“THE JAZZ SINGER”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 636, 12 April 1929, Page 15

“THE JAZZ SINGER”

PARALLEL FROM STAR’S LIFE “Indiana,” says George Ade, “is a State I will never go back to.” And that is just what A 1 JOlson is saying of the stage since the spectacular success of his first movie, “The Jazz Singer,” shortly to be released throughout New Zealand. The story of the play parallels Jolson’s own life. He, too, ran away from an orthodox home to follow the lure of the theatre, and was rewarded by applause such as no other entertainer in history has elicited. At the moment of the triumph of the Jack Robin of “The Jazz Singer,” his mother comes to tell him that his father is dying, and to plead with him to leave Broadway for the humble home in the Ghetto to sing the Day of Atonement song, in place of his father. Torn between two loves, the piece rises to dramatic heights of great beauty. The .cast includes May McAvoy, Warner* Oland. Eugenie Besserer, Richard Tucker, William Demerest, Anders Randolf and Will Walling. Alan Crosland’s masterly direction is everywhere evident, but it is Jolson the inimitable. Jolson the emotional. the volcanic, the captivating, which makes audiences shout and weep and laugh.

Romance and drama, visions of surpassing beauty. Oriental magnificence, lovely women, and evil deeds of violent passions, flow through the pages of the "Thousand-and-one Nighis.” which no producer has ever ventured to put upon the screen before. A fortune has been spent to achieve the effect of the wealth and luxury of these Arabian Nights tales. Never was such magnificent spectacle staged for a film, nor finer entertainment. The whole of the Dominion will be talking about the "Secrets of the East,” the greatest U.F.A. spectacle yet made, when it will be released shortly by Cinema Art Films.