80th Anniversary Screening of 'The Jazz Singer' November 10, 2007

From: Friends of the Loew’s, Inc. 54 Journal Square, Jersey City, NJ 07306;
Tel (201) 798-6055; Fax (201) 798-4020; Email [email protected]

Remembering When The Movies Learned To Talk:
An 80th Anniversary Screening of
"The Jazz Singer"

The Movie That Changed Hollywood Forever

Starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland

With Commentary by Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project

Saturday, November 10, 7:30PM

At the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre
A Not-For-Profit Arts Center

54 Journal Square, Jersey City, N.J. 07306 Tel. (201) 798-6055

This is the only Anniversary year screening scheduled in New York City and New Jersey, and the first of only two in the entire Metro Area.

Plus -- The Loew's is working with the Afro-American Historical & Cultural Society of Jersey City to offer a contemplation on the OTHER historical aspect of "The Jazz Singer": Black Face and the legacy of racial imagery at the movies.

See below for more about “The Jazz Singer”

"The Jazz Singer" will be shown in Warner Bros.' vault 35mm print on our 50 ft x 25 ft screen.

Admission is $6 for adults; $4 for seniors, students w ID and children 12 yrs old & under.

The Loew's is easily reached from throughout the Metro Area. We are directly across from the PATH JSQ Station, with trains to and from Lower & Mid-town Manhattan and Newark's Penn Station, and we’re minutes from the NJ Trnpk Exit 15E, Rts 1&9 and 3 and the Holland Tunnel.

Press Inquiries To: Colin Egan, Tel. (201) 798-6055 or Cel. (201) 344-7477

**More About The Jazz Singer And The Coming Of Sound

“The Jazz Singer” is a melodrama about Jakie Rabinowitz, the son of Jewish cantor Warner Oland. Jakie turns his back on family tradition and transforms himself into cabaret-entertainer Jack Robin. When he comes home to visit his parents, Jack is warmly greeted by his mother (Eugenie Besserer), but is cold-shouldered by his father, who feels that he is a traitor to his heritage by singing jazz music. As the story proceeds father and son repeatedly fail to reconcile while Jack pursues his career. But of course, the most important aspect of the “Jazz Singer” is not the story – but its place in history.

The history of the movies is unavoidably divided in two: Silent vs. Sound. Today, in the age of Dolby and THX, it's tempting to think of silent movies as antique, if not inferior curios of an almost pre-historic era. But silent film was the dynamic vanguard of a new and wildly popular medium. Silent movies built Hollywood, made millions of dollars, and created the first mega stars of pop culture. Most movie goers and movie stars alike did not think they were living in an inferior era, but rather took the lack of sound for granted -- and probably assumed it would always be that way.

But inventors had been trying for years to find a way to synchronize the playback of recorded sound with the projection of moving images. All these attempts failed -- until Warner Bros. and Western Electric jointly developed something called the Vitaphone. This was a 35mm projector that had a turntable attached to it on which 16 inch disks -- similar in size to an LP record -- were played and "read" by a moving arm with a stylus on its tip -- just like a record player. The turntable was connected to the same gears that moved the film, and so if started at the same time, film and record played in sync.

Originally, Warner Bros. only expected to use its Vitaphone equipment to record music and sound effects, not dialogue. But after experimenting with recorded song in several short subject films, Warner's decided to add singing to the instrumental music it would record for an upcoming feature film, "The Jazz Singer". Accordingly, the studio signed one of the most popular Broadway singing stars of the era, Al Jolson, to star in the movie. Jolson had a dynamic, larger than life stage presence that audiences loved, and which was only matched by his out-sized, ebullient personality. And so it was perhaps inevitable that while filming his first singing performance in the "The Jazz Singer", the irrepressible Jolson ad-libbed this dialogue: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet!"

There was an electric -- if unanticipated -- alchemy between these prophetic words, Jolson's dynamic charisma and wide popularity, and the fact that for the first time ever audiences could hear a major star speaking dialogue in the course of a feature film. The public was enrapt. When "The Jazz Singer" premiered, only 200 theatres in the United States were wired for sound -- but somehow, hundreds of thousands of people saw this first "talkie" anyway. The movie was a smash hit, and suddenly the public, which up until then probably never imagined anything better, was bored with silent films. Without warning, the movie studios found their operations were obsolete, forcing them to rush to license the new Vitaphone technology and build sound studios. Virtually overnight, some stars found that their careers were over because their voices did not match the public's expectation for them. Cinematographers, who had developed very sophisticated techniques with their silent cameras, suddenly found that they had to essentially re-learn their craft to accommodate the new, much bulkier sound recording equipment. Theatres raced to be equipped for sound, and less than two years after "The Jazz Singer" premiered, 8000 theatres were wired for sound.

"The Jazz Singer" is a singular moment in history -- an unexpected pivot on which everything turned and changed. Jolson's ebullient ad-lib was more than prophetic; with it, the Silent Era effectively came to an end, and Hollywood was born again into The Talkies.

***Jolson performed in black face on stage as well as in "The Jazz Singer". His use of black face did not usually include the most exaggerated of stereotyped gestures and speech typical of minstrel shows -- Jolson in black face sang, moved and spoke pretty much like Jolson in white face, which is to say in his own very unique style. But the fact that a major popular star such as Jolson regularly performed in a make up tradition that was rooted in the stereotyping of a whole race of people, and was perfectly accepted (indeed, encouraged) in doing so by the vast majority of audiences says something significant about racial sensibilities and sensitivities of America at the time. While we will ask our audience to remember that any film -- including "The Jazz Singer" -- should be viewed in the context of its time, we will also create a display for the Theatre's lobby that addresses part of that context: the long history of stereotyping and negative imagery in the movies and how this has impacted the ways we think about one another and ourselves. We'll also ask viewers to ponder how far – or not -- we have come.

Official Website: http://www.loewsjersey.org