Why were there silent movies?

No, the movies had no sound track at all. Showings usually had live piano or organ players who followed along with the scenes. Years later these musical performances may have been recorded with the moving pictures onto regular sound film.

@gasman ahhhh ok that makes much more sense. That’s actually what my girlfriend suggested but I just wanted to ask the collective to make sure. Thank ya.

I recently saw a movie on Turner: The Jazz Singer with sound and slient.

@gasman is correct. Often, studios would provide sheet music or song suggestions to be played with the movie. George Gershwin and Chico Marx both spent some of their early days playing piano accompanyment for films. So did my old pal Bob Vaughn, who was suspected of being the Zodiac killer.

I was watching a silent movie on TCM the other day and I was thinking that it is too bad that the film editors couldn’t fit the word captions directly into the film footage like they do in modern films. This way they wouldn’t have to keep stopping and starting the film footage all the time to show what’s being said.

@uberbatman Listen to your girlfriend more seriously. And don’t tell her you came here to check up on what she told you. She sounds like she deserves more respect. Yes, I’m being a busybody, and I apologize for that.

@Sunny2 she was sitting right next to me when I asked…. And she was also the one who suggested fluther….

@gondwanalon The first year the Academy Awards were given out, they had an award for “Best Titles”, which were not for the name of the movie, but the dialog cards.

The Jazz Singer was the first “talky” film; as pointed out, the first films had no audio track (which was a printed optical track), so the technology didn’t exist in the first film projection systems. Also, the recording mechanisms didn’t exist, as sound in-synch did not come around until the mid-1920s.

Good to see you around sndfreQ. Feel like I havent seen you in forever.

@uberbatman Right?!?! Yeah, I was doing my best impression of Caine from Kung Fu lol…thanks for the welcome back :) Missed you all!