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288 CINEMATOGRAPHIC ANNUAL
On the sultry evening of August 6, 1926, Warner Brothers and the Vitaphone Corporation, at Warners Theatre in New York, showed "Don Juan." There was a stirring orchestral accompaniment but no orchestra. Preceding the feature picture Mr. Will Hays, from the screen, made an address, and songs were sung by Marion Talley, Anna Case and Martinelli. Mischa Elman and Zimbalist contributed with their violins. On that evening a startled audience heard the first commercially successful talking picture in the world. As far as the motion picture industry is concerned, sound came that night to the silent screen.
In January 1927 William Fox showed greatly improved sound recorded on film, and followed not long afterwards with the first movietone news reel, and during 1928 the larger motion picture producers made up their minds that the talking picture had come although as to its future one man's opinion was as good as another's. In 1928 the Motion Picture Industry contemplated the cold, cold water and took its plunge.
Up to this time most of the developments and other happenings had been in the East. Hollywood, left somewhat uncertain as to its future, was still quiet. Things changed. Hollywood, the capital of the silent motion picture world, felt the first rumblings of its reincarnation with a voice. Skeletons of sound stages began to rise, and in Hollywood when things rise, they rise. There were few sound experts, none of course with actual talking picture experience, no suitable stories for sound pictures, and the merest beginnings of stages and recording equipment. Shortly after the frantic start came a fire at the Paramount studios which wiped out four sound stages nearing completion. Fortunately the recording apparatus was not damaged. Undismayed, new stages were started and pictures on schedule went ahead in the quiet of the night on other stages far from silent. New men, new tools, new technicians, with a new and puzzling vocabulary, suddenly sprang into existence. The Western Electric plant in Chicago worked extra shifts in manufacturing equipmen. At the end of 1928 Hollywood boasted 16 recording channels in use.
Nineteen twenty-eight faded into twenty-nine. Along with the physical construction of buildings and the installation of recording channels came other problems. Hollywood, long noted for its doctors of beauty culture, added to its activities doctors of voice culture. To an augmented staff of writers came composers, singers and stage actors of note. Silent pictures were fitted wih recorded musical accompaniments. Simple stage dramas were tried on the new machine.