Crosland, Alan

The Jazz Singer (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)

The first feature film to utilize Synchronous Sound. The story is about Cantor Oland's son who goes into show business over his objections. Tunes include "Mammy" "Toot Toot Tootsie" and more. Academy Award Nominations: 2 including Best Adapted Writing. Academy Awards: Special Award for technical achievement.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS Rating: NR UPC: 012569798892 Manufacturer No: 79889

It's one of the most famous titles in film history, and everybody knows why: in a handful of sequences in The Jazz Singer, sound and image are excitingly synchronized. By 1927, some short subjects had already been "talkies," and a few features had synchronized music, but The Jazz Singer gets the prize as the breakthrough. Because the film is largely without dialogue, you can--even watching the film today--almost palpably sense the shift in movie epochs, as cinema takes an evolutionary leap from one form to the next. The movie itself, based on a successful Broadway show by Samson Raphaelson, is strictly melodrama of an ancient kind. Young Jakie Rabinowitz is expected to follow in the long line of family Cantors, but his heart yearns to sing "Toot Toot, Tootsie" instead of "Kol Nidre." Al Jolson plays Jakie (later Jack Robin of footlights fame), and you get a taste of why he was widely considered the greatest entertainer of his time; watch him with a tearjerker such as "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face" and you'll see the skillful, completely irony-free manipulations of a master storyteller. Equally fun is Jolson's non-singing patter--in fact, this is where you get the thrill of talking pictures, more so than the songs. "You ain't heard nuthin' yet," he burbles, and it's hard not to catch the excitement.

Jolson's numbers include his blackface act, a longstanding tradition of minstrel shows and music halls, and an unavoidable source of awkwardness for later viewers (see The Savages for an amusing account of the embarrassment this can cause). Blackface is a bizarre show business reality, and it's part of the movie, so some historical context is required.

Warner Bros. rightly considers The Jazz Singer a key moment in the studio's history, and this three-disc DVD package gives the deluxe treatment. The film itself is beautifully restored, and reproductions of original supporting materials (souvenir program, stills, ads) are fun. A booklet on early Vitaphone shorts clearly predates The Jazz Singer, for Jolson is mentioned only as a star of Vitaphone shorts, and George Jessel is tabbed as the future star of The Jazz Singer (he'd played Jakie on Broadway). A 90-minute documentary gives a fine account of how the Vitaphone system worked, and how other systems actually became the industry standard.

Supplemental short films are a true treasure trove. A Plantation Act is more Jolson blackface, Hollywood Handicap a studio short comedy directed by Buster Keaton, and I Love to Singa a hilarious 1936 Tex Avery cartoon--a spoof of The Jazz Singer starring a bird named Owl Jolson. A flabbergasting collection of Vitagraph shorts--over four hours' worth--makes up disc 3 of this set: utterly weird and wonderful performances by some of the strangest acts ever to kill vaudeville. There are a few names here: George Burns and Gracie Allen in a short called Lambchops, the Foy Family doing wacky stage business. But the cornball timed jokes of Shaw & Lee, the saucy songs of Trixie Friganza, not to mention "The Wizard of the Mandolin," Bernardo De Pace--these are gems, folks. Anyone with a taste for showbiz past will love them. --Robert Horton

The Jazz Singer

LEGENDARY FIRST TALKING PICTURE!Of historical importance as the first successful talking picture, it's the story of a Cantor who would like his son to follow in his footsteps. But Jolson feels otherwise: he wants to be a Jazz Singer! A very early performance by Myrna Loy, with the classic line:"You ain't heard nothing yet!" Main songs: "Toot , Toot, Tootsie Goodbye", "My Mammy", "My Gal Sal", and others. Based upon the play by Samson Raphaelson as produced on the spoke stage by Lewis & Gordon and Sam H. Harris. Scenario by Al Cohn Black & White

The Olive Thomas Collection: The Flapper/Olive Thomas - Everybody's Sweetheart

In the heyday of silent films a winsome ingenue named Olive Thomas had a seemingly charmed life. Born in the mining town of Charleroi Pennsylvania her beauty and spirit carried her to New York where she found fame and fortune. She became a favorite of illustrators the "Darling of the Cond# Nast crowd" the mascot of the New York Yankees and a Ziegfeld Follies lovely. Soon she became a movie star with The Flapper a charming comedy about small-town girl Ginger King who attends an East Coast boarding school and dreams of adventures. Ginger feels she has outgrown her boyfriend and flirts with an older man only to get mixed up with a couple of crooks who entrust her with a batch of stolen jewels. Ginger returns home from school wearing the jewels and playing the "jaded vamp." When the crooks come after her she realizes she must overcome her childish dreams and save the day! Norma Shearer and her sister Athole also make their first film appearances. Then Olive Thomas: Everybody's Sweetheart explores the life and death of one of the first onscreen flappers. Beneath the glitter of success Olive had her share of tragedy and heartache. Her death under mysterious circumstances in Paris just a month before her 26th birthday shocked the world. It was the very first of the Hollywood scandals soon followed by the deaths of Virginia Rappe William Desmond Taylor and Wallace Reid. Narrated by Rosanna Arquette this irresistible documentary features rare clips from Olive's films and interviews with director Allison Anders Richard Ziegfeld and Daniel Selznick. The Olive Thomas Collection reveals what a great loss Olive's death was to cinema or as producer David O. Selznick said of this tragedy she was "a dancing sunbeam suddenly snuffed out like a candle."Special Features:Stills Gallery; Anecdote Reenactments about Olive Thomas as told by Billy Bitzer and Lenore Coffee; Illustrated Interview with Bernard Krug Thomas Olive#s first husband found in The Pittsburgh Press (Ma

Film history records that during the late Teens of the 20th century, Olive Thomas was the screen's "quintessential American girl" and possibly "the most beautiful woman in the world." The beauty was there for anyone to see: a heart-shaped face, luminous skin and smile, large eyes whose deep blue photographed a lustrous gray. As for quintessential American girlness, she'd been born in the milltown of Charleroi, Pennsylvania (unlike "America's sweetheart" Mary Pickford, who'd been born Canadian), and gone from gingham counters in Charleroi and then New York City, to modeling for the most popular portrait artists of the day, to stardom with the Ziegfeld Follies. Wonderfully natural on screen, she made a passel of movies (eight in 1919 alone), married Mary Pickford's brother Jack, got to define the screen image of "the flapper" (albeit comically), and may have been turning into a real actress when she died in Paris in 1920, either a victim of accidental poisoning or an impetuous suicide.

It's necessary to say "film history records" because the films themselves, by and large, do not survive. One that does, pristinely, is The Flapper (1920), Thomas's next-to-next-to-last movie. Written by the estimable Frances Marion, it's an easygoing comedy about a Southern teen who, sent to a ritzy boarding school up North, gets into mischief while acting the sophisticated grownup to impress a suave gentleman and match wits with a pair of jewel thieves. She's lovely to look at, and there's an exhilarating sequence shot atop a double-decker bus as it bears her along Fifth Avenue--an innocent girl in a vibrant metropolis she had already seduced years earlier.

Completing the Collection is Olive Thomas: Everybody's Sweetheart, an hourlong documentary chronicling the actress's life and career--including her relationships with Flo Ziegfeld and the three Selznicks, Lewis J., Myron, and David--and affording glimpses of some of her other movies. Much of the commentary is supremely fatuous, but not the legend that her ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre where her star first rose. --Richard T. Jameson

The Beloved Rogue

A swashbuckling sensation, The Beloved Rogue, has thrilled audiences for years due in large part to the incomparable John Barrymore who turns out a great performance as the legendary poet-patriot, Francois Villon. Set amongst wonderfully fantastic winter sets, The Beloved Rogue promises high-flying stunts, wild snowstorms, passionate romance, and good-hearted humor.

Collectible poster included

The Beloved Rogue (1927)

The Beloved Rogue

The French poet-patriot Francois Villon enters a battle of wits with King Louis XI and fights to save his beloved in this exciting and romantic adventure. An enormous production with lavish sets and costumes, this swashbuckling story features a vibrant performance by the great John Barrymore. It also marks the American film debut of German film star Conrad Veidt, who would go on to play unforgettable roles in classics like "Casablanca" and "The Thief of Bagdad."

The Beloved Rogue (1927)

John Barrymore stars memorably as Parisian literary giant Francois Villon, who is made King for a day by King Louis XI in an effort to placate his subjects. Before the day is over, Villon must assemble a rag tag army of felons, vagrants, and ladies of ill repute to defend his beloved city against an invading army from Burgundy.