Triva Question

[curleysound]

Keeping with the trivia, does anyone know what the first sync sound film was? (Clue, it's not what you might think is the obvious answer!)

Tom Curley

[Jeff Wexler]

Keeping with the trivia, does anyone know what the first sync sound film was? (Clue, it's not what you might think is the obvious answer!)

Tom Curley

As posted by Ron Scelza on r.a.m.p.s.:

This may be of interest to you.

From http://www.oscars.org/events/vitaphone/index.html

Eighty years ago an innovation called “Vitaphone” introduced

synchronized sound to the movies, changing the movie industry forever.

This risky venture by Western Electric and the Warner brothers (Harry,

Sam, Albert and Jack) used a “sound-on-disc” method (one of several

technologies being explored at the time) to synchronize dialogue, music

and sound effects to moving images on the screen. On August 6, 1926,

Vitaphone premiered in New York City with a number of short films and

the feature Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, to the extreme delight of

an enthusiastic audience. This success was soon followed by The Jazz

Singer and hundreds of other Vitaphone shorts and feature films. Until

the summer of 1926, studios had frowned upon the idea of “talkies,” but

the triumph of Vitaphone proved unequivocally that synchronized sound

was here to stay.

[curleysound]

Before Vitaphone, there was William Dickson:

http://www.filmsound.org/murch/dickson.htm

[redge]

Rory you are close, but no cigar.  The original spelling would be La Valliere, this of course is hint number 2.

RVD, just trying to play along. That is indeed the origin (to be precise, de La Valliere), hence the French noun lavalliere, hence lavaliere or lavalier. Comes complete with a good story. My Petit Robert dates lavalliere to 1874. Interestingly, while the Robert does not recognize the more recent spellings, they seem to be common enough in French speaking countries in relation to microphones.

It would be interesting to know when, where and how the word got co-opted as a description of a type of microphone. The Shorter Oxford says only that this happened in the mid-20th Century.

Cheers,

Rory

[Brad Harper]

I think the first lines of sync dialog were in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times.

[redge]

Hint number one being that the early lavaliers were microphones that were attached to a "necklace" of some sort and apparently reminded someone of the Duchess.  I guess we're lucky they didn't get called the Duchess, "I'd like two of those Sanken duchess microphones please."

What I don't know and would be interested to find out, is who coined the term lavalier.  What history major working in early television, or radio I suppose, decided to annoint these microphones as the "lavalier."

Are you a Quebecoise, Rory?  Just curious, as I'm not familiar with the "petit Robert."

Hi RVD,

The person who came up with the idea of applying the word to a microphone was certainly inventive. In French, the word denotes a tie similar to an Ascot. For a picture, and a demonstration of how to tie one if you are so inclined, see: http://www.theatrhall.com/boutique.php?ref=224&cat=3

I wonder whether the idea of applying the word to a mic derives from the association with a necklace, or a loose scarf/tie, and whether the person who first came up with this was French or English (the Oxford specifically mentions the word in association with necklaces, starting in the early 20th century). Or maybe the application was the fanciful invention of a New World francophile

The Petit Robert is the leading one-volume French dictionary. It is a smaller and more up-to-date version of the Grand Robert, although at close to 3,000 pages it is not exactly a pocketbook. In French-speaking countries, it serves the same purpose as the Shorter Oxford. Not from Quebec, but I lived there, and in France.

Cheers,

Rory

[redge]

RVD,

Well now you've got me going, sucker that I am for etymological questions. If I have a moment tomorrow, I'll have a look at the Grand Robert, the Larousse, the Academie Francaise dictionary (which is finally up to the letter "O" after Lord knows how many decades) and the full multivolume Oxford. I have these books at work, so it won't take more than a few minutes. The "big" dictionaries may have a lot more examples of these words in use, showing the date of use. Maybe they'll shed some light on this pressing question.

Cheers,

Rory

[redge]

RVD,

Sure enough, the full Oxford English Dictionary has more on this. This is from the electronic edition. "Transf." is an OED abbreviation for "transferred sense". I'll have a look at the French dictionaries (we have them only in hard copy) later today.

Lavallière:

Also Lavalière, with lower-case initial, and without accent; lavalier.

Name of Louise de la Vallière, French courtesan (1644-1710), used absol. or attrib. to designate certain styles in clothing and jewellery. Also transf., a small microphone.

1873 Young Englishwoman July 350/1 (heading) White chip Lavalliere Hat. The crown is moderately high, with a rather broad brim, turned up in front and down at the back. 1916 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 16 July 2/1 (Advt.), Our stock of moderately priced Necklets, Pendants and La Valieres is most attractive. 1942 Horizon Oct. 250 His collar and ready-made tie (a lavallière). 1951 E. PAUL Springtime in Paris vii. 136 Noel, with broad-brimmed felt hat, seersucker jacket and flowing lavallière, personified the artistic type. 1955 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. XXIV. 122 Any minor bauble such as a lavaliere..is a dangler. 1959 Times 28 Apr. 20/6 A diamond lavalliere. 1969 D. M. DISNEY Fatal Choice (1970) x. 80 Marcy was wearing John's farewell gift, a lavaliere set with an aquamarine..and seed pearls. 1970 New Yorker 12 Sept. 32/2 Mr. Siegel, whose clothes for public appearances are striking, running to vests and lavalieres, had a big grin on his face. 1972 R. HENDRICKSON Human Words 179 Today the small television microphone that hangs on a cord from the neck is also called a lavaliere, taking its name from the pendant necklace. 1974 Amer. Speech 1971 XLVI. 55 A low impedance, unidirectional microphone is, I feel, better than a lavalier microphone.

Cheers,

Rory

[redge]

Hello again RVD,

Well this is intriguing, at least to someone who is interested in the archeology of words.

I just had a look at Webster's Third Edition Unabridged (1961, still considered by many to be the finest American dictionary ever published), the multivolume Le Grand Robert (2001), the multivolume Le Grand Larousse Universel (1995) and the multivolume Tresor de la Langue Francaise (1983, published by France's Institut de la Langue Francaise).

As far as the French dictionaries are concerned, a lavalliere is a loose-fitting tie. Think of a scarf, tied around a woman's neck, or of the kind of neckwear that an Impressionist painter or an Oscar Wilde or a 1930s American in Paris might fancy, and you get the idea. It is not a necklace, not a microphone, but a tie, and the spellings lavaliere and lavalier are not recognized. The Tresor attributes this use of lavalliere to the important French writer Stephan Mallarme, from a work published in 1874, but it is clear from the OED that the word was in use in England, if not France, at least as early as 1873.

As far as Webster's Third is concerned, a lavalliere (or lavaliere/lavalier) is either a tie or a necklace. It is not a microphone. However, the much more recent on-line Merriam-Webster, if one enters the spelling lavalier (as distinct from lavalliere), does define the word as a type of mic. Perhaps 1961 was just too soon for Webster's to pick up the meaning.

I also had a look at a hardcover, second edition (1989), of the full Oxford, which predates the electronic version to which I have access through a subscription over the internet. In 1989, the OED gave all three spellings (lavalliere, lavaliere, lavalier) and all three meanings, tie, necklace, microphone. Looking at the OED electronic entry in my previous post, one of the things that struck me was that a jeweller in Victoria, which is on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, would use the word La Valliere to describe a necklace in a 1916 advertisement. That suggests to me that that meaning of the word was well-understood by English speaking people in the early 1900s, even if they were a long way from London High Street shops.

It is tempting to hypothesize that someone who was English-speaking, or else very fluent in English, came up with the idea of using lavalliere (however spelled) to describe a microphone and, for that matter, a necklace. It's less clear to me that using the word to describe a type of microphone grew out of the attribution to a type of necklace. It could just as easily have grown out of a practice, if such a practice existed, of using a loose-fitting tie/Ascot to hide the mic. Or maybe someone will discover that it was the invention of some clever marketing fellow at a mic manufacturing company.

Cheers,

Rory

P.S. A quick language-specific Google search makes it clear that a lot of French-speaking sound people use this word to describe a microphone, despite the fact that the major French dictionaries do not recognize the usage.

This may well be an instance in which a French word has been exported to English, and then reimported with a different spelling and meaning. As some people may know, there are elements in France, particularly on the right, that get quite exercised about the so-called Anglicization of the French language. Thought about in terms of that debate, if this is indeed a reimportation, complete with bastardized spelling and a brand new meaning, it is a pretty amusing example of Anglicization.

[Thomas Popp]

I was told in school that GOBO is more of a relative term used for anything that is meant to "GO-Between" something. Like a Sound Baffle in a studio, or a flag on a set...

This post is fun! Keep it going!

~Thomas Popp

[Guest jimg]

Many years ago, I got caught in a bad place while working on a BBC film documentary. We were covering the '84 election somewhere in the South. I was in the American "MOS" mode and didn't realize it stood for ""Man On The Street" to my producer so I went to the bus we rode in on to get caught up on my paperwork.  Was I surprised or what.

Jim

[greg sextro]

sort of like "watermellon" right?

have a large enough group say either one of those words (of course, not at the same time) over and over and you can achieve the necessary sound for a background.  'course, that used to be in the days of radio...don't know if that still holds up in film in this day and age.

greg

[Doug Brandon]

Did they actually say "walla walla walla walla..." ?

...from walla walla washington to kalamazoo..

[greg sextro]

Did they actually say "walla walla walla walla..." ?

...from walla walla washington to kalamazoo..

that i actually don't know...a bit before my time.  i've only read about it.  i have used "watermellon, watermellon, watermellon" before, but only behind layers of actual dialog.

-g-

[John Blankenship]

"Bread and butter rhubarb" is the one I learned.  Get several people saying that (at random, of course, certainly not in unison) and it just sounds like generic, background babble.

John B.

Indy