Phonofilm

Optical sound on film system
Phonofilm is an optical sound on film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s. In 1919 and 1920, de Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound on film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back into sound waves when the movie was projected. The Phonofilm system, which recorded synchronized sound directly onto film, was used to record vaudeville acts, musical numbers, political speeches, and opera singers. The quality of Phonofilm was poor at first and while it improved somewhat in later years, it was never able to match the fidelity of sound on disc systems such as Vitaphone, or later sound on film systems such as RCA Photophone or Fox Movietone. The films of de Forest were short films made primarily as demonstrations to try to interest major studios in Phonofilm. These films are particularly valuable to entertainment historians, as they include recordings of a wide variety of both well known and less famous American vaudeville and British music hall acts which would otherwise have been forgotten.

In November 1922, de Forest founded the De Forest Phonofilm Corporation with studios at 314 East 48th Street in New York City, and offices at 220 West 42nd Street in the Candler Building. However, de Forest was unable to interest any of the major Hollywood movie studios in his invention. To record on film, de Forest tried using a standard incandescent bulb to expose amplified sound onto film. The bulbs quickly burned out, and, even while functioning, never produced a clear recording. To reproduce his nearly inaudible soundtracks, de Forest used a photocell that could not react quickly enough to the varying light coming to it as the soundtrack passed through the sound gate, resulting in an incomplete reproduction of sound from an inadequate recording – a dual failure. Having failed to create a workable sound on film system by 1921, de Forest contacted Theodore Case to inquire about using a Case Research Lab invention, the Thallofide (thallium oxysulfide) Cell, for reproducing the recorded sound. Case provided de Forest with that major upgrade and later provided him with another Case Research Lab creation, the AEO Light, to use for recording the soundtrack.

Hollywood studios largely rejected Phonofilm, and instead introduced different systems for sound film. In 1924, Western Electric was developing both a sound on disc system, where the film is synchronized with a phonograph containing the sound, and their own optical sound systems. They had settled on 24 frames per second (90 feet per minute) as the standard film speed for sound, as they found slower film speeds could not consistently reproduce sound well. Warner Bros. was the first to use a sound on disc system, Vitaphone. Warner Bros. released the feature film Don Juan starring John Barrymore on August 6, 1926, in Vitaphone, with music and sound effects only. On October 6, 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson in Vitaphone. The Jazz Singer was the first feature film to use synchronized sound for talking sequences rather than just for music and sound effects, and thus launched the talkie era. The Fox Movietone system was first demonstrated to the public at the Sam H. Harris Theatre in New York City on January 21, 1927, with a short film of Raquel Meller preceding the feature film What Price Glory?, originally released in November 1926. Later in 1927, Fox released the first sound on film feature Sunrise by F. W. Murnau. In 1928, the sound on film process RCA Photophone was adopted by newly created studio RKO Radio Pictures and by Paramount Pictures. Since Western Electric's ERPI division dominated the theater hardware market when the sound revolution finally got underway, its standard 24 frames per second speed was universally adopted by Fox and all the other studios as each began making sound films. As a consequence, Case's tests and de Forest's early Phonofilms, shot at about 21 frames per second, gave speakers and singers high pitched "helium voices" if they are run on a standard sound projector. The Library of Congress and other film archives have printed new copies of some early Phonofilms, modifying them by periodically duplicating frames and correspondingly "stretching" the soundtracks to make them compatible with standard projectors and telecine equipment.

Case and de Forest had a falling out due to de Forest taking full credit for the work of Case and Earl I. Sponable at the Case Research Lab. The Case Research Lab proceeded to build its own camera. That camera was used by Case and Sponable to film President Coolidge on August 11, 1924, creating one of the films shown by de Forest and claimed by him to be the product of "his" inventions. Case also expressed his displeasure that the program credited only the "DeForest Case Patents", as Phonofilm's success rested upon the work of Case and his Case Research Lab. Seeing that de Forest was more concerned with his own fame and recognition than he was with actually creating a workable system of sound film, and because of de Forest's continuing attempts to downplay the contributions of the Case Research Lab in the creation of Phonofilm, Case severed his ties with de Forest in the fall of 1925. On July 23, 1926, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought Case's patents, cutting off de Forest's access to them. Without access to Case's inventions, de Forest was left with an incomplete system of sound film. He gave up on trying to exploit the process — at least in the U. S. (see UK section below). de Forest was in financial difficulty due to his lawsuits against Case, and had resorted to selling cut rate sound equipment to second run movie theaters wanting to convert to sound on the cheap. His company declared bankruptcy in September 1926. The Fleischers stopped releasing the Song Car Tune films in Phonofilm shortly thereafter. Even so, in June 1927, producer Pat Powers made an unsuccessful takeover bid for de Forest's company. In the aftermath, Powers hired former DeForest technician William Garity to produce a cloned version of the Phonofilm system which became Powers Cinephone.

In July 1925, The Gentleman, a comedy short film excerpt of The 9 to 11 Revue directed by William J. Elliott, was made using Phonofilm, the first sound on film production in England. In 1926, the owner of a UK cinema chain, M. B. Schlesinger, acquired the UK rights to Phonofilm. Schlesinger filmed short films of British music hall performers such as Marie Lloyd Jr. and Billy Merson, along with famous stage actors such as Sybil Thorndike and Bransby Williams performing excerpts of works by Shakespeare, Shaw, and Dickens, from September 1926 to May 1929. On October 4, 1926, Phonofilm made its UK premiere with a program of short films presented at the Empire Cinema in London, including a short film with Sidney Bernstein welcoming Phonofilm to the UK. According to the British Film Institute website, the UK division of De Forest Phonofilm was taken over in August 1928 by British Talking Pictures and its subsidiary, British Sound Film Productions, which was formed in September 1928; it is believed British Talking Pictures acquired De Forest's primary assets, including patents and designs for theatre audio equipment. In March 1929, a feature film The Clue of the New Pin, a part talkie based on an Edgar Wallace novel, was trade shown with The Crimson Circle, a German UK coproduction which was also based on a Wallace novel. Crimson was filmed in Phonofilm, and Pin was made in British Phototone, a sound on disc process using 12 inch phonograph records synchronized with the film. However, the UK divisions of both Phonofilm and British Phototone soon closed. The last films made in the UK in Phonofilm were released in early 1929, due to competition from Vitaphone, and sound on film systems such as Fox Movietone and RCA Photophone. The release of Alfred Hitchcock's sound feature film Blackmail in June 1929, made in RCA Photophone, sealed the fate of Phonofilm in the UK.

In June 1925, Phonofilm opened its first Australian office at 129 Bathurst Street, Sydney. On July 6, 1925, the first program of Phonofilms in Australia was shown at the Piccadilly Theatre in Sydney. A program was also shown at the Prince Edward Theatre in November and December 1925. On April 6, 1927, Minister for Trade Herbert Pratten appeared in a DeForest film to celebrate the opening of a Phonofilm studio in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. On May 12, 1927, a Phonofilm of the Duke and Dutchess of York arriving at Farm Cove was shown at the Lyceum Theatre in Sydney. Phonofilm had closed all of its operations in Australia by October 1927, and sold its remaining studio facilities to an Australian company in October 1928.

In 1928, Spanish producer Feliciano Manuel Vitores bought the Spanish rights to Phonofilm from DeForest and dubbed it "Fonofilm". He produced four films in the process, Cuando fui león (1928), En confesionario (1928), Va usted en punto con el banco (1928), and El misterio de la Puerta del Sol (1929). The first three were short films directed by Manuel Marín starring Spanish comedian Ramper, and the last was the first sound feature film made in Spain. The feature film was released in Spain by Divina Home Video in 2005, after years of being thought a lost film.

The Maurice Zouary collection at the Library of Congress holds approximately 45 films made in Phonofilm. A DVD produced by Zouary about the history of Phonofilm says that a short film of opera singers performing the Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor was made by the "Latin American division" of Phonofilm. No further information is known about this division of Phonofilm. In 1926, DeForest released a short film referred to as Cuban Sound Documentary which included the Cuban national anthem and excerpts from The Merry Widow. However, little else is known of this film or whether other Phonofilms were made in Cuba.

More than 200 short films were made in the Phonofilm process, with many preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress (45 titles) and the British Film Institute (98 titles). In 1976, five Phonofilm titles were discovered in a trunk in Australia, and these films have been restored by Australia's National Film and Sound Archive.