX projection system was developed in 1967, and made its debut in 1970 at the Fuji Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, with a five-story screen and 70mm film in the projector (and the first IMAX film Tiger Child - a Multiscreen Corporation production)

The Cleopatra Disaster:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The much-heralded Joseph L. Mankiewicz film Cleopatra (1963), filmed on location in Rome, brought together the explosive pairing of Elizabeth Taylor as the Queen of Egypt and future husband Richard Burton as Marc Antony, who brought more headlines with their blossoming romance than the budget problems. It proved to be a tremendous financial disaster for 20th Century Fox, headed by Darryl Zanuck. Taylor, already the highest-paid performer in the history of Hollywood at $1 million, had a costume wardrobe budgeted at almost $200,000, and with numerous cost over-runs, extravagant sets and thousands of costumes for the cast, the film was the most expensive up to that time at a record $44 million (in adjusted dollars, about $300 million), from an initial budget of $2 million. It was also the longest, commercially-made American film released in the US - at 4 hours and 3 minutes. [Fox was saved from financial disaster only by the release of the fact-based war epic The Longest Day (1963), an all-star re-creation of the events surrounding D-Day, and the blow was also softened by the unexpected success of The Sound of Music (1965).]

British Influences:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
With the high cost of producing and making films in Hollywood and the shrinking of studio size, many studios decreased their internal production and increased moviemaking outside the country, mostly in Britain (an economically advantageous production base), making big-budget, big-picture films there. In 1962, for example, the number of Hollywood films in production had hit an all-time low, dropping off 26% from the previous year. Two examples of films made elsewhere included these magnificent historical dramas of 12th century England:

  • Becket (1964) with Richard Burton (as Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury) and Peter O'Toole (as King Henry II), an Oscar-winning film for Best Screenplay
  • The Lion in Winter (1968), the retelling of the clash between King Henry II (Peter O'Toole reprising his role as the King) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), with Oscar wins for Hepburn and James Goldman's screenplay [this film featured Anthony Hopkins' feature-film debut as King Richard the Lion-Hearted]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The major studios increasingly became financiers and distributors of foreign-made films. Two of director David Lean's 60's films, the ones that defined his career's reputation, were made in Britain. The scenic beauty and backdrops of both films became a tangible character, and opened the door for similar epic-travelogues:

  • Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - the spectacular, adventure epic film made in 70 mm about an enigmatic, masochistic British officer/hero named Col. T. E. Lawrence who fought guerrilla-style alongside Omar Sharif (in a breakthrough role), with Shakespearean actor Peter O'Toole in his first major, Oscar-nominated, star-making screen role as the homoerotic protagonist; from a revered screenplay by Robert Bolt
  • Doctor Zhivago (1965), a sweeping romantic/historical drama adapted from Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning novel of the days of Russia's Civil War played out against the story of physician Yuri Zhivago, the two female loves of his life: sensuous mistress Lara (Julie Christie) and wife Tanya (Geraldine Chaplin), and the villainous Kamarovsky (Rod Steiger)

The Anglo-American epic A Man For All Seasons (1966) by director Fred Zinnemann, won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor Oscars. It portrayed the clash of ideals between the honorable and principled Sir Thomas More (well-spoken, Oscar-winning Paul Scofield reprising his stage performance) who sacrificed his own life as a rebel against the egocentric and tyrannical King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw).

The Phasing Out of Big Historical Epics:

However, costly historical epics were being phased out. Two big-money, opulent, epic productions, both directed by Anthony Mann, were carryovers from the 50s decade of inflated historical epics. These were made in Spain and Italy respectively, two less expensive movie-making locations in Europe:

  • El Cid (1961) with heroic Charlton Heston as the legendary 11th century Spanish warrior; Mann made the film after being fired from the set of Spartacus (1960) - see below
  • producer Samuel Bronston's historical drama The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) - a disastrous, exorbitant film that overextended and bankrupted his studio

Nicholas Ray's and Andrew Marton's 70 mm. 55 Days at Peking (1963), also produced by Samuel Bronston, starred Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, and John Huston's religious epic The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) lost favor as extravagant film productions of this kind became too costly.

British "Kitchen Sink" Cinema: "Angry Young Men" Films

A new wave of grim, non-fictional, social realism in British cinema, dubbed or styled "Kitchen Sink" due to its angry, every-day working-class heroes, frank dialogue, and negative post-war themes, was exemplified in the grainy, powerful works of various directors in the late 50s and early 60s. Most of the directors had backgrounds in theatre, television and documentaries and brought their talents to the screen.

Their socially-conscious films were also categorized as "Angry Young Men" films, due to the fact that each one focused on the economic and social problems of a frustrated male protagonist who attempted to break free from society and its expectations, through the use of alcohol, sex, sports, and money, etc. They broke new material by portraying England's angry and alienated youth in fresh, energetic, and frank terms:


Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 23

The Invasion of British Cinema:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Increasing American interest in British fads, fashion, and culture coincided with the smash-hit period comedy and Best Picture-winning Tom Jones (1963) that was based on the hero of Henry Fielding's classic novel. [The adapted screenplay was written by John Osborne - known for his earlier work for the socially-realistic Look Back in Anger (1959).] Its win of four Oscars (including Best Picture) and six other nominations in 1963 took everyone by surprise - Tony Richardson's British film was an especially appealing, free-spirited, 'Swingin' Sixties' film because of its bawdy, slapstick attitude toward sex seen through the misadventures of a lusty youth (Albert Finney) in 18th century England.

The Fabulous Four Beatles, who had invaded the US with Beatlemania in 1963 and 1964 with their pop music made two semi-documentary musical films: (1) director Richard Lester's fast-paced, inventive rock 'n' roll comedy A Hard Day's Night (1964) (filmed in only eight weeks after the Beatles' return to England) - a day in the life of the band, and (2) the energetically zany Help! (1965). A few years later, a third Beatles-related film, the UK's animated, kaleidoscopic fantasy musical Yellow Submarine (1968) with a score by George Martin, featured a Nowhere Man, actors' voices standing in for the actual Beatles, and an invasion of Blue Meanies on Pepperland.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Other British films such as John Schlesinger's Darling (1965) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Georgy Girl (1966), and Lewis Gilbert's sex comedy Alfie (1966) gave international attention to actors like Julie Christie, Lynn Redgrave and Michael Caine (also Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson and others). Oscar-winning Maggie Smith starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), a film set in 1930s Edinburgh about an exceptional, free-thinking teacher whose pupils were "the creme de la creme." Director Ken Loach's low-budget debut film Kes (1969) told about an abused 15 year old boy (David Bradley) from the Yorkshire working classes who found solace with a pet kestrel (falcon).

Blacklisted US director Joseph Losey collaborated with scriptwriter Harold Pinter and actor Dirk Bogarde (as a sinister and unctuous manservant named Barrett) to satirize the upper strata of the British class system in The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). But the British film (now a cult classic) that best exemplified the 'swinging' youth drugs/sex era of late 60s London was co-directors Donald Cammell's and Nicolas Roeg's originally X-rated Performance (1970) - starring Rolling Stones rock star Mick Jagger.

The Invasion of Foreign Cinema:

Many of the best and most varied arthouse films came from foreign directors (from Italy, France, and Japan) during this decade and were enjoyed (with subtitles) by college students and other sophisticated metropolitan audiences, such as:

  • Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963)
  • Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle (1960) (aka Breathless)
  • Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960) and Blow-Up (1966)
  • Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Jules Et Jim (1962)
  • Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
  • Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962)
  • Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963)
  • Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966)
  • Luis Bunuel's Viridiana (1961), Belle De Jour (1967) and Tristana (1970)
  • Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967)
  • Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967)

Many famous European directors (Antonioni, Truffaut, Polanski) produced their cinematic works in Britain during the decade: Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni filmed the enigmatic, complex and thought-provoking, existential murder-mystery Blow-Up (1966), a tale of an over-sexed London fashion photographer (David Hemmings) - it was Antonioni's first English language film and his most commercially-acceptable film. [It was released without a Production code seal because it was the first feature film to show a full-frontal flash of female pubic hair.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
French director Francois Truffaut's first film in English was Ray Bradbury's science-fiction drama Fahrenheit 451 (1966) (with future director Nicolas Roeg as cinematographer). After his first feature film Knife in the Water (1962, Pol.), Polish director Roman Polanski went to England and made his first English-language film - the imaginatively-nightmarish, surrealistic classic Repulsion (1965) with Catherine Deneuve as a young, sexually-repressed London hairdresser who slowly descended into madness, and then later to America to make his first American film Rosemary's Baby (1968) adapted from Ira Levin's novel - the colorful thriller about a coven of Satanistic witches in New York City interested in Mia Farrow's unborn devil-baby after her husband made a deal with Satan.

In the 1960s, Czechoslovakian film-maker Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde (1965) was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar, followed soon after by the social satire of the Czech New Wave titled The Fireman's Ball (1967) -- before he emigrated to Hollywood and made his first American film there, Taking Off (1971).

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci's first feature films were The Grim Reaper (aka La Commare secca) (1962), followed by Before the Revolution (aka Prima della rivoluzione) (1964), released in 1971, but it would be in the next decade that he would make a name for himself with Last Tango in Paris (1972). Inventive Italian director Mario Bava churned out a number of horror films in the 60s, including his best known and most influential film and his first solo directorial effort, the macabre The Mask of Satan (aka Black Sunday) (1960), starring gothic horror queen Barbara Steele as the evil witch Princess Asa. The film was banned in Great Britain until 1968 and released in a censored (and re-dubbed) version in the US. In the same time period, Egyptian-born Riccardo Freda was also pioneering Italian horror-fantasy films, including I Vampiri (1957) (aka Lust of the Vampire), and L'Orribile Segreto Del Dottor Hichcock (aka The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock) (1962). He also directed the sword 'n' sandal film The Giants of Thessaly (1960), a variant of the Jason and the Golden Fleece tale.

German New Wave director Werner Herzog experimented with films in the 60s, i.e., Signs of Life (1968), and then directed his first masterpiece Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) with Klaus Kinski in the 70s. New German cinema's auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder had only limited success with his early films in the late 60s, until he found international successes in the 70s with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979).

Stanley Kubrick's Prolific Decade:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The most distinguished "British" films of the decade were from one of the most original, visionary and controversial of directors - Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's first three feature films were in the 50s:

He opened the 60s decade with his first Hollywood production: Spartacus (1960), a thrilling, historical epic about a slave revolt in Ancient Rome - another film designed to wrest viewers away from their small-scale televisions. [The covert homosexuality seduction-bathing scene between Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and slave Antonius (Tony Curtis), dubbed the 'snails and oysters' scene, was censored.] Producer and star actor Kirk Douglas had a falling out with the original director Anthony Mann, and replaced him with Kubrick, who ended up having little artistic control over the film. Douglas also promoted the use of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's name onscreen - it was Trumbo's first screen credit in over ten years, now that the blacklist was ending after 13 years (Trumbo became the first blacklisted screenwriter to receive screen credit).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Kubrick's next two remarkable films, considered somewhat anti-Hollywoodish, were both filled with dark visions of social and political institutions during the tense Cold War era:

  • Lolita (1962), a satirical adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's brilliant novel about a sexually-obsessed academic named Humbert Humbert (James Mason) who married a widow (Shelley Winters) to be close to her "nymphet" daughter (Sue Lyon)
  • the Cold War black comedy Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) about a possible nuclear Armageddon at the hands of inept politicians, arrogant scientists, and military figures with lunatic concerns about fail-safe points, hotlines, and Communist plots such as flouridation (Gen. Jack D. Ripper's fear as portrayed by Sterling Hayden). Peter Sellers was memorable as he played three roles (including the title role) in the film, as was Slim Pickens in the role of the bomb-riding pilot who directed the H-bomb to its target - rodeo-style. One of the film's most memorable quotes was the President's admonition: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Kubrick's last film in the 60s was the most successful science fiction film of the decade with a story that spanned all of human history with giant leaps (from pre-historic cave-dwelling apes jump-cutting ultimately to futuristic outer space travelers to Jupiter). A continuing theme was the reception of an extra-terrestrial signal in its portrayal of man (bored in his technological paradise) confronting technology beyond his control. His film, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, was the majestic, Super Panavision 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with its spectacular visuals, landmark special effects, classical music, psychedelic, light-show ride (that appealed to late 60s 'tripping' viewers) and the memorable, flawed HAL supercomputer (with the uncredited voice of Douglas Rain).

In the next decade, Kubrick would go on to make the controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971), and a visually-stunning, 18th century England period adaptation of the Thackeray novel about an Irish gambler, Barry Lyndon (1975).

Cold War Political Dramas:

Contemptuous or politically-satirical films portrayed the American military situation in a bleak, nightmarish light in the 60s:

  • Jack Arnold's political satire The Mouse That Roared (1959), with Peter Sellers acting in three roles (one of which was the leader of an invading force upon the US)
  • Billy Wilder's satirical political farce One, Two, Three (1961), based on Ferenc Molnar's play and with a screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, about a Coca Cola executive (James Cagney) whose job was jeopardized when his boss' daughter (Pamela Tiffin) married an East Berlin Communist (Horst Buchholz)
  • John Frankenheimer's black and white conspiratorial political-military drama-thriller Seven Days in May (1964) about an attempted military coup, adapted by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling from the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Waldo Bailey II; with Fredric March as the President and Burt Lancaster as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • the apocalyptic disaster drama about nuclear war, Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe (1964), adapted from the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, with Henry Fonda as the US President
  • the UK's tense The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) adapted from John Le Carre's tale of espionage, with Oscar-nominated Richard Burton as a disillusioned and betrayed British Cold War spy-agent after entering into E. Germany to trap his communist counterpart
  • Jack Cardiff's espionage film The Liquidator (1966), based on John Gardner's novel and a parody of the James Bond films
  • Theodore J. Flicker's political satire The President's Analyst (1967), starring James Coburn as the title character
  • Howard Morris' Don't Drink the Water (1969), based on a play by Woody Allen
  • director/writer William Klein's angry political fantasy satire, Mister Freedom (1969) in the form of a American comic-strip super hero who must save France from the Communists (Klein was best known for his documentary Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1969))

Golden Age Directors: The End of an Era

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Some of the greatest directors from Hollywood's golden era were experiencing their swan songs during this decade. Many of them, including King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and Howard Hawks, directed their last, lesser-known films in the 60s. For example, King Vidor's last film in the last year of the previous decade was filmed in Spain - the biblical spectacle Solomon and Sheba (1959) starring Yul Brynner and alluring Italian star Gina Lollobrigida. Frank Capra's last feature film was Pocketful of Miracles (1961) - a remake of his Lady for a Day (1933). Orson Welles was struggling in the 60s, although still directing films, such as the adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (1962) with Anthony Perkins, and Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff (1966) in which he starred as Shakespeare's Falstaff.

John Ford's last three films included the revisionistic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a bleak and dark vision of the West starring John Wayne as the unsung hero, Lee Marvin as the title character-villain, and James Stewart as the falsely-honored killer of the outlaw gunman - and advertised with the statement that legend was more important than truth: ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"), and Ford's last epic western Cheyenne Autumn (1964) - about the awful trek of three hundred Cheyenne Indians from Oklahoma to their ancestral home in Wyoming. Walsh's last work was A Distant Trumpet (1964), and veteran director Hawks ended his long career with Red Line 7000 (1965) and El Dorado (1967) with macho stars John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. With the end of the era, the old film masters were finally being acclaimed as true auteurs by writers/directors of the French New Wave.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
At the end of the decade, in homage to one of the greatest Western stars in cinematic history, director Henry Hathaway saluted John Wayne with True Grit (1969) - a film for which Wayne, as one-eyed, pot-bellied Marshal Rooster Cogburn, received deserved critical recognition and a sentimental Academy Award for Best Actor - his first and sole Oscar victory.

Producer/director George Pal's The Time Machine (1960) with Oscar-winning visual effects was based on the H.G. Wells tale, and starred Rod Taylor as the traveler to the year 802,701 in a world populated by Morlocks and Elois. Creative special-effects master Ray Harryhausen developed his legendary stop-motion animation techniques to perfection in his best science-fiction film ever - director Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Chaffey also directed Raquel Welch in a furry bikini (boosting bikini sales), who followed banished tribesman Tumak in Hammer Studios' unbelievable One Million Years BC (1966) (a remake of the 1939 prehistoric adventure with Victor Mature), featuring Harryhausen's animated dinosaurs.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 24

Emergence of a New Crop of Directors: Hollywood's New Wave

Hollywood could not always predict which films would do well - what worked in the past no longer was a sure thing in the present. However, it was clear that more emphasis had to be placed into the hands of the director (regarded as a creative and powerful auteur), who was functioning very independently of the weakened studio system.

The creative power of filmmaking was falling more and more into the hands of stars and their agents, as well as toward the new rising crop of Hollywood directors (in the 60s and 70s), including Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Woody Allen, Sydney Pollack, Irvin Kershner, John Landis, Sam Peckinpah, George Roy Hill, Arthur Penn, George Lucas, John Cassavetes, William Friedkin, and John Frankenheimer, some of whom had learned filmmaking in television (or were mentored in low-budget Roger Corman-produced films) and believed in the ideal of tense, low-budget, stark cinema.

A new crop of film-school-trained cinematographers (including Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, and William Fraker) also contributed their talents in the burgeoning era of film experimentation. British directors John Schlesinger, Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Ken Loach, John Boorman, and Ken Russell also elevated the level of film-making during this period.

John Frankenheimer:

Frankenheimer, who gained experience directing TV plays for Playhouse 90, started the decade with The Young Savages (1961), a film with Burt Lancaster about juvenile delinquency, and then his first critical hit The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), about the ornithologist-inmate Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) sentenced to life imprisonment. [Lancaster would star in five of Frankenheimer's films in the 1960s.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
His most acclaimed film at the time was the chilling, political spy thriller/black comedy based on Richard Condon's novel The Manchurian Candidate (1962). It was a stark black-and-white film that starred Laurence Harvey as a Korean War hero/veteran ("the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known...") who was brain-washed by the Communists, and upon his return to the US was programmed to kill on command and attempt a political assassination. Angela Lansbury played his evil mother who goaded her son into assassination. Because of its controversial nature and its interpretation as paranoid speculation (before the actual political assassinations of the decade in 1963 and 1968), the film was a box-office failure. A year later, the film was withdrawn by Frank Sinatra due to its resemblances to the Kennedy assassination. It fared better after a critical re-appraisal and re-release in 1987-88. [It also featured Hollywood's first martial-arts fight between Henry Silva and Frank Sinatra.] His next film, Seven Days in May (1964) with a conspiracy theory theme and starring Burt Lancaster as an Army officer plotting a coup, was well-received as an exciting Cold War political thriller - screen-adapted by Rod Serling from TV's Twilight Zone series.

Frankenheimer also directed Rock Hudson in the medical/mystery thriller Seconds (1966) as a middle-aged, New York banker who fakes his own death. His drastic plastic surgery changed his identity forever - accentuated by James Wong Howe's disorienting photography. The film fared poorly at the box office, but eventually became a cult favorite. Another Frankenheimer film in the same year, the race-car drama Grand Prix (1966), featured Monte Carlo as the backdrop for the famous cross-continent competition between drivers Yves Montand and James Garner, among others.

Arthur Penn:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Arthur Penn, who also had experience in television, made his first major film - The Miracle Worker (1962), a stirring emotional drama of a young, untamed blind deaf-mute Helen Keller (young Patty Duke) and her strong-willed, dedicated teacher Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), with Oscar-winning portrayals by the actresses who were reprising their acclaimed Broadway performances. Penn went on to direct the artsy and New Wavish Mickey One (1965) with Warren Beatty, and then his greatest masterpiece, Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

His next film was one of the most whimsical of the late 60s films that symbolized the anti-war, counter-cultural movement. It was Alice's Restaurant (1969) - based on folk-singer/writer Arlo Guthrie's 20-minute 'talking song' The Alice Restaurant Massacree from his album, a brilliantly-recreated sequence, about a $50 littering ticket that caused the rejection of a hippie's induction into the Army. This was followed by Penn's revisionist western Little Big Man (1970) with Dustin Hoffman as the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand at Little Big Horn.

A Wave of Other New Directors:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Woody Allen, a screenwriter and stand-up comic, had his directorial debut at the end of the decade with Take the Money and Run (1969), a crime documentary spoof. British film-maker John Boorman's second film (and his first US production) was the hard-edged, artsy thriller Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin as a revenge-seeking gangster. And Sydney Pollack's breakthrough early film (with a Best Director Oscar nomination), about the competitive Depression-era dance marathons, was the tragic drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) with Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, and Gig Young (as the jaded Master of Ceremonies).

George Roy Hill had already directed the comedy The World of Henry Orient (1964) with Peter Sellers, and the adaptation of James Michener's Hawaii (1966) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) - both with Julie Andrews, before his immensely popular buddy western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Director Peter Bogdanovich's first film as director, the suspenseful Targets (1968), also served as a tribute to one of its stars, aging horror legend Boris Karloff (in his last memorable film). In the 60s, William Friedkin directed TV shows including an episode of the "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" (1962), before turning to feature films, when he directed the comedy duo Sonny and Cher in their sole feature film, Good Times (1967); he also directed The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), and The Boys in the Band (1970) before striking gold with The French Connection (1971).

One of Sidney Lumet's earliest films, the courtroom drama 12 Angry Men (1957), was followed by other milestones in the 60s, including Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), one of the best versions of Eugene O'Neill's play with Katharine Hepburn, The Pawnbroker (1964), the Cold War thriller Fail-Safe (1964), and The Group (1966) with Candice Bergen. Although Robert Altman found his stride as a director in the 70s, he had directed many episodes of the hit TV show Bonanza, and the feature film That Cold Day in the Park (1969). Sam Peckinpah had already directed the classic Ride the High Country (1962) with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, and Major Dundee (1965) with Charlton Heston before his ground-breaking western The Wild Bunch (1969) at the close of the decade.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Independent Film-makers:

The individualist "underground" movement began almost immediately in the decade with actor John Cassavetes' first film, the experimental, psychological thriller Shadows (1960) with Rock Hudson - an improvisatory, independent work filmed with a 16 mm camera. Outside the industry system, the technically rough film was a milestone in the development of independent American films, winning the Critics Award in the 1960 Venice Film Festival.

After starring in a few films to pay the bills (e.g., The Killers (1964), Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Rosemary's Baby (1968)), writer/director Cassavetes also financed another independent cinema verite film Faces (1968), a study of infidelity in which he cast his wife Gena Rowlands as one of the lead characters, a high-class call-girl who was involved with a middle-aged married man - and all of the resultant, tragic repercussions. It was the first independently-made and distributed American film to reach mainstream audiences. At the end of the decade, Cassavetes served as director, writer, and actor in another improvisational work, Husbands (1970). Many have interpreted Cassavetes' films as marking the start of the "New Hollywood."

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
And cinema verite producer/director Andy Warhol also made radically different, non-traditional, avante-garde films, including his controversial blue movies: Blow-Job (1964), Flesh (1968) - a film about an East Village bi-sexual hustler (Joe Dallesandro), Blue Movie (1969) (originally titled F--k) - a leisurely-paced 90 minute film of a love-making session between a couple (Viva and Louis Waldon) in their Manhattan apartment, and Trash (1970).

Director-writer-producer-composer and photographer Gordon Parks became the first African-American director to be financed by a major Hollywood studio for a feature film - The Learning Tree (1969). Parks' second feature would be the successful, urban and action-oriented, angry-toned Shaft (1971) with an Isaac Hayes score. It was the first commercially-successful film about a black private detective (Richard Roundtree), and the first in a series of so-called 'blaxploitation' films in the next decade.

Domestic Stars Compete with International Stars:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Foreign films were becoming more popular in the 1960s, increasing in influence and popularity and becoming commercially competitive with Hollywood products. International stars (France's Brigitte Bardot, Italy's Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, and Britain's Sean Connery and Richard Burton) competed against American stars.

The biggest American stars of the 60s included Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Cary Grant, Debbie Reynolds, Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Dee (the last major star under an exclusive contract with a studio), Frank Sinatra, Lee Marvin, John Wayne, William Holden, Rock Hudson, Sidney Poitier (the first black film superstar), Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Jack Lemmon, Elvis Presley, Burt Lancaster, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood (who first appeared in the mid-60s TV series Rawhide), Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, Ann-Margret, Katharine Hepburn, and Steve McQueen.

The Passing of Major Stars:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
This was the decade that various stars and film-makers died, often unexpectedly:

  • pioneering film-maker of epic spectacles, Cecil B. DeMille, died in January 1959, at the age of 77 years
  • 36 year-old Marilyn Monroe perished in Los Angeles in 1962 due to an alleged drug overdose, during the filming of the unfinished Something's Got To Give
  • 34 year-old late 50s-60s, B-movie platinum blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield (with dimensions 40-21-36), the star of such films as Single Room Furnished (1968) - her last film, A Guide for the Married Man (1967), the UK's Too Hot To Handle (1961), Kiss Them For Me (1957) with Cary Grant, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) (a role she had played in the original 1956 stage production on Broadway), died on June 29, 1967 in an early morning gruesome car crash near New Orleans, LA on US Highway 90 [In the car were her three young children, including future TV star Mariska, who all survived the crash. Mansfield was not decapitated, as often rumored.]
  • 67 year-old Spencer Tracy died in June of 1967, shortly following the making of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - his last pairing with Katharine Hepburn
  • 47 year-old Judy Garland tragically died in 1969 in London due to a drug overdose of sleeping pills
  • director Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Charles Manson "family" on August 9, 1969

Cary Grant's career also ended following the making of his last film as an actor Walk Don't Run (1966) - he died 20 years later while on a lecture circuit in Iowa.

James Bond Films Inaugurated:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The decade inaugurated the first of the popular James Bond film-extravaganzas made in Britain, Terence Young's cheaply-made Dr. No (1962) and its hip star, Scottish actor Sean Connery as the Ian Fleming character James Bond (after an appearance in Disney's Irish fantasy Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), although David Niven and not Connery was the studio's first choice). [Connery's last Bond film was Diamonds Are Forever (1971) with one triumphant return in the unofficial Bond film twelve years later, Never Say Never Again (1983). Connery officially played agent 007 in six films.] The spoof Casino Royale (1967) starred David Niven as the intrepid agent.

The highly-profitable series stimulated the production of other exaggerated and more outlandish secret agent/spy adventure dramas. The Bond film hallmarks were obvious - the charming English gentleman spy Agent 007, great theme music and stylistic credits, high-tech gadgetry and spying, tongue-in-cheek humor, sexy women, exotic locales, and the mortal struggle against fiendish, diabolical, would-be world-rulers. See details in James Bond Girls section.

The six James Bond films for the decade, all starring Sean Connery (except one), included some of the most popular ever made - See Greatest Film Series Franchises: James Bond Films (illustrated):

  • Dr. No (1962), the 1st film in the famed series, with Ursula Andress as the conch-shell diving 'Bond Girl' and Joseph Wiseman as the villainous title character, Dr. No, with a secret island base at Crab Key, Jamaica
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    From Russia With Love (1963), the 2nd Bond film, considered the quintessential Bond film by many; with Daniela Bianchi as the 'Bond Girl' Tatiana Romanova - a Russian consulate cypher clerk employed by SPECTRE as a pawn, and Robert Shaw (as Red Grant) and Lotte Lenya (as Rosa Klebb) as the villains; the second film, also directed by Terence Young
  • Goldfinger (1964), the 3rd Bond film and considered the definitive Bond film; with a gold-plated, ill-fated 'Bond girl' Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) punished by skin suffocation; and two others: the evil, sexily-named, lesbian-leaning Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) who eventually changed allegiances, and vengeful sister Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet); Bond struggles against megalomaniac gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) and his fearsome, mute henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) with a lethal, metal-rimmed bowler hat, leading to a finale at the Fort Knox Depository in Kentucky; this film featured Bond's first high-tech Aston-Martin DB-5; directed by Guy Hamilton, with music by John Barry and a rousing Shirley Bassey theme song
  • Thunderball (1965), the 4th in the series, slick and gimmicky; with two 'Bond Girls': Claudine Auger as "Domino" Derval, mistress of the villain and the vengeful sister of a murdered NATO pilot, and redheaded seductress and assassinatrix Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), and Adolfo Celi as the SPECTRE villain Emilio Largo in the Bahamas; again directed by Terence Young
  • You Only Live Twice (1967), the 5th in the series; with two Japanese "Bond Girls": Akiko Wakabayashi as Japanese Secret Service agent Aki and Mie Hama as Kissy, Bond's wife in a fake marriage; also Donald Pleasence as the SPECTRE No. 1 villain (Ernst Stavro Blofeld) making his first full appearance; the biggest James Bond film to date; directed by Lewis Gilbert
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), the 6th James Bond film, starring George Lazenby (in his only appearance as Bond); also with Diana Rigg as the 'Bond Girl' (and the only Mrs. James Bond in the series) and Telly Savalas as the SPECTRE villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Also starring Angela Scoular, Catherine Von Schell, and Joanna Lumley; directed by Peter Hunt

James Bond Imitators:

To capitalize on the success of the James Bond films, numerous imitators and take-offs emerged:


Following his success, Caine also branched out and starred as a womanizer in the Best Picture-nominated Alfie (1966), for which he was given an Academy Award acting nomination.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 25

AIP's Rise to Prominence in the 60s:

American International Pictures (AIP) with director-producer Roger Corman, were responsible for a large wave of low-budget, B-film, black and white exploitative films designed for the teen market, including genres as diverse as westerns, crime thrillers, and sci-fi/horror. By 1960, however, their strategy of releasing double-features was declining in success, and they began to release bigger budgeted films (often in color). There were two series in the 60s that helped establish AIP as a leading studio:

  • Edgar Allan Poe Tales - AIP released a cycle of eight higher-budget, colorful widescreen films loosely based on Poe's tales, often with big-name actor Vincent Price, including
    • The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
    • The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
    • The Premature Burial (1962)
    • Tales of Terror (1962)
    • The Raven (1963)
    • The Haunted Palace (1963)
    • The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
    • The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    "Beach Party" Films - released mostly to drive-in theatres, mostly sexless, antiseptic, and well-groomed antics of beachgoers (on a perpetual summer vacation), and starring popular 24 year-old singer Frankie Avalon, and now-buxom 21 year-old ex-Disney Mickey Mouse Club Mousketeer Annette Funicello (as Dolores or "Dee Dee" in later films). [Note: Ironically, both Avalon and Funicello were from Philadelphia, not sandy-beached S. California!] William Asher was the primary originator of the extremely popular and profitable series and the director of most of these films. It consisted of a four year run (1963-1966), with 7 official 'beach party' films in a continuing series (see below).

    These beach movies were unique because they added pop music (almost presented as rock videos) to the fantasy 'beach party' theme. AIP realized the lucrative buying power of this new demographic group and advertised their first fluffy film Beach Party (1963) alluringly: "It's what happens when 10,000 kids meet on 5,000 beach blankets." However, wholesome star Annette Funicello - still under contract to Disney, was legally forced to not appear in a bikini, and to express repressive sexual attitudes, although she wore a non-revealing two-piece suit! - the main films in the series included:

    • (1) Beach Party (1963), a musical comedy starring Avalon, Funicello, Robert Cummings, and Dorothy Malone
    • (2) Muscle Beach Party (1964) - about a 'turf' clash between bodybuilders and beach surfers
    • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
      (3) Bikini Beach (1964) - AIP's biggest grossing film ever; included Boris Karloff in an uncredited cameo role; advertised as: "It's where the girls are BARE-ING, the guys are DAR-ING, and the surf's RARE-ING to GO-GO-GO"
    • (4) Pajama Party (1964) (aka The Maid and the Martian), d. Don Weis; with the action moved from the beach to an indoors slumber party; with roles by old-time stars Buster Keaton, Dorothy Lamour and Elsa Lanchester, and with Disney star Tommy Kirk (of The Hardy Boys) as a poor substitute for Frankie Avalon
    • (5) Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) - the classic 'beach party' film, with Avalon (now 26 years old!, and in his last and major starring role in the 'Beach Party' films) who caused Funicello (as Dee Dee) to try sky-diving when he went to rescue kidnapped pop singer Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) from biker Eric Von Zipper's (Harvey Lembeck) gang, and small roles by Hollywood icon Buster Keaton (as a lecherous beachcomber) and Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson
    • Ski Party (1965), d. Alan Rafkin, an aborted attempt at a spin-off with new characters and locales, featuring Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Deborah Walley, and a cameo by Annette Funicello
    • (6) How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) - with a cast including Buster Keaton as witch doctor Bwana, Dwayne Hickman (from TV's Dobie Gillis), Mickey Rooney, and a cameo by Elizabeth Montgomery (from TV's Bewitched)
    • Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), d. Norman Taurog, a parody spy film (of two 60s James Bond films: Dr. No and Goldfinger), starring Vincent Price as mad scientist Dr. Goldfoot who created a group of bikinied robots
    • (7) Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), d. Don Weis, with Deborah Walley and Aron Kinkaid in the lead roles, and Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in minor roles; the last in the seven film AIP series
    • Footnote: Back to the Beach (1987) - released over 20 years later - a comedy spoof-parody (and celebration) with Funicello and Avalon as executive producers and stars as a married couple (Frankie, the Big Kahuna and Annette) living in Ohio who head to California for a visit; featured appearances by 1950s and 1960s TV stars in bit parts (some uncredited) including Tony Dow, Jerry Mathers and Barbara Billingsley (from Leave It to Beaver), Bob Denver as a bartender (spoofing his title role in Gilligan's Island) with various humorous lines, such as: "I was on an island for years with a guy who could take two coconuts and some string and make a nuclear reactor. But he couldn't fix a three-foot hole in a boat") and Alan Hale Jr. from Gilligan's Island as his buddy, Don Adams (from Get Smart) as the Harbor Master, and Edd "Kookie" Byrnes (from 77 Sunset Strip) as a valet; Connie Stevens starred as Miss Lip Gloss of 1962 and Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) performed a virtuoso version of 'Surfin' Bird'

AIP 'Beach Party' Ripoffs:

The beach party films from AIP were cheaply ripped off and imitated in the mid-60s by many of the major studios, including director Maury Dexter's Surf Party (1964) with heartthrob singer Bobby Vinton, Wild on the Beach (1965) (aka Beach House Party) featuring an appearance by Sonny and Cher (in their film debut), and by Paramount's and director Lenni Weinrib's Beach Ball (1965). It had the tagline: "Those surf ridin', skin divin', sky jumpin', drag racin', beach bashin' boys and their bikini beauties... in a blast of a beach brawl!", starred Ed "Kookie" Byrnes and featured an appearance by Motown's Supremes. Another spy-comedy beach movie was Universal's Out of Sight (1966). Columbia's and director Don Taylor's Ride the Wild Surf (1964) starred Fabian, Shelley Fabares, Barbara Eden and Tab Hunter in a Hawaiian surf setting, and The Beach Boys singing group and pop star Lesley Gore appeared in Paramount's and William Witney's The Girls on the Beach (1965) set in S. California. Many of the teen-related beach movies included performances by pop bands of the time. Elvis Presley's Clambake (1967) was advertised as a 'beach party' film.

Other "Clean Teen" Beach Films, Gidget, and Tammy:

In the late 50s and 1960s, one of the major cinematic trends was to appeal to the 'coming of age' baby boomers - an increasingly well-groomed, youthful, middle-class film audience that wanted comic, idyllic romantic escapades without heavy melodrama. [They were the kind of clean white teens seen in TV shows such as Ozzie and Harriet and American Bandstand.] Whimsical tales of carefree teens served as a counterpart to the rebellious and mixed-up teen films with James Dean and Marlon Brando, and counterbalanced the scary early 60's political and social scene (evidenced by the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of nuclear holocaust, the growing sexual revolution and Vietnam War, etc.).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Hollywood's first teen 'beach party' or high-profile surfing film, with numerous sequels and imitators for the youth market, was the first in a series of romantic comedy films from Columbia Pictures. They featured a petite, teenaged girl, tomboyish surfer and A student named Francie Lawrence (nicknamed Gidget or "girl midget"), first played by Sandra Dee. The pert, squeaky-clean young blonde actress was one of the top 10 box office attractions from 1960 to 1961, and the 'Gidget' role was the one she would become most identified with. [She was also referenced in a song in the rock musical Grease (1978) -- "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, Lousy with Virginity"]:

  • Gidget (1959), with Sandra Dee as 'Gidget', James Darren (as Moondoggie), and Cliff Robertson as Kahuna, Malibu's resident surf bum
  • Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) with Deborah Walley as Gidget
  • Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) with Cindy Carol (as Gidget) and James Darren
  • Gidget, a spin-off TV series, lasting one season from 1965-66 with Sally Field
  • Gidget Grows Up (1969), a made-for-TV movie, with Karen Valentine as Gidget
  • Gidget Gets Married (1972), a made-for-TV movie, with Monie Ellis as Gidget

A similar series of four, surprise-hit, romantic comedies debuted in the late 50s with a charming Debbie Reynolds (followed by Sandra Dee again) as a young, backwoods country girl named Tammy Tarleton:

  • Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) with the hit song Tammy (Oscar-nominated as Best Song)
  • Tammy, Tell Me True (1961) - with Sandra Dee and John Gavin
  • Tammy and the Doctor (1963) - with Sandra Dee and Peter Fonda
  • Tammy and the Millionaire (1967) - with Debbie Watson
  • Tammy, a spin-off TV series from 1965-66 with Debbie Watson

Surfing Films:

The biggest surf film of the decade was director Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer (1966), a semi-documentary about the search for the "perfect wave." Other surfing and youth-oriented films that followed close behind during the decade were: Ride The Wild Surf (1964), The Golden Breed (1968), UA's For Those Who Think Young (1964), Fantastic Plastic Machine (1969), and Pacific Vibrations (1970) (promoted as "Like Woodstock on a Wave"). The surfing craze was also reflected in TV shows such as Surfside Six and Hawaiian Eye.

Literary-Based Films:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
During the early to mid 1960s, Hollywood looked to literary works and the history books for many of its films. The studios were increasingly willing to pay for film rights to various novels and literary works. Examples of literary works translated to the screen in the 60s include:

  • Richard Brooks' absorbing adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel Elmer Gantry (1960) - a tale of a 1920's huckster, phony evangelist on the Midwest circuit of revival meetings, a flamboyant role for which Burt Lancaster won a Best Actor Award
  • Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960) with Oscar-winning music , based upon Leon Uris' novel about the establishment of the independent state of Israel, with an unlikely blue-eyed Paul Newman as Jewish leader Ari Ben Canaan
  • a fictionalized dramatization of the actual Scopes 'monkey trial' courtroom battle about the teaching of evolution (between the legendary Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan), in the film's adaptation between defense attorney Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) and prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) - based upon Jerome Lawrence's and Robert E. Lee's play Inherit the Wind (1960)
  • A Raisin in the Sun (1961) - after its successful run as a Broadway play, was a ground-breaking work on race-relations by Lorraine Hansberry, during the early years of the civil rights movement, with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee
  • Elia Kazan's direction of an adaptation of William Inge's psychosexual drama Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Warren Beatty (in his debut film) and Natalie Wood - a Depression-era Romeo and Juliet plot; it marked the first screenplay of playwright Inge
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    MGM's Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, based on a true story of the British navy in the 1700s, was remade as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), with odd-accented Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh
  • Otto Preminger's The Cardinal (1963), adapted from Henry Morton Robinson's best-selling novel, following the life of a young Rome-educated American priest rising from a backwoods clergyman to Cardinal [the film was the first film in Panavision 70, a film process in which a 35 mm film was enlarged to 70 mm for wide-screen projection]
  • writer-director Elia Kazan's own semi-autobiographical America, America (1963) about his Turkish-Greek uncle's immigrant experience
  • John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964) - based on a Tennessee Williams play about an alcoholic former clergyman (Richard Burton) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) based on a Carson McCuller novel about a homosexual army officer (Marlon Brando) in the South
  • Harold Robbin's steamy novel that was made into a garish saga of the career of a Howard Hughes-like millionaire/industrialist in The Carpetbaggers (1964) (actor Alan Ladd's last film)
  • George Stevens' big-budget religious epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) was an adaptation of Fulton Oursler's best-selling book, with Max Von Sydow in the role of Jesus, Telly Savalas as Pontius Pilate, David McCallum as Judas, and many other stars in the roles of additional New Testament characters
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    the screen version of Robert Bolt's play in the superb, Oscar-winning period piece by director Fred Zinnemann, A Man For All Seasons (1966) - it portrayed the clash of ideals between the honorable Sir Thomas More (Oscar-winning Paul Scofield reprised his stage performance) and egocentric King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw)
  • director/writer Richard Brooks' filming of Truman Capote's adapted screenplay of a notorious 1959 Kansas mass murder of the Clutter family in the stark black and white film In Cold Blood (1967), starring Robert Blake as one of the two killers
  • Charly (1968), a TV adaptation of Daniel Keyes' story Flowers for Algernon (with a experimental lab mouse named Algernon), brought the title character (Cliff Robertson) a Best Actor Oscar for his role as someone with learning difficulties who temporarily became a genius
  • director Frank Perry's oddly-intriguing The Swimmer (1968), an allegorical telling of a John Cheever short story (adapted by Eleanor Perry) about a swimming trunks-clad man (Burt Lancaster) who swims home through a suburban neighborhood
  • James Goldman's literate screenplay for The Lion in Winter (1968), about a medieval power struggle between Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn) and Henry II of England (Peter O'Toole)
  • Franco Zeffirelli's version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1968) starred two young teenaged actors (Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting) in the lead roles as the tragic "star-crossed" lovers of Verona

Two aging actors were both involved in Shakespearean roles in the mid-60s: Laurence Olivier in the lead role of Othello (1965) and Orson Welles in Chimes at Midnight (1966) (also known as Falstaff), a seamless integration of five of Shakespeare's texts/plays. With French production, Welles also directed a black, expressionistic, noirish version of Franz Kafka's The Trial (1962) (or Le Proces).

War Films:

Sink the Bismarck! (1960) told the story of the deadly German battleship that was sunk with a single shot by the British Royal Navy's HMS Hood. In Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Spencer Tracy presided over Nazi war crime trials in Germany to bring justice to those guilty of crimes against humanity during the war. The Longest Day (1962), a tale about the events of June 6, 1944 told from both the Allied and German points of view, featured nearly 50 international stars.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Cool, anti-hero 60s star Steve McQueen appeared in Don Siegel's WW II action drama Hell Is For Heroes (1962) about a group of Americans defending a foxhole. After his earlier work in 1960 with producer/director John Sturges, Steve McQueen was re-teamed to make the critically-acclaimed and box-office champ The Great Escape (1963), a classic WWII German POW camp escape tale (based on a true story) with an all-star group of Allied prisoners (American, Canadian, and British) - with McQueen's memorable attempt at freedom on a soaring motorbike.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
During the years when the conflict in Vietnam was building up, McQueen gave a compelling, Oscar-nominated performance as a sailor aboard a gunboat (with young newcomer Candice Bergen) on the Yangtze River in China during the 1920s in Robert Wise's The Sand Pebbles (1966), the director's first film since his success with The Sound of Music (1965). The action drama provided an interesting commentary on American imperialism (and the concurrent US role in Vietnam). When tragically dying in the film's climax, the heroic McQueen asked: "What the hell happened?" - reflecting the era's confusion about its policies (See more on Steve McQueen below.)

The UK's historical war epic Zulu (1964) documented how the British at Rorke's Drift were outnumbered by Zulu tribesmen in 1879 Africa. Frank Sinatra (as Colonel 'Von' Ryan) led an escape of POWs held in WWII Italy by seizing a German train in Von Ryan's Express (1965). A popular, farcical Cold War movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) provided a comical and satirical perspective, with its tale of a stranded Soviet submarine on the coast of New England with a crew led by Theodore Bikel and Alan Arkin.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Robert Aldrich's nihilistic and macho-man The Dirty Dozen (1967) was an enormously-successful hit in the 60s - a non-stop action World War II thriller with the exciting tale of an impossible suicidal mission against the Nazis by a group of death-row convicts (including John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas as Maggot, Donald Sutherland, Charles Bronson, and ex-football star Jim Brown) - all led by tough-talking Lee Marvin. And John Wayne's portrayal as leader of elite US Army's Special Forces in the simplistic, stereotyped The Green Berets (1968) [co-directed by Wayne], patriotically bucked the era's anti-Vietnam war sentiments with heavy-handed propaganda and pro-Vietnam views. It was the only big-budget Hollywood feature film specifically about the Vietnam War that was made during the war - and it was both hawkish and pro-intervention.

Landmark Films and Stars of the 60s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
60s movie star Paul Newman's most famous screen role was as anti-hero pool-player Fast Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961), an adult drama and character study of an emotionally-empty two-bit hustler who challenged legendary pool player Minnesota Fats (superbly played by Jackie Gleason). Other memorable films during Newman's best acting period included Martin Ritt's Texas-based drama Hud (1963), Jack Smight's detective film Harper (1966), and Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967), with Newman as Lucas Jackson - a rebellious Southern chain-gang prisoner and symbolic Christ-figure, noted for an egg-eating contest and the line of dialogue: "What we have here is failure to communicate." As many others stars would do, Newman took a stab at directing and cast his wife Joanne Woodward as a spinsterish schoolteacher in his feature film directorial debut Rachel, Rachel (1968).

Robert Mitchum had one of his most menacing roles as vengeful ex-con Max Cady, who terrorized the Bowden family led by prosecuting lawyer Gregory Peck who had sent him to prison, in Cape Fear (1962). The noirish thriller ended with a tense climax on a houseboat. (The film was remade by Martin Scorsese as Cape Fear (1991), with Robert DeNiro in the lead role as the threatening ex-criminal.)

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Anti-hero Steve McQueen also exemplified the ultimate in "cool" - as a young poker player in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and as a vengeful young half-breed in Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith (1966). Producer/director Norman Jewison's expensive, slick caper romance/thriller The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (remade in 1999) overdid the artsy split-screen technique and other fancy photography (from Haskell Wexler), but featured Steve McQueen in the charming title role. In addition, he participated in one of the most exciting, extraordinary car chases in film history (with McQueen driving a Shelby Mustang 350GT chasing a Dodge Charger R/T through San Francisco) in Peter Yates' action-film Bullitt (1968) with music by Lalo Schifrin. His role as an unorthodox police lieutenant inspired other maverick cop-detective films. It was one of the first Hollywood films shot entirely on location.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Another big 60's star, Audrey Hepburn, starred in one of her best-loved, off-beat roles as sophisticated Manhattan party girl Holly Golightly in the stylish adaptation of Truman Capote's story Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) with an Oscar-winning score (including the popular Oscar-winning "Moon River") by Henry Mancini. In the Hitchcock-like murder-mystery / romantic-thriller Charade (1963), the popular actress was pursued throughout Paris by bad guys and the suave Cary Grant (assuming many aliases: Peter Joshua, Adam Canfield, Alexander Dyle, while his real name was Brian Cruikshank) - plus there were early appearances by Walter Matthau, George Kennedy and James Coburn. And she played a blind girl terrorized by a psychopathic killer (Alan Arkin) looking for heroin in the scary thriller Wait Until Dark (1967).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Esteemed black actor Sidney Poitier was the first African-American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his role as a warm-hearted, unemployed construction worker who helped nuns build a chapel in Lilies of the Field (1963). A Patch of Blue (1965) boldly featured a kissing scene between a compassionate, well-educated black man (Sidney Poitier) and a lower-class blind white woman (Elizabeth Hartman). In just one momentous year - 1967 - the successful Poitier went on to make further hits, and appeared in the few films of the decade that portrayed racial tensions:

  • To Sir, With Love (1967), with Poitier as a teacher in an inner-city school in London's tough East End; also with the title hit song by Lulu
  • director Norman Jewison's Best Picture winning detective-murder mystery-drama In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Poitier as a Philadelphia detective named Virgil Tibbs who clashed with a bigoted Mississippi sheriff (Oscar-winning Rod Steiger) in a prejudiced, Southern redneck town; noted for the line of dialogue: "They call me Mister Tibbs!"
  • Stanley Kramer's old fashioned, semi-contrived Hollywood film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), about the controversial subject of inter-racial romance between a black medical doctor (Poitier) and his fiancee Katharine Houghton (the actual niece of Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn), the daughter of Hepburn and Tracy in the film; Hepburn was playing opposite Spencer Tracy (for the ninth and final time)

Disaster film expert Irwin Allen directed the special effects-laden adventure sci-fi Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), with Walter Pidgeon as Captain Nelson commanding the submarine Seaview on a mission to save the world. The film inspired an Irwin Allen executive-produced spin-off ABC-TV series from 1964-1968, starring Richard Basehart. Richard Fleischer's Fantastic Voyage (1966) used the interior of the human body as the setting for a miniature government project in which surgeons were shrunk to save a dying man - with Raquel Welch in a tight-fitting wetsuit.

Light-Hearted Fare:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Cinerama's second hit in the 60s, before its demise, was Stanley Kramer's exhausting It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) starring almost every living Hollywood comedian (from the silent years to the present, e.g., Buddy Hackett, Jimmy Durante, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Jonathan Winters, Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas, Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, and Jerry Lewis) in a mad search for buried treasure. According to Jimmy Durante, it was buried under a big W. [The studio set a precedent by financing a Hollywood press junket for reviewers to fly in.] Jerry Lewis also played a dual role as the ultra-smooth Buddy Love and as a nerdy college teacher (Julius Kelp) in The Nutty Professor (1963).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Three continents were spanned in Blake Edwards' comedy The Great Race (1965) with rivals Tony Curtis (as The Great Leslie) and Jack Lemmon (as mustached Professor Fate). The first in a long, popular series of sleuth-caper Pink Panther sequels was the original slapstick comedy The Pink Panther (1963) with the incomparable, bumbling, inept French police Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers in the first of five films) trailing a glove-dropping jewel thief named the Phantom (David Niven) in the Swiss Alps.

The heartwarming children's/family nature film Born Free (1966) - with an Oscar-winning title song, told of Elsa, a lion raised in Kenya and eventually returned to the wild by game wardens Joy and George Adamson. Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968) starred Zero Mostel as a con of little old ladies, Gene Wilder as his timid accountant, and their attempts to create a sure-fire flop called Springtime for Hitler. Zero Mostel was also featured in the slapstick musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), with Stephen Sondheim songs. Jane Fonda and Robert Redford starred as newlyweds, who lived on the fifth floor of a Greenwich Village New York apartment in the romantic domestic comedy Barefoot in the Park (1967), originally a successful Broadway play from Neil Simon.

Cross-Over Singing Stars: Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard

Fox contracted with pelvic-thrusting Elvis "the King" Presley, for his debut film, the Civil War drama Love Me Tender (1956). In the same year, Elvis made two appearances on NBC-TV's Milton Berle Show (in April and June), an appearance on NBC-TV's The Steve Allen Show (in July), and the first of three appearances (from 1956-1957) on the competing CBS-TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show (in September), propelling the singer's rise to fame.

He continued making films, including Paramount's Loving You (1957) (his first Technicolor film and first screen kiss), MGM's Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Paramount's King Creole (1958) (his third and last B/W film, and Elvis' favorite film), although he was soon inducted into the Army in 1958. In 1960, after serving a two-year stint in the US Army, rock 'n' roller and movie star Elvis Presley was honorably discharged and began filming Paramount's G.I. Blues (1960) opposite Juliet Prowse, and singing the popular "Blue Suede Shoes."

There were over a dozen Elvis Presley films released for youth audiences by 1964, including:

  • Loving You (1957)
  • Jailhouse Rock (1957)
  • King Creole (1958)
  • G.I. Blues (1960)
  • Flaming Star (1960)
  • Wild in the Country (1961)
  • Blue Hawaii (1961) - with Angela Lansbury as Elvis' mother!, and the hit song: "Can't Help Falling in Love"
  • Follow That Dream (1962)
  • Kid Galahad (1962)
  • Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962)
  • It Happened at the World's Fair (1963)
  • Fun in Acapulco (1963)
  • Kissin' Cousins (1964)
  • Viva Las Vegas (1964) - the King's biggest box-office hit, opposite Ann-Margret
  • Roustabout (1964)

Singing star Cliff Richard (the UK counterpart to Elvis Presley) and his music-filled films (sometimes with his band The Shadows) served the same function, as in director Sidney J. Furie's Wonderful to Be Young (1961) (aka The Young Ones), director Peter Yates' bus trip film Summer Holiday (1963) - a combination of pop rock, roadie film, and romantic comedy, Wonderful Life (1964), and Finders Keepers (1966).

Doris Day Returns in 60s Romantic Comedies:

For escapist entertainment by director Delbert Mann, Doris Day and Rock Hudson were re-teamed as rival business adversaries, battling each other on Madison Avenue as well as in a mating game in another appealing romantic comedy called Lover Come Back (1961) - one of their best. Cary Grant (as a suave and wealthy businessman) also starred with Doris Day (as an unemployed secretary) in the next year's That Touch of Mink (1962). In the year that Doris Day was the number one box-office star, she starred in another romantic comedy, Move Over, Darling (1963), a poor imitation of the 1940 classic My Favorite Wife (with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne).

Other Popular Films:

John Wayne starred as an zoo-animal hunter in producer/director Howard Hawks' adventure film Hatari! (1962) (meaning danger in Swahili), shot on location in East Africa. The first (and best of five) in a long series of sequels of thought-provoking science-fiction films was Franklin Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968), with its reversed man-ape tale, and a surprise shock ending of a fragmented Statue of Liberty in the Forbidden Zone.

The British comedy crime caper The League of Gentlemen (1960) starred Jack Hawkins as the head of a hand-picked group of bank robbers.

L

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
egendary director Lewis Milestone's caper film Ocean's 11 (1960) (remade in 2001) was the first movie featuring the so-called Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, also Norman Fell and Henry Silva) and sexy Angie Dickinson - a group that called themselves "The Summit" or "The Clan." [Note: the Rat Pack nickname was a misnomer. It was earlier used to identify a group surrounding Humphrey Bogart.] The film was about the heist of five Las Vegas casinos (the Sahara, the Riviera, Desert Inn, Sands and The Flamingo) at midnight on New Year's Eve, by a group of 82nd Airborne WWII veterans. By orchestrating a power outage, the group was able to unlock the cashier cages and rob the casinos. In the tale's twist ending, the money stashed in garbage bags - and hidden in the coffin of one of the group members (Richard Conte) who suffered a surprise heart attack after the job was completed - was accidentally incinerated when his body was cremated.

The last 'Rat Pack' film was the semi-musical crime comedy Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), a Robin Hood adventure story take-off, now set in Chicago with Dean Martin as Little John, Peter Falk as rival Guy Gisbourne, Sammy Davis, Jr. as Will, Frank Sinatra as North Side boss Robbo, Bing Crosby as Allen Dale, and Barbara Rush as Marian.

Producer/writer and director Billy Wilder supplemented his phenomenal track record with the acidic tale of lawyers and insurance fraud entitled The Fortune Cookie (1966), a marvelously-funny film with the first teaming of stars Jack Lemmon (as an injured TV sports cameraman) and Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning Walter Matthau (as a shyster lawyer who promotes the exaggeration of insurance claims). Later, the two reappeared as ideally-cast opposites (Lemmon as fussy Felix Ungar and Matthau as messy Oscar Madison) in the hilarious Neil Simon comedy The Odd Couple (1968) - the film inspired numerous sequels and TV shows or series.

Cult Exploitation:

In only two days, producer/director Roger Corman, who began his career in 1954 with ultra-cheap black-and-white exploitation movies, shot the low-budget cult classic black comedy about a killer plant - The Little Shop of Horrors (1961), with Jack Nicholson in one of his earliest roles as a masochistic dental patient.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
By the mid-60s, American International Pictures (AIP) began to return to its permissive, sexually-liberated roots with youth-oriented, counter-cultural films such as Roger Corman's definitive biker film The Wild Angels (1966) (co-written and edited by Peter Bogdanovich) with Peter Fonda as Heavenly Blues, the leader of a violent leather-clad biker gang. Corman's quintessential LSD film The Trip (1967) (scripted by Jack Nicholson) told about the hallucinogenic, psychedelic tripping (visualized with special effects) of a television commercial director (Peter Fonda) in Los Angeles, and his drug dealer guide (Dennis Hopper) - the film was a precursor to the classic hit Easy Rider (1969).

And sexploitation, soft-porn director Russ Meyer, known as "King of the Nudies" and "King Leer," created one of his adult-cinema classics that was considered hard-core for its day: Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1962) - with action, violence, nudity, and humor. Later in the decade, he directed the outrageous Vixen (1968). Meyer's X-rated cult sexploitation film about a female rock group was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) - a major studio release. It featured a screenplay co-written by inexperienced screenwriter Roger Ebert (film critic) and Meyer himself. In all, throughout the 60s and 70s, Meyer produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited, and shot 23 of these 'semi-pornographic' tantalizing 'skin-flicks' (with descriptive titles) featuring big-breasted women.

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Page 26

New and Old Themes in 60s Westerns:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Although westerns enjoyed a revival, many 1960s westerns were down-beat and heavy-handed, portraying the themes of the fading West and the perilous plight of the aging Westerner living off past glories. John Huston's anti-Western The Misfits (1961), based on Arthur Miller's prophetic screenplay about ex-cowboys in a modern world, starred Miller's wife Marilyn Monroe as a Reno divorcee, and Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift as mustang-horse wranglers. Poignantly, it was both Gable's and Monroe's last film - shortly after filming wrapped, each of them died (in late 1960 and in mid-1962 respectively) - with Clift following shortly thereafter in 1966.

Remarkably, the comedy western Cat Ballou (1965) with its title song performed by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, brought a Best Actor Oscar to Lee Marvin (in a dual role as gun-fighting brothers), often seen on a drunken horse.

Eastwood in The "Spaghetti" Westerns:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Clint Eastwood, who played Rowdy Yates on TV's Rawhide from 1959 to 1966, would go on to greater heights in his career after starring in the first of three "The Man With No Name" entries and becoming an iconic figure. The first film was an Italian/Spanish/German co-production with European actors. Sergio Leone's entire "Dollars Trilogy" reinvented the Western with his Italian-made "spaghetti westerns," including:

  1. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - with a storyline derived from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961); originally titled El Magnifico Stragnero (The Magnificent Stranger)
  2. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
  3. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966), notable for its Ahh-eee-ahh-eee-ahhhhh...Waah...waah...waah theme music by Ennio Morricone, and Eli Wallach as Tuco

Eastwood also began a decades-long collaboration with action-film director Don Siegel with his appearance as an Arizona lawman in NYC in Coogan's Bluff (1968).

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Lonely Are the Brave (1962) - a Hollywood Western set in modern times, was a chase thriller about the remorseless pursuit of a fugitive, resolute loner cowboy on his horse named Whiskey by a reluctant sheriff (Walter Matthau) and by helicopters, and other mechanical means. Richard Brooks' exciting action-adventure/Western The Professionals (1966) told the turn-of-the-century story of a rugged band of mercenaries (Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) sent to Mexico by a wealthy rancher (Ralph Bellamy) to rescue the man's pretty wife (Claudia Cardinale) from a villainous group of bandits led by Jack Palance; in Will Penny (1967), Charlton Heston starred as an aging, poor, and illiterate cowboy in the American West who befriends a woman (Joan Hackett) and her young son; and Monte Walsh (1970), cinematographer William Fraker's directorial debut film, featured two over-the-hill Western cowpokes (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) trying to make the transition to the new century by settling down in Arizona.

Director Sam Peckinpah produced two classic westerns at the start and end of the decade. The earlier film prefigured his other ground-breaking masterpiece in 1969:

  • Ride the High Country (1962), a sensitive, nostalgic tribute to the passing of the American frontier period that brought together two aging lawmen who had helped tame the Old West - portrayed by Randolph Scott (his last screen role) and Joel McCrea
  • The Wild Bunch (1969) - about an aging, anti-heroic, rugged group of individualistic gunfighters/outlaws at the time of the Mexican Revolution (around 1912) who faced the civilizing of the Old West for their final rampaging ride. Peckinpah cast stars from the 40s and 50s (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, and Ben Johnson) to signal the end of the era. The savage, slow-motion, mass killings in its opening and blood-spurting finale changed the traditional western forever

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The decade opened with one of the most popular, shoot-em-up westerns of all-time, producer/director John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (1960), lifting the structure of another Akira Kurosawa film - the epic The Seven Samurai (1954), about the defense of a small village. It was noted for Elmer Bernstein's memorable, Oscar-nominated score. The film made stars of many of its actors, notably Steve McQueen (and the other six: Brad Dexter, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson, and Yul Brynner). John Wayne produced, directed, and starred as Col. Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1960), a cliched, mushy, and overlong saga of patriots defending the famous fort against the Mexican Army in the struggle for Texas' independence. [The campaign to promote the film as a Best Picture nominee and Chill Wills for a Best Supporting Actor nomination was successful, foreshadowing further strong-armed tactics within the industry.]

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
The 50's three-screen Cinerama process presented an all-star cast (James Stewart, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck, for instance) in an overlong, epic Western How the West Was Won (1963) that followed several generations of the same family. It was directed by three greats: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall.

Italian director Sergio Leone's beautifully-choreographed and soundtracked, revisionist epic western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, It.), with composer Ennio Morricone's score, mixed both violence and humor in arguably one of the greatest westerns ever made. It was a story of conflict between a land-owning ex-prostitute/widow (Claudia Cardinale) and a railroad company, with Henry Fonda in an atypical against-type role as Frank - a black-hearted, butchering villain, Charles Bronson as the mysterious and brooding Harmonica, and Jason Robards as the untameable escaped con scoundrel Cheyenne. The film's tagline proclaimed: "There were three men in her life. One to take her... one to love her... and one to kill her."

George Roy Hill's popular western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), about two perfectly-matched outlaw-hero buddies (the dashing duo of Paul Newman as the head of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang and Robert Redford as the gun-slinging kid), perfectly reflected the mood and emotions of the time. It had both comedy ("Who are those guys?") and graphic violence in its story of unflappable western partners-in-crime who were romantically doomed to die together in Bolivia. [The success of this likeable film brought the two 'dream team' co-stars together with the same director four years later in the Best Picture/Best Director winner The Sting (1973), and set the archetype for many more buddy-hero films to come.]

60s Musicals:

Though musicals had declined by the 1960s and would decline further in the next decade, three musicals in the decade were among the screen's greatest spectacles:

  • Robert Wise's and Jerome Robbins' boldly innovative, exuberant and fresh West Side Story (1961) - featured a Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score - it was a modern, New York re-telling of the tragic Romeo and Juliet star-crossed love story, with dynamite choreography, and a sensitive depiction of the problems of rival street gangs (Sharks vs. Jets) and juvenile delinquency; with memorable roles played by Natalie Wood (as Maria) and Rita Moreno (as Anita)
  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Lerner and Loewe's and director George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964), based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion - with Rex Harrison recreating his Broadway role as wagering phonetics Professor Henry Higgins, with the impossible mission of teaching common Cockney flower-seller Eliza Doolittle how to be a lady (Audrey Hepburn, who replaced snubbed Broadway star Julie Andrews, had her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon, and was not nominated for a Best Actress award)
  • Rodgers and Hammerstein's and Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965) reinvigorated the musical. It starred Julie Andrews in her second film as Maria, a spunky governess for the von Trapp family in Austria where "the hills were alive". The film was the Best Picture and Director Academy Award winner - and it surpassed Gone With the Wind (1939) as the greatest box-office success. [In 1961 and 1968, the Civil War drama was reissued and restored, outgrossing hundreds of new films in box office receipts. Some objected to its wide-screen format in the re-releases.]

Stanley Donen, known for his musicals, also produced and directed Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney as a soul-searching married couple in the non-musical romantic comedy Two For the Road (1967). Many other musicals of the decade did extremely well:

  • Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
    Can-Can (1960)
    - a Cole Porter musical about a 19th century Parisian France
  • Flower Drum Song (1961) - a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about a romance in San Francisco's Chinatown
  • the screen adaptation of Meredith Wilson's book of the Broadway stage hit - director Morton da Casta's thoroughly delightful, lively and enjoyable The Music Man (1962) with Robert Preston as the irrepressible, city-slicker con-art salesman Professor Harold Hill who offers a boys' band to a small Iowa town
  • Mervyn LeRoy's biopic musical Gypsy (1962), originally a Broadway stage musical with Ethel Merman, starred Rosalind Russell as stage Mom Rose, and Natalie Wood as stripteasing daughter Gypsy Rose Lee
  • the Broadway hit show of 1960, Bye Bye Birdie, was adapted for the screen by Irving Brecher and directed by George Sidney as Bye Bye Birdie (1963). It was the first Broadway musical to include rock songs; it told about an Elvis Presley-styled pop star named Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson); Dick Van Dyke reprised his role in the film as a struggling songwriter who sang the upbeat "Put on a Happy Face" to secretary-fiancee Rosie (Janet Leigh), and 22 year-old Ann-Margret appeared in her third film (and sang the title song during the opening credits before a blue-screen) as 16 year-old Kim McAfee - she was the lucky Ohio teenager who was chosen to receive a farewell kiss from the rock idol (before he was drafted into the military) on the TV variety program The Ed Sullivan Show
  • The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), adapted from a Broadway hit - with Debbie Reynolds as a spunky, no-holds-barred survivor of the SS Titanic and the wife of a gold-prospecting husband
  • Oliver! (1968) - a Best Picture and Best Director winner (defeating Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)!), with Ron Moody as Fagin, and Mark Lester as the hungry title character who asked for "More"

However, audiences stayed away from other post-The Sound of Music musicals that were both expensive and old-fashioned, some among the biggest flops of all-time, with some of the decades' greatest stars:

  • Doctor Doolittle (1967) with Rex Harrison as an animal doctor who could 'talk to the animals'
  • Joshua Logan's big-budget flop Camelot (1967) , film-adapted from Lerner and Loewe's Broadway hit musical, starred Richard Harris (replacing Richard Burton) as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave (replacing Julie Andrews) as Guenevere, Franco Nero (replacing Robert Goulet) as Lancelot, and David Hemmings as Mordred
  • George Sidney's old-fashioned, overblown, and formulaic Half a Sixpence (1967, UK) with Tommy Steele; Sidney had earlier directed these more successful Hollywood musicals: Anchors Aweigh (1945), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Pal Joey (1957), and Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
  • Star! (1968) with Julie Andrews
  • Hello, Dolly! (1969), with Barbra Streisand (see below)
  • the California Gold Rush-era Paint Your Wagon (1969) with unusually-cast western star Clint Eastwood (singing "I Talk to the Trees") and Lee Marvin (singing "Wand'rin' Star")
  • Blake Edwards' Darling Lili (1970), a old-style musical that nearly bankrupted Paramount Pictures; it was the first of seven films Blake and partner Julie Andrews made together; it starred Andrews as the title character, a Mata-Hari like German espionage agent during WWI, who romanced American pilot Maj. William Larrabee (Rock Hudson)

Barbra Streisand:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Powerhouse singer Barbra Streisand's screen debut was in Funny Girl (1968), a reprise of her Broadway role as comedienne Fanny Brice - director William Wyler's film launched her into stardom. She tied for Best Actress (an unprecedented feat) with Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter (1968). The next year, she was miscast as a matchmaking widow (who met her match with eligible 'half-millionaire' Walter Matthau) in the lavish adaptation of the popular Broadway show Hello, Dolly! (1969) directed by Gene Kelly - with Louis Armstrong presenting his rendition of the title song. At the start of the 70s, Streisand appeared in two other pictures: Vincente Minnelli's musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) and Herbert Ross' romantic comedy The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) opposite George Segal.

Films from Disney Studios in the 60s:

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Walt Disney Studios re-emerged as a triumphant box-office moneymaker and producer of a variety of expensive-to-produce, animated and likable, wholesome live-action family features during the decade, including the following:

  • Pollyanna (1960), a family drama, brought child star Hayley Mills (with her first of six films for Disney) a special juvenile Oscar for the role as an optimistic orphan
  • The Swiss Family Robinson (1960), an adaptation of Johan Wyss' tale about a shipwrecked family (headed by Dorothy McGuire and John Mills) on a desert island; one of the top-grossing films of 1960
  • the delightfully animated 101 Dalmatians (1961), the highest grossing film of the year at $186.6 million, featured adorable puppies and villainesse Cruella DeVille
  • The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), a comedy with Fred MacMurray as a wacky scientist who invents flubber (flying rubber) and is pursued by Cold War spies who want the formula. It was the fifth top-grossing film of the year. The popular sequel to The Absent-Minded Professor was Son of Flubber (1963)
  • The Parent Trap (1961) with fresh-faced adolescent Hayley Mills playing twins through clever trick photography; it was the sixth top-grossing film of the year
  • Bon Voyage! (1962), another lightweight comedy about a family's vacation to Paris, with Fred MacMurray and Jane Wyman as the parents of three children (Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, and Kevin Corcoran)
  • The Sword in the Stone (1963), an animated story based on the 1938 novel by T.H. White, about a medieval sword blade embedded in a rock
  • Mary Poppins (1964), a delightful musical fantasy combining animation and live-action sequences, and featuring Best Actress-winning Julie Andrews in her screen debut as an energetic, eccentric nanny with magical powers in Edwardian London; also with Dick Van Dyke, and the song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"
  • The Jungle Book (1967), the last, full-length animated film that the legendary Walt Disney supervised before his death in 1966
  • The Love Bug (1968), one of the top-grossing films of the year, about an anthropomorphic Volkswagen 'beetle' named Herbie with driver Dean Jones

Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?
Which of the following films released in the 1920s was the first successful talking motion picture?