It always astonishes people who think they know the history of films, when they first encounter one of the musical shorts that were produced from 1906-1914. How is this possible? Didn't Edison invent the movies, Porter the story film, the Warner Brothers the talking pictures and Walt Disney the animated feature?
A resounding "No!" to all of those. The wave of sound films in the Edwardian era wasn't even the first. Cinematically, these sound films were primitive things. They had to be because of the primitive microphones of the era, and their popularity limited because you couldn't make the loudspeakers loud enough for a sizable audience. But people wanted them anyway.
A resounding "No!" to all of those. The wave of sound films in the Edwardian era wasn't even the first. Cinematically, these sound films were primitive things. They had to be because of the primitive microphones of the era, and their popularity limited because you couldn't make the loudspeakers loud enough for a sizable audience. But people wanted them anyway.