The Academy said it all with their dedication.  This movie ushered in the era of Talking Pictures, a medium which to this day still draws millions to cinemas across the world.  It also caused nothing short of a revolution in Hollywood, in technical, economic and artistic terms.

All the studios had to convert to sound in order to stay in business, and in some cases went out of business due to the conversion costs involved.  Many silent movie stars were unable to make the transition and had their careers abruptly and cruelly ended, a situation referred to in Sunset Boulevard (1950).  Given the bulky equipment necessary for sound recording, location photography became almost impossible in the early sound era, and so many early ‘talkies’ appear very static, stagebound affairs.

Sound ended the slapstick era, and paved the way for dialogue-based comedians like W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers, and the witty comedies of Ernst Lubitsch et al.  Musicals became a brand new genre – an art form in themselves – and the finest of which, Singin’ in the Rain, ironically parodies this very period in Hollywood’s history.

But perhaps the most lasting effect of sound was to cause the single world market of silent movies to be shattered into a myriad linguistic fragments, leading to a relative decline in European movie-making, and the emergence of Hollywood as the dominant film force, a situation they have never looked back from.

As for Jolson, his popularity faded in the thirties but was revived firstly by his entertaining the troops during World War II, and later by the smash-hit biopic The Jolson Story (1946), which featured Larry Parks in the title role but using Jolson’s own voice for the singing.  Halliwell gives this dedication to him in the Filmgoer’s Companion:

‘For heralding a new era, and for being a star again 20 years later without even being seen.’

Year: 1927