The deaf silent film star, whose work was taken away by the sound films, started subtitling them

In the 1920s, Emerson Romero had only a brief taste of the Hollywood high life. He took film acting seriously, studying Charlie Chaplin’s methods and working with stars such as WC Fields and Janet Gaynor. However, when sound films appeared in cinemas, the promising actor’s career ended immediately. Romero was deaf, which was not only a disadvantage when shooting silent films.

Romero was born in Havana on August 19, 1900, and became deaf there at the age of six, losing his hearing as a complication of whooping cough. The boy lived well (his family got rich from sugar exports), so his father was able to enroll little Emerson in a special elementary school in America. This was the Wright Oral School in New York, where disabled children such as Helen Keller, who later became famous with her life story, studied among others. Romero continued his studies in America and studied engineering at his colleges, but he was no longer able to obtain a degree because the family became impoverished and could no longer pay the child’s school fees. He then began working in a New York bank until his brother Dorian talked him into going back to Cuba in 1924.

Dorian Romero then started his own company, the Pan-American Film Corporation, which produced country image films disguised as feature films for the Cuban government. The older brother saw potential in the handsome, athletic brother and got him to appear in his films. Emerson got it right away A Yankee in Havana title role, but the film flopped. However, it was good that director Richard Harlan noticed Emerson and offered him a job.

Romero appeared in more than two dozen films in the following years under the name Tommy Albert (film distributors asked him to choose a simpler stage name), and his career took off. He typically worked for smaller studios, where he also helped with editing and subtitling of dialogs accompanying silent film scenes. Later, he also managed to get a role for a deaf-mute compatriot, Carmen de Arcos, and they starred in three films together. Of course, Romero did not hear the director’s instructions on the set, but the information was discussed beforehand in writing and by pointing, and the actor saw when he had to start the scene he was filming by watching the cameraman’s movements.

Romero’s biggest successes came in 1927 – the very year he was a big Hollywood sensation The jazz singer, the first film that was partially sound. “Talkie” films soon pushed silent films out of theaters, and Romero could no longer find work. His career ended roughly when the great global economic crisis began, and Dorian died soon after, and with that the family film company also closed down the curtain. Romero went back to work at the bank, and after a few years he applied for a new job, where he could use his engineering studies. He got a job at the Republic Aviation aircraft factory, where he worked, among other things, on the production of sheet metal for P-47 Thunderbolt planes. This company remained the man’s workplace until his retirement in 1965.

In addition to his work, the former silent filmmaker worked passionately to bring the joy of acting to his fellow deaf people. In 1934, he founded a theater with two friends, where both deaf and hearing people could enjoy the plays. Romero himself directed plays, and was the actor of more than twenty deaf actors. He also found his way back to the movies: as he was saddened that the film industry did not care about the hearing impaired after the release of sound films, in 1947 he came up with a sufni solution.

Romero practically brought back the full-screen subtitles accompanying silent film scenes. He bought several films with his own money, and then cut them to pieces at the appropriate dramaturgical points. He inserted transcripts of spoken dialogues and other necessary subtitles between the scenes. A film subtitled using this method naturally became much longer than the original work, and it became difficult for hearing viewers to enjoy, because the frames of the subtitles kept interrupting the soundtrack, for example. Still, Romero was the first to seriously try something like this: his work was not of high quality, but there was a demand for his subtitled films, and for a while he even rented them out to deaf schools and clubs.

However, as this work required money and time, and he could not get support from the film industry, Romero stopped subtitling after a few films. But this was enough to attract the attention of Edmund Brunke Boatner, who was the head of the American School for the Deaf. At that time, Boatner also learned that a Belgian company was experimenting with displaying subtitles on the film strip parallel to the scenes. This and Romero’s work spurred him to found a nonprofit called Captioned Films for the Deaf.

CFD specifically wanted to make as many subtitled films as possible for the deaf. Between 1949 and 1958, the company subtitled and delivered 29 films to institutions dealing with the deaf, and its work was supported by celebrities such as Katherine Hepburn. In 1958, the Captioned Film Act came into force, which provided state funds to the CFD, and then the number of subtitled films made for the deaf increased.

At that time, Romero was already busy with other things, working on versions of everyday objects adapted for the deaf. In 1959, he developed a vibrating alarm clock called Vibralarm, but also made doorbells, smoke alarms and baby monitors for the deaf. And when he was resting, he probably sometimes watched his cousin César Romero, who played the Joker in the 1960s Batman series, on TV. Emerson Romero moved to Boulder, Colorado for his retirement years, where he died in 1972 – when the subtitled film was no longer considered a curiosity at all.