Movies: Lee De Forest

For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this ...

British music hall entertainer Dick Henderson sings "I Love Her All the More" and trills out a resounding ode to his beloved in this early sound recording, stopping to aim some rather less romantic jibes at his wife before delivering a rousing encore...

Spanish dancer Conchita Piquer performs in a short film produced in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process....

Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake sing snappy songs....

Follow the bouncing ball sing-along...

This 1926 Fleischer Song Car-Tune encouraged movie going audiences to follow the bouncing ball, or racist caricature, and join in on a minstrel classic. In this way, the short joined sentimentality, a sense of the collective, and community to an alre...

In his career, De Wolf Hopper recited Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" thousands of times. Here, wearing a tuxedo, he emerges from behind a curtain as if at a theater, gives a short introduction, and launches into the poem. The camera is s...

Early music video....

Vaudeville stars Weber and Fields perform their famous pool hall routine in a short film produced in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process....

Blake plays his "Fantasy on Swanee River" (two takes of same piece, in different styles). The highest notes failed to record in this seminal experiment with synchronized sound....

The first presidential film with sound recording....

'Billy Merson, the great Nottingham-born music hall performer, presents one of his signature numbers. The film clearly captures Merson's comic brilliance - he not only sings, but dances, skips and indulges in a lot of creative business with a lyre. ...

Early sound film featuring comedian Eddie Cantor....