Talkies by Eddie Cantor
Talkies by Eddie Cantor is a humorous essay written in the early 20th century. It playfully examines the dawn of talking pictures and the broader eruption of sound in modern life, poking fun at the technical hiccups, cultural shifts, and showbiz absurdities that accompanied the move from silent films to “talkies.” The piece riffs on how silence vanished from city life and the cinema, then catalogs the comic chaos that early sound
created: scratchy voices and soup-slurping kisses, glamorous stars undone by odd tones or clacking dentures, and microphones hidden in absurd places that force lovers to address a sofa. Cantor heightens the farce with miscast accents in costume dramas, dialogue out of sync so barnyard animals “speak,” and a star who needs separate doubles to talk, sing, and play piano. He imagines a “smellophone,” culminating in a skunk-sparked disaster on a mock Noah’s Ark set. The satire closes with the wry assurance that, for all their wonders, the talking pictures can’t replace the living thrill of the stage. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Cantor, Eddie, 1892-1964 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Holton, L. T. (Leonard T.), 1906-1973 |
| Title | Talkies |
| Original Publication | Chicago: The McCall Company, 1930. |
| Series Title | Produced from the February, 1930 issue of Redbook magazine. |
| Credits | Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Essays |
| Subject | American wit and humor |
| Subject | Motion picture industry -- Humor |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77870 |
| Release Date | Feb 5, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 268 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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