Spoiler alerts for a film nearly a century old: The story tells of Jacob Rabinowitz, son of a New York cantor (played by Warner Oland), who wants "Jakie" to follow in his footsteps. He has the talent, but he wants to sing popular music, including the rising form of jazz. So he defies his father, denies his heritage, takes the name "Jack Robin," and becomes a musical star. (Jolson himself had been born Asa Yoelson.) He also meets Mary Dale (May McAvoy), a decidedly non-Jewish woman (known in Yiddish as a shikseh), who becomes his manager and his girlfriend, further enraging his father.
His father tells the congregation, "Now, I have no son." His mother (Eugenie Besserer), watching him sing jazz, is more understanding: "Here he belongs. If God wanted him in His house, He would have kept him there. He's not my boy anymore -- he belongs to the whole world now."
Years later, after Jack's first burst of success, his father falls ill the day before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement -- which falls on the same day as the premiere of Jack's big show. He is told that if he doesn't take his father's place at the service, his father will die without his forgiveness; and that if he doesn't sing at the premiere, he'll never get another job.
Presaging the later decisions of baseball stars Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, Jack goes to the synagogue, and sings the Kol Nidre in his father's place. His parents' apartment is close enough to hear, and his father tells his mother, "Mama, we have our son again," and he dies. Apparently, God rewards Jack, because the end of the film shows him a successful singer.
The film is 1 hour and 29 minutes long. At 17 minutes and 25 seconds into it, all of it silent thus far, even in its apparent musical sequences, Jolson speaks words that he tended to say in his stage act: "Wait a minute, wait a minute: You ain't heard nothin' yet, folks!" He then sings the 1st song heard in a sound film, Gus Kahn's "Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye)."
It is often called "the first sound film" or "the first talking picture." It isn't -- Jolson himself had sung in a much shorter film the year before -- but it is the 1st feature-length motion picture with a synchronized recorded music score, and the 1st feature-length motion picture with lip-synchronous speech and singing.
The film's scenes of Jolson, singing Southern songs in blackface, have been parodied and, retroactively, critically assailed. The Southern songs in question are "My Mammy" and "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" (a steamboat named for the Confederate General). But the film also includes Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead; "Yahrzeit Licht," Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies," and, as mentioned, "Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye)."
Talking pictures was an idea whose time had come. On February 24, 1926, a film version of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème premiered, starring John Gilbert and Lillian Gish. The fact that a silent film had been made of an opera appears to suggest that the Roaring Twenties didn't understand the concept of irony.
Lights of New York premiered on July 6, 1928. A crime drama, it was the 1st "all-talking" feature-length film. Critics hated it, none more so than Oliver Claxton of The New Yorker: "It would have been better silent, and much better unseen." But it was a box-office smash. By the end of 1929, all movies -- with a few exceptions, such as Charlie Chaplin's City Lights in 1931 and Modern Times in 1936 -- would be "talkies." Chaplin made his 1st talkie in 1940, The Great Dictator, and proved he could be a genius that way, too.
Jolson died in 1950, at the age of 64, already a relic of a bygone age, and no longer an exemplar of Jewish success in America. His death came shortly after he had recorded one last hit song. It was a song from his era, first recorded in 1927. But it would be best known in a 1960 version by Elvis Presley: "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Yes, Jolson did the spoken-word part in the middle, too, although the words are a little different. As would be said later, Asa Yoelson did have soul.
Eugenie Besserer, born in France and raised in Canada, was Catholic rather than Jewish, and died in 1934. Warner Oland, a Swedish actor who was not Jewish, was also not Chinese, yet he gained fame playing Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. He died in 1938, while one of his Chan movies was still in progress. It was rewritten to star Hungarian-Jewish actor Peter Lorre as the Japanese secret agent Mr. Moto.
May McAvoy, who had starred in the 1926 silent version of Ben-Hur, continued acting, including having a cameo in the 1959 remake of Ben-Hur, and lived until 1984. Bobby Gordon, who played Jakie as a boy, went on to become a renowned director under the name Robert Gordon, and died in 1990, as the last surviving castmember of The Jazz Singer.
Remakes of The Jazz Singer have been done in 1952 with Danny Thomas (a Maronite Catholic), in 1959 with Jerry Lewis (Jewish, and he brought back one of Jolson's songs, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody," in 1956 and had a hit with it), and in 1980 with Neil Diamond (Jewish). While quite a few black singers have left "the sanctified church" and Gospel music for jazz, rock and soul, no one has yet thought to remake The Jazz Singer with a black cast.
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October 6, 1927 was a Thursday. There was only one sporting event of any consequence on the day, but it was of rather large consequence. It was Game 2 of the World Series, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The New York Yankees scored 3 runs in the 2nd inning and 3 more in the 8th, and beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-2. Babe Ruth went 0-for-3, but drew a walk and got a run home on a sacrifice fly. Lou Gehrig went 1-for-3 with a walk. George Pipgras was the winning pitcher. The Yankees went on to sweep the Series in 4 straight.
