It wasn't until 1927 that a movie came along and introduced the world to the concept of the talking picture, or "Talkie." The Jazz Singer, produced by the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck, was a star vehicle for Al Jolson, a popular singer and stage performer who was America's highest-paid entertainer in the '20s.
The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on October 6, 1927.
"Wait a minute… Wait a minute… you ain't heard nothin' yet." In 1927, Al Jolson spoke those words in The Jazz Singer, marking the end of the silent film age. (Of course, that film also featured Jolson in blackface which unfortunately was common at the time.)
Thomas Edison thought so. He and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson had devised a talking-movie machine as early as 1889. In the early '20s short sound films appeared featuring vaudeville and opera stars.
In 1927, The Jazz Singer, another Warner Brothers film, became the first feature with recorded dialogue, though the spoken lines were only heard in two scenes.
The Jazz Singer, American musical film, released in 1927, that was the first feature-length movie with synchronized dialogue. It marked the ascendancy of “talkies” and the end of the silent-film era.
And film directors were skeptical of sound decreasing film creativity. In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first feature length film to include sound. By the early 1930s, the silent film era was over as “talkies” became a theatre sensation.
Did you know that A Visit to the Seaside (1908) was the first commercially produced film in natural color? This eight-minute British short film used the Kinemacolor process to capture Brighton Southern England seafront shots.
The first color cinematography was by additive color systems such as the one patented by Edward Raymond Turner in 1899 and tested in 1902. A simplified additive system was successfully commercialized in 1909 as Kinemacolor.
Most Americans actually saw the simultaneously released silent version. It was the more widely distributed bootlegging drama Lights of New York (1928) – the first all-talking picture – that caused queues to form outside the few cinemas wired for sound, with audiences keen to hear the actors talk.
It's Joe Pesci, who's said the F-word 272 times in his various movies. But check this out: 241 of those were from a single movie: “Casino”. Al Pacino is second, with 197, followed by Jason Mewes of Jay & Silent Bob fame and Jonah Hill with 183 apiece, Leonardo DiCaprio with 144, and Seth Rogen with 140.
Marcel Marceau reprises his "walking into the wind" routine while trying to lift a phone. He then shouts his, and the film's only spoken word: "Non!". When the Studio Chief asks what was his answer, Mel Funn cowardly replies that he doesn't understand French.
In old films from the 1930's to 1950's, why do the characters seem to talk so fast? Movie makers encouraged diction, more along the lines of British speech which was more clipped, with less drawl. (drawl was allowed in Western movies), but Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn had very clipped accents.
Contrary to popular belief, The Wizard of Oz was not the first color film, not even close. It is an easy misconception to believe — the use of color is so sensational in the film.
The team of researchers discovered bright pink pigment in rocks taken from deep beneath the Sahara in Africa. The pigment was dated at 1.1 billion years old, making it the oldest color on geological record.
On Boxing Day 1906 The Story of the Kelly Gang opened at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne. It was the first multi-reel, feature-length film ever produced in the world.
The Wizard of Oz was filmed in color in 1939. The film was shot using Technicolor, which was a new color process at the time. The scenes from home in Kansas were filmed in black and white, with sepia color being added. The Oz scenes were filmed in full color.
In 1937 the release of Disney's first full length-animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” in Technicolor, goes on to become the most successful sound film of all time.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1910 American silent fantasy film and the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company without Baum's direct input.
The Horse in Motion, animated from a plate by Eadweard Muybridge, made with an array of cameras set up along a racetrack Roundhay Garden Scene, which has a running time of just over two seconds, was filmed in 1888. It is believed to be the world's earliest surviving motion-picture film.
Similarly, silent films were perceived as worthless after the end of the silent era. Film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said, "Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films.
What was the first movie to show a flushing toilet?
Psycho was the first film to feature the visuals and sounds of a flushing toilet – kind of. This piece of trivia has been passed around so much that it hasn't really been interrogated, often simply brought up as a sign of how prudish audiences were back then.
On Their Own. Reporters get to see the first successfully synchronized sound-on-film moving pictures. 1923: Radio pioneer Lee de Forest demonstrates his Phonofilm movie process to the press, bringing the world of synchronized sound to the movies.
