Talking pictures are perfected, says Dr. Lee De Forest. So is castor oil.
JAMES QUIRK, Photoplay, MARCH 1924
Once a new technology enters public usage, it is susceptible to being co-opted for any number of new purposes-many of which the creators did not foresee. The sound film emerged as an exhibition phenomenon several years preceding 1927, the generally accepted date for the "birth of the talkies." When the recording and reproducing apparatuses moved out of the laboratories and into theaters, few if any inventors or promoters thought that the sound film would take over Hollywood to transform the silent feature into the all-talking, all-singing phenomenon that would become popular around 1929. Rather, the sound film was perceived as a novelty. The mainstream industry, as Quirk suggested with scatological innuendo, regarded the sound film as an irritation. The problem for the filmmakers was, without any extant models, how were they to merchandise this new kind of film to the public? They relied on what they knew. The resulting films blended the most popular ingredients of the current entertainment mix of vaudeville, live musical accompaniment for silent films, lectures, public address, and radio. Filmmakers capitalized on cinema's capability to suggest a virtual presence, an imagined being-there, in order to bring performer and auditor together in the space of the filmed performance.
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