AUTOGRAMM. AUTOGRAPH. FILMSTUDIOS. MOVIES. LUBITSCH (Ernst). - Lot 51

AUTOGRAMM. AUTOGRAPH. FILMSTUDIOS. MOVIES. LUBITSCH (Ernst). Letter signed, to Heinz Wolfradt. Hollywood, December 8, 1928. Typescript. 1 pp. small folio (19.1 x 27.8 cm), with engraved letterhead "Lubitsch productions / Hollywood California". Addressed in German to a Berlin publisher and playwright (Heinz Wolfradt, b. 1863). Signed autograph or typescript archives of Lubitsch's work are uncommon, not least because of his untimely death in 1947 at the age of 55. Our letter is addressed in 1928, when he had just arrived in the USA and his Hollywood career was beginning at the crossroads of silent and talkies. "I read with great interest the manuscripts you sent me. Unfortunately, I must inform you that I cannot use them [...] the production situation here, caused by the so-called 'talkies', is [...] uncertain, until the first attempts [...] show an evolution [...].) show an evolution [...]" 1928 was a turning point for American cinema: Paramount, MGM, Universal and United Artists signed an agreement for the broadcasting of talkies, whose productions were pejoratively named "talkies", and whose sound recording required silence on the sets. It was no longer possible to shoot several films at the same time in Californian studios, forcing an economic and urban transformation of Hollywood. Lubitsch, the same man who first gave voice to Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, also made his first talking picture, a "talkie" at the time of this letter. Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier, was released a few months after his letter, and was a hit that launched the "Lubitsch touch" and the American career of Berlin's little "Schlemihl". Discreet fold marks and traces of red pencil.