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Don Juan (1926
1926 in film

Events*August - Warner Brothers debuts the first Vitaphone film, Don Juan . The Vitaphone system used multiple 33? rpm gramophone record developed by Bell Labs and Western Electric to play back audio synchronized with film....
) is a Warner Brothers film, directed by Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland

Alan Crosland was an United States actor and film director.Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do family, Alan Crosland attended from Dartmouth College....
. It was the first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone
Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930....
 sound effects and musical soundtrack
Soundtrack

The term soundtrack refers to three related concepts: recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; and the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded so...
, though it has no spoken dialogue. The production, which premiered in New York City on August 6, 1926, stars John Barrymore
John Barrymore

John Sidney Blyth Barrymore , was an American actor, frequently called the greatest of his generation. He first gained fame as a stage actor, lauded for his portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III ....
 as the hand-kissing womanizer (the number of kisses in the film set a record).

here was one thing that Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things - life, disillusionment and death.






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Don Juan (1926
1926 in film

Events*August - Warner Brothers debuts the first Vitaphone film, Don Juan . The Vitaphone system used multiple 33? rpm gramophone record developed by Bell Labs and Western Electric to play back audio synchronized with film....
) is a Warner Brothers film, directed by Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland

Alan Crosland was an United States actor and film director.Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do family, Alan Crosland attended from Dartmouth College....
. It was the first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone
Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930....
 sound effects and musical soundtrack
Soundtrack

The term soundtrack refers to three related concepts: recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; and the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded so...
, though it has no spoken dialogue. The production, which premiered in New York City on August 6, 1926, stars John Barrymore
John Barrymore

John Sidney Blyth Barrymore , was an American actor, frequently called the greatest of his generation. He first gained fame as a stage actor, lauded for his portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III ....
 as the hand-kissing womanizer (the number of kisses in the film set a record).

Plot

If there was one thing that Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things - life, disillusionment and death. In his father's case it was his wife, Donna Isobel, and Donna Elvira who supplied the latter. Don Juan settled in Rome after attending the University of Pisa. Rome was run by the tyrannical Borgia family consisting of Caesar, Lucrezia and the Count Donati. Juan has his way with and was pursued by many women, but it is the one that he could not have that haunts him. It will be for her that he suffers the wrath of Borgia for ignoring Lucrezia and then killing Count Donati in a duel. For Adriana, they will both be condemned to death in the prison on the river Tiber.

Cast

  • John Barrymore
    John Barrymore

    John Sidney Blyth Barrymore , was an American actor, frequently called the greatest of his generation. He first gained fame as a stage actor, lauded for his portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III ....
     - Don Jose de Marana / Don Juan de Marana
  • Jane Winton
    Jane Winton

    Jane Winton was a movieactress, dancer, opera soprano, writer, and painter. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.During the 1920s she began her stage career as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies....
     - Donna Isobel
  • John Roche
    John Roche

    John Michael Roche is a retired American professional basketball player in both the American Basketball Association and the National Basketball Association....
     - Leandro
  • Warner Oland
    Warner Oland

    Warner Oland was a Sweden actor most remembered for his role as "Charlie Chan."...
     - Cesare Borgia
  • Estelle Taylor
    Estelle Taylor

    Estelle Taylor was an United States Hollywood, California actor whose career was most prominent during the silent film era of the 1920s.Born Estelle Boylan in Wilmington, Delaware, Taylor married a banker while still a teenager....
     - Lucrezia Borgia
  • Montagu Love
    Montagu Love

    Montagu Love, also known as Montague Love was an England screen, stage and vaudeville actor.Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and educated in Great Britain, Love began his career as an artist and military correspondent....
     - Count Giano Donati
  • Josef Swickard
    Josef Swickard

    Josef Swickard was a Germany-born veteran stage and screen character actor, who had toured with stock companies in Europe, South Africa, and South America....
     - Duke Della Varnese
  • Willard Louis - Pedrillo
  • Nigel De Brulier - Marchese Rinaldo
  • Hedda Hopper
    Hedda Hopper

    Hedda Hopper was an United States actor and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns....
     - Marchesia Rinaldo
  • Myrna Loy
    Myrna Loy

    Myrna Loy was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, but after a few minor roles in silent films, she devoted herself fully to an acting career, and from 1925 gradually established herself as a film actress....
     - Mai, Lady in Waiting
  • Mary Astor
    Mary Astor

    Mary Astor was an Academy Awards-winning United States actress. Most famous for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon opposite Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long film career as a teenager in the silent films of the early 1920 in film....
     - Adriana della Varnese
  • Lionel Braham - Duke Margoni (uncredited)
  • Helene Costello
    Helene Costello

    Helene Costello was am United States motion picture actress, most notably of the silent film era.Born in New York City, New York, USA she was the daughter of the prominent stage and pioneering film actor Maurice Costello and his actress wife Mae Costello and the younger sister of actress Dolores Costello....
     - Rena, Adriana's Maid (uncredited)
  • Helena D'Algy - Donna Elvira, Murderess (uncredited)
  • Yvonne Day - Don Juan (at age 5) (uncredited)
  • Philippe De Lacy
    Philippe De Lacy

    Philippe De Lacy a.k.a. Philippe deLacy was a former silent film era child actor....
     - Don Juan (at age 10) (uncredited)
  • Emily Fitzroy - The Dowager (uncredited)
  • John George - Hunchback (uncredited)
  • Gibson Gowland - Gentleman of Rome (uncredited)
  • Phyllis Haver
    Phyllis Haver

    Phyllis Haver was an United States actress of the silent film era....
     - Imperia (uncredited)
  • Sheldon Lewis - Gentleman of Rome (uncredited)
  • June Marlowe - Trusia (uncredited)
  • Dick Sutherland
    Dick Sutherland

    Dick Sutherland , was an American film actor of the silent film. He appeared in 76 films between 1921 in film and 1932 in film.He was born in Benton, Kentucky, and died in Hollywood, California from a myocardial infarction....
     - Gentleman of Rome (uncredited)
  • Gustav von Seyffertitz - Neri, the Alchemist (uncredited)
  • Helen Lee Worthing - Eleanora (uncredited)


Sound recording

George Groves
George Groves

George Robert Groves was a film sound pioneer who played a significant role in developing the technology that brought sound to the silent screen....
, on secondment to Vitaphone, was charged with recording the soundtrack to the film. He devised an innovative, multi-microphone technique and performed a live mix of the 107-strong orchestra. In doing so he became the first music mixer in film history. The music was played by the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is the oldest active symphony orchestra in the United States, organized during 1842. Based in New York City, the Philharmonic performs most of its concerts at Avery Fisher Hall....
.

Program of Vitaphone Shorts Shown Before Don Juan

The following short films made in Vitaphone were shown before Don Juan at the 6 August 1926 premiere:
  • Introductory Remarks by Will H. Hays
    Will H. Hays

    William Harrison Hays, Sr. , was the namesake of the Hays Code for censorship of American films, chairman of the Republican National Committee and U.S....
  • The New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Henry Hadley, plays the overture to Richard Wagner
    Richard Wagner

    Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, Conducting, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas . Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner wrote both the scenario and libretto for his works....
    's Tannhäuser
    Tannhäuser (opera)

    Tannh?user is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two Germany legends of Tannh?user and the S?ngerkrieg at Wartburg Castle....
  • Roy Smeck
    Roy Smeck

    Roy Smeck was an United States musician. His skill on the banjo, guitar, steel guitar, and especially the ukulele earned him the nickname "Wizard of the Strings."...
    , billed as "The Wizard of the Strings" in His Pastimes
  • Anna Case and The Dancing Cansinos
    Rita Hayworth

    Rita Hayworth , was an American actress who attained fame during the 1940s not only as one of the era's top musical stars, but also as the era's defining sex symbol, most notably in the 1946 film Gilda....
     in La Fiesta
  • Mischa Elman
    Mischa Elman

    Mikhail Saulovich 'Mischa' Elman was a Ukraine-born violinist, famed for his passionate style and beautiful tone....
     performs "Humoresque" by Antonín Dvorák
    Antonín Dvorák

    Anton?n Leopold Dvor?k was a Czechs composer of Romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia....
  • Giovanni Martinelli
    Giovanni Martinelli

    Giovanni Martinelli was a celebrated Italian operatic tenor. He was particularly associated with the Italian lyric-dramatic repertory, although he performed French operatic roles to great acclaim as well....
     sings "Vesti la giubba
    Vesti la giubba

    Vesti la Giubba is a famous tenor aria performed as part of the opera Pagliacci, written and composed by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, and first performed in 1892....
    " from I Pagliacci


External links