THE SINGING FOOL (1928)

This numbingly awful follow-up to Al Jolson’s THE JAZZ SINGER/’27 was a phenomenon, holding the top-grossing spot for a decade. A ridiculous, poorly made piece of hoke (Jolie’s singing waiter hits it big; marries glamor; loses wife & kiddie; sinks like a stone before crawling back for more tragedy . . . and another hit tune!!), but Synch-Sound rather than content drew them in. (The Brothers Warner, to their financial chagrin, long thought that Jolson, rather than synch-sound was the draw.) While THE JAZZ SINGER had packed all available ‘wired-for-sound’ theaters, how many were up & running? Usually claimed as the first Talking Picture, it is and it isn’t. Largely a silent pic with recorded music & sound effects, its song numbers (and a few lines of off-the-cuff dialogue) were projected in the Warner sound-on-disk system already being used for VitaPhone short subjects. But if JAZZ wasn’t quite the first Talkie, it does hold a claim for (of all things) christening The Silents, a term previously unknown. It happens about halfway in: Jolson, singing & kidding around with his mother, is stopped by an angry shout from his father. Instantly, you note something missing, an aural vacuum created as the synch-speech stops. The film seems to stagger before the recorded music track starts up again. Ironically, it took the cusp of The Talkies to give us ‘The Silents,’ a new term. Before this it was ‘The Movies,’ Picture Show, occasionally Shadow Play. Which makes Jolson, the man who’s famous for bringing voice to the screen, less the first Talkie star, than the last Silent star discovery. And this follow-up film, THE SINGING FOOL (60% talk & song/40% silent with inter-titles), turbo-charged by a huge increase in theaters equipped with the Rube Goldberg contraption that was Warners’ synch-sound-on-disc system - see below/click to expand

was America’s first chance to see and hear the new star. Then, just as it was for so many silent film stars after a smash first Talkie, curiosity sated, a shockingly fast decline in popularity.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with THE JAZZ SINGER. (WARNING! - Both films earn BLACKFACE alerts!) Wrongly decried as second-rate by most film historians, JAZZ SINGER may be corny & heavy-handed, but it’s also a well constructed play (by Samson Raphaelson) and boasts a handsome production from helmer Alan Crosland.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A much needed comic song, ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life,’ was removed from all SINGING FOOL prints due to a law suit. Here it is, lip-synched by Larry Parks to Jolson’s own vocal in the inexplicably popular THE JOLSON STORY/’46. (VICTOR/VICTORIA/’82 fans will note its likeness to that film’s ‘Shady Dame From Seville,’ right down to the travesty coloratura.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2T_ONrXCtY