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| A pioneer film sound recordist from the 20s and the 30s, Walter R. Hicks captured Helen Keller vocalizing words in this 1933 Fox Movietone newsreel, How Helen Keller Learned to Talk. | In this diction coach scene from Singin' In the Rain (1952), Kathleen Freeman as "Phoebe Dinsmore" and Jean Hagan as "Lina Lamont" seem to reincarnate Sullivan and Keller of the Fox Movietone newsreel. | ||
| "I am not dumb now," Keller announces. She asserts, in essence, the good news of the talkies. | Singin' In the Rain tweaks Hollywood 1927-1928, when, as talkies enthralled audiences, silent stars with street car voices stepped to the curb from the firmament. | ||
| The dowager who trained Keller to speak—Anne Sullivan —was by 1933 herself descending into blindness. When she died in 1936, Anne Mansfield Sullivan Macy had become virtually blind as Keller. Student outlived teacher by thirty-two years. | |||
