Canadian Film Weekly Year Book of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry (1952)

Gauvreau, Ouimet’s former employer at the Theatre National, decided he needed a special attraction for the movie theatre he had built two blocks from the Ouimetoscope. He obtained the rights to a phonograph-talkie arrangement being offered by British Gaumont and advertised this great attraction far in advance. Miles Brothers had purchased in Paris a gramophone that could be synchronized with any projection machine. With it came twenty-five short subjects, each timed to last as long as a gramophone record. Miles Brothers couldn’t make up its mind about marketing it in the United States and Ouimet, faced with Gauvreau’s coming talkies, went after the outfit and got a bargain. Ouimet got his talkie equipment almost a month before Gauvreau’s arrived. But Ernest put the gramophone in full view of the audience, ruining the illusion and causing roars of laughter. “If I had been sure of getting enough subjects to keep the machine going I would not have done that,” he said. “As it was I couldn’t afford to have talkies as competition.” Not long afterward Ouimet acquired the right to use the now-historic amplifier, invented by Emil Berliner in Montreal. Sound proportion was much superior to that of the phonograph horn and pleased the public. The gramophone revelation caused the public to ignore Gauvreau’s talkies. He tried to cancel the contract but was forced to pay $10,000, Ernest claims. It is Ernest’s contention that the talkies he showed in October, 1907 were the first successful ones in North America. The cameraphone of 1903, which synchronized film and phonograph records, was short-lived. Ernest Ruhmer’s sound film was offered in 1904, Duetsche’s Vitascope in 1905 and an English device in 1906 which recorded sound and scene on the same film. In 1908 Carl Laemmle tried to market in the United States Greenbaum’s Synchroscope, manufactured in Germany, which he installed in the Majestic Theatre, Evansville, Indiana during the summer, the house being closed to vaudeville for that period. Edison, who‘had been led into pictures in an attempt to add something to increase the entertainment value of his phonograph, offered a phonograph-movie device in 1910. De Forest’s Phonofilm of 1923 is the basis of modern talking . pictures. The 40 first real sound-on-film recording was revealed on January 21, 1927 and on October 6 of that year Warners, who in 1926 had offered Don Juan with a synchronized score, presented The Jazz Singer, the first full-length film with music and dialogue sequences. In 1928 Warners presented The Lights of New York, the first all-talking feature film. Then the changeover to talkies began in earnest. The ten years including and between 1905 and 1914 were the most important in the history of the motion picture industry. In 1905 the first continuous movie performance was established and by 1915 the United States alone had about 15,000 places where pictures were the entertainment. Today there are some 22,000 theatres in the United States and 2,000 in Canada. Jt must be remembered that a great many of the theatres erected since 1915 were designed to seat thousands of patrons. In those ten years the fight for freedom of production, distribution and exhibition was carried on against the Motion Picture Patents Company, a monopoly patent pool formed by the producers which restricted distributors to those bearing its authority, limited the use of production equipment to licensees and forced exhibitors to pay a weekly royalty of two dollars for the right to use equipment already paid for, The late Carl Laemmle, soon to become a producer, led the fight against the monopoly, which was ruled out of business by the United States Supreme Court in 1917. F{RNEST OUIMET returned to distrj bution in 1915. Charles Pathe, 4 great film figure, had come to the United States in 1914 and established studios at Fort Lee, New Jersey, undertaking the distribution of his own product on this continent, which had been handled b General Films. The Great War had hindered Pathe’s French production and the government, recognizing that he was too old for service, permitted him to emigrate. Ouimet arranged with Pathe for the distribution in Canada of the latter’s productions. Pathe stipulated that Ernest must withdraw from the exhibition field and the Ouimetoscope was leased to others. The deal began January 1, 1915, Ouimet established Famous Films, which six months later became the Specialty