VITAPHONE REVITALIZED:
THE SENSATIONAL SYNESTHESIA OF SOUND-ON-DISC
Words by Laura Darlington
A few days before the West Coast premiere of Vitaphone in October 1926, a woman approached the box office of Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, according to Variety, and asked: “Is Vitaphone a new kind of refrigeration?”
Vitaphone was instead a system that synchronized silent motion pictures with sound recordings on phonograph discs; while not the first system to achieve this, it was the first to be commercially viable, acting as the catalyst for the transition from silent to sound films.
When technology evolved, films and discs were mislaid, and only 40 years later were collective efforts initiated to reunite and preserve Vitaphone elements. One such collaboration was That’s Vitaphone! at last year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, which brought together three Los Angeles archival institutions to share live synced playback.
“Warner Bros. Vitaphone: Talking & Singing Pictures.” Detail from advertisement, 1929. Courtesy of The Vitaphone Project
Starting in the 17th century, magic lantern shows projected illustrations in motion along with live sound effects. Experiments synchronizing “animated photographs” with sound recorded on cylinders and discs began in the 1880s; soon, multiple competing systems were in play, including Thomas Edison’s Kinetophone – “The Sensation That Failed” – which in 1913 was first applauded and then booed when picture and sound fell off by 12 seconds.
These systems struggled to synchronize projectors with phonograph players, and the acoustic amplification was tinny and weak. In 1925, Western Electric (the American Telephone & Telegraph Company’s manufacturing arm) tried to drum up film industry interest in a new “sound-on-disc” system with interlocked synchronization and electric amplification developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories (AT&T’s engineering department).
The major studios were dubious and risk-averse due to disastrous losses from previous attempts; “dabbling with talking pictures was the surest possible way to ruin,” recounted author Fitzhugh Green in his 1929 story of Vitaphone. However, Sam Warner recognized that the technology emerging from telephone R&D meant high-quality sound films were finally feasible, and his brother Harry strategized to start with music rather than talking.
“Vitaphone is Thrilling the World!” Detail from program for West Coast premiere of "Don Juan" at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, 27 October 1926. Photo by Laura Darlington. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Ultimately, the impracticalities of Vitaphone – laborious production, fragile discs, risks of live synchronization, and difficulties of editing – led to its obsolescence.
In the early 1920s, silent films were accompanied by live scores and sound effects, with performances by musical, comedy, or novelty acts between films. The Warners surmised that film scores and Vaudeville acts recorded once and played over and over could replace costly live performers, as well as bring big-name talent to small towns.
Warner Brothers called their plan “sound accompaniment” to sidestep the taboo of talking pictures, and in 1925, the Vitaphone (“living voice”) Corporation was formed in association with Western Electric to produce sound films. The investment was a huge gamble that took Warner Bros. from a scrappy family business to a major studio player.
After initially balking at the cost, other studios begrudgingly got on the sound bandwagon, and the newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered training and troubleshooting. Silent moving pictures, the “movies,” quickly became “talkies” or “talkers.” Over 800 Vitaphone shorts were produced: Vaudeville acts, dramatic playlets, newsreels, cartoons, and trailers, plus around 150 feature films. By 1930, almost every theatre in the nation was wired for sound, and attendance had more than doubled.
Ultimately, the impracticalities of Vitaphone – laborious production, fragile discs, risks of live synchronization, and difficulties of editing – led to its obsolescence. The film industry shifted to the more flexible sound-on-film format, with an optical soundtrack encoded directly onto the edge of the film itself, guaranteeing sync; by 1931, sound-on-disc was already referred to as “the old system.” While Vitaphone reigned for only a few years and was perhaps simply a stopgap solution, it opened the floodgates of the senses and charted a new cultural course.
“Wax-shaving machine in operation,” in Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ed. Lester Cowan, "Recording Sound for Motion Pictures," McGraw-Hill, 1931, p. 45. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library
The technological innovations Vitaphone relied on were made possible through electric amplification: after the vacuum tube amplifier was licensed by Western Electric and improved by Bell Labs, it was applied to telecommunications (the microphone), the phonograph (electric recording and reproduction), and the public address system (loudspeakers).
Vitaphone film and sound were recorded concurrently, with cameras and turntables driven by synchronized motors. Shot through peepholes in soundproof booths to isolate operation noise and recorded by stationary mics suspended in place or concealed within props, the movements of cameras and actors were constrained by the limits of early sound-on-disc production.
Audio was registered as a spiral groove onto discs of “wax” – a soap scum of fatty acids and metal salts – which were electroplated to create stamper molds that pressed discs from brittle shellac – a natural thermoplastic derived from secretions of the lac bug. Unlike phonograph records of the time, Vitaphone discs can be up to 16 inches in diameter, are usually one-sided, and play at 33⅓ rpm (as opposed to 78) from the center outwards. To minimize “frying bacon” surface noise, Vitaphone shellac does not contain the abrasive minerals that protect record grooves from wear, sacrificing disc life for audio quality.
Synchronized playback “sounded plausibly easy; it was actually cussedly difficult,” noted Fitzhugh Green. To ensure sync, the projector and turntable were mechanically coupled. A projectionist or two ran at least two apparatus, with new reels and discs cued every 10 minutes: the “start” frame was aligned in the projector, and the needle was placed at an etched arrow on the lead-in groove. The danger of cueing a mismatched film and disc was compounded by discs with multiple takes or scenes.
Vitaphone films became noticeably out of sync when picture and sound were off by just two frames, and by four frames off, the illusion was lost. Mishaps such as skipping needles or broken film were common; since discs were a fixed medium, an exact number of blank frames had to be spliced to maintain synchronization.
The turntable’s heavy tone arm quickly wore out its steel needle – replaced after each play – which in turn wore out the grooves. Vitaphone disc labels had 20 check-boxes to track the number of plays, after which the sound quality deteriorated (some studios had lower standards, offering 40). Spent discs and films were supposed to be returned to the distributor for destruction.
The turntable’s heavy tone arm quickly wore out its steel needle – replaced after each play – which in turn wore out the grooves.
As the discs played, amplified vibrations were transmitted to compression speaker drivers on massive, coiled wooden horns placed behind or beside the screen. This groundbreaking system, completed two weeks before Vitaphone’s opening night, offered unprecedented fidelity and was the first that could fill an entire theatre with sound.
“The first Vitaphone projection room,” in Fitzhugh Green, "The Film Finds Its Tongue," Putnam, 1929, p. 170. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
“One type of horn used behind talking-picture screen,” in Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ed. Lester Cowan, "Recording Sound for Motion Pictures," McGraw-Hill, 1931, p. 329. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library
The Warner Brothers realized spectacle and showmanship would be necessary to market Vitaphone as a breakthrough and not just another novelty doomed to fail. A synchronized score and sound effects (clashing swords, etc.) were added to Don Juan, a swashbuckling silent epic already in production, and a prelude of highbrow musical shorts was produced.
Vitaphone premiered on August 6, 1926, at the Warners’ Theatre in Manhattan as a gala event with a sold-out VIP crowd. Although the public had seen sound films for three decades, Vitaphone made a splash not only with the accuracy of its sync but with its tone quality and amplification. The New York Times marveled that it was “as if the living beings were present instead of mere shadows,” and Etude remarked that “one had to pinch oneself now and then to realize that this was a mechanical reproduction.”
The audience was so used to the context of silence in motion pictures that when clear, well-synchronized sound was added, it created an uncanny synesthetic effect, with familiar sensory information traveling down unfamiliar pathways – they were hearing sights. Vitaphone resonated with multi-sensory fusion: “The talking picture,” declared director D. W. Griffith, “will be an eighth art, a combination and synthesis of all the arts.” Or, as “King of Comedy” Mack Sennett put it, “The talkers have added sound to sight; touch and smell always depend upon who sits next to you and what perfume she's using.”
“What Makes the Picture Talk?” Detail from advertisement for Western Electric sound system in "Saturday Evening Post," 13 July 1929, p. 111. Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center
The public’s first experience of the Vitaphone was a four-minute introduction by Will Hays, standing woodenly in front of a curtain as if addressing a live audience before the show. With deliberate, stilted elocution, Hays rhapsodizes that “no… story… ever written… for the screen… is as dramatic… as the story of the screen itself.” He welcomes “the beginning of a new era” with grandiose gestures, then takes a bow.
The audience “burst into a storm of applause,” according to Motion Picture News, and Fitzhugh Green reported that it was “like watching a man flying without wings.” Hays’ blessing, as President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, was calculated to legitimize Vitaphone – as former Postmaster General, he was billed as the “Honorable” Will H. Hays.
The short is a self-conscious demonstration of the technology, as parodied in the 1952 film Singin’ in the Rain, yet it also spins Vitaphone as a noble vehicle bringing high culture to the commoner. Hays’ speech was followed by musical shorts featuring elite classical performers to cultivate opening night prestige; subsequent productions reflected more popular taste: Tin Pan Alley hits, dancers, acrobats, and comedians. While Vitaphone preserves a time capsule of 1920s stage performers, their very documentation led to their demise as the theatre lost its audience to the cinema.
Still from “Will H. Hays’ Introduction to the Vitaphone,” 1926, 03:54. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery
When the novelty of “canned” variety acts waned, Warner Bros. adapted the hit Broadway musical The Jazz Singer into a feature-length film, mostly silent but punctuated by synchronized songs and less than two minutes of dialogue. In contrast to Hays’ formal, theatrical speech, the casual intimacy of Al Jolson’s delivery, along with the technology’s ability to reproduce natural voice tones, seemed revolutionary, inspiring a new Vitaphone slogan: “Pictures that talk like living people.”
The Jazz Singer was a sensation, grossing $2.6 million and coaxing the public into films with dialogue. The enormously problematic elephant in the room, of course, is that Jolson performed in blackface; Vitaphone amplified Vaudeville’s exploitation of racial, ethnic, and religious stereotypes. However, Vitaphone did provide visibility – and audibility – for underrepresented artists, including Black composers Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, Queer drag performer Karyl Norman, and Indigenous baritone Chief Caupolican, although numerous films and discs have become separated and lost.
While the Library of Congress holds a vast collection of Vitaphone films, the matching discs are often missing. “Ironically,” points out film historian Edwin Bradley, “many of the little pictures that ushered in the sound era were now themselves mute.” Once Vitaphone was obsolete, the discs seemed useless, and even those saved were easily broken. There are stories of discs sold off to amusement parks for shooting gallery targets, and during the materials shortages of World War II, discs were melted down and recycled.
Grassroots efforts to reunite films and discs have built a community of audiophiles, cinephiles, and archivists working together toward preservation. Collectors were at first reluctant to disclose holdings, fearing prosecution since the discs were technically still studio property; this led to a non-commercial usage agreement. The Vitaphone Project, a collective of enthusiasts spearheaded by the late Ron Hutchinson, has scoured attics, garage sales, and old theatres for the past 35 years, resulting in an online database.
Synchronous disc containing Will Hays’ introduction to Vitaphone. Detail for condition report, 10 April 2024. Photo by Laura Darlington. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
One such lost film was the 1926 Will Hays introduction. In 1972, Miles Kreuger of the Institute of the American Musical set out to recreate the Vitaphone debut program for its 50th anniversary at the Museum of Modern Art. After locating the Hays disc in Western Electric’s New Jersey archives, Kreuger transported it to Queens for transfer to tape by sound engineer Art Shifrin. Kreuger, who at 91 years old is currently writing his memoirs in fountain pen, recalls that the disc was “virgin,” with no center hole yet punched in the label by the turntable spindle, meaning that it had never been played. The tape capture was printed as an optical soundtrack for the 1976 MOMA event and subsequent national tour; with the Hays film still missing, his speech was accompanied by a photo montage and a surviving clip of the short from the 1946 documentary Okay for Sound. Although the disc was returned to Western Electric, where it is now remains a mystery.
In 1987, Bob Gitt of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, along with Leith Adams of the Warner Bros. Archive at USC, discovered a trove of over 2,000 Vitaphone discs – including the Hays disc – behind a screen in a defunct soundstage on the Warner lot and relocated the discs to UCLA. Two years later, Gitt searched the lot again, even checking Jack Warner’s personal nitrate vault, for missing elements to include in MOMA’s The Dawn of Sound. The Hays film was found and restored – now with sound and picture – touring the country with the 1989 MOMA program and later appearing on the Turner Classic Movies channel and Warner Bros.’ 2006 Don Juan DVD.
Today, UCLA’s copy of the Hays Vitaphone disc is broken in two pieces (a casualty, Gitt speculates, of the 1994 Northridge earthquake), and neither the AT&T Archives nor the Library of Congress holds a copy. There is, however, an intact copy held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, believed to have been acquired in 1950 by curator Howard Walls, with an ink marking logging seven previous plays. At least one other copy exists, unearthed from a rubbish heap in the abandoned Odeon Cinema in Southport, U.K., before it was demolished in 1980. The high cost of shipping and ease of disc reproducibility meant many discs did not return from overseas theatres. This disc, with only two plays checked off, is held in the rescuer’s personal collection and bequeathed to the British Library.
Curiously, the Academy’s and UCLA’s copies are 12 inches in diameter while the British copy is 16 inches – perhaps a dupe of the original onto another size disc? Unlike the obviously oversized 16-inch discs, 12-inch Vitaphone discs are easily mistaken for regular 78s, and more copies of the Hays disc could well be filed under “miscellaneous” in record collections, both archival and personal. Additionally, during recording, the wax master was inscribed “William Hayes,” a spelling error that, if cataloged verbatim, may be preventing the disc from appearing in database search results.
Sound engineer Bob Weitz inspects the grooves of the Will Hays Vitaphone disc on his custom turntable at Warner Bros. Sound, 11 April 2024. Photo by Laura Darlington
Modern screenings of Vitaphone films are almost always safety stock, rather than the original combustible nitrate, with the disc audio transferred to an optical soundtrack on the film. In 2024, the TCM Classic Film Festival staged a rare treat: That’s Vitaphone! The Return of Sound-on-Disc showcased live synchronized playback of original discs using a custom turntable designed by Academy Award®-winning Warner Bros. sound engineer Bob Weitz. The program included five Vaudeville shorts loaned by UCLA plus the Hays introduction, with film from Warner Bros. and disc loaned by the Academy; as the exhibitions coordinator for the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, I helped facilitate this loan.
Consulting with fellow Warner Bros. engineer Steve Levy, who has expertise in Western Electric sound equipment, Weitz fabricated a turntable that is not coupled mechanically to the film projector but instead syncs to a frame-counting signal pulse. The bespoke, dual-pivot tone arm tracks at only 5-6 grams – “just tickling the grooves,” Levy says – as opposed to the 85-170 grams of pressure exerted by a 1920s tone arm, meaning that Vitaphone discs are no longer damaged by playback, nor limited to 20 plays, alleviating any concern that the event would use up disc life.
In preparation for the event, the Hays disc was cleaned with deionized water by the Herrick’s conservator, Dawn Jaros, and then I completed a condition report – noting minor chips and scratches – and transported it to Warner Bros. Sound for audio capture. While it had previously been digitized from the 1980s optical transfer, this was an opportunity to digitize directly from the disc using Weitz’s new system. The grooves were inspected with a microscope, and the WAV sound capture had only one small pop, which required an edit. Although current technology is capable of sanitizing old audio to perfection, archival best practices aim to retain the authentic sound quality of the era.
Warner Bros. Post-Production Creative Services engineers Bob Weitz, left, and Steve Levy, right, coordinate playback sync of the Will Hays short in rehearsal for “That’s Vitaphone! The Return of Sound-on-Disc” at the TCM Classic Film Festival, 17 April 2024. Photo by Laura Darlington
There was one obstacle for live playback: a scratch on the lead-in groove was causing the needle to skip, so cueing to the start arrow was not going to work. Weitz marked where the scratch ended with a piece of tape to cue the needle there, and in rehearsal, Levy determined how many frames would need to be advanced to match the shorter lead-in and achieve sync.
On April 19, 2024, That’s Vitaphone! was held upstairs at the Chinese Theatres multiplex in Hollywood, with audio playback by Weitz, 35mm projection by Levy, and hand-delivery of the Hays disc by Warren Sherk, the Academy's director of special collections. The projector and turntable were not hidden in the projection booth but displayed prominently to demystify operations. While the state-of-the-art sound system was not exactly historically accurate, the pleasure of hearing the disc at high quality echoed the experience of the 1926 audience, and TCM’s packed house was delighted by the aura of the original audio as well as the high-wire act of live synchronization, which was spot-on.
Sadly, Weitz passed away only five months after the event, but his work will live on as his system continues to help preserve, restore, and share sound-on-disc. Next year brings the 100th anniversary of Vitaphone, an opportunity for further archival collaborations to demonstrate the medium in its original format and keep “the living voice of the silver screen” alive. “Now,” observed Will Hays in his introduction, “neither the artist nor his art will ever wholly die.”
FURTHER READING
Bandy, Mary Lea (ed.); Gitt, Robert; Koszarski, Richard; Hochheiser, Sheldon; and Wolfe, Charles. American MovieMakers: The Dawn of Sound. Museum of Modern Art, 1989.
Bradley, Edwin M. The First Hollywood Film Shorts, 1926-1931. McFarland, 2005.
Crafton, Donald. The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. In History of the American Cinema, ed. Charles Harpole, vol. 4. Scribner, 1997.
Gitt, Robert. “Bringing Vitaphone Back to Life.” Film History, vol. 5, no. 3: “Film Technology and the Public,” Sept. 1993, pp. 262-274.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3815141
Green, Fitzhugh. The Film Finds Its Tongue. Putnam, 1929.
https://archive.org/details/filmfindsitstong00gree
Liebman, Roy. Vitaphone Films: A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. McFarland, 2003.
Luperi, Kim. “An Interview with the Team Behind ‘That’s Vitaphone! The Return of Sound-on-Disc.’” I See a Dark Theater, 25 April 2024.
https://www.iseeadarktheater.com/an-interview-with-the-team-behind-thats-vitaphone-the-return-of-sound-on-disc
Shaman, William. “The Operatic Vitaphone Shorts.” Association for Recorded Sound (ARSC) Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 35-94.
FURTHER VIEWING
“Don Juan – DVD Feature: Will Hays Introduction to Vitaphone,” 1926. YouTube, uploaded by Warner Bros. Rewind, 19 April 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIWXbLQw4o
“The Movies Learn to Talk” with Walter Cronkite, 25 October 1959. YouTube, uploaded by Rod Willerton, 22 May 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouldiKY4oOc
“The Voice from the Screen – Vitaphone Demonstration #1-2” with Edward B. Craft, 1926. YouTube, uploaded by Warner Bros. Rewind, 19 April 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9b6_6ef3cM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ONEdascKQ
Laura Darlington is the Exhibitions Coordinator for the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Previously, she served as the Interim Director of the Museum of Neon Art and worked in the recording industry. She holds an MLIS from San José State University.
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