Natural Sound in the Early Talkie Western

Abstract

This article outlines the historical conditions surrounding the reception of the first cycle of talkie Westerns produced by Hollywood studios from 1929 to 1931. While these films have largely been treated by contemporary scholarship as merely descendents of silent Westerns and crude forebears of the genre's later sound-era classicism, this article removes them from that teleological trajectory to situate them within the historical debates surrounding the transition to sound. By highlighting the generic designation 'outdoor film' and linking it to the notion of 'natural' sound that formed a key point of the marketing for sound on film systems, this article provides a listening model for understanding the varied aesthetic strategies by which these films worked out an approach to sound within the ideological constraints of the classical Hollywood studio system.