HENRY BLANKE (producer): Western Electric [developers of sound] went to everybody in the business before the Warner brothers were offered it. All the big studios at this time turned it down. Western Electric finally came down to the small Warner Bros. studio. There were three brothers: Harry, the financier; Sam, who was interested in sound; and Jack Warner, who did the silent pictures. Harry was invited to come to the Western Electric studios, and he went there and there were speakers, and he heard music. Western Electric always had the idea of using sound for talking, which Harry Warner never thought much about. His idea was not to record voices but to use music for accompaniment. He says, “I can give every little town in America a hundred-and-ten-piece orchestra, the same as New York has at the Roxy” with this system. And that’s how they began. Harry had the idea of starting out by giving every little theater a big orchestral sound … and Sam perfected it.
HAL MOHR (cinematographer): Vitaphone—sound at Warner Bros.—was created by Sam Warner. He didn’t invent it, but he was instrumental in the introduction of it as a kind of novelty thing. They started making short films of people singing or a band playing or dancers dancing to music or little comedy skits. It was a novelty for the theaters.
