The Jazz Singer

THE JAZZ SINGER

USA, 1927

Director: Alan Crosland

Production: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.; black and white, 35mm, silent with synchronized musical numbers; running time: 89 minutes. Released October 1927, New York. Filmed June through August 1927 in Warner Bros. studios, and on location in Hollywood, and the Lower East Side and in front of Shuberts' Winter Garden theater in New York City. Cost: $500,000.

Scenario: Alfred A. Cohn, from the story and play The Day of Atonement by Samson Raphaelson; titles: Jack Jarmuth; photography: Hal Mohr; editor: Harold McCord; sound: George R. Groves; music score and direction: Louis Silvers.

Cast: Al Jolson ( Jakie Rabinowitz, later Jack Robin ); Warner Oland ( Cantor Rabinowitz ); Eugenie Besserer ( Sara Rabinowitz ); Otto Lederer ( Moisha Yudelson ); Bobby Gordon ( Jakie, age 13 ); Richard Tucker ( Harry Lee ); May McAvoy ( Mary Dale ); Nat Carr ( Levi ); William Demarest ( Buster Billings ); Anders Randolf ( Dillings ); Will Walling ( Doctor ); Roscoe Karns ( Agent ); Myrna Loy, Audrey Ferris ( Chorus girls ); Cantor Josef Rosenblatt ( Himself, in concert number ); Jane Arden, Violet Bird, Ernest Clauson, Marie Stapleton, Edna Gregory, and Margaret Oliver ( Extras in Coffee Dan's sequence ).

Award: Special Oscar to Warner Bros. for producing The Jazz Singer "which revolutionized the industry," 1927–28.

Publications

Script:

Cohn, Alfred A., The Jazz Singer , edited by Robert Carringer, Madison, Wisconsin, 1979.

Books:

Thrasher, Frederick, Okay for Sound: How the Screen Found Its Voice , New York, 1946.

Jolson, Al, Mistah Jolson , as told to Alban Emley, Los Angeles, 1951.

Burton, Jack, The Blue Book of Hollywood Musicals , Watkin's Glen, New York, 1953.

Sieben, Pearl, The Immortal Al Jolson: His Life and Times , New York, 1962.

Springer, John, All Singing, All Talking, All Dancing , New York, 1966.

Kiner, Larry F., The Al Jolson Discography , Westport, 1983.

Freedland, Michael, Al Jolson , New York, 1972; London, 1984.

Griffith, Richard, editor, The Talkies: Articles and Illustrations from Photoplay Magazine , New York, 1972.

Stern, Lee Edward, The Movie Musical , New York, 1974.

Geduld, Harry M., Birth of the Talkies: From Edison to Jolson , Bloomington, Indiana, 1975.

Kreuger, Miles, editor, The Movie Musical from Vitaphone to 42nd Street , New York, 1975.

Anderton, Barrie, Sonny Boy! The World of Al Jolson , London, 1975.

Everson, William K., American Silent Film , New York, 1978.

Ellis, Jack C., A History of Film , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.

Oberfirst, Robert, Al Jolson: You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet , San Diego, 1980.

McCelland, Doug, Blackface to Blacklist: Al Jolson, Larry Parks, & "The Jolson Story," Lanham, 1987.

Goldman, Herbert G., Jolson: The Legend Comes to Life , New York, 1990.

Fisher, James, Al Jolson: A Bio-Bibliography , Westport, 1994.

Freedland, Michael, Jolson: The Al Jolson Story , Clearwater, 1995.

Usai, Paolo C., Burning Passions: An Introduction the Study of Silent Cinema , Collingdale, 1999.

Articles:

"Warner Brothers Studios," in Moving Picture World , 26 March 1927.

Schallert, Edwin, "Vitaphone Activities in Hollywood," in Moving Picture World , 8 July 1927.

"How the Vitaphone Enters In," in New York Times , 28 August 1927.

New York Times , 7 October 1927.

Variety (New York), 12 October 1927.

Calhoun, D., "Sketch on Alan Crosland," in Motion Picture Classic (New York), June 1928.

Close Up (London), February 1929.

The Jazz Singer

"Flicker Veteran," in Cue (New York), 20 July 1935.

Amengual, Barthélemy, in Positif (Paris), September 1972.

Sarris, Andrew, "The Cultural Guilt of Musical Movies: The Jazz Singer , 50 Years After," in Film Comment (New York), September-October 1977.

Swindell, L., "The Day the Silents Stopped," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1977.

Beylie, Claude, in Ecran (Paris), January 1978.

Kupferberg, A., in Take One (Montreal), January 1978.

Farassino A., in Ekran (Ljubljana), no. 2, 1978.

Bosseno, C., in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), 1979.

Slide, Anthony, in Magill's Survey of Cinema 2 , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980.

Gomery, Douglas, "Case Study: The Coming of Sound," in Film History: Theory and Practice , by Gomery and Robert C. Allen, New York, 1985.

Reid's Film Index (Wyong), no. 3, 1989.

Wolfe, C., "Vitaphone Shorts and The Jazz Singer ," in Wide Angle (Baltimore), no. 3, 1990.

Rogin, M., "Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice," in Critical Inquiry (Chicago), no. 3, 1992.

Rogin, M., "Two Declarations of American Independence," in Representations , no. 55, Summer 1996.