Manhattan Cocktail was a part-talkie

Part-talkie

A part-talkie is a partly, and most often primarily, silent film which includes one or more synchronous sound sequences with audible dialog or singing. During the silent portions lines of dialog are presented as "titles" -- printed text briefly filling the screen -- and the soundtrack is used only...

 film, directed by Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner was an American film director. Her directorial career in feature films spanned from the late 1920s into the early 1940s, a time period in which there were very few—if any—other women working in the field.- Biography :Born in San Francisco, California, Arzner grew up in Los...

, and starring Nancy Carroll

Nancy Carroll

Nancy Carroll was an American actress.-Career:She was christened Ann Veronica Lahiff in New York City. Of Irish parentage, she and her sister once performed a dancing act in a local contest of amateur talent. This led her to a stage career and then to the screen. She began her acting career in...

, Richard Arlen

Richard Arlen

-Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

, and Lilyan Tashman

Lilyan Tashman

Lilyan Tashman was a Brooklyn-born Jewish American vaudeville, Broadway, and film actress. Tashman was best known for her supporting roles as tongue-in-cheek villainesses and the bitchy 'other woman'...

. At the time this movie was made Hollywood was already making the transition of silent to sound either making all talking movies, part talking movies, or silent movies with their own soundtrack and sound effects.

Film Preservation

Manhattan Cocktail is a lost film

Lost film

A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...

, except for a one-minute montage sequence "Skyline Dance" by Slavko Vorkapich which was released in October 2005 on the DVD Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941 is a 7-disc and 19-hour DVD retrospective released by Image Entertainment in October 2005, and which includes some of the earliest American experimental film. It includes the work of:...

.

Cast Notes

Arlen became a big star with the Paramount film Wings (1927) and Carroll was becoming famous with the coming of sound movies. However, both Carroll and Arlen's careers would fade by the early 1930s.

See also

• Silent movie
  Silent Movie
  Silent Movie is a 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976...
  
  
• List of lost films
• Sound movie
• Vitaphone
  Vitaphone
  Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
  
  
• Sound-on-disc
  Sound-on-disc
  The term Sound-on-disc refers to a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or playback sound in sync with a motion picture...
  
  
• Black and White
• The Jazz Singer
  The Jazz Singer (1927 film)
  The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system,...