Theatre: Vocafilm

Smug Broadwayfarers learned last week that the shoguns of the show world, principally the Brothers Shubert, Albert Herman Woods, William A. Brady, Arthur Hammerstein, had bickered among themselves, had dickered with one David R. Hochreich, president of Vocafilm Corporation of America, makers of a talking picture device that theretofore had been obscured by Movietone (parade music, gunfire) and by Vitaphone (Ben Bernie, tapdancing, Frances Williams). Unofficially, the newspapers said that Hochreich and the theatre shoguns had made a deal: Hochreich to receive money, the producers the rights to his invention.

Many a movie man smiled; it was a moral victory for the...

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