Imagine 1978’s Jaws without the menacing two-note introduction of the villainous shark that terrified Amityville’s residents.
Recall how Darth Vader’s Imperial March in the Star Wars’ 1977 saga accentuated the power of the character.
Remember the emotional response to the Tara theme music in Gone with the Wind as Scarlett O’Hara raises a fistful of dirt, vowing, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”
A film soundtrack enhances the movie-going experience.
There was a time, however, when movies were silent.
To call movies from the first two decades of the 1900s “silent films” is a misnomer. Although there wasn’t a recorded audio track for dialogue and background noise that synchronized with the film until the mid-1920s, there was usually a live pianist, organist or even an entire orchestra accompanying the on-screen action. There was neither a standardization of sound nor of live musicians from theater to theater; local musicians were usually hired to perform.
Such musicians usually hadn’t seen the film before its screening, keeping the musical accompanist on his or her toes.
“We ran (the new) film on Monday morning and I faked it through,” Rosa Rio, a concert pianist who played for silent films for more than 60 years wrote in her memoir. “Then I would get ideas that I’d write down as I played. The next show I did a good job. And the next show I did a better job. By the time I played three shows a day, seven days a week, at the end of the week I really had it down perfect. And that was the end. Then I’d start over, all over from Sunday night, Monday again.”
In the mid-1920s, Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, created Vitaphone, an early technology using electrical sound recording on a phonographic disc that could be recorded and played back in synchronization with film, and could be amplified to be heard in a 3,000-seat movie palace with excellent fidelity.
Earlier attempts by other companies to sync sound with film had been expensive failures; the studios didn’t want to assume the potential cost while theaters had no incentive to install the equipment to play a sound film. Burbank-based Warner Bros. Pictures was willing to take the chance on Vitaphone in 1925, and the successful merging of true sound and film was born.
The first full-length feature film to utilize Vitaphone’s sound on disc was Warners’ Don Juan in 1926, starring John Barrymore. The film had no spoken dialogue but music and sound effects synchronized with the film.
The first commercially successful full-length feature film with dialogue premiered in October 1927. The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, ushered in the future of the film industry with less than three minutes of actual talking and six songs. The rest of the dialogue was displayed on title cards. (Jolson and wife Ruby Keeler moved to their 12-acre home on Louise Avenue in Encino in 1935.)
Sam Warner was the second youngest of the four Warner Brothers and the one who championed the development of sound, working with Western Electric. Sadly, he died the night before the film’s premiere…at age 40. He never knew how his championing of sound would revolutionize motion pictures.
The Vitaphone sound system on synchronized phonographic discs changed the course of cinematic history; it did, however, have weaknesses. The discs were easily scratched, their bulkiness and sensitivity to sound hindered camera operators when shooting the film, and the discs were heavy and hard to transport.
They also were limited to 20 plays. The race was on to develop a hardier and more easily used technology.
RCA and Fox quickly developed sound-on-film innovations which eliminated the need for separate discs and provided ease of use for camera operators and transportation. It did, however, pose financial and other challenges to theaters.
By the early 1930s, the film industry had fully converted to sound films and, initially, theaters had to provide equipment for both the Vitaphone format and the sound-on-film formats. Theater owners had to invest in projection and sound systems to accommodate the rapidly changing technology and it wasn’t long before all movies were filmed with sound-on-film formats.
By the 1950s stereo sound made its debut. In 1965, Ray Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories, the creators of Dolby sound in the 1970s. George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars brought this immersive sound technology into prominence. The film’s use of sound effects, coupled with John Williams’ Oscar-winning score, changed the film experience once again, setting new standards.
The introduction of sound was pivotal and far reaching. As the past century has shown, continuing innovation in sound technology is a certainty, and, in the words of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
Mari Wilcox Gilbert is a communications professional with more than 30 years’ experience in working with clients in the arts, healthcare, education, nonprofit organizations and fashion arenas. She is Director of Marketing & Research for Edifice Rex, as well as a senior executive with Cooper Communications, representing such clients as London Trust Productions, Mattel, Encino Hospital, Polytechnic School, and more. Her volunteer activities include the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley and the Conejo Valley Adult School.
Martin Cooper, President of Cooper Communications, supervised public relations for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for 10 years; held executive positions with Disney and Universal Studios; and was Board Chairman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. He is currently researching his next book, The ‘Reel’ Hollywood: The San Fernando Valley, the history of motion pictures in the Valley.
