The violinist with Bauer is Efrem Zimbalist. They play an abbreviated form
of the second movement of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata.
Elman is in a different film. He plays "Humoresque" by Dvorak and "Gavotte"
by Gossec. Wonderful!
Harold Zamansky
----- Original Message -----
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 7:58 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Vitaphone (was: Recording Innovations)
> There was also a film of Harold Bauer solo, and playing with the violinist
> (name? too early in the morning). Elman or someone else?
>
> These are the only name instrumentalists I know of.
>
> joe salerno
>
>
> Michael Biel wrote:
>> From: Roger Kulp <[log in to unmask]>
>>> I would like to see a listing of these.Someone once told me there
>>> are classical records,including one of Mischa Elman.Is there ?
>>
>> Elman's film is catalog #275,
>> and it was in the first batch shown in
>> 1926 and restored in 1976 for the 50th Anniversary celebration at MOMA.
>> Check out the web site of The Vitaphone Project.
>> http://www.picking.com/vitaphone.html The public database listings
>> have not been kept up to date, but by looking at them and the quarterly
>> bulletins you can see what is known. There are many classical and
>> operatic films and discs, but they are usually are not on the front
>> burners to be restored. The grant by the Getty family to restore a
>> large group of operatics had to be withdrawn due to death, so donations
>> to restore that group are again being accepted. Some of the films are
>> shown on Turner Classics and have been released on
>> LaserDiscs and DVDs, usually as extras. The best grouping of these are
>> on the three-disc set of The Jazz Singer that was released last year.
>> There are annual screenings in NY and LA of the recent restorations, and
>> last weekend at the NJ Jazz Bash, Ron Hutchinson repeated this year's
>> show for us. If any collector and archive holds any soundtrack disc,
>> please report it to the Project. Likewise, if any film without the
>> discs are known, the Project needs to know this too. Mike Biel
>> [log in to unmask] --- On Thu, 6/25/09, Jack Theakston
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> From: Jack Theakston <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Recording Innovations
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Thursday, June 25, 2009, 3:08 PM
>>
>> The Vitaphone discs did have a start point, which was ultimately your
>> sync mark. It was a little arrow on the inner point of the film, on
>> which you synced up to a start point on the film. The difficulty, of
>> course, was if the film broke, you couldn't just slug it with one frame
>> of leader because the cement splice couldn't take the stress. Instead,
>> you had to cut two or more frames out, leaving a noticeable slug.
>> Sound-on-film, of course, was no problem, because there's no way for it
>> to drop out of sync.
>>
>> With proper care, even on manual rewinds (which should all have a
>> tension brake on them), a film should be returned in the same condition
>> as the day it came in.
>>
>> J. Theakston
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: George Brock-Nannestad <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 4:45:52 PM
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Recording Innovations
>>
>> From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
>>
>> just a short remark, re Bob Hodge:
>>
>>
>>> Competent projectionists would splice in black film equal to the number
>>> of
>>> frames damaged. Just a normal part of projection. Ideally, the
>>> rotational pivot should be midway in its travel for maximum
>>> flexibility. It couldn't rotate 360 degrees due to the leads from the
>>> tonearm. But more than enough to compensate for subtle difficulties. And
>>> why
>>> a second set of discs were shipped with each film requiring them.
>>
>> ----- at first I thought that having the pivot midway would compensate
>> for having put too many black frames into the gap, but then I remembered:
>> there is no synchronization mark on the Vitaphone disc, so when it is
>> first
>> put on the turntable you do not know where it is on the turntable. For
>> this
>> reason you might have to go back or forth to find the sync.
>>
>> ----- by the way, the black film replacement would only work for silent
>> stock. When a frame was lost in a sound film, the best you could do as a
>>
>> projectionist was to paint fade-in and fade-out on either side of the
>> splice. Re-sync would not happen after 20 frames anyway. I think that my
>> worst experience as a projectionist in our little cinema (35 mm Ernemann,
>> though!) was in manual rewind. If you got the reels up to speed and lost
>> power in
>> your winding arm towards the end, the loop would rise above the reels,
>> and if
>> you were not diligent, above 3 feet in height would threaten with havoc.
>> What could you do, except clamp your hand on the other reel, getting burn
>> tracks in your hand. I wore a left-hand leather glove after that. You did
>> not
>> want to use the brake, because it would slow down the process to a safe
>> speed. Films had to take a lot of abuse (the reason why nitrate survived
>> for so
>> long-
>> -it was not only more transparent but also much tougher than acetate)
>>
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