The King of the Kongo
| The King of the Kongo | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Richard Thorpe |
| Produced by | Nat Levine |
| Written by |
Harry Sinclair Drago Wyndham Gittens |
| Starring |
Jacqueline Logan Walter Miller Richard Tucker Boris Karloff |
| Cinematography |
Ernest Laszlo Ray Ries |
| Distributed by | Mascot Pictures |
|
Release date
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August 9, 1929 |
|
Running time
|
10 chapters (213 min) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The King of the Kongo (1929) is a Mascot film serial, and was the first serial to have sound, although only partial sound ("Part Talking") rather than the later (and now standard) "All-Talking" productions with complete sound.
Independently, the two protagonists, Diana Martin and Secret Service agent Larry Trent are searching the jungle for missing relatives, her father and his brother. Tied up in this plot are ivory smugglers and a lost treasure hidden in the jungle.
The King of the Kongo was the first film serial to have any sound element. Larger serial-producing studios (for example, Pathé and Universal Studios) were reluctant to change away from silent production (although Universal released their own Part-Talking serial, Tarzan the Tiger, later in the same year) while smaller studios could not afford to do so. Legend has it that producer and studio-owner Nat Levine carried the sound discs in his lap from Los Angeles to New York City, by train and aeroplane, for them to be safely developed. For financial reasons, these discs could not have been repaired or replaced if anything had gone wrong. This was two years after the first Part-Talking film, The Jazz Singer (1927), had been released and a year after the first "All-Talking" film, Lights of New York (1928).
Despite an announcement that two versions of this serial would be released, (a "Part Talking" version and a silent version intended for theatres not yet equipped for sound), no evidence for a silent version ever being released exists. Some of the video bootlegs of the film are the sound version with the sound credits excised.
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