Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928 film)

Jimmy Valentine
Publicity still of William Haines released for the film
Directed byJack Conway
Written bySarah Y. Mason
A. P. Younger (adaptation)
Joseph Farnham (intertitles)
Based onAlias Jimmy Valentine
by Paul Armstrong
StarringLionel Barrymore
William Haines
CinematographyMerritt Gerstad
Edited bySam Zimbalist
Music byWilliam Axt
Production
company
Distributed byLoew's Inc.[nb 1]
Release date
  • November 15, 1928 (1928-11-15) (United States)
Running time
88 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSound (Part-Talkie)
English Dialogue and Intertitles

Alias Jimmy Valentine is a 1928 American sound part-talkie crime drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring William Haines, Leila Hyams, Lionel Barrymore, and Karl Dane. The film features talking sequences along with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film is based on the 1909 play Alias Jimmy Valentine by Paul Armstrong, which itself was based on an O. Henry short story.[2] The play toured in travelling production companies making it extremely popular. It was revived on Broadway in 1921.[3] Two previous film adaptations had been produced at the old Metro Studios.[4] A 1915 film version was directed by Maurice Tourneur and a 1920 version starring Bert Lytell was directed by Edmund Mortimer and Arthur Ripley.

Released on November 15, 1928, the film was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first partially talking film.[5] It was completed as a silent film before Irving Thalberg sent back Lionel Barrymore and William Haines to repeat their performances for the last two reels with sound.[6]

The film was shot in the middle of the night to avoid ambient noise infiltrating the soundtrack. Haines described the discomfort of working with sound: "You are confined to working quarters... that are almost airtight. You can hardly breathe, and in the hot weather it's like working in a boiler room... The sweat rolled off me until I could hardly stand it, and once I nearly felt like fainting".[7]

  1. ^ Gomery, Douglas; Pafort-Overduin, Clara (2011). Movie History: A Survey (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 144. ISBN 9781136835254.
  2. ^ The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1921-1930. 1971. p. 12.
  3. ^ The Routledge Guide To Broadway. Bloom, Ken. CRC Press. 2007. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-415-97380-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. ^ Langman, Larry (1998). American Film Cycles: The Silent Era. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 182. ISBN 0-313-30657-5.
  5. ^ The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography Of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. Bradley, Edwin M. McFarland. 2004. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-786-42029-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ^ "Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) - IMDb". IMDb.
  7. ^ Eyman, Scott. The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon and Schuster, New York: 1997.


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