The talking movie is here to stay.
JACK ALICOATE, 25 APRIL 1928
For the dedicated movie fan of 1928, it must have been an exciting and perhaps bewildering year. One heard of the studios' experiments in sound, but unless one lived near a major exhibition market, the talkies were more a rumor than an actuality. The majority of the films making headlines as talkers were playing locally as silents. But all around, theaters were undergoing conversion. When they started showing sound films regularly, moviegoers came to hear what the fuss was about. Like customers looking over new-model cars, audiences wished to learn what differentiated this product from the older one. Producers were eager to put their new prototype through its paces so that fans could see and hear what the sound film could do.
In May 1928, when the major producers signed their ERPI licenses, the next season (which would run from the fall of 1928 through the summer of 1929) was already being sold. What to do about sound? What to do with these films? Blind bidding and block booking had guaranteed security to Hollywood because product was sold before it was made. But sound introduced uncertainty.
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