The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American part-talkie musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, featuring six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
This article is about the 1927 film. For other uses, see The Jazz Singer (disambiguation).The Jazz Singer
Warner Bros. Pictures
- October 6, 1927
89 minutes
96 minutes (with overture and exit music)
United States
English
$422,000[1]
$2.6 million (gross rental)[1]
The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden, he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer, performing in blackface. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer, but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.
Darryl F. Zanuck won an Academy Honorary Award for producing the film; Alfred A. Cohn was nominated for Best Writing (Adaptation) at the 1st Academy Awards. In 1996, The Jazz Singer was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 1998, the film was chosen in voting conducted by the American Film Institute as one of the best American films of all time, ranking at number ninety. The film's copyright expired on January 1, 2023, when all works published in the U.S. in 1927 entered the public domain.
Production[edit]
Concept and development[edit]
On April 25, 1917, Samson Raphaelson, a native of New York City's Lower East Side and a University of Illinois undergraduate, attended a performance of the musical Robinson Crusoe, Jr. in Champaign, Illinois. The star of the show was a thirty-year-old singer, Al Jolson, a Lithuanian-born Jew who performed in blackface.[5] In a 1927 interview, Raphaelson described the experience: "I shall never forget the first five minutes of Jolson—his velocity, the amazing fluidity with which he shifted from a tremendous absorption in his audience to a tremendous absorption in his song." He explained that he had seen emotional intensity like Jolson's only among synagogue cantors.[5]
A few years later, pursuing a professional literary career, Raphaelson wrote "The Day of Atonement", a short story about a young Jew named Jakie Rabinowitz, based on Jolson's real life. The story was published in January 1922 in Everybody's Magazine.[6] Raphaelson later adapted the story into a stage play, The Jazz Singer. A straight drama, all the singing in Raphaelson's version takes place offstage.[7] With George Jessel in the lead role, the show premiered at the Warner Theatre in Times Square in September 1925 and became a hit.[8] Warner Bros. acquired the movie rights to the play on June 4, 1926, and signed Jessel to a contract.[9] The Moving Picture World published a story in February 1927 announcing that production on the film would begin with Jessel on May 1.[10]
Legacy[edit]
Three subsequent screen versions of The Jazz Singer have been produced: a 1952 remake, starring Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee;[53] a 1959 television remake, starring Jerry Lewis; and a 1980 remake starring Neil Diamond, Lucie Arnaz, and Laurence Olivier.[54] The Jazz Singer was adapted as a one-hour radio play on two broadcasts of Lux Radio Theatre, both starring Al Jolson, reprising his screen role. The first aired August 10, 1936; the second, also starring Gail Patrick, on June 2, 1947.[55]
The Jazz Singer was parodied as early as 1936, in the Warner Bros. cartoon I Love to Singa, directed by Tex Avery. Its hero is "Owl Jolson", a young owl who croons popular ditties, such as the title song, against the wishes of his father, a classical music teacher.[56] Among the many references to The Jazz Singer in popular culture, perhaps the most significant is that of the MGM musical Singin' in the Rain (1952). The story, set in 1927, revolves around efforts to change a silent film production, The Dueling Cavalier, into a talking picture in response to The Jazz Singer's success. At one point Donald O'Connor's character suggests a new name for the now-musical, "I've got it! 'The Dueling Mammy'." The plot of The Simpsons episode "Like Father, Like Clown" (1991) parallels the tale of Jakie Rabinowitz/Jack Robin.[57] Krusty the Clown's rabbi father disapproves of his son's choice to be a comedian, telling him, "You have brought shame on our family! Oh, if you were a musician or a jazz singer, this I could forgive."[58]
According to film historian Krin Gabbard, The Jazz Singer "provides the basic narrative for the lives of jazz and popular musicians in the movies. If this argument means that sometime after 1959 the narrative must belong to pop rockers, it only proves the power of the original 1927 film to determine how Hollywood tells the stories of popular musicians."[59] More broadly, he also suggests that this "seemingly unique film" has "become a paradigm for American success stories."[60] More specifically, he examines a cycle of biopics of white jazz musicians stretching from Birth of the Blues (1941) to The Five Pennies (1959) that trace their roots to The Jazz Singer.[61]
In 1996, The Jazz Singer was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" motion pictures.[62] In 1998, the film was chosen in voting conducted by the American Film Institute as one of the best American films of all time, ranking at number ninety.[63] In 2007, a three-disc deluxe DVD edition of the film was released. The supplemental material includes Jolson's Vitaphone short, A Plantation Act (1926).
The phrase said by Al Jolson, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!" was voted as the 71st best quote by the American Film Institute.