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- Title
Why Did Negroes Love Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer?: Melodrama, Blackface and Cosmopolitan Theatrical Culture.
- Authors
Musser, Charles
- Abstract
This essay offers a reassessment of The Jazz Singer (1927) and Al Jolson by challenging several different lines of persistent criticism: its lack of artistic merit, its effacement of Jewish identity and its racist depictions in light of Jolson's use of blackface. Rather than a failed adaptation of Samson Raphaelson's play of the same name, the picture innovatively reworked both that play and E.A. Dupont's film The Ancient Law ( Das Alte Gesetz, 1923), further placing it within a framework of Jewish culture. The black press and Negro moviegoers warmly embraced both The Jazz Singer and Jolson for a variety of reasons, including his promotion of black artists. Among African Americans, he was the most popular Hollywood movie star of the late 1920s.
- Subjects
JAZZ Singer, The (Film : 1927); JOLSON, Al, 1886-1950; BLACKFACE entertainers in motion pictures; BLACKFACE entertainers; RACE relations
- Publication
Film History, 2011, Vol 23, Issue 2, p196
- ISSN
0892-2160
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.2979/filmhistory.23.2.196