Abstract: Early sound film was linked to the broadcasting and recording industries both economically and technologically. This alliance produced a variety of interactions between the three media, which were regarded as attractions of modernity around 1930. The widespread fascination with radio not only combined theories on film and radio but also became the subject of numerous feature films. Against the backdrop of these discourses, cinema soon developed conventional narratives about radio, which, in turn, shaped the media fantasies of the time. Based on the analysis of selected films, this chapter explores how the attraction of radio was formulated, disseminated, appropriated, and transferred to early sound films. The focus is on the (film) character of the radio reporter and the new dispersed audience united by the ‘radio waves.’

Keywords: broadcasting, audio culture, intermediality, modernity, stars

Before the operetta finale in the sound film Die große Sehnsucht (The Great Desire) (1930, dir. István Székely), a technician appears on screen and carefully sets up a microphone in the film studio. He is followed by a radio reporter: Alfred Braun, a popular real-life radio man of the era in a cameo. Appearing as a character under his own name, he is supposed to report on the shooting of the film within the film that bears the same title, Die große Sehnsucht, as the film we see, and which metaleptically merges with it in the final musical number. After a brief conversation between the reporter and the technician as to whether the microphone is in the best position, a young woman appears. She introduces her autograph request by complimenting Braun on how wonderfully he speaks. The fact that she accidentally swaps the star postcard she brought for one of Harry Liedtke leaves no doubt: the broadcaster himself is presented as the star here. Similarly, Betty Amann, Lil Dagover, Jenny Jugo, Fritz Kortner, Anny Ondra, Luis Trenker, Conrad Veidt, and numerous other popular movie stars (among them Harry Liedtke) briefly appear in the diegetic studio world ‘as themselves’ in this auto-thematic feature film.

Before Braun can finally step up to the microphone, there is another slight delay: the production manager (Paul Henckels) turns to the newspapermen gathered in a corner of the studio, clearly not as spotlighted as Braun; he announces that lead actress Eva van Loe (Camilla Horn) is running late, and thus the recording is delayed.