Untold Stories: ‘The Jazz Singer,’ Al Jolson, and the First ‘Talkie’ Movie

Today (Oct. 6) marks the 1927 premier of the first “talkie,” or the first movie with sound. “The Jazz Singer” starred the legendary Al Jolson, once called “the world’s greatest entertainer,” in a story of how “The son of a Jewish Cantor must defy the traditions of his religious father in order to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer.”

The movie (which was technically a “part-talkie,” some scenes silent and others with sound) marked a monumental turning point in the history of movies, with sound synced up to the lip movements of the actors and singers, marking the beginning of the end of the silent movie era and the dawning of the golden age of Hollywood.

Jolson has been canceled in modernity because he reached fame doing blackface routines (below is one such from “The Jazz Singer”). While we now rightly see black face as offensive, not everyone who did it then was racist; some even saw it as a sort of tribute to black Americans and a way to tell the story of their suffering (strange as that seems now).

In fact, Jolson had many black friends, one of them the talented dancer “Bojangles” Robinson, and Jolson battled racial discrimination both on Broadway and in movies. He fought for equal treatment and desegregation, and promoted black performers on stage and in film.

“The Jazz Singer” also helped celebrate Judaism and Jewish Americans in a massively popular way. We might look back and see prejudice of one type, but the movie undoubtedly was a work of art that could fight anti-Semitism.