It Happened in Hillsborough: Anna Case Sings

A New York Times feature story from 1936 on the tenth anniversary of "talking pictures" declared,
"Sound Has a Birthday." Indeed, it does. The very first presentation of a successful commercial motion
picture with living sound took place at Warner's 39; Theatre in New York 100 years ago today, on August
5, 1926. And Hillsborough's own Anna Case was the star attraction.

Anna Case Sings!

Anna Case, the daughter of South Branch village blacksmith Peter van Nuys Case, was a former
Metropolitan Opera soprano, leading concert and radio performer, and renowned Edison recording
artist when she was chosen by Warner Brothers to star in the musical short "La Fiesta." The nine-minute
film, utilizing the new sound synchronization process Vitaphone, was the penultimate presentation on a
bill that concluded with John Barrymore in "Don Juan," the first sound feature - premiering more than a
year before Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer." And while "Don Juan" was essentially a silent film with
synchronized music and sound effects, the stars who appeared in the shorts wowed the public and the
critics with their perfectly synchronized singing and playing.

The decision to cast Miss Case in this historic movie appears to have been an easy one, perhaps the only
one possible. Producer Samuel L. Warner, in a New York Times article earlier that year, explained that it
was extremely difficult to find a leading lady pleasing enough that the camera did not see her flaws. This
problem was exacerbated when it came to opera singers. "The film public would need much education
to accept the average prima donna physique", opined Mr. Warner.

I know of only one great singer who is near enough the screen type to be accepted by the movie public.
That is Anna Case. “Unfortunately, none of the newspapers that covered this story in 1948 did any
follow-up, so it is assumed that the bootleggers, having learned of the raid, moved on and were never
caught.

She appears in the second half of the short film, singing her own composition, "Anhelo" La Fiesta
proved to be one of the most popular of the early Vitaphone films and continued to be shown in
combination with other shorts and features for a number of years after that initial August 1926
premiere.

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Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column
“Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. A recipient of
the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission History Award for Education/Leadership in
2018, he was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.