Intertitle from ‘The Kid’ (1921)
Date
Credits
- Charlie Chaplin Film Director
- Emerson Romero Designer
Format
- Film/Video 31
Type of Work
- Article(s) 194
Techniques
- video 13
Locations Made
- United States 756
- Hollywood 2
- California 232
- Florida
Emerson Romero, a Cuban-American silent film actor was the creator of the first iteration of closed-captioning. Romero watched Hollywood transition from silent films to ‘talkies’, or films with audible dialogue. While silent films had been accessible to both hearing and non-hearing audiences, the auditory-only element of talkies left deaf viewers without a visual means of understanding the movies. Romero sought to include all audiences in the enjoyment of these new movies by cutting away to intertitles which would display the dialogue as written text in between scenes. Although his work was not widely appreciated at the time (the frequent cut-aways almost doubled the run time of films), he is presently considered a key figure in accessible design.
Location of ‘The Kid’ production: Hollywood, CA
