what was the first feature-length film to use vitaphone technology
Vitaphone The business was established at Western Electric's Bell Laboratories in New York City and acquired by Warner Bros. in April 1925.[2] Warner Bros. introduced Vitaphone on August 6, 1926 with the release of their silent feature Don Juan, which had been retrofitted with a symphonic musical score and sound effects. There was no spoken dialog. The feature was preceded by a program of short subjects with live-recorded sound, nearly all featuring classical instrumentalists and opera stars. The only "pop music" artist was guitarist Roy Smeck and the only actual "talkie" was the short film that opened the program: four minutes of introductory remarks by motion picture industry spokesman Will Hays.
History of film D. W. Griffith had the highest standing among American directors in the industry, because of the dramatic excitement he conveyed to the audience through his films. The American film industry, or "Hollywood", as it was becoming known after its new geographical center in Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since: film factory for the world and exporting its product to most countries. By the 1920s, the United States reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually,[1] or 82% of the global total (Eyman, 1997). During late 1927, Warner's released The Jazz Singer, with the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized). Sound saved the Hollywood studio system in the face of the Great Depression (Parkinson, 1995).