|
Answer:
Emerson Romero (1900-1972), a Hollywood/Cuban silent-movie actor and inventor (and incidentally, cousin of the well-known film star Cesar Romero), was the first person to caption films. After the advent of the “talkies” in 1927, he, like other Deaf performers, left Hollywood, their livelihoods gone. He purchased reels of commercial films and painstakingly spliced in captions.
Several of Ernest Marshall’s films, which were produced for Deaf-club screenings, include captions, done in careful hand-lettering, so that those who didn’t have a strong “ASL background” could also enjoy the films. These films were seen by relatively few people, in the confines of Deaf clubs. They were, of course, enjoyed and greatly appreciated by their audiences.
With the rise of the foreign-film industry and the importation of major foreign movies, the practice of subtitling the foreign dialogue became standard practice. (The alternative to subtitling was dubbing the foreign dialogue in English, and, not surprisingly, deaf audiences hated it, as did many hearing viewers.) Deaf viewers enjoyed subtitled foreign movies, even while English-language movies were inaccessible to them.
Captioning didn’t become commercially feasible until Congress established the Captioned Films Program. (Malcolm J. “Mac” Norwood [1927-1989] played a crucial role in this.) It’s now called the Captioned Media Program, but the aim has remained constant—to make audio-visual media accessible to deaf people. |
