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"Jessel had some exposure to Vitaphone and making talking pictures and so on. There was a tremendous amount of publicity announcing Jessel as the star of the upcoming The Jazz Singer. So, this was a public expectation in 1926, very early 1927. However, when the Warner brothers saw the reaction to Al Jolson A Plantation Act, which was nothing short of electric, it’s just incredible even today. And then simultaneously, Jessel started hinting that since he was now expected to sing and talk instead of just silently act, that he must get some more money, the Warner brothers in actual fact, used his complaint to say, "You know what, we really want Jolson now. We don’t want Jessel. We see what Jolson can do."

Yowza, Yowza, Yowza. This is Brian Marcus Decker, for the Jolson and Friends Blog located on the web at www.JolsonBlog.com, which is the first tech-nostalgic blog dedicated to the musical influences of Al Jolson and Friends.

Well folks, it's now time to continue with Part IV of our outstanding Jazz Singer interview with Ron Hutchinson, one of the co-founders of the Vitaphone Project. Due to their extensive efforts working with private collectors, university film archives, the Library of Congress, Warner Bros. and Turner Entertainment they have successfully preserved hundreds of early Vitaphone and Vitaphone Variety film performances. Included in this illustrious Vitaphone catalog include performances by the legendary Al Jolson, Burns & Allen, Baby Rose Marie, Ruth Etting, Weber & Fields, The Seven Little Foys, Georgie Price, George Jessel, Joe E. Brown, Sissle & Blake, Jack Benny, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, William Demarest, Joe Frisco, Jack Norworth, Molly Picon, Rudy Vallee and many, many more.

We will also have an opportunity to discuss with Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project the overall involvement with the recent Commemorative 80th Anniversary Edition of the legendary film, The Jazz Singer: This three-disc deluxe DVD EDITION is nothing short of fantastic. For Jolson fans and anyone interested in early 20th century performing arts, music, film and nostalgia, this is a must buy. This incredible three-disc collection includes more than several hours of digital transferred and immaculately refurbished soundtracks from the original Vitaphone Sound on Disc recordings. This special collection also includes behind the scene Jazz Singer photo cards, souvenir programs that include reviews, news articles, a Vitaphone brochure, replicas of postcards that even Al Jolson sent to Jack Warner following the death of his brother and more.

80th Anniversary DVD Edition of THE JAZZ SINGER

Click here to shop for this three-disc DVD from Amazon

Free Jolson and Friends Podcasts

You can listen to the entire series of interviews including my current eight-part interview with Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project, Rich Conaty of the Big Broadcast radio show, Asa the Magnificent Minstrel, the Vaudeville series with author Trav S.D. and our favorite child actress, Sybil Jason.

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Jolson Blog: Jazz Singer and Vitaphone Interview with Ron Hutchinson Part IV

"The Singing Fool, by this time there were probably about 3,000 to 5,000 theaters that could play the film, instead of a few hundred with The Jazz Singer. This was a hugely, hugely successful film. It was financially the most successful motion picture until Gone With the Wind, financially. So this was just beyond belief. This absolutely forced the remainder of Hollywood studios’ hand that there’s no turning back now. We’ve got to just bite the bullet and get into talking pictures. So, The Singing Fool was just incredibly successful."


Brian Marcus Decker: There are so many mythos associated with the 1927 version of The Jazz Singer. Most people are clearly under the misconception that The Jazz Singer was the very first talking picture. In fact, Al Jolson had already appeared in a few silent movies and a short talking picture in 1926 entitled A Plantation Act. Since the Vitaphone project had a great deal to do with restoring that, can you give us a little context to that?

Ron Hutchinson: It’s one of these things where it’s eerie in retrospect how this developed. But, a year before The Jazz Singer, September of 1926, Jolson signed with Warner Bros. to make one short. Now, at this point, the feature, Don Juan, was about ready to appear and with it were seven or eight shorts, operatic. There’s a banjo guy and different people. Will Hays speaks to the audience. And the plan was for Warner Bros. to have features with Vitaphone music and sound effect, but no talking, accompanied by seven or eight shorts. Increasingly, more and more were vaudeville and Broadway stars.

So, in September of 1926, at the Manhattan Opera House, where the Warner brothers had set up for filming talkie shorts, Jolson was paid $25,000 to make this 10-minute short called Al Jolson in A Plantation Act and in blackface on a farm set, he sings three songs. Our research indicated by late 1929, it had already been withdrawn by Warner Bros. It was kind of an old-fashioned looking short by 1929, even though it was only three years old. And by 1933, the records indicated that Warner Bros. didn’t even think they had either their disc or the picture anymore, because there were some inquiries at the time. So, for all intents and purposes, this was a lost short from 1933 on.

Fast forward to 1991 when the Vitaphone project is formed and we made our little wish list of what do we really want to find and work on, and that was one of them, because two of the four members were huge Jolson fans, had big collections and so on. And, of course, seemed to be a pipe dream that was never going to happen, because in 1991, no picture, no sound, nothing existed whatsoever.

Then, incredibly, and I like to think maybe because of the Vitaphone project being formed and somebody on high said, "Well, now, it’s time to start finding the pieces," around 1993, I believe, the Library of Congress found a film can that was marked "Jazz Singer trailer." And when they took the film out and ran it, the people down at the Library of Congress archives said, "This isn’t The Jazz Singer trailer. We’ve seen The Jazz Singer trailer. This isn’t it. This is Jolson without sound singing in blackface. I know what this is. This is A Plantation Act, albeit without any sound."

So, immediately, we were contacted by Robert Gitt and the Library of Congress saying, "Hey, we found the picture. Now we’ve got to find the sound." Now, this is like beyond a needle in a haystack, phonograph needle in a haystack, even. This is, where are you going to find one disc in the whole world for a particular film. Well, doing a lot of research we were able to find that, 10 years earlier, one of the founders, Dave Goldenberg, had been contacted by an old Bell Labs guy, who said he had five discs, one of which was A Plantation Act.

Well, since this time, the fellow had passed away. We had to do a lot of research. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we had to find the widow, who didn’t have a telephone, call the next door neighbor. And the next door neighbor knocked on her door and said, "Hey, somebody wants to talk to you," wanted to find out is the disc there. And it was sitting in the barn in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. So, John Newton drove down furiously and found the discs and indeed, one of the discs is for Al Jolson  A Plantation Act.

The problem was, it was broken in five places, epoxied together such that the grooves didn’t line up. So, you had this wonderful disc. It was unplayable. It would play for about 1/4 of a second and then skip, so it was horrible. What to do? Bring in a fellow by the name of Jim Cooprider, who’s a guy known for being able to take a crumbled 78, practically, and restore it so it can be played. So, we gave it to him and he thought about it for about two months, before he even touched the disc, how am I going to do this, because you can’t just separate it, because the grooves will flake apart and now you can’t do anything with it.

So, he finally came on the idea of putting it between two heavy sheets of glass in the sun, letting it sit for an hour or two, seeing if the glue would soften. And eventually, just at the right point, he was able to slowly move the pieces up and down and separate them without flaking the grooves off. Eventually, he was able to line them up, put them together with some non-permanent adhesive and we were able then back in New Jersey up at the Shanachie Studios in Newton, New Jersey, tilt the turntable, put a couple of quarters on the needle head, so it would track. And all of us were sitting there when for the first time in over 70 years; we were the first ones hearing Jolson’s performance again. And it played all the way through once.

It was digitized, cleaned up by UCLA. And about a year later, they synchronized it with the picture and the rest is history. But, if you listen close on the DVD, you can still occasionally hear those little bumps where those five big cracks were. So, it was like nothing in 1991, something found and within three years, everything kind of came together, so that people could enjoy this performance again.

Brian Marcus Decker: That’s a great story.  Continuing, there are obviously many other stories that had to do with how Jolson actually accepted the lead role in this pioneering film, The Jazz Singer. One of them as the story goes, Georgie Jessel had appeared in a very successful theatrical version of the movie and was obviously, one of the stronger contenders for the movie role. Even Eddie Cantor was considered for the role, according to Brian Gari, Eddie Cantor’s grandson. As it goes, we talked a little bit before about the misnomer about Warner Bros. struggling financially and the mythos goes that they were not prepared to pay Jessel what he was asking. And Jolson became interested in the project. After all, the original story was loosely based on his life to begin with. Made an offer to Warner Bros., which they could not refuse, which had to do with some money, but also taking some Warner Bros. stock. From your research, can you separate for us the truth from the myth?

Ron Hutchinson: This is another one of these stories, which kind of gained credence over time and when you start digging, you kind of find out the real story. And it relates partly to A Plantation Act. And here’s why. First of all, on the program that had Al Jolson, A Plantation Act, one of the other acts was George Jessel. His was one of the other shorts. So, Jessel had some exposure to Vitaphone and making talking pictures and so on. There was a tremendous amount of publicity announcing Jessel as the star of the upcoming The Jazz Singer. So, this was a public expectation in 1926, very early 1927.

However, when the Warner brothers saw the reaction to Al Jolson A Plantation Act, which was nothing short of electric, it’s just incredible even today. And then simultaneously, Jessel started hinting that since he was now expected to sing and talk instead of just silently act, that he must get some more money, the Warner brothers in actual fact, used his complaint to say, "You know what, we really want Jolson now. We don’t want Jessel. We see what Jolson can do." So, they used that as the excuse.

Jessel stayed under contract to Warner Bros. for about another year, making silent features, no talking in them. So, what happened was, Jessel kind of gave them the excuse to go over to Jolson. Jolson was obviously even then the much, much bigger star. Jolson was paid much more than Jessel was going to be paid, so this theory that they couldn’t afford to pay Jessel doesn’t hold water. Part of the compensation was indeed in stock, which was brilliant on Jolson’s part. But, it was not a case that he worked for free and was given stock instead and might be doing the performance for nothing. So, the reality was that Warner Bros. knew that with Jolson they were going to have a likely hit with talking pictures and a future in talking pictures and they wouldn’t have that with Jessel.

Brian Marcus Decker: What were some of the other Warner Bros. Vitaphone produced films that Jolson did star in after The Jazz Singer?

Ron Hutchinson: Well, immediately after the success of The Jazz Singer, which was in circulation from October of ’27 really through 1928, his next film was The Singing Fool. The Singing Fool was, I’m going to say, about 80% talking. It comes across almost like a full talkie, if you watch. But, there are passages where it’s silent. But, it’s largely talkie. I think there were only a couple hundred words in The Jazz Singer and there are obviously a lot more in The Singing Fool.

The Singing Fool, by this time there were probably about 3,000 to 5,000 theaters that could play the film, instead of a few hundred with The Jazz Singer. This was a hugely, hugely successful film. It was financially the most successful motion picture until Gone With the Wind, financially. So this was just beyond belief. This absolutely forced the remainder of Hollywood studios’ hand that there’s no turning back now. We’ve got to just bite the bullet and get into talking pictures. So, The Singing Fool was just incredibly successful.

Afterwards, the other films made money, but nothing could compare to The Singing Fool. And his subsequent film, Say It With Songs, was somewhat criticized and then the criticism started creeping in that some of it was more of the same. The original effect of seeing Jolson talking for the first time on screen had somewhat worn off. They had seen a few films now, so the novelty was somewhat off. So, Say It With Songs was not anywhere near as successful financially.

He also did Mammy, which I think his performances get better and better and more and more comfortable as his career at Warner Bros. progresses, even has some recently-restored Technicolor scenes, which are just breath-taking. And then he also did Big Boy, which is a re-creation of a performance he had on Broadway.

But, the films were nowhere near as financially successful and by 1930, he and Warner Bros. parted company for the first time. He returned later in the 30’s, but those were the films. He did a couple of other shorts, which were mainly promotional for his features.

Brian Marcus Decker: The Jazz Singer includes several seminal Jolson songs including Dirty Hands, Dirty Faces, Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye), Irving Berlin’s classic Blue Skies, Mother of Mine, I Still Have You and of course the classic rendition of My Mammy. What are some your favorite Jolson films and songs and why?

Ron Hutchinson: Well, I think when you get into The Singing Fool that is where the real effect of Jolson’s performance on the screen and record sales, because I started with the Vitaphone project, primarily as a record collector. My wife, Judy, and I collect 78’s, have about 12,000, 1925 to ‘35, mainly. And among our first records we acquired were Jolson’s Brunswick 78’s from the 20’s. And one of our favorites at the time, when we first started collecting, was I’m Sittin’ on Top of the World, and was a million seller and it was as much because it was something performed by Jolson on screen. And that’s certainly one of them that I really, really love. I think we have all of Jolson’s 78’s from ’25 on and some of the earlier ones. There’s one that was cut though from; and you correct me if I’m wrong, I think from Say It With Songs, but it’s I’m Crazy for You.

Brian Marcus Decker: Great song.

Ron Hutchinson: Great song. It was cut because there was some dispute or whatever. But, the soundtrack discs still exist and it’s just wonderful and again, a little more obscure. And he did one later, which he did not record, called Hooray for Baby and Me. But, it’s hard to find any performance from that period of Jolson that isn’t really just full of life. Very often, he’ll comment to the band members during the recording, "Come on, get hot," and that kind of thing. So, it’s kind of like audio verite, sometimes, but just some great, great performances.

Jolson Blog: Vitaphone Project Interview Part V: July 31, 2008

• There were many film genres that were part of the early tests with recorded sound films. Why was it that the real success of sound movies started with the musical and the musical comedy?

Wait a Minute, wait a minute, wait a minute:
Jolson and Friends Blog Required Viewing and Reading List

80th Anniversary DVD Edition of THE JAZZ SINGER

This three-disc deluxe DVD EDITION is nothing short of fantastic. For Jolson fans and anyone interested in early 20th century performing arts, music, film and nostalgia, this is a must buy. This incredible three-disc collection includes more than several hours of digital transferred and immaculately refurbished soundtracks from the original Vitaphone Sound on Disc recordings. This special collection also includes behind the scene Jazz Singer photo cards, souvenir programs that include reviews, news articles, a Vitaphone brochure, replicas of postcards and more.

Click here to shop for this three-disc DVD from Amazon

No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Paperback) by Trav S.D.

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

My Fifteen Minutes: An Autobiography of a Child Star of the Golden Era of Hollywood (Paperback) by Sybil Jason

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When Jolson Was King: (Paperback) by Richard Grudens

Richard Grudens has written an entertaining and informative (must read) book for anyone interested in the legendary, Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer".

"The book contains many facets of Jolson' career including those around him, his competition, employers, and comments from those he inspired enough to form their own careers, the issue of minstrel, blackface performers, fabled stories of the famed Friar's Club, a chapter of the infamous Shubert Brothers, and chapters covering Jolson's experiences in film, radio and his extensive USO travels. Covered too are vignettes of the theatres in which Jolson performed, and of those great theatrical competitors like the Barrymore's and where they were voicing their talents while Jolson was pulling them in at the Winter Garden, and a full feature on Jolson's films from the first talkie, The Jazz Singer to his famed bio-pics The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again." - Richard Grudens

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Changes to Jolson and Friends Blog

In the upcoming months I am looking to continue to evolve the Jolson and Friends Blog and wanted preview some upcoming changes. I am continuing to promote the sale of Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Houdini, History of Baseball and several other unique Limited Edition T-shirt designs (featured above) and matching gift cards (all with free U.S. shipping). The sales from these items help offset the cost of maintaining this blog. Your continued support is greatly appreciated and besides they are great T-shirts.

Due to the time intensive nature of ongoing research, content development, production and maintaining and the Blog, the next blog update will happen on July 31st. I am continuing to work on several future Jolson and Friends projects including:

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