On this day in Labor History the year was 1928.
300 musicians working in Chicago went on strike against 250 movie theaters.
They were protesting their impending replacement by talking pictures.
This was part of a nationwide wave of protest by the American Federation of Musicians.
The union had amassed one-and-a-half million dollars to fight laying off musicians who played at the movies.
From the inception of cinema, Thomas Edison hoped to merge sound and film.
Since this did not happen in the early days of movies, the films used inter-titles and had musical accompaniment.
This music ranged from an orchestra in large urban theaters to a single piano in smaller theaters.
Across the country 75,000 musicians worked in movie theaters.
This live music played an essential role in setting the mood of the film, building dramatic tension, and enhancing the movie-going experience.
However, there was considerable difficulty matching other sound to film visuals.
Western Electric and Bell Telephone produced the first commercially viable movie sound system.
It hooked up a very large phonograph to a film projector. This was first used in the film Don Juan in 1926.
But the next year, the opening of the Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer, in October 1927, marked the introduction of the first successful talking picture.
Talking pictures were a boon to many comedic vaudeville performers such as Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers who could now translate their comedy onto film.
As a result, musicians - members of the American Federation of Musicians – were no longer needed to provide musical accompaniment.
By the end of 1928, nearly 2,000 theater musicians in the U.S. were unemployed. By 1929, nearly half of the nation’s movie theater had converted to sound.
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