Grauman says he’ll produce ‘talkers’

Oct. 23, 1928: Theater owner Sid Grauman said he would start producing talking pictures. Times Hollywood writer Grace Kingsley called the news “one of the most important announcements of the year” in the movie industry.

“He will make feature-length pictures as well as novelties, he says.... Grauman should be a tremendous asset to the producing end of the business, inasmuch as he has shown, to an infinitely greater degree than any other local exhibitor, that he knows what the public wants,” Kingsley wrote.

Grauman put it this way: “I think that the silent drama has gone as far as it can go and that the future of pictures is in the talkers. I believe there is no end to the artistic future of talking pictures, with their wide visual field, a field limited on the stage.”