When the show first opened on Broadway last year talk was that the story was based on Jolson, so now with Jolson actually doing it the psychology is perfect. Jessel is still out in the play and doing big business. George Jessel originally did the show and was supposed to have done this picture. Following “Kol Nidre,” the final scene has Jolson in “one” during a performance, his mother in the first row as he sings “Mammy” to her, and the finish of the song closes the picture. Convinced that ber boy belongs to the theatre, she returns home where Jolson follows, dons the Cantor’s talis and leads the choir.Ĭrosland has done no stalling in these passages, the scenes moving fast wlth just the boy’s decision to the inferred mental struggle shown through his appearing in the home. Worried about his father, torn between his first big chance and a natural impulse to throw up everything and go to the synagog, Jolson comes out in “one” to do “Mother O’Mine, I Still Love You” as she stands in the wings and listens. The scene switch is then to the dress rehearsal on the day of the show’s opening with Yudelson and his mother pleading with him in the dressing room to come to the synagog that night and sing on the eve ot Yum Kippur because of his father’s illness. As he goes into another chorus his father entrances, to order him out of the house for the second time. At this point is some laugh patter as Jolson affectionately kids his mother. He returns home to see his mother, where he sits down at a piano to run over one of his songs, “Blue Skies,” for her. In the sticks a wire comes for him to join a Broadway show. Bobbie Gordon plays this early sequence with Jolson’s entrance in Coffee Dan’s cellar restaurant in ‘Frisco, where he gets up and does two songs, “Dirty Hands, Dirty Face” and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye.” Besides which the story has the father dying as his son sings for him with the boy’s voice coming through a window as the parent passes on.īy script it tells of young Jakie running away from home to eventually become a vaudevillian. Or any audience for that matter as, after all, anybody’s religion demands respect and consideration and when as seriously presented as here, the genuineness of the effort will make everybody listen. With Jolson’s audible rendering of “Kol Nidre” this bit will likely make a tremendous impression in such houses. Tho pathos makes the picture a contender for Jewish neighborhoods, minus the voice feature.
#The jazz singer plus#
Heavy heart interest in the film and some comedy, plus adept titling, which helps both these ingredients. May McAvoy is pretty well smothered on footage with no love theme to help, but being instrumental in getting Jakie, nee Jack Robin, his chance in a Broadway show. Oland recently left this theatre as a Chinese dastard in “Old San Francisco” and comes back as a Jewish cantor, so if his performance isn’t what it might be, it’s excusable on the territory he covers. Cast support stands out in the persons of Eugenie Besserer, as the mother Otto Lederer, as a friend of the family, and Warner Oland as the father. The film dovetails splendidly, which speaks well for those component parts of the technical staff. The picture is all Jolson, although Alan Crosland, dlrecting, has creditably dodged the hazard of over-emphasizing the star as well as refraining from laying it on too thick in the scenes between the mother and boy. That much goes with or without Vitaphone. But as soon as he gets under cork the lens picks up that spark of individual personality solely identified with him. Plus his camera makeup this holder of a $17,500 check for one week in a picture house isn’t quite the A1 his vast audience knows.
Yet for his first picture the Shubert ace does exceptionally well. When he’s without that instrumental spur Jolson is camera conscious. There are six instances of this, each running from two to three minutes. has prepared two versions of the film, with and without Vitaphone, for the exhibition angle.
On the other hand, with Vitaphone it can’t miss. It’s doubtful if the general public will take to the Jewish boy’s problem of becoming a cantor or a stage luminary as told on celluloid.
There’s really no love interest in the script, except between mother and son. But “The Jazz Singer” minus Vitaphone is sometblng else again.