Warner celebrates Jazz Singer with 80th anniversary edition
JULY 9 | On Oct. 16, Warner Home Video will debut the DVD of the studio’s 1927 landmark movie The Jazz Singer, which was the first feature-length film to have synchronized dialog and musical sequences.
The Al Jolson-starring title will be issued in a three-disc 80th Anniversary Collector’s Edition that contains, among other things, a restored and remastered version of the film featuring a refurbished soundtrack, a collection of period cartoons, shorts and rare Vitaphone comedy and music pieces, a handful of early sound era shorts and the newly produced feature-length documentary The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk. The package will carry a list price of $39.98.
The Jazz Singer “is going to be one of the landmark releases for 2007,” said WHV’s senior VP of theatrical catalog marketing George Feltenstein, who’s particularly proud of the new documentary.
“The story of the emergence of sound and its early days is such a fascinating one,” Feltenstein said. “There were competing technologies, competing studios, lots of egos and differences in public taste and perception. Sound familiar?”
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| Submitted by: | John Newman (newjohn@onetel.com) 7/12/2007 3:30:31 AM PT |
| Location: | U.K. |
Excellent news but it could have been so much better. It has taken a long time for The Jazz Singer to be released on DVD and I can’t wait to get my hands on the restored film and all of extras, particularly “Plantation Act” where the Jolson of 1926 sings “Rock-A-Bye your Baby”, When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along” and “April Showers” WOW! We should have had much more of Jolson. Al Jolson was and is “The Jazz Singer”. If any of the artists in the Vitaphone music shorts, or ANYBODY else, had stared in “The Jazz Singer” it would not be remembered as “the first sound film”, the film that revolutionized the industry. Warner’s realised this when they asked him to collect their special Oscar at the first Academy Awards ceremony. “I don’t know what Jack Warner’s going to do with this statue. It can’t say yes”. So Jolson wasn’t tall or handsome, he wasn’t an actor but he could present a song and he could move an audience. Whilst today’s DVD buyer might not appreciate Jolson’s later films in their entirety what a great fourth disc it would have been to include all of his songs from his Warner films. As we are promised with Judy Garland in the Rooney, Garland five disc set to be released end of September. Another unbelievable extra would have been the screen tests that Al Jolson made in 1948 before the shooting of “Jolson Sings Again”. Either to convince the studio that he was still young enough to play himself or as a guide for Larry Parks, as if! I can only hope the there is more to come and that “We ain’t heard nothin’ yet”.
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