sound became a regular part of the short motion picture viewing experience indicated by the first commercial screening of sound-on-film in the early 1930s.
sound became a regular part of the short motion picture viewing experience indicated by the first commercial screening of sound-on-film in the early 1930s.
when did sound become a regular part of the short motion picture viewing experience indicated by the first commercial screening of sound-on-film?
early 1930s
on april 15, 1923, at new york city's rivoli theater, came the first commercial screening of motion pictures with sound-on-film, the future standard: a set of shorts under the banner of de forest phonofilms, accompanying a silent feature. the set included short film "from far seville" with concha piquer, preserved by the u.s. library of congress. that june, de forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee, freeman harrison owens, for title to one of the crucial phonofilm patents. although de forest ultimately won the case in the courts, owens is today recognized as a central innovator in the field. the following year, de forest's studio released the first commercial dramatic film shot as a talking picture—the two-reeler "love's old sweet song", directed by j. searle dawley and featuring una merkel. however, phonofilm's stock in trade was not original dramas but celebrity documentaries, popular music acts, and comedy performances. president calvin coolidge, opera singer abbie mitchell, and vaudeville stars such as phil baker, ben bernie, eddie cantor and oscar levant appeared in the firm's pictures. hollywood remained suspicious, even fearful, of the new technology. as "photoplay" editor james quirk put it in march 1924, "talking pictures are perfected, says dr. lee de forest. "so" is castor oil." de forest's process continued to be used through 1927 in the united states for dozens of short phonofilms; in the uk it was employed a few years longer for both shorts and features by british sound film productions, a subsidiary of british talking pictures, which purchased the primary phonofilm assets. by the end of 1930, the phonofilm business would be liquidated.
sound film
a "talkie" or sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. the first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. the primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. at first, the sound films incorporating synchronized dialogue—known as "talking pictures", or "talkies"—were exclusively shorts; the earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. the first feature film originally presented as a talkie was "the jazz singer", released in october 1927. a major hit, it was made with vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures. by the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. in the united states, they helped secure hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial systems (see cinema of the united states). in europe (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere), the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of soundless cinema. in japan, philippines, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance, talking pictures were slow to take root. in india, sound was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry.
movie theater