‘Masking madness with gaiety’: innovating sound exhibition in Australia and the Royal Commission's failure to prevent the talkie wars

Abstract

The 1927–1928 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia sought to strengthen the domestic film industry's competitiveness against foreign investment, technology and manpower. Although it concluded before the wide-scale rollout of sound exhibition, it began collecting evidence after the coming of sound had already begun to make waves. Beginning in 1924 and continuing beyond the Commission, agents of the US De Forest Phonofilms company, primed the local market for sound through a series of publicity events. Their activities lead the local trade press to dub the Australian Phonofilms franchise as the instigator of a ‘Talkie War’, challenging the Commission's ability to curtail the expansion of human capital and technology from the USA. Within a year of its conclusion, agents from the US Western Electric company arrived in Australia to wire the major capital city theatres with sound. Initially, this strengthened Hollywood's foothold in ways that the Commission was anxious to avoid. Hoyts Theatres intensified the ‘Talkie-gear war’ by backing the ‘Australian-made’ Markophone as a competitor to the US Fox–Movietone sound system. Hence, while the Commission failed to achieve its aims, local pioneers took action by innovating rival sound systems with local technology, engineering and showmanship. Markophone wired up the ‘Talkie War’ in face of local and international competition in ways that differed from nearly all alternative sound systems.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous referees of an earlier version of this article for their insightful comments and suggestions for further research. The underlying research materials for this article (i.e. trade press, newspaper articles, parliamentary debate records, and defunct company records) can be accessed at the National Film and Sound Archive, National Library of Australia, National Archives of Australia, State Library of New South Wales-Mitchell Library, Australian Parliamentary Library, and New South Wales State Archives, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Brian Yecies is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Wollongong. His research focuses on cinema culture and policy in Korea, China and Australia. He is the author of Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893–1948 (2011, Routledge) and The Changing Face of Korean Cinema, 1960–2015 (forthcoming, Routledge) – both with Ae-Gyung Shim. He is also a chief investigator on the 2014–2016 ARC Discovery Project ‘Willing Collaborators: Negotiating Change in East Asian Media Production’.

Notes

1. The phrase ‘Masking Madness with Gaiety' appeared in an intertitle used to introduce one of Dolores del Rio's major dance numbers at the Moscow Theatre in The Red Dance.

2. In mid-1930, the US Western Electric–ERPI and RCA companies, and the German Tobis-Klangfilm company met in Paris to resolve standardisation (aka interchangeability) disputes between their competing systems. They also agreed to divide the globe into three exclusive sales areas: a German zone, an American zone and neutral territory. Although the neutral territory included Great Britain, France and other parts of Europe excluded from the German zone – probably to appease British and French sound companies such as Gaumont, British Phototone and Pathé – it was open to both US and German sound companies.

3. Formed in 1926, the MPDAA consisted mainly of representatives of American (Hollywood) film distributors, including First National-Warner Bros., United Artists, MGM, Fox, Famous Lasky (Paramount), Universal and Selznick Pictures.

4. Phonofilms Australia began producing Australian-made films following the opening of its studio at Rushcutters Bay in April 1927, including the studio's opening ceremony. Senator Herbert E. Pratten, Minister of Trade and Customs, officially opened the new studio, which he saw as a key vehicle for ‘instilling a national Australian spirit in the Australian people'. See Daily Telegraph, April 6, 1927, 2. Union Theatres acquired the studio in 1933 and revamped it for its Cinesound Studios.

5. Hawkins had been a producer with Sovereign Pictures since 1922, making educational and industry films for the New South Wales government and various commercial organisations (Australian Government 1928a, 413–421).

6. Promoting links with the Empire also made good business sense – the Parliamentary Tariff Board gave preferential treatment to imported British goods in the form of reduced tariffs. In the late 1920s there was a 40% general tariff on cinema equipment (projectors and arc lamps) imported from the United States, while only 25% was levied on equipment from Britain. See Australian Government 1930, 2087.

7. Two months after leaving Phonofilms Australia, Hawkins had completed two single-reel industrial films for MGM, exploring the subjects of ‘beautiful womanhood' and billiards respectively. See Everyones, March 21, 1928, 26.

8. Between November and December 1928, ERPI staff worked around the clock to wire just three cinemas – the Union Theatres’ Lyceum and Prince Edward and the Hoyts’ Regent – for sound.

9. Western Electric–ERPI leased its systems for mandatory 10-year periods that included weekly service charges, rather than selling them outright. This strategy helped the company maintain its market leadership by encouraging constant upgrades and innovations over the life of the contract. It also prohibited non-certified technicians and handymen from working on its equipment. The cost of installing Western Electric sound equipment in Australia at this period was between £6000 and £7000 – not including the compulsory weekly service charges, which ultimately made Western Electric sound equipment cost-prohibitive for the suburban showman (and narrowly affordable for the big cinema circuits – especially during the Great Depression).

10. In 1929, a number of Markophone trade demonstrations were held at the Palace Theatre in Gladesville, NSW, and the National Theatre in Richmond, Victoria. In February 1930, another heavily promoted trade demonstration took place at the National Picture Theatre in Balmain. See Everyones, October 9, 1929, 21; Film Weekly, December 19, 1929, 8; and Everyones, February 12, 1930, 14.

11. After the Markophone brand name had disappeared, the key Sydney players behind the regional system pursued bigger projects within the industry. Snider resigned from his executive position at Hoyts Theatres in September 1935 and acquired the Fuller's Theatre chain with his partner George B. Dean (Film Weekly-Who's Who, September 24, 1936, 6). In 1937, Alexander Noad and William Marshall helped to establish the Australian representative of the Gaumont British Equipment Company (Film Weekly-Who's Who, October 14, 1937, 28). Gaumont British sound head and reproducing equipment was manufactured in Australia by Noad's Precision Engineering Company under license from British Acoustic Films Ltd., an associate company of Gaumont British.

12. Other ‘unfinished business' of the 1927 Royal Commission revisited by the 1934 Inquiry included the discriminatory distribution practices of block and blind film booking, and the need for enacting an Australian film quota.

13. Western Electric countered these charges by bringing a suit in March 1934 in the Supreme Court of New South Wales against exhibitors who had refused to pay the company its lease payments in order to terminate their equipment contracts. The Supreme Court, and later the 1934 Inquiry, sided with the giant US electrical company. See New South Wales Legislative Assembly 1934, 75.