A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in New York City in April 1923.

The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the United States in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films incorporating synchronized dialogue—known as "talking pictures", or "talkies"—were exclusively shorts; the earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.

Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an American film editor and sound designer.

Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine (née Scott) and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch (1907–1967), a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961. He then attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduating in Liberal Arts.

While at Hopkins, he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, with whom he staged a number of happenings. In 1965, Murch and Robbins enrolled in the graduate program of the University of Southern California film school, successfully encouraging Deschanel to follow them. There all three encountered, and became friends with fellow students such as George Lucas, Hal Barwood, Robert Dalva, Willard Huyck, Don Glut and John Milius; all of them would go on to be successful filmmakers.

Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969). Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's THX 1138 and American Graffiti and Coppola's The Godfather before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's The Conversation, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound in 1974. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's The Godfather Part II which was released in 1974, the same year as The Conversation. He is most famous for his sound designing work on Apocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979. In 1985 he directed his one film, Return to Oz, which he co-wrote with Gill Dennis.

Florence Desmond (31 May 1905 - 16 January 1993) was the stage name of Florence Dawson, an English actress, comedienne and impersonator.

Born In London in 1905, Desmond was educated at the Dame Alice Owen's School, Islington. Her brother Fred Desmond was a comedy acrobat from the "Desmond and Marks" double act.

She began her stage career at age 10. Upon leaving school in 1920, she embarked on a long and successful career in the theatre, especially as an impersonator of famous stars. She appeared extensively in radio, theatre and occasionally in the cinema. She died in Guildford, Surrey in 1993 aged 87, where a Ward was named for her at St.Luke's Hospital.

She was married twice, first to the aviator Tom Campbell Black from 1935–1936, then to aviator and insurance broker Charles Hughesdon from 1937 who she lived with at Dunsborough Park House in Ripley, Surrey.

3. "Florence Desmond", by Florence Desmond, London: George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd, 1953.

George Formby, OBE (26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961), born George Hoy Booth, was a British comedy actor, singer-songwriter, and comedian. He sang light, comical songs, accompanying himself on the banjo ukulele or banjolele. He was a major star of stage and screen in the 1930s and 1940s.

Formby was born at 3 Westminster Street, Wigan, Lancashire, as George Hoy Booth. The eldest of seven surviving children, Formby was born blind because of an obstructive caul. His sight was restored during a violent coughing fit or sneeze when he was a few months old.His father James Booth used the stage name George Formby, adopted from the town of Formby, Lancashire. He was one of the great music hall comedians of his day, fully the equal of his son's later success. His father, not wishing him to watch his performances, moved the family to Atherton Road in Hindley. It was from there that the younger Formby was apprenticed as a jockey when he was seven. He rode his first professional race at 10, when he weighed under 4 stone (56 lb; 25 kg).