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Witt and Berg was the name of a vaudeville duo during the 1920s. It consisted of ukulelist Bob Witt and guitarist Cy Berg. Largely forgotten today, they were popular with their charming singing voices.
The duo starred in an experimental 1926 sound film, recorded and produced by The Vitaphone Corporation. They sang a combination of Sonny Cunha's Honolulu Hula Girl and Abel Baer and L. Wolfe Gilbert's Hello, Aloha, How Are You? .
Another experimental sound film made in 1926 was The Voice from the Screen , where a Bell Laboratories scientist explains the Vitaphone recording system and its labor, filming Witt and Berg from a different angle.
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The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American part-talkie musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech. Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, featuring six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
The Divine Lady is a 1929 American pre-Code Vitaphone sound film with a synchronized musical score, sound effects, and some synchronized singing, but no spoken dialogue. It stars Corinne Griffith and tells the story of the love affair between Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton. It featured the theme song "Lady Divine", with lyrics by Richard Kountz and music by Nathaniel Shilkret, which became a popular hit in 1929 and was recorded by numerous artists, such as Shilkret, Frank Munn, Ben Selvin, Smith Ballew, Adrian Schubert, Sam Lanin, and Bob Haring.
Vitaphone is a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack is not printed on the film, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at 33+1⁄3 rpm and typically 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter, are played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film is projected. Its frequency response is 4300 Hz. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound".
Sound-on-disc is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Early sound-on-disc systems used a mechanical interlock with the movie projector, while more recent systems use timecode.
A Plantation Act (1926) is an early Vitaphone sound-on-disc short film starring Al Jolson, the first film that Jolson starred in. Jolson in blackface sings three of his hit songs: "April Showers", "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody", and "When the Red, Red Robin ".
Don Juan is a 1926 American romantic adventure film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue. The film is inspired by Lord Byron's 1821 epic poem of the same name. The screenplay was written by Bess Meredyth with intertitles by Maude Fulton and Walter Anthony.
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
Photo-Kinema was a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures invented by Orlando Kellum.
Tiffany Pictures, which also became Tiffany-Stahl Productions for a time, was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921 until 1932. It is considered a Poverty Row studio, whose films had lower budgets, lesser-known stars, and overall lower production values than major studios.
The musical short can be traced back to the earliest days of sound films.
Finding His Voice (1929) is a short film, created as an instructional film on how the Western Electric sound-on-film recording system worked. Recording stars Billy Murray and Walter Scanlan, uncredited, provide the speaking and singing voices. Murray also provided the voice for the Fleischer Studios character Bimbo.
While London Sleeps is a 1926 Warner Bros. film about a police-dog, Rinty, who helps Scotland Yard defeat a dangerous criminal organisation known as the Mediterranean Brotherhood that operates out of the Limehouse district of London. Walter Morosco wrote the screenplay. It was the first of many films directed by Howard Bretherton, and one of several created for Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd dog used in films during the 1920s and 1930s. The film was also released with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc soundtrack with a music score and sound effects, and only the sound discs survive today. The British release prints censored the more horrific aspects of the film.
Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, also known as Movietone Follies of 1929 and The William Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, is an American black-and-white and color pre-Code musical film released by Fox Film Corporation.
Waterfront is a 1928 American silent comedy drama film released with sound effects and music, produced and released by First National Pictures. The film was directed by William A. Seiter and starred Dorothy Mackaill and Jack Mulhall, then a popular duo under the First National banner. This sound film was released with a synchronized Vitaphone soundtrack of music and sound effects.
Vitaphone Varieties is a series title used for all of Warner Bros.', earliest short film "talkies" of the 1920s, initially made using the Vitaphone sound on disc process before a switch to the sound-on-film format early in the 1930s. These were the first major film studio-backed sound films, initially showcased with the 1926 synchronized scored features Don Juan and The Better 'Ole. Although independent producers like Lee de Forest's Phonofilm were successfully making sound film shorts as early as 1922, they were very limited in their distribution and their audio was generally not as loud and clear in theaters as Vitaphone's. The success of the early Vitaphone shorts, initially filmed only in New York, helped launch the sound revolution in Hollywood.
Stark Mad is a 1929 American pre-Code adventure film produced and distributed by Warner Bros., directed by Lloyd Bacon, and starring H. B. Warner, Louise Fazenda, Jacqueline Logan and Henry B. Walthall. This lurid jungle melodrama was an attempt to emulate the then-popular jungle horror films being made at the time by Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. The film was unusual in that it is set in the jungles of Central America rather than Africa.
The Better 'Ole is a 1926 American silent World War I comedy drama film. Released by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., this film is the second full-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process, two months after the first Vitaphone feature Don Juan; with no audible dialogue, the film does have a synchronized musical score and sound effects. This film was also the second onscreen adaptation of the 1917 musical The Better 'Ole by Bruce Bairnsfather and Arthur Elliot. Charlie Chaplin's eldest brother Sydney Chaplin played the main lead as Old Bill in perhaps his best-known film today. This film is also believed by many to have the first spoken word of dialog, "coffee", although there are those who disagree. At one point during the film, Harold Goodwin's character whispers a word to Sydney Chaplin which is also faintly heard. This was discovered by the UCLA's Robert Gitt, during the restoration of the sound discs for the film. The line was recorded in perfect sync, apparently during the orchestra recording sessions rather than live on set, therefore making it the earliest known use of dubbing in a motion picture.
The Crash is a 1928 American sound drama film directed by Edward F. Cline and starring Milton Sills, Thelma Todd and Wade Boteler. This film was released with a synchronized musical track with sound effects using the Vitaphone system.
Edward Beech Craft was an American electrical and communications engineer.
They Know Their Groceries is a 1929 Vitaphone Varieties short comedy film directed by Bryan Foy. It stars vaudeville comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles and features an African American cast. The plot involves inattentive grocers. Sam Sax was the producer.