Nowhere is there a better illustration of the "trying on" of forms for the talkies than William Fox's development of Movietone. First, however, the shoals of de Forest's legal challenges had to be navigated. In 1926 Lee de Forest knew of Western Electric's work in sound cinema. Nevertheless, he experienced "a shock, like a blow," when he first saw Warner Bros.' big Times Square billboard announcing Vitaphone while en route to his Forty-second Street office.¹ It is an indication of de Forest's failure to find a wide market for his system that there were no comparisons to Phonofihn in the flow of critical ink describing the gala 1926 Vitaphone premiere. One exception was Roy Chartier, who pointed out that the difference between Vitaphone and Phonofilm lay in showmanship, not acoustic superiority:

Whether the Vitaphone is any better...