Events

• January 10 - Fritz Lang's science-fiction fantasy Metropolis premieres in Germany.
• April 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx marries Marion Benda.
• May 11 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in Los Angeles, California by Douglas Fairbanks. The 1st Academy Awards (Oscars) went on to films, which are released in 1927 or 1928.
• August 12 - Paramount's dramatic film Wings, which would go on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture, opens at the Criterion Theater in New York City, with an unheard-of roadshow admission price of $2.00 per ticket.
• September 23 - FOX Films acquires the rights to the Tri-Ergon sound-on-film technology, which had been developed in 1919 by three German inventors, Josef Engl, Hans Vogt, and Joseph Massole.
• October 6 - The Jazz Singer, (starring Al Jolson), premieres at the Warner Theater in New York City. Although not the first 'talkie', The Jazz Singer becomes the first box-office hit and popularizes sound motion pictures. It was the highest-grossing movie of all-time.
• Italian Alberto Rabagliati wins a Rudolph Valentino look-alike contest and moves to Hollywood to start his acting career.

Top grossing films

1. The Jazz Singer
2. Wings (#1 for year 1927 alone)
3. The King of Kings
4. Love
5. Seventh Heaven
6. The Unknown
7. It
8. Mockery
9. The Patent Leather Kid
10. Jesse James(1927 film)
11. My Best Girl
12. Sunrise
13. Metropolis

Academy Awards

• Best Production: Wings
• Best Artistic Quality: Sunrise
• Best Actor: Emil Jannings for The Way of All Flesh and the 1928 movie The Last Command
• Best Actress: Janet Gaynor for Seventh Heaven and Sunrise, as well as the 1928 movie Street Angel

Films released in 1927

• Annie Laurie
• Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (documentary)
• The Cat and the Canary
• The Chinese Parrot
• College, starring Buster Keaton
• The General, starring Buster Keaton
• Her Wild Oat, starring Colleen Moore
• The Honorable Mr. Buggs
• Hula, starring Clara Bow
• Huntingtower, by George Pearson (John Buchan novel)
• It, starring Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno
• The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson and May McAvoy
• The Kid Brother, a comedy starring Harold Lloyd
• The Lodger
• London After Midnight, starring Lon Chaney, Sr., Conrad Nagel and Marceline Day, directed by Tod Browning
• Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang
• Mockery, starring Lon Chaney
• Napoléon directed by Abel Gance
• October: Ten Days That Shook the World
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy
• The Scar of Shame, a race movie starring Harry Henderson and Lucia Lynn Moses
• Seventh Heaven, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell
• The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, starring Ramón Novarro and Norma Shearer, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
• Sunrise, starring George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor, directed by F.W. Murnau
• Underworld
• The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney Sr., Norman Kerry, and Joan Crawford
• The Way of All Flesh, starring Emil Jannings
• Why Girls Love Sailors
• Wings, starring Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen and Jobyna Ralston

Short film series

• Buster Keaton (1917-1941)
• Our Gang (1922-1944)
• Laurel and Hardy (1921-1943)

Animated short film series

• Felix the Cat (1919-1930)
• Aesop's Film Fables (1921-1933)
• Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes (1924-1927)
• Alice Comedies (1923-1927)
• Krazy Kat (1925-1940)
• Un-Natural History (1925-1927)
• Pete the Pup (1926-1927)
• Inkwell Imps (1927-1929)
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (1927-1938)
• Newslaffs (1927-1928)

Births

• January 17 - Eartha Kitt, actress, singer
• February 7 - Juliette Greco singer, actress
• February 20 - Sidney Poitier, actor
• March 1 - Harry Belafonte actor, singer
• March 20 - Cairbre (also known as Leo), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's lion mascot, born in Dublin Zoo
• April 13- Maurice Ronet actor, director, writer
• May 13 - Herbert Ross, director (d. 2001)
• June 23 - Bob Fosse, director (d. 1987)
• July 4 - Gina Lollobrigida, actress
• July 6 - Janet Leigh, actress (d. 2004)
• September 16 - Peter Falk, actor
• October 14 - Roger Moore, actor
• October 18 - George C. Scott, film and stage actor (d. 1999)
• October 31 - Lee Grant, actress
• November 14 - McLean Stevenson, American actor (d. February 15, 1996)

Film Debuts

• Robert Armstrong
• Fred Zinneman, director and producer
• Barbara Stanwyck
• January 13 - Arnold Daly, stage & film actor
• March 17 - Charles Emmett Mack, actor age 26
• April 25 - Earle Williams, American silent screen actor
• May 7 - Bruce McRae, stage & screen actor
• June 3 - Einar Hanson, Swedish actor
• June 4 - Robert McKim, actor (the villain in Fairbanks' "Mark of Zorro")
• September 5 - Marcus Loew, theater chain executive & founder of Loews Theaters
• October 5 - Sam Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers studios
• October 13 - Hughie Mack, rotund American silent film actor
• November 4 - Valli Valli, stage & film actress
• December 15 - Romaine Fielding, silent film actor and director