After more than 20 years of silent films, movies’ artists could finally talk at the cinema theatres. This was after failed experiments carried out in the US and in Europe.

It was the Warner Brothers Vitaphone Corporation in amalgamation with the Western Electric which succeeded in producing a sound system knownas ‘Vitaphone’.

So on the evening of Thursday, October 6, 1927, at Warner’stheatre in New York, the first talking picture called The Jazz Singer was premiered. It was not all ‘talkie’, as the change from silent to talking pictures was very difficult.

But the film industry considers it as the first because it was in The Jazz Singer that dialogue was first uttered by any actor.

The main actor was the legendary minstrel Al Jolson. Jolson uttered spontaneously: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Wait a minute, I tell you. You wanna hear ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie?’ All right, hold on...Lou, listen. You play ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie, three choruses, you understand, and in the third chorus I whistle. Now give it to them hard and heavy. Go right ahead.”

The silent movie died as talking pictures were created to last. The Vitaphone sound system and the energetic performance of the great Al Jolson transformed the film industry for ever.

The film grossed a fortune for Warner Brothers and for Al Jolson, who had taken a typical calculated risk in making the film.

It also won a Special Award for Warner Brothers in the first Academy Award presentations of 1927-8. So it is appropriate that October 6 be celebrated as ‘Talkies Day’.