Ethnic Identity in the 1920s: The Jazz Singer (1927)

The Jazz Singer, Hollywood's first feature-length film with synchronized sound and spoken dialogue, opened on October 6, 1927 and rapidly transformed the film industry from the silent world of "movies" into the aural world of "talkies." The film also depicted a more subtle revolution of cultural values that transformed the world of European immigrants into an assimilated society of white "Americans." In the film, a younger generation, raised in America, triumphs over traditional immigrant parents.

Sound technology appears in only 25 percent of the first talkie. The Jazz Singer begins with a familiar silent film card that reads: "In every living soul, a spirit cries for expression--perhaps this plaintive, wailing song of Jazz is, after all, the misunderstood utterance of a prayer." In this way, the movie places the new music of jazz in the context of religious tradition.

Set on the Lower East Side of New York City, a neighborhood densely populated by "new" immigrants from eastern Europe, The Jazz Singer introduces the Jewish Cantor (or singer) Rabinowitz who is responsible for leading his congregation in religious chants and songs and who, we are told, "stubbornly clings to the ancient traditions of his race." His son, Jakie Rabinowitz, has different ideas about what to do with his singing talent. Instead of coming home for religious services, he sings under the stage name "Ragtime Jakie" in a saloon. At this point in the movie, delighted audiences heard the song "My Gal Sal" sung by the actor Bobby Gordon. But despite his Jakie's talent, his father whips him for being disrespectful of his religion, causing the boy to run away from home, to the great sorrow of his mother.

The film now jumps ten years forward to a San Francisco nightspot named Coffee Dan's, where the adult son (played by actor Al Jolson) has renamed himself Jack Robin. On the verge of a successful career, he sings, as the movie shifts back to sound, "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face" and receives great applause. Then, in the first spoken dialogue in a Hollywood film, Jolson declares: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet." He instructs the band to play "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" with a "hard and heavy" tempo. His success is assured. With the support of a non-Jewish stage dancer, Mary Dale (played by May McAvoy), he heads for his Broadway debut in New York.

Jack's homecoming is bittersweet. Although he enchants his mother with a jazzy version of "Blue Skies"--Jolson adds some impromptu dialogue--his father interrupts them with a loudly spoken "Shtop." Then, in the silent format, father and son argue about his decision to be a jazz singer rather than a cantor in the synagogue. Jack is banished again. He throws himself into the production of a Broadway musical "April Follies" with Mary Dale.

As the theater troupe approaches Opening Night and the fulfillment of Jack's ambitions, he learns that his father has fallen ill and will be unable to sing in the synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Jack and Mary discuss the importance of his career, and he agrees continue with his stage performance. He dresses for his role, covering himself with blackface and a wool wig to appear like an African American jazz singer. His mother arrives, imploring him to return home to his dying father. When she hears Jack singing on stage, however, she concedes "he belongs to the whole world now."

Guilty about failing his father, Jack decides to visit the old man. The theater cancels the opening night performance. In another display of sound, Jack sings in place of the cantor in the synagogue, making a spiritual reconciliation with his father. Then the film cuts back to the theater, where one day later Jack wears blackface and sings "Mammy" to his mother sitting in the front row of the audience.

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