Here are a couple of items I meant to post on Monday, but forgot:
– Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail is generally considered the first British film with sound. However, Hitchcock had already started filming the movie when the decision was made to add sound to it. Hitchcock had chosen Polish\Czech actress Anny Ondra as the female lead because film was originally supposed to be silent. However, now that sound was added, Anny’s thick accent would make her unconvincing as an English woman. Since recasting the lead and starting over from scratch was too expensive, and since sound could not be edited later on at that time, Hitchcock had Ondra mouth the words while English actress Joan Berry spoke into a microphone off camera. Here’s a picture of the filming:
Hitchcock (with headphones on) listens to Berry read lines as Ondra mouths them and a cameraman records it.
– There’s an interesting story behind the creation of Curious George.
– Play-Doh was originally created as a wallpaper cleaner.