13 Facts About Phonofilm

Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.

In 1919 and 1920, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines.

The quality of Phonofilm was poor at first, improved somewhat in later years, but was never able to match the fidelity of sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, or later sound-on-film systems such as RCA Photophone or Fox Movietone.

Phonofilm announced to the press in April 1922 that he would soon have a workable sound-on-film system.

On 15 April 1923, DeForest premiered 18 short films made in Phonofilm — including vaudeville acts, musical performers, opera, and ballet — at the Rivoli Theater at 1620 Broadway in New York City.

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Case expressed his displeasure that the program credited only the "DeForest-Case Patents", as Phonofilm's success was fully due to the work of Case and his Case Research Lab.

One of the few two-reel films made by DeForest in the Phonofilm process was Love's Old Sweet Song, starring Louis Wolheim, Donald Gallaher, and the 20-year-old Una Merkel.

Red Seal Pictures and DeForest Phonofilm filed for bankruptcy in September 1926, and the Fleischers stopped releasing the Song Car-Tune films in Phonofilm shortly thereafter.

On 4 October 1926, Phonofilm made its UK premiere with a program of short films presented at the Empire Cinema in London, including a short film with Sidney Bernstein welcoming Phonofilm to the UK.

In June 1925, Phonofilm opened its first Australian office at 129 Bathurst Street in Sydney.

Unfortunately, Phonofilm had to close all of its operations in Australia by October 1927, and sold its remaining studio facilities to an Australian company in October 1928.

Phonofilm produced four films in the process, Cuando fui leon, En confesionario, Va usted en punto con el banco, and El misterio de la Puerta del Sol.

In 1976, five Phonofilm titles were discovered in a trunk in Australia, and these films have been restored by Australia's National Film and Sound Archive.