Sound & Vision Part II - The First Words.

In April of 1928, The Warners were thoroughly determined to be heard ...on screen, and their daunting duties of perfecting this new synchronized sound to screen would continue. Several

Vitaphone shorts would be produced and by June 1928, there would be a host of three-part talkies, but all achingly amateur, as the sound sequences were harried and rushed. Among these early wave releases, were Michael Curtiz's gangster tale Tenderloin; Glorious Betsy, which was a lavishly costumed effort courtesy of Alan Crosland and Lloyd Bacon would give in kind with The Lion and The Mouse, a dramatic featurette whose main star was Lionel Barrymore. (And it was also quite telling, being Barrymore was cast, as it would be apparent that stage trained actors were essential for this new school of talkies).

In July of the same year, Warners would release the very first all-talkie with Lights of New York, which was about two country bumpkins who arrive in the Big Apple and fall in with the wrong kinda crowd, aka, bootleggers and other larcenous assortments. Bryan Foy was the director. It only clocked in at 51 minutes in running time length, a shoddy production at best and it's actors were virtually shackled and visibly anxiety ridden, their lines were mainly delivered in methodical monotone. Despite it's shortcomings, Lights of New York was an unprecedented box office winner.

Later in 1928, the Warners would follow suit and garner further notoriety with The Jazz Singer, and yet another Al Jolson vehicle with The Singing Fool.

                      Sly as a Fox was Movietone News

Fox Movietone News would now raise an eyebrow or two when it was literary leviathan and wit George Bernard Shaw, who at the time was  72 years old and already an established celebrity, it was here that he would cheekily capitalize on the opportunity of  a screen short,  to promote his personality in all it's eccentric splendor. This was a one-off for Fox, as they would ordinarily concentrate on releasing silent features, with synchronized scores, as well as effects. Their 1928 contribution to the medium consisted of a group of pictures made by the studio's key directors and alums of the silents, who would matriculate to being important and influential figures of the sound era.

         In Old Arizona (1929) the first successful action talkie

John Ford ( Four Sons; Mother Machree - silent version, 1927) Raoul Walsh (The Red Dance, Me, Gangster) Howard Hawks (Fazil, The Air Circus) and Frank Borage (Street Angel). The Movietone newsreels had indicated the possibilities of shooting sound in the open air and both Ford and Walsh, fearless action directors, respectively took their recording equipment on location. Ford's short subject Napoleon's Barber - and Walsh for a feature, In Old Arizona. Irrespective of there being  uncontrollable wind and sage brush to conceal microphones, In Old Arizona would actually take the honors of being the first properly successful talking action picture.

 King Vidor' royally funny Show People (1928)

Movietone, at the end of 1928 was syndicated by some of the big fish studios, one of which was MGM whose sound projects in this transitional year were tentative. Sound effects and synchronized scores were aligned with Harry Beaumont's jazz age drama Our Dancing Daughters and with King Vidor's knee-slapping comedy Show People, starring Marion Davies; otherwise the company was involved with experimentation of two-part talkies. W.S. Van Dyke would turn out White Shadows in the South Seas ( a virtually silent entry) and a crime melodrama with Alias Jimmy Valentine (1929).

Universal, for release in 1928 would tack on sound to their prestige pictures of the prior year: Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs, and Harry Pollard's Uncle Tom's Cabin; they both also, somewhat excessively, provided dialogue sequences for Paul Fejo's admirable Lonesome. The studio's official all dialogue film, Melody of Love a A.B. Heath production, was a considerable flop, the audiences were now enlightened to sound films and able to discern, and knew to reject a hasty run-up.

As early as 1927, Paramount was yearning to be heard 

Paramount tried their hand at experiments with sound early in 1927, when Wings was provided with a synchronized score, as well as sound effects. But after opting for Movietone, the company would be in more serious pursuit of sound programming in 1928. Another focal point for Paramount was equipping their major silent films, such as Ernst Lubitsch's The Patriot, Erich Von Stroheim's The Wedding March and William Wellman's Beggars of Life, with sound effects and music. The first Paramount release to be deemed a sound film, was only a partial talkie Warming Up, a baseball themed drama of which it was said that the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd did not align well with the pictures. Paramount's first full talking picture was Interference (1929) that starred Clive Brook, whose stage expertise would come in tremendously handy.

                          RKO's maiden sound voyage

Ironically, Brook additionally starred in The Perfect Crime, and that was the first sound venture of RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). This new studio was formed in 1928 through the amalgamation of Joseph Kennedy's distributing network (FBO), the Keith-Albee-Orpheum cinema chain, and Rockefeller's Radio Corporation of America (RCA). This affiliation would enable RCA to apply its own Photophone sound system and adapt it to the studio's product.

This would also be a year of reorganization, First National Pictures was consumed by Warner Brothers and would release eight features in the year 1928 alone. The first effort was a partial talkie, Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath, it went slightly unacknowledged at the time, but success would be had with George Fitzmaurice's Lilac Time that starred an eventual living legend, Gary Cooper as well as Colleen Moore, their own company provided the synchronized musical score with its Firnatone system.

And would you believe it, but the extent of the creative possibilities and where the horizons could take them was revealed by a mouse. Walter E Disney brazenly took the decision to marry sound to an animated short, Mortimer, later known as Mickey Mouse, starred in Steamboat Willie which saw it's premiere at the Roxy Theater on the very same day as The Singing Fool. The ingenuity and fluency with which Disney utilized sound in Steamboat Willie and the first Silly Symphonies was vastly admired in these very early years of the sound film.