Earliest Audience Recording?

[Jack Theakston]

Here's an interesting one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEVhXFybB5c" target="_blank

Now, I've had and heard audience reaction discs from previews from the '40s and '50s, but this is the earliest audience reaction I've ever heard, even with the annoying narration over it. Obviously, the disc was a promo, probably for a trucked around horn, or perhaps outside of a theater, but it's interesting that the label notes that the audience is a real audience laughing at the picture, and indeed, there is some music, too.

So what do you all make of it? Have any of you ever heard similar field recordings?

[moviepas]

I have downloaded this piece. Charles Penrose was a British comedian who was famous for his recording of The Laughing Policeman. Although I have only heard this one, I believe he also recorded and performed other Laughing whatevers.

Quite an old turntable the guy has. Another piece of history still in use.

[Brooksie]

I'm certain I read of at least one other recording of this kind - from memory, David Robinson's book on Chaplin claimed that several minutes of audience laughter during a showing of 'The Gold Rush' was broadcast on radio. I'm not sure if any recordings were made or preserved (no doubt we'd know about it if they were), but it must have been 1925 or thereabouts.

There seemed to be some bizarre appetite for listening to folks laugh at around that time, as well as the sort of laughing songs that moviepas mentions. Take a listen to the Okeh Laughing Record, a total oddity from 1923 which I came across on the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/Okeh.

Who knows what the appeal was!? I find it oddly ghoulish.

[Richard M Roberts]

I've heard electrical test recordings made by Western Electric in 1924 from a mike they had installed above the stage of the Capitol Theater in New York where they made a number of recordings of performance off the stage and of Erno Rapee and the Orchestra performing, and you can hear live audience reaction on them. It was kind of neat to hear something sounding live and electrical that early.

There's a number of live audience recordings from Britain in the 1930's, comedian Max Miller made several live Variety records in 1938-40. Apparently British record companies found this did not deter from the listening process earlier than American companies did.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[vitaphone]

Jerry Lewis had a big stack of 16 inch audience reaction recordings in his archives and my friend Bob Furmanek let me know that intermixed with them were a few same-sized Vitaphone soundtrack disks. I believe the audience disks came primarily from storage in the Westwood theatre and at some point to whole stack went to Lewis. This is at least 20 years ago.

Among the Vitaphone disks in the stack were TRIXIE FRIGANZA IN 'MY BAG 'O TRIX" (1929) which was subsequently restored. That's the one where she plays a big bass fiddle. Another was JACK HALEY AND FLO McFADDEN IN 'HALEYISMS' (1929). No film on this one, but it is an Al Boasberg written two act very much like Burns & Allen. I was able to get a transfer to Jack Haley, Jr, who played it for his still-living 100 year old mother --- Flo.

[westegg]

Aren't there recordings that were done at an NYC opera house circa 1904? The recordings were done above the stage during performances and audience applause was part of the sound capture.

[Jonathan]

I presume the OP was asking about cinema audiences but if we're extending it to live theatre audiences, then the Mapelson cylinders recorded at the Met from around 1901 are perhaps the earliest. You can hear the audience applause and vocal reactions clearly on this recording around 1:55.

As for laughing songs, yes these were very popular in the 78 era. Charles Penrose recorded dozens of them, e.g. I Tried to Keep From Laughing, I Couldn't Help Laughing, The Laughing Family, They All Laugh Like This, The Laughing Husband, My Laughing Irish Girl, Ragtime Laughing Man, The Mirthful Curate (for a change), Laughing Jazz Drummer, The Laughing Ploughboy, etc. etc.

The earliest recording of a laughing song I own - on an original 1890s disc - is of George W. Johnson (1846-1914), an African-American who recorded the same ones many times. They can be found on YouTube too, but I won't link to them as they include "racially sensitive" words, sometimes even in the titles.

[Penfold]

Interesting - a record whose sole purpose is to promote a silent film. I wonder, as it was the same year, whether the live broadcast of The Gold Rush mentioned by Brooksie inspired the idea of this promo item.....I can't believe people paid money for that, but who knows. Give me a few hours and I'll check the London play dates of Gold Rush and Charley's Aunt....btw, the record mentions The Tivoli; that was an important cinema on The Strand, London.....I have a couple of their quite lavish programmes, but not for these films.....


EDIT - well, if anything,it would be the other way around; Charley's Aunt played The Tivoli from April 13th 1925, after a private screening a few days earlier; The Gold Rush played The Tivoli (The UK Premiere, followed by an exclusive run there) from September 14th 1925. The live broadcast - I assume it was live, it was a solid 10 minute broadcast - from there was on September 26th. The film did not go on general release in the UK until March '26.