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Vitaphone was a sound film system used for and nearly 1,000 made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack is not printed on the film, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at rpm (a speed first used for this system) and typically in diameter, are played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film is projected. Its frequency response is 4300 Hz. Many early sound film, such as The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound".
The "Vitaphone" trademark was later associated with cartoons and other short subjects that had sound-on-film and did not use discs.
The business was established at Western Electric's Bell Laboratories in New York City and acquired by Warner Bros. in April 1925.Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), p. 111. Warner Bros. introduced Vitaphone on August 5, 1926, with the premiere of their silent feature Don Juan, which had been retrofitted with a symphonic musical score and sound effects. There was no spoken dialog. The feature was preceded by a program of short subjects with live-recorded sound, nearly all featuring classical instrumentalists and opera stars. The only "pop music" artist was guitarist Roy Smeck and the only actual "talkie" was the short film that opened the program: four minutes of introductory remarks by motion picture industry spokesman Will Hays, ( Introduction of Vitaphone Sound Pictures).
Don Juan was able to draw huge sums of money at the box office, but was not able to recoup the expenses Warner Bros. put into the film's production.Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), p. 113. After its financial failure, Paramount head Adolph Zukor offered Sam Warner a deal as an executive producer for Paramount if he brought Vitaphone with him.Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), p. 114. Sam, not wanting to take any more of Harry Warner's refusal to move forward with using sound in future Warner films, agreed to accept Zukor's offer, but the deal died after Paramount lost money in the wake of Rudolph Valentino's death. Harry eventually agreed to accept Sam's demands.Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), p. 116. Sam then pushed ahead with a new Vitaphone feature starring Al Jolson, the Broadway dynamo who had already scored a big hit with early Vitaphone audiences in A Plantation Act, a musical short released on October 7, 1926. On October 6, 1927, The Jazz Singer premiered at the Warner Theater in New York City, broke box-office records, established Warner Bros. as a major player in Hollywood, and is traditionally credited with single-handedly launching the talkie revolution.
At first, the production of Vitaphone shorts and the recording of orchestral scores were strictly a New York phenomenon, taking advantage of the bountiful supply of stage and concert hall talent there, but the Warners soon migrated some of this activity to their more spacious facilities on the West Coast. Dance band leader Henry Halstead is given credit for starring in the first Vitaphone short subject filmed in Hollywood instead of New York. Carnival Night in Paris (1927) featured the Henry Halstead Orchestra and a cast of hundreds of costumed dancers in a Carnival atmosphere.
Except for the unusual disc size and speed, the physical record-making process was the same one employed by contemporary record companies to make smaller discs for home use. The recording lathe cut an audio-signal-modulated spiral groove into the polished surface of a thick round slab of wax-like material rotating on a turntable. The wax was much too soft to be played in the usual way, but a specially supported and guided pickup could be used to play it back immediately in order to detect any sound problems that might have gone unnoticed during the filming. If problems were found, the scene could then be re-shot while everything was still in place, minimizing additional expense. Even the lightest playback caused some damage to the wax master, so it was customary to employ two recorders and simultaneously record two waxes, one to play and the other to be sent for processing if that "take" of the scene was approved. At the processing plant, the surface of the wax was rendered electrically conductive and electroplated to produce a metal mold or "stamper" with a ridge instead of a groove, and this was used to record press hard shellac discs from molten "biscuits" of the raw material.
Because of the universal desirability of an immediate playback capability, even studios using sound-on-film systems employed a wax disc "playback machine" in tandem with their film recorders, as it was impossible to play an optical recording until it had made the round trip to the film processing laboratory.
A Vitaphone-equipped theater had normal Movie projector which had been furnished with special phonograph turntables and pickups; a fader; an amplifier; and a loudspeaker system. The projectors operated just as motorized silent projectors did, but at a fixed speed of 24 Frame rate and mechanically interlocked with the attached turntables. When each projector was threaded, the projectionist would align a start mark on the film with the film gate, then cue up the corresponding soundtrack disc on the turntable, being careful to place the phonograph needle at a point indicated by an arrow scribed on the record's surface. When the projector was started, it rotated the linked turntable and (in theory) automatically kept the record "in sync" (correctly synchronized) with the projected image.
The Vitaphone process made several improvements over previous systems:
These innovations notwithstanding, the Vitaphone process lost the early format war with sound-on-film processes for many reasons:
Vitaphone was the market leader in the early days of talking pictures, for two key reasons. First, the new novelty was very popular with the public, with The Jazz Singer being a monster hit. It was in theater owners' best interest to compete as soon as possible. Second, a much more practical reason was the cost. Converting a silent-only theater to sound was much quicker and cheaper with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system than it was with the Movietone sound-on-film system. Exhibitors with limited incomes opted for Vitaphone, particularly in smaller towns. The Vitaphone brand name became synonymous with talking pictures in general; as early as 1928, theater organists, thrown out of work when their bosses discontinued silent pictures, placed situation-wanted ads in trade papers with the melancholy phrase "Reason for leaving due to Vitaphone." Motion Picture Herald-World, December 29, 1928, p. 81.
After the improvement of the competing sound-on-film systems, Vitaphone's disadvantages led to its retirement early in the sound era. Warner Bros. and First National stopped recording directly to disc and switched to RCA Photophone sound-on-film recording. Warner Bros. had to publicly concede that Vitaphone was being retired, but put a positive spin on it by announcing that Warner films would now be available in both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc versions. Thus, instead of making a grudging admission that its technology had become obsolete, Warner Bros. purported to be doing the entire movie industry a favor.
Despite the fact that Warner Bros. still used Vitaphone as a brand name, the soundtrack-disc era was largely over by 1931. Many theater owners, who had invested heavily in Vitaphone equipment only a short time before, were financially unable or unwilling to replace their sound-on-disc-only equipment. Their continuing need for discs compelled most Hollywood studios to prepare sets of soundtrack discs for their new films, made by dubbing from the optical soundtracks, and supply them as required. This practice continued, although on an ever-dwindling scale, through 1937.
Like ordinary pre-vinyl records, Vitaphone discs were made of a shellac compound rendered lightly abrasive by its major constituent, finely pulverized rock. Such records were played with a very inexpensive, imprecisely mass-produced steel needle with a point that quickly wore to fit the contour of the groove, but then went on to wear out in the course of playing one disc side, after which it was meant to be discarded and replaced. Unlike ordinary records, Vitaphone discs were recorded inside out, so that the groove started near the synchronization arrow scribed in the blank area around the label and proceeded outward. During playback, the needle would therefore be fresh where the groove's undulations were most closely packed and needed the most accurate tracing, and suffering from wear only as the much more widely spaced and easily traced undulations toward the edge of the disc were encountered.
Initially, Vitaphone discs had a recording on one side only, each reel of film having its own disc. As the sound-on-disc method was slowly relegated to second-class status, cost-cutting changes were instituted, first by making use of both sides of each disc for non-consecutive reels of film, then by reducing the discs to in diameter. The use of RCA Victor's new "Vitrolac", a lightweight, flexible and less abrasive vinyl-based compound, made it possible to downsize the discs while actually improving their sound quality.Barton, F.C. (1932 1931). Victrolac Motion Picture Records. Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, April 1932 18(4):452–460 (accessed at archive.org on August 5, 2011)
There were exceptions to the standard size of 1920s Vitaphone discs. In the case of very short films, such as trailers and some of the earliest musical shorts, the recording, still cut at rpm and working outward from a minimum diameter of about , was pressed on a disc when the smaller size sufficed.
Although Warners' sound feature films were made in Hollywood, most of the short subjects were made in Brooklyn, and Vitaphone shorts became a fixture in movie-theater programs through 1940. Many stage stars filmed their acts for posterity: Al Jolson, Burns and Allen, Rose Marie, Edgar Bergen, Bert Lahr, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and many others. From the musical world came Mischa Elman, Frances Langford, Giovanni Martinelli, Xavier Cugat, Bill Robinson, Hal Le Roy, Lillian Roth, Ruth Etting, Ethel Merman, Abbe Lane, Helen Morgan, The Nicholas Brothers, Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Nelson, Jane Froman, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Judy Canova, Nina Mae McKinney, Ethel Waters, June Allyson, Lanny Ross, and Cyd Charisse.
Performers in Vitaphone shorts sometimes graduated to stardom, among them Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Sammy Davis Jr., Sylvia Sidney, Pat O'Brien, Joan Blondell, Eleanor Powell, Betty Hutton, Milton Berle, and Phil Silvers.
Many familiar character players started at Vitaphone, including Helen Broderick, Allen Jenkins, Donald MacBride, Franklin Pangborn, Judith Anderson, Leo Carrillo, Marjorie Main, Lionel Stander, William Demarest, and Natalie Schafer. In addition, Vitaphone had its own stable of comedians who starred in one- and two-reel short subjects: Roscoe Arbuckle, Jack Haley, Shemp Howard, Joe Penner, Bob Hope, George Givot and Charles Judels, the Easy Aces (Goodman and Jane Ace), Ken Murray, El Brendel, Roscoe Ates, Henry Armetta, Harry Gribbon, Thelma White, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Norworth, and The Yacht Club Boys.
As of December 2016, The Vitaphone Project had located about 6,500 soundtrack discs in private collections and helped preserve 125 films, 12 of which were feature-length films. They have also raised $400,000 in donations, with Hugh Hefner being a notable donor.
The Vitaphone Project has been able to help restore films featuring stars such as Rose Marie and Al Jolson. They also worked with Warner Brothers to restore 1929's Why Be Good?, the final silent film made by Colleen Moore. Funding raised by The Vitaphone Project was used to restore 1928's The Beau Brummels, starring vaudeville comedy team Al Shaw and Sam Lee, which was added to the National Film Registry in 2016.
Vitaphone had made its reputation largely for its short subjects, so the Warner live-action shorts and animated cartoons were copyrighted by The Vitaphone Corporation until 1959 and marketed under the Vitaphone brand name.
Vitagraph had ceased operations in 1925. In 1932, producer Leon Schlesinger made a very-low-budget series of six John Wayne western features, consisting largely of action scenes from silent Ken Maynard westerns. The Schlesinger features were so very cheap that Warner Bros. elected not to put its own name on them, or even the First National name. They were released under the Vitagraph name, which Warner still owned.
Warner Bros. stopped making live-action short subjects in 1956, and The Vitaphone Corporation was officially dissolved at the end of 1959. Warner then used the brand names for various purposes, to keep them active legally. In the 1950s, the Warner Bros. record label boasted "Vitaphonic" high-fidelity recording. In the 1960s, the end titles of Merrie Melodies cartoons (beginning with From Hare to Heir 1960) carried the legend "A Vitaphone Release". Looney Tunes of the same period (beginning with that same year's Hopalong Casualty) were credited as "A Vitagraph Release". By late 1968, the Vitaphone/Vitagraph titles had become interchangeable between the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series titles.
Though operating on principles so different as to make it unrecognizable to a Vitaphone engineer, DTS is a sound-on-disc system, the first to gain wide adoption since the abandonment of Vitaphone.
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