The first language of feature films was Scots, not American English
First-ever ‘talkie’ feature film was the 1926 Scottish production, Till The Bell Ring, according to new evidence
It’s bound to come up as a pub quiz question: What was the first-ever ‘talkie’ feature film? However, if the answer on the card is The Jazz Singer, a 1927 American production, you must protest!
For it appears that a Scottish film, called Till The Bells Ring and first shown in Edinburgh, beat Al Jolson and co by a whole year. What’s more, the actors spoke in what its writer described as “Lowland braid Scots”.
A review in The Scotsman remarked that “movement and sound are perfectly synchronised, and after the listener becomes accustomed to the phenomenon of screen figures appearing to talk and the ear attunes itself to the sounds, there is no difficulty in catching the spoken words... Even America has never attempted such a work.”
However, seven years later, Till The Bells Ring was re-released as a tax dodge and marketed as a new production, leading it to be mislabelled as a 1933 film.
The original language of the silver screen was Scots. It’s enough to make Jolson weep for his ‘mammy’ – and yet another entry for the famous tea towel of Scottish firsts.
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