The Jazz Singer

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Charles J. Shindo

Produced in 1927, The Jazz Singer brought sound film to Hollywood. Directed by Alan Crosland and starring Al Jolson, the film was based on the 1922 short story "The Day of Atonement" by Samson Raphaelson. This story of Jewish assimilation to American culture through popular music has been adapted as a Broadway play (starring George Jessel in 1925), two radio plays (both starring Al Jolson in 1936 and 1947), a televised production (starring Jerry Lewis in 1959), and two subsequent film versions (starring Danny Thomas in 1953 and Neil Diamond in 1980). The Jazz Singer not only illustrates the emergent sound technology of the 1920s, but also illustrates the mainstream acceptance of jazz music and comments on the acculturation process of immigrants to America.

The Jazz Singer recounts the story of Jakie Rabinowitz, the son of immigrant parents in New York, who is expected to succeed his father, as well as many ancestors, as the cantor in their synagogue. But young Jakie has ambitions of fame and fortune as a jazz singer, expressing himself in American popular music instead of Jewish religious music. Jakie's intentions of singing popular music leads to his father's denunciation and sends Jakie (now Jack Robin) to a career on the vaudeville circuit. As Jack's career progresses he falls in love with Mary Dale, a star dancer and gentile. Jack's two worlds collide when he accepts a part in a Broadway revue (starring Mary) and returns to New York upon his father's sixtieth birthday. Jack's father has still not accepted his son, but seeing him results in his father falling ill. In the film's climatic scene, Jack must decide between the show's opening on Broadway or filling in for his dying father at the synagogue singing "Kol Nidre" for Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Jack fulfills his father's dying wish, and still manages to make it big on Broadway, bringing a sense of balance between his parents' old-world immigrant ways and his new Americanized life.

The Jazz Singer is often referred to as the first sound film, yet this is only partially true. The idea of synchronized sound and motion picture is as old as the movies themselves, but it was not until the early 1920s that a workable method of recording both image and sound came into use. Warner Brothers studio was the first to undertake sound film production, primarily as a last ditch effort to battle the larger studios who had, by the 1920s, solidified their hold on the movie industry. Warner's first efforts at sound film were variety programs with talking shorts, musical numbers, and staged productions using a sound-on-disc recording technology. Fox studios also entered the sound film market with its Movietone newsreels which presented news stories with a sound-on-film technology. Different studios could utilize different sound formats since each studio primarily exhibited at their own theaters. Warner's The Jazz Singer, however, was the first feature film to integrate the use of sound, both music and dialogue, into the story itself. The film is primarily a silent film with a musical soundtrack, but in several scenes, synchronized singing and dialogue are presented, most notably in the scene where Jack sings to his mother and after finishing one song says to her "You ain't heard nothin' yet."

The film's significance goes beyond its historical role in film technology to illustrate the mainstream acceptance of jazz music as an American art form. Even though the music in the film is not, strictly speaking, jazz music, its does contain elements of jazz style, such as increased syncopation and a blues tonality. More importantly, the film expresses the belief that jazz music is an Americanizing force since it is a uniquely American form of music. The original author of the story, Samson Raphaelson, wrote in the introduction to the published stage play that "in seeking a symbol of the vital chaos of America's soul, I find no more adequate one than jazz." Ironically, in order to perform jazz music onstage Jack Robin dons the costume of a minstrel performer, including blackface. Jack "becomes" black in order to become an American, and in the process reinforces nineteenth-century stereotypes of African Americans in popular culture. The film promotes both acculturation and the maintenance of ethnic identity as significant parts of economic prosperity and success, the American dream.