The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930: Amazon.ca: Scott Eyman: Books

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First Sentence
In New York, in the year of our Lord 1907, the horse-drawn cars on West Street, Chambers Street, and Canal Street and even the cable cars on Broadway were slowly being replaced by electric streetcars. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

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4.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Hollywood's turbulent era, Oct 10 2001

By

Bruce Calvert "silent movie collector" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930 (Hardcover)

Scott Eyman's masterful research of the Talkie Revolution is a must-read for silent-film and early sound-film fans. He covers early unsuccessful sound-film attempts, some of the last great silent film classics like THE CROWD and SUNRISE, Warners' and Fox's different sound systems, and many other topics. The main scope of the book is the period from 1926-1930. The focus of the book is on how the business of filmmaking and the art of filmmaking was completely changed with the coming of the talking movie. Careers were born and destroyed overnight. Sometimes a performer's voice was a problem in sound films. In other cases, like John Gilbert's, the studio thought that he was too expensive and the type of film that was his forte became passe. For a couple of years, the sound-man was the most important person on a movie set.

Eyeman's book is comprehensive, but not comprehensive enough. Curiously, he gives short shrift to some comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Raymond Griffith. Except for a brief mention of the British change-over, the book focuses exclusively on Hollywood studios. He covers all of the bases such as legal wrangling over patents, financial profits and losses, the problems that studio artists encountered in making sound films, and the many poor films that were produced in the early sound era. If you like classic films, you will love this book.

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4.0 out of 5 stars serious film history buffs only, Jun 5 2001

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Ken Braithwaite (inkster, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930 (Hardcover)

If you have a passing interest in this period, this is not for you. It is a very detailed -- often overdetailed -- history of the coming of the talkies. Everyone who writes on silents tends to overpraise them,and Eyman is no exception, but this is not a screed and not overly nostalgic, just a good revealing history of the the time.

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5.0 out of 5 stars ONE OF THE BEST FILM BOOKS EVER WRITTEN, July 22 2000

By

anonymous (san francisco, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930 (Hardcover)

You know you're dealing with a serious achievement when you read a book and can't conceive how one person was able to write it. Eyman does some amazing things in this book. He covers the BUSINESS side of the talkie revolution. He covers the TECHNOLOGICAL side of it. He covers the ARTISTIC side of it. And he covers the HUMAN side of it. Moreover, he does this in the context of a flowing narrative that drops some stories here and picks them up there, juggles one aspect with another; sets them aside, traces another development . . . without ever losing the flow, without ever losing the reader. I've read a lot of film books, and the skill and the intelligence of this one just amazed me. This is a dazzling piece of work, and it reads like a really good novel. I couldn't recommend a book more enthusiastically.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars It takes you into the mindset of the late 20s
I am a huge silent movie buff. This book is utterly fascinating. The detail given to the movie industry at the time, the descriptions of movie goers reactions to the new fangled... Read more

Published on Feb 2 1999 by Randall

3.0 out of 5 stars One Noticeable Flaw
Silent comedy gets ignored in this book. I read every word and found no explanation for why the author would fail to make no more than passing references to the silent work of... Read more

Published on Jun 4 1997