{"id":794596,"date":"2026-10-07T07:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T07:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794596\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T07:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T07:44:08","slug":"scottish-film-could-steal-the-jazz-singers-crown-as-worlds-first-talkie-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794596\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish film could steal The Jazz Singer\u2019s crown as \u2018world\u2019s first talkie\u2019 | Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

For almost a century, The Jazz Singer has been celebrated as the world\u2019s first feature-length film to include synchronised dialogue (known as a \u201ctalkie\u201d), and English as the first language of cinema. But a chance discovery threatens to upend film history with the news that it may have been beaten to the title by a full year \u2013 and by a film made in Glasgow<\/a> and written in Scots.<\/p>\n

The breakthrough was made by the historian and self-confessed \u201cfilm nerd\u201d Marc David Jacobs, who was conducting research for a book on the first wave of British sound films when he came across the story of Till the Bells Ring.<\/p>\n

The 46-minute feature film, featuring spoken parts and synchronised sound throughout, premiered in Edinburgh in October 1926, a year before The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, hit New York\u2019s screens to widespread fanfare and took its place in the history books.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the start of what we would consider modern film,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cIt was a completely new art form at the time, and if it had been taken up in Britain there could have been a real alternative history of cinema where the Americans didn\u2019t take over and get such a lead on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creation of the Scottish playwright Graham Moffat, Till the Bells Ring is a domestic comedy set in Glasgow and performed by Moffat\u2019s six-part touring company, including his wife, Margaret, and daughter Winifred, in what he called \u201clowland braid Scots\u201d: a term for plain-language Scots dialect originating from central and southern Scotland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Graham Moffat directed and starred in Till the Bells Ring alongside his wife, Maggie. Photograph: 1996-2004 AccuSoft Co. All rights reserved\/courtesy of the British Library<\/p>\n

It was billed at the time as a \u201csuper talking picture \u2026 of Victorian family life\u201d and heralded upon its premiere as a cinematic milestone. The Edinburgh Evening News wrote in a review: \u201cEven America has never attempted such a work \u2026 So perfect was the synchronisation between the image on screen and the broad Scots dialogue spoken by the image, that one might quite well have been listening to a legitimate stage version of the comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jacobs said the film was quickly forgotten about. \u201cThis fits into a larger narrative about British cinema, which has been uniquely neglected,\u201d he said. \u201cI think if it had been celebrated as a distinctly Scottish production, it might have survived or been discovered by now. But it\u2019s fallen under this rubric of British cinema and there\u2019s no real sense that British cinema history is actually worth looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film was billed at the time as a \u2018super talking picture … of Victorian family life\u2019. Photograph: courtesy of the National Library of Scotland<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that the film was ever screened publicly again after its week-long run in Edinburgh\u2019s Poole\u2019s Synod Hall, where the city\u2019s Traverse theatre stands today. Moffat died in 1951 having never made another film.<\/p>\n

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Among Jacobs\u2019 discoveries are that two of the film\u2019s reels, comprising more than half its length, survive in the BFI National Archives in Hertfordshire but have never been screened since their acquisition more than 50 years ago. With this year marking the film\u2019s centenary, Jacobs hopes that will change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this becomes more than just a Scottish story, and that archives around the world might be able to take a look and maybe find the missing reel,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this is a film that had its origins as a stage play and the manuscripts have survived, so you can imagine perhaps playing those surviving reels and then performing that missing part on stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be an amazing moment to recreate this important landmark in world cinema history. But beyond that, hopefully it spurs people on to reconsider British cinema history as a whole and think: if this has been sitting around for 100 years, what else might be out there?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For almost a century, The Jazz Singer has been celebrated as the world\u2019s first feature-length film to include…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-794596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}