The Jazz Singer

This was the film that revolutionized the motion picture industry, spelled disaster for hundreds of leading players who couldn't or wouldn't speak their lines, and made stars out of unknowns dying to give voice to films. With THE JAZZ SINGER the movies finally--and forever--talked! Besides the songs, there's actually only a smattering of dialog in the film, when Al Jolson's Jakie Rabinowitz talks to his mother (Eugenie Besserer)--once privately, as he sits at a piano, and another time while she sits in an audience watching him perform. The story, such as it is, concerns Jakie and his longing to have a Broadway career as a jazz singer. However, his father (Warner Ol...