A transformation occurred in the movie world in the late 1920s. In collaboration with Warner Brothers and Vitaphone, Western Electric and Bell Labs produced Don Juan, a sound movie featuring John Barrymore. The movie premiered on 6 August 1926. Although there was no talking, the music and some saber clashes were synchronized to the action. A year later, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, did have spoken lines, and its success caused movie producers to rush to make sound movies.
Suddenly, electronics was vital to movie-making. Microphones converted sound to an electrical signal, which might be amplified or otherwise processed electronically. A photocell allowed the photographic soundtrack to be converted back to an electrical signal. And together with loudspeakers, amplifying tubes recreated the sound for the audience. Indeed, sound movies brought about the mass production of photocells, since they created the first large market for such tubes.
Electric lighting-- including neon and other colored lighting-- as well as projection systems and sound systems were vital to the success of the movie palaces of the late 1920s and the 1930s. Among the most famous were the Roxy Theater-- the “Cathedral of the Movie”-- at Seventh Avenue and 50th Street in New York City, and Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.