ALLAN DWAN: Technically, sound was wrong when it began. It was wrong for a long, long time. By that I mean in pitch. If your voice was high, it made it higher, no doubt due to the speed . . . very much like the tone if you speed it up. The voice becomes shrill. Actors like John Gilbert just didn’t have the kind of a voice that went with his personality, and Doug Fairbanks didn’t, either. Doug was manly looking, but he had a high voice. So the sound didn’t fit them. Today it could be corrected, or they could have some vocal lessons. But up until that time, they hadn’t had to talk, so no one had
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