George Groves The Movie Sound Pioneer

George Groves arrived in New York on December 11th 1923 not knowing where he was going to live and whether Western Electric Research Laboratories (known as Bell Labs from 1925) would actually be able to offer him employment.

His entrée into 463 West Street was the business card presented to him by their Director of Research, Dr. Harold Arnold, who had interviewed him in Manchester. Dr. Arnold had been impressed by George but couldn't guarantee him a job if he sailed to New York.

Fortunately, the head of the Personnel Department at Western Electric Research Labs was sympathetic to the man who had travelled 3,000 miles on an off-chance and offered to place George within their Research Service Department.

This would allow him to become familiar with the wide range of research activities that the company was engaged in and allow George to become acquainted with their engineering and support staff. The young Englishman found lodgings at the YMCA in Brooklyn where he lived for most of his time in New York.

Being a skilled musician – and having brought his French horn with him to the States – music became George's means of meeting people and making friends.

He regularly played at the Germania Club in Brooklyn in an orchestra composed mainly of German businessmen.

George also played for the American Orchestral Society and in a symphony orchestra at City College, which boasted over one hundred members.

He even organised and conducted a small orchestra amongst his engineering colleagues at Bell Labs. When George began his employment at the labs at 463 West Street, a research team led by J. P. Maxfield had been attempting for five years to develop sound motion pictures using electrical recording and sound-on-disc technology.

Their efforts were boosted by important developmental work within the research labs by Dr. Harold Arnold and E.C. Wente.

They were able to develop Lee de Forest's Audion into the first practical vacuum tube amplifier and they created a condenser microphone capable of picking up sound much more efficiently.

Plus loudspeaking telephone horns - as loudspeakers were initially called - capable of filling an auditorium were being developed in the labs.

However, the creation of an efficient system that could precisely and consistently synchronise a film's sound recordings to its pictures, was still proving to be a stumbling block.

In 1922 a set of records was made to provide a running commentary to a Bell System motion picture entitled The Audion.

This was an animation which explained the workings of Lee de Forest's vacuum tube.

The synchronisation between picture and sound was accurate to within one second, which was good enough for this type of commentary but quite insufficient for the lip-sync of singers or actors. George, although initially a junior member of the research group, was able to employ his engineering and technical skills within the team to help improve the efficiency of the technology. George’s musical talents were also utilised in the test films that the Western Electric team shot.

Films and disc recordings were made of George playing his French horn, so that the Bell engineers could practice marrying the sound recordings to their motion picture equivalents. In his oral history of 1973, George said: Early in 1925 Bell Labs had made sufficient improvements with the synchronisation and efficiency of their sound-on-disc system to put on demonstrations to the major movie studios.

However, there was little interest as the film studios were making record profits from silent pictures and the investment needed for sound pictures, both in production and exhibition, would be considerable.

Why fix something that was far from being broken?

The studios disguised their vested interest in the status quo by claiming a lack of public demand for sound films.

This was explained by Stanley S. A. Watkins (1888-1975) – the British engineer at Bell Labs – in his memoirs published in 1964: However through a Western Electric sales contact, Nathan Levinson, a demonstration of the system's capabilities was given to Sam Warner of the fledgling Warner Bros. After a further demonstration to Sam's siblings, Albert and Harry, the four Warner brothers bought the use of the Bell Labs system.

In May 1925 they licensed entrepreneur Walter J. Rich to exploit it for commercial motion picture use, which led to the creation of the Vitaphone Corporation. Rich became its President and Warner Bros. took a fifty percent share in the venture. Then in April 1926, Warners signed a contract with Bell Lab's parent company, AT&T, for the exclusive use of its film sound technology.

As a consequence George Groves and his Bell colleagues H.C. Humphrey and R.C. Sawyer were seconded to Vitaphone.

Working under Stanley Watkins, the trio were charged with sharing their technical expertise with Warners' staff in using this new apparatus.

However, as the nation's musical talent was based mainly in New York, George remained in the 'Big Apple' and began working at Warners' newly-acquired Vitagraph studios.

George recalled in his AFI oral history how canine cinema star Rin Tin Tin (1918-1932) played his own part in Vitaphone's sound experiments: The first short subject made at Vitagraph for actual theatrical exhibition was called The Volga Boatmen.

In this a dozen Russians hauled ropes in a mock-up of the bow of a boat as they sang The Volga Boatmen's Song, a popular traditional Russian folk song.

Microphones were strategically placed in front of the actors in static, fixed positions, so no real action was possible. In The Volga Boatmen George Groves made his first commercial sound film recording but later described how the Vitagraph studios and the technology that they used were not fit for purpose Stanley Watkins, who for a year became Chief Engineer of the Vitaphone Corporation, also commented that the sound of cooing pigeons perched on the roof girders was another problem. A long pole was required to discourage them!

Incidentally, George Groves and Stanley Watkins briefly shared a BFI (British Film Institute) commemorative plaque that was unveiled at a prestigious Warners cinema in London's West End in 1996.
The plaque celebrated the pair's engineering achievements in developing the sound-on-disc technology. However Warners sold their cinema chain in 2003 and the new owners removed it and the plaque is now lost.

In The Warner Bros. Story, Clive Hirschhorn, archivist for AT&T, praises Stanley Watkins and George Groves, for their work on the sound-on-disc process especially their: As the Vitaphone process was being refined it was decided that the only way to prove its capabilities was to use it on a full-length feature film and the lavish John Barrymore action picture, Don Juan, was seen as the ideal guinea pig.