SOUND MOVIES

SOUND MOVIES. SILENT MOVIES could draw huge crowds if properly promoted by someone like Jake Rosenthal. The first sound movies had phonograph record turntables geared to the film machines. These worked well until the film broke and needed repair. Often needing to remove a frame, the projectionist often reassembled the film only to find that the sound no longer matched the actor's lip movements. Frequent repairs could move an entire speech to another character.

Around 1931 the sound head with a photoelectric cell was invented. This brought about the sound track on the side of the film and a fraction of an inch wide. The sound was photographed on the track in the shape of small dark lines extending horizontally across and track and varying the depth, or another method in which lines go out at varying distances toward the opposite side. The length and depth of the lines determined the pitch of the sound. Pictures of these lines flashed before the photoelectric cell were turned into sound waves which were picked up by amplifiers and increased thousands of times as they went into loudspeakers.

Something new was met with suspicion by theater managers in Dubuque. It was Jake Rosenthal who used $25,000 to install sound equipment. Silent movie theaters responded with signs such as "Silence is Golden," but the competition proved too great. Sound films like "The Jazz Singer" played to packed houses for days.

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Source:

Tyson, H. G. "Pioneer Tells About Days of Film Flickers," Telegraph Herald, September 15, 1946, p. A7