Top 6-10 Firsts in Feature Films

6 Wings 1927

First: Best Picture Winner at the Oscars

The 1st Academy Awards in 1929 had an alternative to the Best Picture award (introduced the following year) called the Most Outstanding Production award, so one could argue that the first official Best Picture winner was All the King’s Men, but that would be overly pedantic. This romantic/WWI epic stars Buddy Rodgers and Richard Arlen as small time townies fighting for the attention of sweetheart Sylvia (Clara Bow), who become best friends after training together. Presumed dead in action, Arlen’s character steals a German bi-plane in attempt to get to safety, but is shot down by Rodgers’ character in attempt to avenge his friends death.

7 The Jazz Singer 1927

First: Feature Film with Audible Dialogue

This is a well-known film starring Al Jolson as the title character Jake Rabinowitz, a man from a devout Jewish family who becomes an entertainer under the alias Jack Robin, to his family’s dismay. The process used to show the film was incredibly complex: Each of Jolson’s musical numbers was mounted on a separate reel with a separate accompanying sound disc. Even though the film was only eighty-nine minutes long…there were fifteen reels and fifteen discs to manage, and the projectionist had to be able to thread the film and cue up the Vitaphone records very quickly. The least stumble, hesitation, or human error would result in public and financial humiliation for the company.

8 Gone With the Wind 1937

First: Feature Film to Gross $100m

This, along with Toy Story, is probably the most famous film on the list. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the same name, this romantic epic tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath on the people of a Georgian town. It received a then record ten academy awards, and consistently ranks high on lists of America’s greatest films. It was the first film to gross 100 million, and when inflation adjusted is the highest grossing film ever. Marked men

9 Bwana Devil 1952

First: 3-D Feature Film

This is a film about the construction of the Ugandan Railway in British Africa in 1898, and the occurrence of man-eating lions devouring the workers. It was filmed and shown using a Natural Vision 3-D process, and the film was released by Arch Oboler Productions, after being turned down by 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first 3-D film to be released by a major company was The Man in the Dark (1953), distributed by Columbia. Pictured above is the iconic photograph of the first audience to watch Bwana Devil.

10 Toy Story 1995

First: CGI Feature Film

This film is about a boy’s toys, which come to life when he’s not around. It took 27 animators to make the 114,420 frames of animation that make up the film. Each character was made out of clay and then computer designed, before being assigned motion controls (Woody had the most, at 723, including 212 for his face alone). Every frame took between two and fifteen days to make, and 800,000 machine hours were required to complete the film.

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