THAT "FIRST WORD" LEGEND
Although only 20 years' old, the talking picture is old enough to have many legends built around it. One of the most persistent of these insists that the miracle-working featurc, "The Jazz Singer," the first
picture with any talk at all in it, qualified as a "talkie" only because of a single line ad-libbed into the stationary microphone during the seventh reel by A1 Jolson; that being "Come oii, Ma, listen to this." Yet a few of the Warner oldtimers have lately- insisted that it wasn't so. To settle the dispute a private screening of the feature was decided on. Then, to their surprise, the company found-it had no print of the picture in its possession. A hurried call was put to New York's Museum of Modern Art which obliged with a print from tiiG archives. Now it can be unalterably recorded that the very first line of spoken dialogue in "The Jazz Singer" is in the second reel, where Jolson, after being applauded by the patrons in Coffee Dan's cafe for his rendition of "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face," utters a singularly prophetic line. Says Jolson: "Wait a minute, wait a minute ... You ain't heard nothing yet!"
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHRONL19460921.2.39.3
Bibliographic details
Chronicle (Levin), 21 September 1946, Page 6
Word Count
201THAT "FIRST WORD" LEGEND Chronicle (Levin), 21 September 1946, Page 6
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Chronicle (Levin). You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in