THE ROYAL CANADIAN MOVIE PAGE

The Soundman Winneth: Canada's Unknown Oscar Machine

DOUGLAS SHEARER

b. Westmount, Quebec 1899

d Culver City, California 1971

So maybe it was one of those brutal Montreal winter nights when any sane person concludes that living in this climate is truly a stupid thing to do. Douglas Shearer is pondering his young life, maybe even over a quart of Molson Ale. Thinking there must be something more an engineer can do beyond fixing and selling cars at the Ford dealership in which he was then a partner.

And he had that Ah-Hah! Moment and said to himself, or maybe to the whole tavern, “I know. I’ll move to California, invent movies that talk, and win more Academy Awards than anyone on Earth except for Walt Disney.”

Okay I may have made parts of that up but that is how it turned out.

He was one of a number of Canadian expatriates who played key roles in starting, defining and shaping the movie industry we know today. There is no other more worth celebrating at Oscar time.

It is true he won an astounding 14 Academy Awards, mostly for Best Sound.
Katherine Hepburn holds the record for the most acting awards with 4.
Only the great Disney collected more. Twenty two actually.

Shearer's big sister happened to be one of the iconic leading ladies of the 1930's. Norma Shearer, won a Best Actress Oscar for The Divorcee, an otherwise wretched movie which thank God lost Best Picture to the classic All Quiet on the Western Front.
But give her credit. she beat out superstars Greta Garbo and Bette Davis. Norma was the second of three Canadian actresses in a row to win that Award,sandwiched between Mary Pickford in 1929 and Cobourg Ontario`s Marie Dressler in 1931. But that`s another post.

That year also saw the first Oscar for sound recording. Won by: her brother Douglas for The Big House. Is this the only brother and sister act to win Academy awards in the same year?

But then Douglas had been insanely innovative from the time he arrived in La La Land in 1925.Legend has it that one of his early jobs was keeping Rin Tin Tin fed and watered. But then I`m probably dating myself knowing who RTT actually was.

His puttering with camera technology drew the attention of MGM`s boy wonder at the time (and soon to be sister Norma`s husband) Irving Thalberg. Within three years he would master the technical challenges to produce history`s first real talking movie.

Yes, The Jazz Singer is generally credited with being the first so-called `talkie`. But while it was the first to have synchronized dialogue and music, it wasn`t from beginning to end.

Shearer`s first masterpieceTHE BROADWAY MELODY of 1929 was. He perfected what no other studio had. The concept of sound on film, not just synched with a separate disk. It`s pretty much how it`s done to this day.

Along the way he had to re-invent the camera because the Silent-Era versions made so much noise the microphones (which he had also just invented) could pick it up. THE BROADWAY MELODY won Best Picture.

His renown was such that,in 1943, he was seconded to the war effort personally by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt. (And what did you think of Bill Murray BTW?). He helped upgrade the Allies' radar capability. He always claimed he had helped shorten the war and kept a signed picture of Churchill on display.
Only for a Canadian could that be cooler than doing the special effects on THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939). Not that Judy ever sent a thank-you note.

His last Oscar was in 1958 for (ho-hum) inventing the widescreen 65 mm film format.

When he died, the New York Times lavished praise and front-page space usually reserved for royalty. Which in Oscar's world, he still is.

Here's the link to The Broadway Melody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ezbMC1M24

In doesn't hold up at all anymore but it's fascinating to watch in its historical context. Try it out. It's really neat.