Sound film
The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included 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, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.
Stereophonic sound
However, beginning in 1957, films recorded in stereo (except for those shown in Cinerama or Todd-AO) carried an alternate mono track for theatres not ready or willing to re-equip for stereo. From then until about 1975, when Dolby Stereo was used for the first time in films, most motion pictures—even some from which stereophonic soundtrack albums were made, such as Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet"—were still released in monaural sound, stereo being reserved almost exclusively for expensive musicals such as "West Side Story", "My Fair Lady", or "Camelot"; epics such as "Ben-Hur" or "Cleopatra". Stereo was also reserved for dramas with a strong reliance on sound effects or music, such as "The Graduate", with its Simon and Garfunkel score.