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Well folks, it's now time to continue with Part VI of our outstanding The 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.

To listen to the free Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast published audio files, just click on the listen to podcast icon on the top of this blog post.

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

"Crossland before The Jazz Singer, had worked on as a director, Don Juan, with another one of Warner Bros.' let's say potentially difficult stars, John Barrymore. That was a silent film, but it was already felt that he had some experience with a Vitaphone film. And so, he was not a great director. He certainly made some films that were quite good, but he was somewhat of a journeyman director, who worked well with "potentially difficult stars." And that is one of the reasons he worked with Jolson."


Brian Marcus Decker: Andrew Sarris, the film critic, also said, "The Jazz Singer marked the beginning of the end, rather than the end of the beginning." We see that there were a number of professional casualties associated with the advent of talking pictures among silent film actors, directors and vaudeville performers. Can you share with us some examples of some of these casualties, both from film and theater?

Ron Hutchinson: Well, this is another myth, to some degree. Obviously, there were casualties, but relatively few had to do with talking pictures. They had more to do with just changing times. Let me give you an example. There were a couple that were just absolutely career-enders. Emil Jannings is a good example.

Brian Marcus Decker: A brilliant actor.

Ron Hutchinson: Brilliant actor, thick accent. There were a few foreign stars at the time, who because of their accent, just could not make it. And they went back to their home country and continued their film career in talkies in their country.

The myth that John Gilbert, the biggest male star, without any question whatsoever, that talkies ruined his career, absolutely untrue. What hurt his career was that the initial talkie features that he starred in had incredibly stilted dialogue that nobody could succeed with, without people laughing at you. He would say, "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you." Now, nobody can deliver that dialogue and not be laughed off the screen. And yet, in Hollywood Review of 1929, you see him and Norma Shearer do a takeoff on Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. And he's very natural. His voice level is fine. He doesn't have this high-pitched voice. However, because of a few really bad early talkies, his career ended pretty rapidly. And he continued to make films for a number of years, but they were not successful.

Those were the main casualties. But, then you look at somebody like Clara Bow. Clara Bow's transition to sound, even though she hated making talking pictures and was very nervous, her films pretty well capture her Jazz Baby, It Girl persona. And her films were very successful. So, they're not these stilted or very badly performed films.

What happened was, with the stock market crash, things changed and this idea of high living and the flappers and all that, that was the past. So, what happened was some of these gritty Broadway stars and performers like Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Joan Blondell, went west and there was a different type of performer coming in. And also, you had stars that couldn't make it in silent films, because they relied on speaking. Marx Brothers, hard to imagine a Marx Brothers film where it was silent. It was not going to work. And then other stars like Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields, who had made silent films and some of them quite successful, gained a much bigger career, because now you had that added dimension of talking.

So, there were very few people whose careers ended. There were certainly silent stars who just could not act, because they had to have the director talk them through every single nuance and emotion, and those people, Norma Talmadge is a good example, perhaps, or some whose careers were starting to end even then, Mary Pickford and so on. So, there is a transition, but it was as much because of changing times. It was much more than that. It was not somebody with a squeaky voice, which is parodied in Singing in the Rain. There were relatively few of those.

Brian Marcus Decker: Alan Crossland had a successful career in film as a director from 1916 to his untimely death on July 16th 1936, in a car crash. Why was Crossland specifically chosen to direct The Jazz Singer?

Ron Hutchinson: Crossland before The Jazz Singer, had worked on as a director, Don Juan, with another one of Warner Bros.' let's say potentially difficult stars, John Barrymore. That was a silent film, but it was already felt that he had some experience with a Vitaphone film. And so, he was not a great director. He certainly made some films that were quite good, but he was somewhat of a journeyman director, who worked well with "potentially difficult stars." And that is one of the reasons he worked with Jolson.

He did a very good job with Jolson. If you stand back and watch the film today, especially in the restored version, you can see there's some really good acting done by Jolson, who was extremely uncomfortable before the camera. People forget that just before he was about to film the talking scenes where he's at the piano with Eugenie Besserer as his mother and everything, he was still extremely nervous, almost to the point of throwing up. And Crossland allegedly hinted that, "Al, we understand if you're nervous about this. You know, Jessel said he really wants back in if you go out." And that convinced him and that supposedly really happened. So, he dealt well with him and got some, I think, really good performances out of Jolson. But, he was really picked because he had the mindset and mentality to deal with potentially difficult, nervous; which Jolson certainly was, concerned performers.

Remember, a couple of years earlier, he was supposed to do a film feature with D.W. Griffith, His Darker Self. And apparently, he was so concerned and worried about doing that, he kind of ran away and there were a bunch of lawsuits and the film was never made. Later in his career, he did a number of other things. He did My Man with Fanny Brice, who was promoted as the female Jolson by Warner Bros., and did some other things. And then he did some fairly stilted films like On With the Show, several operettas and so on, and after about three in a row, his career seemed to shift to more B pictures. He did the Perry Mason features in the early 30's and he was unfortunately killed in an automobile accident.

But, I think Warner Bros. was smart in putting them together. He did later Big Boy with Jolson in 1930, but, more of a personality director. He wasn't a Hitchcock, but he was really good for Jolson, I think.

Jolson Blog: Vitaphone Project Interview Part VII: September 28, 2008

• Could you provide us an overview of some of the other great material on the three-disc DVD set of The Jazz Singer?

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

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

 
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) 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 just 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 September 28th. I am continuing to work on several future Jolson and Friends projects including:

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