If one can lay a charge against Hollywood it will be not that it does
not know how to produce art, but that it knows almost as little about
how to make good, satisfying bilge.
ALEXANDER BAKSHY, 1929

What's the matter?" asks Don Lockwood in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. The head of the studio has stormed onto the set, halted production, and sent everyone home. "The Jazz. Singer, that's what's the matter," the boss bellows. "It's a sensation." A spinning (fictitious) Variety headline confirms his prediction: "Revolution in Hollywood." But our examination of the transition to sound between 1926 and 1931 shows that there was neither a chaotic upheaval nor, at the other extreme, a carefully executed changeover. The transition to sound was more like an experiment that produced unexpected results. Indeed, it seems that at no point during its development from 1926 to...