The Jazz Singer Inaugurates the Sound Film Era
- Date
- 6 October 1927
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- United States
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 6 October 1927 Warner Bros. premiered The Jazz Singer in New York City, the first feature-length motion picture with synchronised recorded music and passages of lip-synchronous singing and speech.
Directed by Alan Crosland and starring Al Jolson, the film used the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system; although only its musical numbers and a few stretches of dialogue carried recorded sound, its commercial success made the case for talking pictures decisively. The film grossed an unprecedented sum and set records for the length of its theatrical runs, convincing Warner Bros. to shift entirely to sound production by the end of 1928, with the other major studios soon following. The transition to sound transformed the global film industry: it required new production technology and soundproofed studios, ended the careers of some silent-era stars, gave rise to the Hollywood musical, and reshaped acting, writing, and exhibition. Within a few years the silent film, a mature international art form, was effectively obsolete. The 'talkie' revolution consolidated Hollywood's commercial dominance and made cinema one of the most powerful mass entertainment media of the twentieth century, even as it raised new barriers of language across national markets.
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Empires active in 6 October 1927
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- First FIFA World Cup Held in Uruguay13–30 July 1930
- Walter Gropius Founds the Bauhaus in WeimarApril 1919
- Rabindranath Tagore wins the Nobel Prize in Literature1913
- Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams'1900 (completed 1899)
- Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'1883–1885
- First Impressionist Exhibition opens in Paris15 April 1874
Further reading
The wider story
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