With the film industry once again in flux, be it the Paramount and Netflix bids for Warner Bros., the rise of AI, or general box office malaise, I thought it would be interesting to look back at what was going on in American film a century ago. It was another era full of change, as synced sound made its first appearance, new box office stars made their film debuts while others lost their lives, and the four main studios were beginning to find their footing in an industry still in its nascence.
While the Warner Bros. part-talkie musical “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolson is often cited as marking the end of the silent era, with its synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech, the death knell actually rang a year earlier with another film produced by WB: 1926’s romantic adventure “Don Juan.” The Great Profile himself, John Barrymore, played the titular womanizing lothario immortalized in Lord Byron’s 1821 poem of the same name. While the Jolson picture ushered in the era of synchronized dialogue, “Don Juan” blazed the trail with its use of a synchronized musical score and sound effects via the brand-new Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system.
Vitaphone sound engineer George Groves, who later worked on “The Jazz Singer,” captured the score for “Don Juan” by recording the 107-piece New York Philharmonic live with an innovative multi-microphone technique. The discs of this recording were then synced to screenings of the film. “Don Juan” premiered on August 6th, 1926, at the Warner Theatre in New York City and later at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Photoplay named it the best film released that week, calling it a “real film event.”
Shortly after the film’s success—it was the studio’s highest-grossing film to date—WB began shuffling their projects in development to focus on films that would lend themselves to the new Vitaphone process, which Photoplay reported included Warners selling their contract with Ernst Lubitsch to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount (then known as Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation). Both “Don Juan” and “The Jazz Singer” were directed by Alan Crosland, who had ironically been hired away from Famous Players–Lasky in 1925 by Warner Bros.
At the same time over at the Fox Film Corporation, Raoul Walsh was working on an adaptation of the stage play “What Price Glory?,” a war dramedy that centers on two US Marine sergeants, Quirt (Edmund Lowe) and Flagg (Victor McLaglen), whose playful rivalry ramps up when the onset of WWI takes them to France, where they both fall in love with Charmaine (Dolores del Río), an innkeeper’s daughter. Although made as a silent film, after its premiere on November 23rd, 1926, in New York City, before it went into general release, Fox reworked the film to incorporate sound effects using the Movietone sound-on-film process as a way to compete with “Don Juan.”
Developed by Theodore Case, the patents for the Movietone technology were bought out by William Fox on July 23, 1926. “What Price Glory?” would go on to break box office records in theaters across the country. In 1927, F. W. Murnau made his Oscar-winning romantic drama “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” using the Movietone technology to sync sound effects and a musical score to his film. It went on to become the one and only winner of the Best Unique and Artistic Picture award at the very first Academy Awards.
Along with the earthquake-sized shake-up that sound brought to the industry, Hollywood had just begun to repair its image after a series of scandals in the early 1920s that shook it to its core when one of its bright stars—Rudolph Valentino—died suddenly. Born Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla, Valentino was scouted in Italy and brought to Hollywood in 1914, where, after a series of bit parts, he began to make a name for himself as The Latin Lover. He starred in numerous box office smashes, including “The Sheik” (1921), “Blood and Sand” (1922), “The Eagle” (1925), and “The Son of the Sheik” (1926).
Known for his smoldering sensuality and bedroom eyes, Valentino was a veritable sex symbol whose persona provoked both fervent adoration and vitriolic hate in equal measure. Journalist Adela Rogers St. John told Kevin Brownlow in his book Hollywood: The Pioneers, “The American men were not very understanding about Valentino. He came along as the first of the great foreign lovers. You see, that was the interesting thing about Gable, a decade later. Every American man was perfectly willing that his wife should be in love with Gable, because Gable was what he’d have liked to have been. But they were not willing that their wives should be in love with a foreigner.”
Although he was idolized by millions, his personal life was often in shambles. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons wrote in her memoir The Gay Illiterate that Valentino was “a strange, introspective boy—he was little more than that—Rudy had the world of women at his feet. And yet was never happy in his personal love life.”
After a series of failed marriages, to Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova (which several writers and historians have speculated may have been lavender marriages, although this claim is disputed by several Valentino biographers), Valentino was getting his life back in order, including a new relationship with Polish star Pola Negri, when he suddenly collapsed in his apartment at the Hotel Ambassador on Park Avenue in Manhattan. He underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer and appendicitis, dying a week later from peritonitis. He was just thirty-one years old.
Several suicides by despondent fans were reported, and it is estimated that 100,000 people lined up to pay their respects at his funeral in Manhattan, ending in a day-long riot. Negri, who claimed to be his fiancée, collapsed at the funeral while standing over his coffin. Because he had not made any arrangements for his funeral, his friend, screenwriter June Mathis, arranged for his remains to be laid to rest in a crypt she had bought for a husband whom she had since divorced. Mathis, unfortunately, died a year later. The two remain interred side by side at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. For decades, a “woman in black” with a red rose visited his crypt on the anniversary of his death, inspiring the country standard “Long Black Veil.”
While Hollywood quaked from the loss of Valentino, another star imported from Europe made an indelible impact on the industry. Born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Sweden, Greta Garbo had appeared in a few films in her home country and Germany before making her way to Hollywood. The facts of how this happened vary, but the gist is that after establishing himself in Hollywood, Swedish director Victor Sjöström suggested that MGM’s Louis B. Mayer take a look at fellow Swede Mauritz Stiller, whose film “Gösta Berlings Saga” had become a hit in Europe. In some versions of the story, Mayer went to Sweden to meet with Stiller, who then insisted Garbo come along with him; in others, Mayer went to Sweden for Garbo, and Stiller rode to Hollywood on her coattails.
Wherever the truth lies, what is undeniable is Garbo’s star power. The camera loved her, and so did audiences. Garbo’s first two pictures at MGM, “Torrent” and “The Temptress,” established her as an exotic vamp with sex appeal to spare.
This persona was dialed up to eleven for her third film, the steamy romance “Flesh and the Devil,” which saw her team up with MGM’s top box-office star, John Gilbert, then known as The Great Lover. The film’s director, Clarence Brown, later recalled to Brownlow that their sizzling chemistry on-screen stemmed from their steamy connection off-screen, remarking, “I just had a real love affair going for me that you couldn’t beat any way you tried.” On the intensity of their relationship, Adela Rogers St. John also told Brownlow that she had “never seen two people so violently, excitedly in love … they couldn’t conceal it.” By the end of filming, they were so deeply in love that Gilbert proposed in September, and Garbo agreed to marry him in a double wedding with King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman.
Garbo never showed up, and according to Gilbert’s daughter Leatrice Gilbert Fountain in her book Dark Star: The Untold Story of the Meteoric Rise and Fall of the Legendary John Gilbert, Mayer said to him, “What do you have to marry her for? Why don’t you just sleep with her and forget it?” Instead of a marriage between the two pairs of lovers, the wedding ended in a brawl between the two men, which was broken up by Eddie Mannix. According to Fountain, Mayer also allegedly said to Gilbert, “I’ll destroy you if it costs me a million dollars.”
Despite all the behind-the-scenes drama, “Flesh and the Devil” became a huge hit for MGM, and the studio teamed up Gilbert and Garbo in two more films, “Love” in 1927 and “A Woman of Affairs” in 1928. Gilbert’s star waned after the sound took over the industry, although not because of voice. A series of less-than-stellar sound projects assigned to him by MGM hurt his appeal with audiences, although he was on an upswing in the 1930s, including reteaming with Garbo for 1933’s historical romance “Queen Christina.” Unfortunately, alcoholism got the best of Gilbert, and he died at the age of thirty-eight in 1936. Fortunately for him (and us), many of his films, including those ethereal films he made with Garbo, can still be viewed today.
While Gilbert and Garbo lit up the silver screen and made headlines for their on-again, off-again romance, two actors who would come to define the western genre in the talkie era made their film debuts: John Wayne and Gary Cooper. John Wayne appeared in King Vidor’s swashbuckling romance “Bardelys the Magnificent,” which starred Gilbert as well as Vidor’s fiancée, Eleanor Boardman. While attending USC, Wayne became interested in the movies. After his coach, Howard Jones, gave silent Western film star Tom Mix tickets to USC football games, Mix convinced director John Ford to bring Wayne on as a prop boy and extra. During this time, he also found himself in a minor role in Vidor’s costume drama. Over a decade later, Ford made Wayne a superstar after casting him in the lead of his Western classic “Stagecoach.”
Born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana, Cooper bounced around for a bit before making his way to Los Angeles, where he found work in the movies via friends from back home who were in Hollywood working as film extras and stunt riders for low-budget western films. After cutting his teeth on a few of these poverty row cheapies, Cooper had his breakthrough in Henry King’s romantic western “The Winning of Barbara Worth” opposite Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. Cooper’s performance brought such praise from critics that Samuel Goldwyn attempted to sign him to a long-term contract. Cooper held out for a better deal, ultimately signing a five-year contract with Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. He then starred with the original “It” girl, Clara Bow, in two films, “Children of Divorce” and William A. Wellman’s war epic “Wings,” which went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture.
Before his breakout performance, Cooper appeared as one of the flood survivors in Irving Cummings’ “The Johnstown Flood.” Produced for the Fox Film Corporation, the disaster film, which paired George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor a year before “Sunrise,” is also notable today for its groundbreaking use of special effects. The film was largely shot in Santa Cruz County, California, with the astonishing flood effects for the titular flood achieved by special effects supervisors Jack Smith and Roy Davidson, who recreated the area with miniature sets designed to collapse realistically under the force of moving water. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the film was screened at the Soquel Congregational Church, near where it was filmed. Allegedly, the special effects were so effective that at least one member of the audience was so concerned about the town’s condition that they fled the screening to make sure it was still there.
Up in Oregon, silent comedy pioneer Buster Keaton was similarly pushing the limits of film special effects and stunts with his most ambitious film to “The General.” Filmed on location in Cottage Grove, Oregon, the film features some of Keaton’s most complex and dangerous stunts, most of which are performed on a moving locomotive train. Keaton purchased two vintage locomotives from the Oregon, Pacific and Eastern Railway to use during filming, as well as a third locomotive for the now-iconic bridge collapse stunt. The shot required six cameras and several trial runs. The wreckage was then left in the riverbed, where it became a tourist spot for a few decades before being salvaged for scrap during WWII.
Now regarded as one of Keaton’s major triumphs, the action comedy was not well-received by critics and was a box office failure. Keaton only made a few more films that matched the artistic heights of his early career, including “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” and “The Cameraman” in 1928. Although Keaton’s post-sound career is filled with creative ups and downs, his legacy as one of the cinema’s greatest innovators remains to this day. Clyde Bruckman, his codirector on “The General,” has left his distinct mark on pop culture, not only for his contribution to film comedies in the silent era, but also as the namesake of Peter Boyle’s character in the beloved episode of “The X-Files” entitled “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.”
What does all this have to say about where cinema stands in 2026? I don’t really know. Other than to speculate that the art of film, being so tied as it is to the business of making money, will always have its ebbs and its flows. But, I am willing to bet somewhere a huge star yet to come has just been cast in their first minor role. Some artisan behind the scenes is innovating a new way to project a mirror of reality onto the big screen. And some businessperson is trying to make a quick buck off the latest trend, rather than find a way to push the artform forward. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will always be. We’ll have to wait another hundred years to see how it all shakes out. Until then, we can still get lost in the otherworldly glow of the movies.
Hence then, the article about to the film industry in crisis a look back at hollywood in 1926 was published today ( ) and is available on Roger Ebert ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( To the Film Industry in Crisis, A Look Back At Hollywood In 1926 )
Also on site :
- Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party receives second big donation from crypto investor
- Canadian Actress Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers Returns Toronto Film Critics Award in Response to Censorship of Pro-Palestine Speech
- Russian Ambassador to Canada: “Ottawa” supported use of force against Iran, & our relations have been in a ‘Deep Freeze’ since 2014