Appalachian History

‘How the Talking Pictures Talk’
Smyth County News
Thursday, June 27, 1929

There are two main ways of making talkies. One is the so-called disc method and the other the sound track method. In the disc method, the cheaper and less satisfactory of the two, discs something like regular phonograph records are used and the sound is synchronized with the movements of the actors. This is the Vitaphone system and it is all right but rather difficult if the film breaks or the machine gets out of whack.

When pictures are made by this method, the action of the play is photographed in a sound proof studio and at the same time the records of the voices, music, and incidental sounds are made.

The other system is the sound track system. It is the one used in the new Lincoln Theater. Under this system the sound is recorded on the film at the same time the picture is photographed in the sound proof studio. A film with a small track of different substance at one side is used. The recording is done by light which plays over the sound track, made of a delicate chemical substance, and the light varied by the sound of the action caused vari-shaded little bars on the sound track.

This system is the Movietone system.

When the picture is shown, another needle of light in the projecting machine plays on the marked sound track and through it to the delicate electrical apparatus. As the light is varied by the shades on the track, the sound is varied and the human voice, the noise of machines, music, etc. comes out of the speakers.

These are located behind the screen, which is of a special cloth full of little holes to let the sound through unmuffled. Back of the screen, except where the speakers are placed, is a heavy black cloth to cut off the light.

Marvelous things have been accomplished by this method. Exact synchronization of sound and action in the picture play have been achieved and the characters moving on the screen never get ahead of or behind the sound of their voices. To the audiences it is like the characters were speaking their parts.

Undated early photo of Lincoln Theatre in Marion; collection of Lincoln Theatre, Inc.

In addition to this equipment there is another special outfit in the new Lincoln. This is a disc outfit not intended to go with the showing of talking films, but to furnish incidental music to the performance of silent films and to furnish overtures and the like. It will play the finest of organ solos as played by Jesse Crawford in the Paramount Theatre in New York and it will play the music of some of the country’s greatest orchestras.

Altogether, the Lincoln Theatre is completely and finely equipped for the reproduction of sound with the showing of its photoplays. The equipment is of the finest; nothing cheap has been used. It is far ahead in quality of the equipment used in sound reproduction in theaters of some of our neighboring towns.

Costing thousands of dollars, well into five figures, this equipment promises much entertainment to the citizens of Smyth County and those citizens of our neighboring counties who will come to Marion to visit the finest picture house between Roanoke and Knoxville.


source: Sherwood Anderson Newspapers Collection/Smyth-Bland Regional Library
www.sbrl.org/sa_newspapers.htm



appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia Lincoln+Theatre Marion+VA Talkies Vitaphone

Her paintings were shown at the 1939 World’s Fair, and she helped decorate the White House during the Roosevelt Administration. But the artistic highlight of Lola Poston’s painting career was surely the six 15x20 ft. murals she created in 1929 for the auditorium of the newly built Lincoln Theatre, a talking picture palace and vaudeville stage in Marion, VA.

Billed as "the finest playhouse between Roanoke and Knoxville," the theater opened on July 1 that year playing Close Harmony to a standing room only crowd. Lincoln Theatre served as the flagship of a chain of movie houses throughout SW Virginia. Today it’s one of only three remaining American movie houses built in Mayan Revival style.

Lincoln Theatre’s interior resembles an ancient temple with exotic representations of mythological gods and creatures painted on the ceilings and walls. Poston’s murals live amidst this décor, housed in pyramid frames. Poston used cotton panels with water-based paints to depict scenes in early American and local history. She was paid $50 for each painting. The murals have been meticulously restored within the last decade; the theatre itself is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Virginia Historic Landmark.

Lola Poston was born on November 12, 1896, in a log cabin in the Walker’s Creek section of Smyth County, VA. She was the oldest of the ten children of Charles Marion Poston and Ida Lodema Hammons. Charles Poston was half-Irish and half-Shawnnee, and his wife was full-blooded Shawnee.

At age 5, Lola painted a self-portrait by looking at herself in a mirror. As she grew up, she began selling her paintings on the streets of Marion. Recognizing her extreme talent, Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Lincoln, Sr. sent her to study art in Chicago. She didn’t stay long at the school. Soon she began drawing illustrations for greeting card companies, then worked for a design company in New York City.

She met her first husband, Charles E. Harriman, and World War I broke out during their European honeymoon. They escaped to England and returned to the United States.

She became something of a bohemian, traveling with Harriman across America in a 'house car' designed to be pulled behind an automobile.

After her first marriage came to an end, she married J. Ellis Dickerson, who operated a car dealership and real estate business from their basement. They resided in Grayson County, VA, home of Mount Rogers, the highest peak in the state.

She became friends with nationally renowned writer and part-time local resident Sherwood Anderson. She retired to Florida in her later years and taught arts and crafts, raised Dachshunds, and managed a flower shop.


sources: www.thelincoln.org/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=20
Marion and Hungry Mother State Park, by Kenneth William Heath, Arcadia Publishing, 2004
Smyth County Revisited, by Kimberly Barr Byrd, Debbie J. Williams, Debra J Williams, Arcadia Publishing, 2007
http://artsmagazine.info/amagazine/2005/12/2005113015293682.pdf



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