Anny Ondra - Blackmail, sound version

[kovik62]

As the screen test reveals, Anny didn't have such a bad accent - no worse than Garbo and Garbo made a hit with her accent just a year later in ANNA CHRISTIE. They could have had Anny keep her voice and just re-write her part as being a foreign girl in England. As it is, she's still great in BLACKMAIL and the dubbing works.

[sexena1999]

@kovik62 My words, thank you :)

[jennymarcela999]

But Anny Ondra didn't speak english very well when this movie was made, she was german. The voice in the video is from another actress: Joan Barry.

[sexena1999]

@jennymarcela999 She maybe do not speak english very well, but she was Czech. This whole thing is pretty complicated. Next year she starred in Germany and in 1931 she starred in Czech and in French. Her language skills was not that bad. In my opinion, Joan Barry was another Hitch's star. Do not remember Rich and Strange?

[jennymarcela999]

@sexena1999 Yes. I Know, but remember that blackmail was made as a silent movie but hitchcock did a sound version too, adding the voice of Joan Barry. This is a note in the book of Truffaut about hitchcock

[sexena1999]

@jennymarcela999 That is the point, this book in "only" collection of interviews, not history study. There is a lot of books, but nobody is currently answering the whole thing about why Joan dubbed Anny. Everybody who thought that Anny was German had wrong start.

[rasmussen418]

she is absolutely stunning

[Senshiboi99]

I can't believe he let her show her legs and bare shoulders in a time like that!! She could've been put in jail for that, right?

[lukebccb]

@Senshiboi99: the ENFORCEMENT of the Production Code didn't come in till the summer of 1934. Thus before then you had films like "The Divorcee" and "Baby Face" and the blatant sexuality of Mae West and the "gangster" films of Edward G. Robinson and Cagney and "those types" that would be banished, again starting in 1934, for three decades.

And, most persons are unaware that films of the 1920s had nudity in the form of DeMille epics.

[LokiV]

Anny Ondra yum yum :)

Wanted to kill the bird in the back ground tho :D

[youngfreak32]

I know what you mean about the bird.

[ThatsGoodTellivision]

This is playing on Turner Classic Movies in three weeks

[racingrubberbiker]

Have you seen the "sound test" for Blackmai , with Hitchcock. She has a charming "mittel europa" accent, but I suppose he had to dubb her for the film. I dont see why she could not have made more takiles in England. She could have been Elstree's answer to Hedy Lamarr for MGM. I know this is fanciful.

[sexena1999]

That is also my idea... There must be something bad about money or something like that.

[khaals]

@racingrubberbiker She seems to have been the only actress Hitchcock genuinely liked - he was notoriously harsh to the rest.

[racingrubberbiker]

@khaals. I have never heard that, but it is not surprising, as many of the hitchcock "blondes" were real "queens". Ondra comes across, to use old-fashioned english, as "a bit of a sport" - a bit like Hitch really.

[napajedla]

she was the first Czech movie star and have to say ,she was very pretty :-)

[sexena1999]

Known outside of Czech :) After her was Lida Baarova for example.

[dAvrilthebear]

It's difficult to decide which version is better. The mirror bit is better in the silent one - just the angle of the camera and all. But here she can drop a plate for some effect. Then the singing birds contrast with her pale face. They have also decided to make the kitchen empty this time - and that's better, probably. (But that has nothing to do with sound.)

[sexena1999]

More art is in the silent one, more thriller is in the sound one I think.

[DrNoYes9]

was there a police car sound when she said "theres been a murderdown the street" cause either that or the police went by my house which is a great coincedence.

[deadlyshoesalesman]

The chirping of the bird puts our nerves on edge in the sound version of this scene. Very effective.