“Wait a minute, wait a minute – You ain’t heard nothin yet”
If you didn’t know the history of this clip, you probably wouldn’t think it at all extraordinary. But it’s Al Jolson in “The Jazz Singer,” uttering the first line ever spoken in the movies.
The audience was stunned. And I think that one of the best things about it is the joke – “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” until now!
Jolson’s energy is extraordinary, very different from anything you see today. He had quite the hip swivel, too, back in 1927.
You’re just baiting the trolls…
I am an old man raised by parents born in the early 1900’s, when this movie came out in 1927 my mom was a high school music teacher and my dad was the football coach, dating each other, and they told me about going to see the first talkie movie. A big change in entertainment, they could also do a killer Charleston dance when they were in there 50’s and early 60’s. What a different world they grew up in.
They had little use for television except for watching the news and all of their lives were avid bridge players several times each week and they had been through a lot including being totally fed up with the 1960’s, dad was a Major in WWII and we were raised in such a different world with a desire to make it better for every one no matter their origin or color. I also clicked on over to see Jolson’s song Mammy and now I am old and a bit confused but I do know what is right and just and what is wrong for all people no matter origin or color.
Thank You Neo for memories.
when this movie came out in 1927 my mom was a high school music teacher and my dad was the football coach,
My mother was in Los Angeles and loving it but her cousins, that she lived with in Hollywood, were hurt badly by the 1929 crash. She returned to Chicago (luckily for me) and, after one of those long Depression engagements, she and my father married and had me in 1938. She was born in 1898 and died in 2001. She lived in three centuries and loved every minute. Her last 6 months were the only decline. Her claim to fame in Hollywood was dancing with Victor McLaughlan. She had many stories about the Great White Steamship to Catalina. They would take the Red Cars to San Pedro, the steamer to Catalina, dance at the new Avalon casino all night, return on the steamer in the morning and then back to Hollywood. I have photos in her flapper dress.
His Jazz singer is interesting.. (singing Mammy and blackface)
but given the performances, they rarely show him
Just as they will rarely show Shirley temple with bill Bojangles Robinson in a movie about her daddy in the civil war… among others.
nor will they show any of the old comedies if step and fetchit is in it
at least they sometimes show the ones which the African character later was better known as Rochester ie. Eddie “Rochester” Anderson with Jack Benny
here is the blackface scene from the same film “the Jazz Singer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaj7FNHnjQ
and in the minstrel show singing oh susana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhavaXOynO8
Mike K, I’m just begging you now, as I often do, to PLEASE write another book.
I remember watching in the early 1960s on TV many of the Al Jolson movies; I was just a kid then. I can still hear in my head him singing “Mammy,” probably because my brother did impersonations of him singing this song.
At the time and even today, I never felt he was demeaning black folks, but today of course, he is considered a racist bigot and guilty of “cultural appropriation.”
Back then on TV I also saw movies with James Cagney, Shirley Temple, Astaire and Rogers, etc., just to name a few.
The first film with spoken lines wasn’t the Jazz Singer (even though that was accepted for a long time). It was A Plantation Act (1926) released one year before the Jazz Singer by Al Johnson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Plantation_Act
And here’s a copy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ85aD0v9Ds
It’s too bad Jolson isn’t around today. This would be a good half-time act at the Super Bowl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuu5YtkPIo
Maybe, in lieu of Jolson, they could do a re-creation, with Jimmy Kimmel.
By the way, I think “gwine” is a much under-used word in today’s society.
Jolson’s energy is extraordinary,
? It’s the sort of thing I watch to try to get some sense of what my grandparents’ contemporaries appreciated (and, perhaps, some insight into their times). Ditto silent films. It’s not that entertaining per se.
One interesting thing about the film is how intensely subcultural the plot is. Not a film buff, but it strikes me that that would have been atypical in silent era or Golden Age film.
The first film with spoken lines wasn’t the Jazz Singer
Eubie Blake cut some short films in 1922-23 using sound. One was actually broadcast on 60 Minutes ca. 1977.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0cmC8Z4KgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEdb-mYpt1A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ85aD0v9Ds
My dad used to tell this story: He tried to convince his parents to please, please, go to the movies. Chaplin. Lloyd. Keaton. His dad told him that he wouldn’t go until they talked. My dad sighed and said, “Then you’re never going to see a movie.”
Buster Keaton is my favorite. “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” is now playing for free at tubitv:
https://tubitv.com/movies/57208/steamboat_bill_jr?start=true
His co-stars were always the prettiest women. As a young woman my grandmother had the exact same hairstyle.
For my parents the talking sensation was Greta Garbo. Garbo talks! Everyone wanted to hear her voice. As far as Buster Keaton – he was my mom’s favorite. But she loved them all.
As a kid I assumed that black face was a variant of clown face – only saw pics in history books. Never saw the Jazz Singer as a kid. With the exception of the red nose – a riff on red nosed drunks, the exaggerated features seemed the same to me. Never cared for drunks or making fun of them (Foster Brooks) – so I never cared for clowns of any kind.
Eva Marie:
I saw blackface in a movie or two or photo or two as a child, and I didn’t like it. I knew black people, they didn’t look or act anything like that, and I didn’t understand what the caricature was about (I saw it as a caricature, although I doubt I knew that word).
Re: Foster Brooks, I agree. He was funny for all of a minute but then it got old. I didn’t know any drunkards so at first it was a matter of curiosity, although I did like the Red Skelton Hour with Freddie the Freeloader. Skelton seemed like a caring man but I know nothing of his personal life. (I’m almost afraid of reading about him!)
Skelton seemed like a caring man but I know nothing of his personal life.
IIRC, devoted Catholic. Lost one of his children to cancer, ca. 1958.
Red Skelton, Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Lewis; we changed the channel when they came on. As far as the Jazz Singer goes – I finally saw it a few years ago. Besides being insulting and in bad taste, it was an awful movie. No wonder everyone waited for Garbo to speak.
Children didn’t have much to say about nighttime TV programs when the adults were around. There was only one TV in the house. My wife says when her Dad got command of the TV set it was Combat, The FBI, and The Untouchables. No arguments allowed!
I loved the Untouchables as a kid. During my 20’s they showed back to back reruns at midnight. If I was worried, couldn’t sleep, I’d turn on the tv and fall asleep to the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun fire. I was surprised at how sad most of the episodes were.
On the weekends I’d babysit. Saturday night at 11:30pm (after the 11pm news) Chiller Theater came on. Mostly black & white B movies, very tame by today’s standards. I remember my first honest-to-goodness scary movie was Psycho. It wasn’t on TV; it was in the high school auditorium where the school Band was raising money for something or other, IIRC. I was there to help seat guests, etc. I had to sit through the movie. Up until that time I had never seen anything so frightening. I thought I was going to die.
Harry Warner, when he was first shown a workable movie-sound system, was enthusiastic about the possibility of providing music in the film itself, for those small theater owners who wouldn’t afford an orchestra. When it was pointed out that the actors could talk, too, he asked: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music—that’s the big plus about this.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/11/29/actors-talk/
David Foster, I don’t know about other movie genres but I regard silent comedy movies far superior to talkies even to this day. I find myself laughing out loud with the old silents. The facial expressions are priceless.
@Brian Morgan… Keaton is my fav too… big time.. seen everything i could, including his late in life cameos… my fav is his flip with the coffee cup… if you can slow it down as i have, he had liquid in the cup… unlike todays props…
for those who are unfamiliar, he is carrying a cup of joe on a saucer and trips, falls forwards, does a roll, but manipulates the cup in such a way that it always remains upright and does not spill..
“Bring me something you cant put your thumb in” was another classic
in fact, he wore blackface in that movie too, but to pose as a black kitchen worker… things got complicated quickly…
I didn’t like his work with fatty arbuckle… fatty was never as funny to me
but he did have a poor time of it after that girls death..
I too also loved chiller theater… did you count the fingers? turned me into a real horror nut… Saw series broke me of that, it was no longer horror, it was twisted sadism.. though i did like pinhead and the box… of course those things werent on chiller… but the blob was with steve mcqueen… creature from the black lagoon… THEM…
didnt care for elvira or sven goolie decades later..
let me guess, you also liked mystery science theater
and then again… Godzilla, mothra, et al..
Artfldgr: “…did you count the fingers?”
Yes! There were six if I recall. That was back before freeze frame videotape. (A friend did have a Beta-Max player but wasn’t into Chiller.)
Have you seen “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”? (1959 but not released until 1962): https://tubitv.com/movies/294859/the_brain_that_wouldnt_die?start=true
The movie starred Virginia Leith, Jason Evers, and Anthony La Penna. La Penna played Evers’ crippled assistant Kurt. Kurt stands by Evers but is becoming increasingly agitated over his use of humans as guinea pigs.
A similar story line can be found in “The Man Who Could Cheat Death” (1959) starring Anton Diffring: https://tubitv.com/movies/499216/the_man_who_could_cheat_death?start=true
Diffring plays a doctor and surgeon Dr. Georges Bonnet who discovers the key to eternal youth by extracting the hormone from a human gland. He begins with cadavers but now harvests organs from the living. He is well over 100 years old but looks to be in his 30’s. His friend Dr. Ludwig Weiss (Arnold Marle) comes calling. Weiss is very old and crippled in his right hand. Bonnet urges him to seek his “treatment”. Weiss learns of Bonnet’s use of live human “donors” and endlessly lectures Bonnet of the immorality of it but Bonnet makes clever rationalizations.
There are striking similarities between Arnold Marle’s Dr. Ludwig Weiss and Anthony La Penna’s Kurt. Both movies were made the same time.
By the way check out Virginia Leith’s performance in Kubrick’s 1953 debut film “Fear and Desire”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjJzQvjhndw
One very attractive lady, she is.
Besides being insulting and in bad taste,
You sound like sparkling company.
neo: There’s a comet advertising you!
“Comet NEOWISE now visible in the evening sky”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/13/comet-neowise-now-visible-in-the-evening-sky/
David Foster on July 12, 2020 at 5:56 pm said:
Harry Warner, when he was first shown a workable movie-sound system, was enthusiastic about the possibility of providing music in the film itself, for those small theater owners who wouldn’t afford an orchestra. When it was pointed out that the actors could talk, too, he asked: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music—that’s the big plus about this.”
* *
The entire plot line of the movie musical “Singing in the Rain” revolves around the discovery that the leading actress….
well, if you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil the story.
“No, no!”
“Yes, yes!”
The unintended consequence of talkies was putting all the movie theater orchestra members out of a job.
Until that happened, a lot of the smaller theaters would use a Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, which was outfitted with the usual organ pipes & keyboard, but also “could produce numerous inventive sound effects, including train and boat whistles, car horns and bird whistles, and some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses’ hooves, smashing pottery, thunder and rain” — all the the literal “bells and whistles” of the familiar idiom.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/its-a-wurlitzer-61398212/
(2002)
When we lived in Utah in the 1970s, there was a restaurant that had a restored organ and patrons were allowed to play it.
Fun!
There are some still in operation.
https://byrdtheatre.org/programming/the-mighty-wurlitzer-organ/
https://friendsofmusichall.org/history/music-halls-organs/the-albee-mighty-wurlitzer-organ-in-music-hall/
Have you seen “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”?
Of course!!! 🙂
Great travel down a good memory lane
When we lived in Utah in the 1970s, there was a restaurant that had a restored organ and patrons were allowed to play it.
AesopFan: The Castro Theatre in San Francisco is a gorgeous old-style theater legendary for its Wurlitzer. The old guy who played was something of a local hero. If you were gay in SF, you knew his name. I wasn’t and don’t, but I saw some good shows there.
According to the web, the Castro has doubled down:
“The Castro Theatre Is About to Get the Biggest Organ in the World”
https://www.sfweekly.com/culture/the-castro-theatre-is-about-to-get-the-biggest-organ-in-the-world/
The title is a double entendre that I’m sure the SF Weekly relished.
Artfldgr,
I never got into Godzilla but I do like Japanese film. Nearly ten years ago I grew tired of modern Hollywood fare. Using Netflix I sampled Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Chinese movies. Of them all I discovered that I could easily build up a basic Japanese vocabulary by listening and then looking at the subtitles. “Watashi” meant “I”, and “Nani” meant “What”. I did not have the same success with the other languages.
Shortly thereafter I enrolled in a 10-session Japanese language course in NYC. My classmates were two young men and a woman. The young lady dropped out soon afterwards. She was bright but was emotionally devastated by the recent 2008 economic collapse. From my discussions with her, she had plans to become a titan in International Finance. I tried to console her that recessions come and go but she seemed determined to see it as the end of her world.
The two fellows stuck it out. They were much better than I. The one guy wanted to be an Anime artist after graduating high school. The other fellow was a fashion student. One Saturday night the three of us emailed each other after an exciting day of Japanese lessons. The fashion student was into movies. I told him about a movie that I had just seen on Netflix called “Noriko’s Dinner Table”. The next morning he emailed me after streaming the movie, and I couldn’t shut him up. It was the best thing he had ever watched.
“Noriko’s Dinner Table” is cerebral. It is the sequel to “Suicide Club” which is fast-paced and gritty. It is, after much contemplation, the slow motion destruction of an otherwise happy Japanese family: husband, wife, and two teenage daughters. The eldest girl fails first. She joins an internet chat group and is invited to travel to Tokyo to meet new friends. Soon this becomes her world. She disappears from home one night without a word to her parents. The mother is distraught, blaming herself. (Japanese culture is very conservative.) For failing to keep her family together, she commits suicide. The husband vows to find his daughter and return her home. He travels to Tokyo and learns that she has become somewhat of an “escort”. Not the kind that performs sexual favors but one who allows the client to act out, due to some repressed trauma. It all happens at Noriko’s Dinner Table where a good meal is served but then it devolves. Unbeknownst to her, her father has found her, and along with his friend, they will confront her.
I don’t want to spoil it for you!
Many people who saw “Suicide Club” first are disappointed by “Noriko’s Dinner Table”. I’m glad I saw it in reverse order.
Allow me to append one more bit into this thread. I was born late 50s which meant high school early to mid 70s. I played in school bands: marching, concert, jazz/rock. We played everything from “In The Mood” to “Age of Aquarius”. Our band director was great but there is one thing I wish he experimented with: integrating the band and the school’s chorus. Our band could belt out a jazzy tune. It only seemed natural that a gifted female vocalist could join us.
With this in mind I’d like to introduce “Golden Half”, a Japanese girl’s group from that era sharing one distinct feature: mom is Japanese, dad is not.
The attached YT video is from early 70s. Two back-to-back tunes: “24000 Kisses” and “Adam and Eve”. It is pure, unadulterated Japanese pop with a sexy twist:
“Watashi, Anata ga suki” — I like you.
“Anata, Watashi ga suki” — You like me.
“suki, kisu, kisu, kisu no kisu” — like, kiss, kiss, kiss upon kiss.
The next tune is “Adam and Eve” with its iconic:
“Aishite onegai dokomademo” — Please love me everywhere.
“Aishite onegai itsumademo” — Please love me forever and ever.
Why can’t they make music like this anymore??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e7j7m6CidQ
I know nobody is reading this, so…
Japanese is a “Reverse Polish Language” meaning that word order is reversed from what we are accustomed to in English.
For example, the sentence:
“Aishite onegai dokomademo” literally translates to “Love please everywhere”
Furthermore, the word “Aishite” isn’t merely “Love”. It has action. It is closer to “loving”.
My Japanese tutor, in her gracious way, would argue against “Love” being equal to “Loving”. “Aishite” or “Loving” is action. It’s here. It’s now. It’s passionate. “Love” on the other hand is something you might read in a user manual, as she once quipped.
My Japanese tutor, she loves America. She says it is the only place in the world where you can come and you will be embraced if you simply try to communicate. But she says that if an American goes to Japan but is not proficient in the language he will have a difficult time. No one will reach out.
Something that she said to me that is relevant to today is this: With her new American friends she once described herself to them as the only “Oriental”. She was surprised if not shocked at their reaction. “No,” they said, “you are ‘Asian'”. How odd. Even to this day she can’t properly pronounce the word “Asian”. It comes out like “Aaaaa-see-un”. She doesn’t like it but if it makes her friends happy.
That was nearly five years ago that she related that story to me. Her “friends” were white Western women…imposing their dogma…on her.
Shame on women for engaging in this disgusting behavior. Shame on all women for allowing this behavior to go unpunished.
Lost me. I’ve never seen Jolson other than in makeup. Here we see a guy dressed like a banker in a Fifties movie jumping around and being some kind of jazzy.
Not getting it.
Brian Morgan on July 13, 2020 at 11:56 pm said:
I can understand half of spoken Tokyo Japanese now, given how much entertainment I have watched. They have very good channeled work. Truth as fiction so to speak.
In US, there is Gandahar movie. On Hulu, there is Heroic Age. Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Netflix has Guardian of the Sacred spirit.
I know nobody is reading this, so…
You might be surprised at those of us Watching.