Who is Lee De Forest?
On this day in 1923, Dr. Lee De Forest demonstrated “phonofilm,” the first sound-on-film technology. From his Wikipedia entry, we see Hwood movie studios were already in full bloom re their bastardly business practices, even back in the early 20s:
In 1919, De Forest filed the first patent on his sound-on-film process, which improved on the work of Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt and the German partnership Tri-Ergon, and called it the De Forest Phonofilm process. Phonofilm recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines of variable shades of gray, and later became known as a “variable density” system as opposed to “variable area” systems such as RCA Photophone. These lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back into sound waves when the movie was projected. This system, which synchronized sound directly onto film, was used to record stage performances (such as in vaudeville), speeches, and musical acts. In November 1922, De Forest established his De Forest Phonofilm Company at 314 East 48th Street in New York City, but none of the Hollywood movie studios expressed any interest in his invention.
De Forest premiered 18 short films made in Phonofilm on 15 April 1923 at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. He was forced to show his films in independent theaters such as the Rivoli, since Hollywood movie studios controlled all major theater chains. De Forest chose to film primarily short vaudeville acts, not features, limiting the appeal of his process to Hollywood studios. Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer used the Phonofilm process for their Song Car-Tune series of cartoons — featuring the “Follow the Bouncing Ball” gimmick — starting in May 1924. De Forest also worked with Freeman Harrison Owens and Theodore Case, using Owens’s and Case’s work to perfect the Phonofilm system. However, DeForest had a falling out with both men. Case took his patents to studio head William Fox, owner of Fox Film Corporation, who then perfected the Fox Movietone process. Shortly before the Phonofilm Company filed for bankruptcy in September 1926, Hollywood introduced a new method for sound film, the sound-on-disc process developed by Warner Brothers as Vitaphone, with the John Barrymore film Don Juan, released 6 August 1926.
In 1927 and 1928, Hollywood began to use sound-on-film systems, including Fox Movietone and RCA Photophone. Meanwhile, a theater chain owner, M. B. Schlesinger, acquired the UK rights to Phonofilm and released short films of British music hall performers from September 1926 to May 1929. Almost 200 short films were made in the Phonofilm process, and many are preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute. [6]
So basically De Forest invents this sound-on-film technology, but the movie studios don’t want to pay him, preferring to work on their own approach, shut his Phonofilm movies out of movie theaters controlled by the movie studios, then when De Forest’s company declares bankruptcy, the studios swoop in and buy his business on the cheap.
Nice!
Here’s a Phonofilm short, a musical medley featuring “Ben Bernie and All the Lads”:
And a Max Fleischer “song car-tune” from 1926 which used the Phonofilm technology which introduced “Follow the bouncing ball”: