To the best of my knowledge the pioneer producer of talking pictures was Preston Kendall, at that time Edison's scenario chief. This smiling scientist philosopher of private means had come to the studio from Thomas Edison's laboratory in Orange where he and Mr. Edison had been experimenting with the synchronization of sound and image. I had bombarded him with stories after Family Honor had been accepted, but though a couple of them had pleased him, Mr. Plimpton would not buy another story of mine.
Like Sumner Williams, Mr. Kendall had his office upstairs, but at the other end of the studio where he could make all the noise he wanted to without hearing the noises other people made or being heard by them. His recording room looked like a phonograph store with different sized amplifiers of the megaphone variety hanging about, and a large gramophone with cylindrical and another with circular recording discs much bigger than the regular phonograph records. He had a great time by himself with all these machines, and he was the only person in the studio who was always in a good humor. He wore pinze-nez and I never saw him without a cigar. He laughed a lot when he talked, and when I told him I had been fired again he laughed more than ever and said to come up and he would give me a voice test, and if it turned out well I would have a week's work when he started his talking picture on Monday.
We went upstairs and he played some records and then started monkeying with one of the big machines.
"It's going to take some time to get this ready," he said.
"My aunt's husband had one with a big horn like that," I said.
Why don't you say your uncle?" he said.
"Because he's only my uncle by marriage," I said. "He invented the Optophone that makes the blind hear light."
"The hell you say," said Mr. Kendall. "What's his name?"
"Fournier d'Albe. He talks Irish and writes scientific books, and once in his laboratory he put a rat under anaesthetic and then turned on an ultraviolet light and I saw its soul hanging in the air just over its body, and when he pinched the soul the real rat squeaked. I never realized rats had souls, did you?"
"Why shouldn't they?" said Mr. Kendall. "They're no worse than a lot of folks that claim to have one."
He began to laugh again and asked me what I thought about Mr. Williams. I told him frankly what I thought, and added a few friendly remarks about Mr. Plimpton. Then I asked how long it would be before he would be ready to make the test.
"What's the hurry?" he said, and changed something from one machine to another.
"Listen," I said, "I want to go down and get a couple of sandwiches before they're all—"
I got no further. The second machine started up. A strange voice said: "My aunt's husband had one with a big horn like that." Then another voice that sounded very familiar said: "Why don't you say your uncle?"
I just sat there with my mouth open until the Williams and Plimpton comments had come to an end. That brought me to my feet.
"My God!" I said. "Will Plimpton hear that?"
The talking picture was an American Civil War story, and the first scene I played in was an exterior, made in the studio. I was a muddy Federal dispatch rider and I had to go up to the colonel who was sitting in front of his tent with his sword on the table and a captain standing beside him and a couple of sentries guarding his tent.
When I had saluted him properly the colonel shouted out of the side of his mouth next to the big gramophone horn on a pole beside the camera:
"What news, Corporal?"
I shouted back out of the side of my mouth:
"The enemy are advancing, Colonel!"
Then the colonel got up and buckled on his sword and took the stage in front of the gramophone horn and shouted a lot of orders into it, though everyone was behind him. When he had finished shouting, someone off-stage blew a trumpet, and then Mr. Kendall took the disc off the machine that was behind the pole with the gramophone horn on it and we went upstairs to hear it played back.
The only things that sounded good were the trumpet and the colonel's orders in front of the horn. So we went back and did the scene again with the table facing the horn and the recording was good except the s's and a crackling sound that went all through. We finished the picture on schedule, but the public did not take to it. So Mr. Edison decided to drop talking pictures for the time being and Mr. Kendall went back to the scenario department.