Classical Hollywood cinema
The beginning of the sound era itself is ambiguously defined. To some, it began with "The Jazz Singer", which was released in 1927 and increased box-office profits for films, as sound was introduced to feature films. To others, the era began in 1929, when the silent age had definitively ended. Most Hollywood pictures from the late 1920s to 1960s adhered closely to a genre—Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, and biopic (biographical picture)—and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films; Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years; Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount Pictures; and director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth Century Fox. Similarly, actors were mostly contract players. Film historians and critics note that it took about a decade for films to adapt to sound and return to the level of artistic quality of the silents, which it did in the late 1930s.
Phoenix Cinema
In 1924, the cinema's name changed to the 'Coliseum'. In 1925, the cinema was sold to Home Counties Theatres Ltd, which also owned the Athenaeum Picture Playhouse and the Summerland Cinema, both in Muswell Hill. At this time, the typical programme was silent movies accompanied by live music, plus variety acts such as singers, magicians and comedians. But in 1928, British cinema went through a huge transformation when the first sound film, "The Jazz Singer", featuring the voice of the film's star Al Jolson, premiered in the Piccadilly Theatre, London . Cinemas across London started the transition to sound and on 22 July 1929 this cinema was the first in the area to show a sound film, screening Al Jolson's "The Singing Fool".