This is topic 'The Jazz Singer' (1927) - DVD availability in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-05-2004, 06:55 AM:
 
Anyone got any ideas why this remains stubbornly unavailable? It seems funny that for a film which has been discussed and written about so much, the the only copies I can find are second-hand VHS PAL tapes dating from a rerelease in 1981, which was a shitty transfer from a heavily scratched print (probably 16mm).

Could Warners be keeping this one back because they have plans for a major 80th anniversary relaunch?
 

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Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 08-05-2004, 01:16 PM:
 
Sounds like studio politics to me. THat's one of those "un-pc" films that might offend people.

danny
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-05-2004, 03:45 PM:
 
Hmm... certainly the film as a whole celebrates Jewish ideology, and the 'Kol Nidre' synagogue scene just before the final number explicitly celebrates the Jewish religion as well; but there are a lot of other films which celebrate similar ideologies and beliefs and which I could have chosen off the shelf of my local Virgin (video shop, that is!) this afternoon. If that is the reason, it's a pity. Can't really say more without straying into political territory, sorry.
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 08-05-2004, 04:20 PM:
 
Amazon.com has it available in VHS but I'm sure its NTSC. DVD is unavailable. I hope they aren't holding it back because of some PC nonsense.
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 08-05-2004, 08:32 PM:
 
Leo

The Jazz Singer occasioally plays on some of the classic movie stations...like Turner. The prints (on tv) did seem to be very clean!

As for the Kol Nidre recording itself, it is available. I forgot the distributor, but some years ago there was an excellent
Kol Nidre compiliation that was released. This compiliation was Kol Nidre exclusive, and featured Rosenblatt, Sirota, Pierce, Tucker, A.J., 101 Strings, and several others! You might look for it.

It may have been a Columbia release, but I have forgotten. It was available on cassette, but I am unsure about c.d.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-06-2004, 02:02 AM:
 
I have a laserdisc of 1927 "THE JAZZ SINGER" along with serveral other Al Jolson films in a special box set collection from Warners Brothers and the picture is to too bad considering the age of the film. The Vitaphone sound was very interesting. Although I have sold almost my entire collection of laserdiscs, I consider this box set a "Keeper" and plan to hold on to it until Warner releases the collection on DVD. I also have "DON JUAN" (1
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-06-2004, 02:10 AM:
 

quote: Leo Enticknap

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Hmm... certainly the film as a whole celebrates Jewish ideology, and the 'Kol Nidre' synagogue scene just before the final number explicitly celebrates the Jewish religion as well; but there are a lot of other films which celebrate similar ideologies and beliefs and which I could have chosen off the shelf of my local Virgin (video shop, that is!) this afternoon. If that is the reason, it's a pity.

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That's not the reason. The Warners were Jewish, & I think the author of the play was Jewish. The problem is that it's offensive because of Jolson's blackface minstrel show character.





Minstrel shows were an entertainment form originated in the USA, & were the antecedents of other indigenous US entertainment forms such as vaudeville, burlesque, & the musical comedy. All those other forms which developed from & included aspects of minstrel shows are pretty familiar now, but minstrel shows have been disappeared from the memory of popular culture because its central premise is too nasty to bring in the house.

Minstrel shows evolved from 'blackface acts'; singles which appeared in pre-US civil war theatres nationwide. The first was Emmitt Till; his success spawned many others who adopted the form (such as the most famous, Thomas Rice, a.k.a "Jim Crow", his blackface character's name).

The blackface act was simple: a single with comedy & song, the comedy was a portrayal of a stereotype poor, uneducated southern black person played for laughs. The performer was a white man made up in blackface. As the form became standardized to set the framework for the humor, the conventions of heightening & universalizing caricatured aspects of the south - watermelon, the plantation, etc. were locked in as setup for gags.

From the single, entire companies were formed of blackface performers essentially employing the same premise, but expanding it to accommodate an entire show, not just one spot on the bill. More caricature aspects were locked in, & also some changes for spectacle, not the least was dressing the entire company in formal wear for big numbers. They became mind-bogglingly elaborate (I wish I could find some pictures I've seen, imagine the most expensive stage set for Showboat you've ever seen, then put 45 men in white tie, tails, tophat & black face in formal assembly on there).

Some of the developed standards of the *schematic* portions of the minstrel shows were the actors' parade (a carryover from antebellum theatre travelling troupes, but for minstrel shows coming to town, the actors were all in costume & following the wagons in caricature performace to the theatre), the 'cakewalk' (a dance number), & most influentially, the verbal comedy segment with Tambo, Mr. Bones, & Mr. Interlocutor.

It grew from the assembled musicians onstage for a number, seated in a line or semicircle across the stage. At the conclusion of the number, there would be comic interchange between 'Mr. Interlocutor' seated at the center (usually not in blackface, i.e. a white man), & oscillating back & forth for comic lines between two performers at the extreme ends of the line, at one end Tambo (who played a tambourine), at the other end Mr. Bones (who basically played the spoons or sticks).

It was a laboratory of straight man/comic from which burlesque & vaudeville (& all subsequent types utilizing the machinery) came. Mr. Interlocutor was the straight man, sometimes for variety one of the end men would set up a straight line for the other end man. You could pare down from the comics (the 'end men') to one, but the oscillation back & forth heightened the suspense which is the most critical part of setup/suspense/payoff. The structure was adapted & incorporated into burlesque comedy, 'doubles', comic scenes with honed straight/comic design &/or roles, & even as minstrel shows toured outside the US became structual components of English music hall Pat & Mike 'crosstalk acts' (more than fair, since the American musical comedy is pretty much the creation of Guy Bolton & English transplant P. G. Wodehouse working in NYC).

Minstrel shows played nationwide, were mostly written (both music & comic parts) by writers around the NYC theatrical hub. Almost all the 'traditional' romanticized songs about the south: "Dixie", etc., were written for minstrel shows by NY-based Tin Pan Alley songwriters. Touring minstrel shows died out in the 20's, as did vaudeville & touring theatricals, as movies became more attractive to run in theaters. However, minstrel shows still were performed all over; if you check eBay, you'll find tons of programs for minstrel shows mounted by high schools, churches, fraternal organizations, police & firemen's associations, local theatre groups, etc. fairly solidly & frequently through the 1960s. There were even on TV still into the 1960s occasional moments in variety programs where suddenly they'd pop up with a minstrel show segment.

The problem was of course that they presented as standard knowledge caricatured, unfair portrayals of black people. These were the only portrayals of black people being presented by the media. As overwhelmingly bizarre as the minstrel show world had become with ornate heightened plantation settings, white people in blackface speaking a dialect that had become its own more than one from any particular place, those images of black people were the ones that whites recieved & accepted as norms.

The political pressure came mostly from the NAACP which protested & boycotted against them, as they had the play The Klansman & later Griffith's adaptation of it Birth of A Nation.

"Minstrel Show" in the US is a derogative term now applied to something which presents unrealistic & damaging carictured portrayals of some group for political or monetary gain. Al Sharpton's been accused of running one, there was a huge cry about a proposed reality show to be constructed as a real-life Beverly Hillbillies by putting rural & isolated southern whites in some urban, upscale social environment as a minstrel show, I remember that MTV got slammed because of the video 'Cotton Eyed Joe' by the group Rednex who presented L'il Abner southern sterotypes as a minstrel show, Queer As Folk & Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have been called gay minstrel shows, etc. Spike Lee examined how constructed entertainment, no matter how demeaning, can be more fascinating & rewarding to an audience than real issues in the minstrel-show based "Bamboozled".

Al Jolson's "Plantation Act", a Vitaphone short which predates "The Jazz Singer", has had its sound discs discovered recently & the whole brought together again. It's a minstrel show tailored to support only a star performer (Jolson), as opposed to the earlier 'blackface acts' which preceded minstrel shows. For a better idea of the minstrel show parallel universe, you've got to see the Jolson movie "WonderBar", in which the number "Goin' to Heaven On A Mule" will make you wonder if you're losing you're mind.

It's interesting that the two most significant turning point movies, Birth of A Nation & The Jazz Singer, had something at the core which was done at the expense of black people in the US. That's why they're hot potatoes, as well as Disney's "Song of the South", which very plainly has Uncle Remus living in the minstrel show parallel universe of a sunny, lazy, bucolic, 100% trouble-free, Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah 'South'.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/news/lgthatcher.html
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=minstrel+shows&ei=UTF-8&n=20&fl=1&vl=lang_en&all=0&fr=FP-tab-web-t
http://www.musicals101.com/minstrel.htm
http://www.jsfmusic.com/Uncle_Tom/Tom_Article6.html
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 08-06-2004, 03:56 AM:
 
William,

A little history of Kol Nidre:

The origions Kol Nidre (All Vows) are not really known. The Kol Nidre is in Aramaic...not Hebrew, Aramaic being the root of both Hebrew and Arabic.

Kol Nidre is not a prayer, and to a large extent has been a source of grief for the Jewish People. It has been retained in lituragy largly due to the haunting melody, which really sets the tone for the High-Holidays (Rosh HaShanah-New Year and Yom Kippur-The Day of Atonement)

Kol Nidre is really a legal document of sorts. It asks for promises and vows made during the year to be forgiven....anti-semites have routinely used the Kol Nidre example as "truth/fact" that Jews cannot be trusted.

However, Rabbinic Law clearly states that the Kol Nidre is between an individual and offenses committed directly to GOD. The Kol Nidre does not include the eradication of offenses committed towards another person. Rather, the offender must seek forgiveness from the party that was offended, to right the wrong...if possible, regardless of what that entails. In seeking forgiveness from GOD, we do what we can to better our lives through action, and to live honestly, etc....
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-06-2004, 04:41 AM:
 
Thanks for the explanation, William. It naively did not occur to me that anyone in their right mind would seriously want to censor a film based on a form of popular entertainment which had its origins around 1900 according to the political sensitivities of 2000. That makes it especially ironic that Kevin Brownlow's version of The Birth of a Nation is readily available on DVD from just about every branch of HMV or Virgin in this country. The portrayal of American Indians in The Iron Horse isn't exactly politically correct, either; but I bought that from a local video shop only last weekend.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-06-2004, 06:27 AM:
 
I thought 'Song of the South' was supposed to have been withdrawn by Disney for similar reasons, but I saw it listed as being on one of the British television channels a week or two ago.

They did, of course, remove material which they considered inappropriate from 'Fansasia', long ago.
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-06-2004, 06:54 AM:
 
Will, that's interesting about Kol Nidre. Not the least because The Lord's Prayer, one of the centerpieces of protestant denominations, contains a line about 'forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors'. I don't think any protestant businessman would have viewed this as a loophole for business, & viewing Kol Nidre in that light would surely be strangely oblivious, if not hypoctitical! Probably it's a feature siezed on by xenophobic people that never had to deal with Jewish businessmen much - you can't do business that way!

Leo: A lot of BOAN's availability has to do with its PD status. 'Jazz Singer' is still under copyright by Warner's or maybe MGM or whoever bought that part of the library the last time the carousel went around. BOAN can be put out by smaller companies, even Brownlow's in the US is distributed by the niche label Image which has lots of esoteric fringe stuff including Cannibal Holocaust, some Von Stroheim, & all sorts of things. I think Warner's or MGM as mainstream companies clearly see it as a risk for causing widespread offense & attracting big unwelcome negative PR.

'Song of the South' may be stereotype-ridden & unrealistic, but the stories it drew on are still very solid fables: probably Warners looks at The Jazz Singer & sees the tar baby.
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 08-06-2004, 01:23 PM:
 

quote:

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I thought 'South of the South' was supposed to have been withdrawn by Disney for similar reason

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It all depends on the country for that film. In the US, Disney feels its not PC to release that feature and has since withdrawn it. But it's available in other areas of the world.
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 08-06-2004, 04:00 PM:
 
One can easily find Song of the South online in PAL format. It can be copied to NTSC with one of those dual format machines. Without editorializing I'd like to draw attention to the following which pretty much sums up my thoughts on PC behavior: "Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
 

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Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-06-2004, 06:55 PM:
 
The Jazz Singer is a good film. Knowing its history only makes it better to me.

Song Of The South is a happy memory of my childhood. I have never associated it and the belittling of the black race. It was a happy film, and the Uncle Remus stories are classics.

All of the non-PC Warners cartoons were pulled in 1977 from the TV station I worked for after we started getting complaints. Complaints over these fine cartoons? Bah. I grew up on all of these films. I have the intelligence to know what is real and what is not. Enough!
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-06-2004, 08:21 PM:
 
Could have sworn I saw this available on DVD at Barnes And Noble in Reno a couple of weeks ago..... B&N has a really great selection of classic films, about the only good selection available to a walk in crowd.

What amazes me is that the Jazz Singer got to be as big as it did. Only one paragraph of dialog and people went crazy for it...... IMHO, its an ok historical artifact but thats about all. There are many much better early sound pictures to watch. I've always felt that Jazz Singer was a horrible film and I always had a hard time getting through it..... many of the silents produced just before the Jazz Singer were far better. I can't blame the addition of sound for my dislike of the picture either. I just find it primitave looking, very rushed in making, and very tiring to watch. A film like "The Coconuts" is a far better example of a good early talkie, still primitave looking but no more than that.

Now "Song Of The South" is a great film by any standard.

Mark
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-07-2004, 01:29 PM:
 
Agreed totally... compared to some of the technically sophisticated Hollywood late silents (The Crowd and The Wind come to mind), my memory of The Jazz Singer is that it's positively neanderthal. I just fancied seeing it again to see if my thoughts about it had changed, that's all, and thought that it would simply be a case of a couple of clicks to order a DVD. The last and only time I've seen the film was in a tired old 16mm print at the NFT, which must have been well over a decade ago.
 

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Posted by Patrick J. McCart (Member # 1043) on 08-07-2004, 05:56 PM:
 
Warner Home Video is working with The Vitaphone Project to release a special edition DVD in the near future. The visuals are being restored and they're using an unsealed, fresh set of vintage Vitaphone discs to digitally remaster the soundtrack. I may be wrong, but this version may finally use the full-aperture 1.33:1 Vitaphone version instead of the cropped sound-on-film dupe that is more commonly seen.

It should also feature "A Plantation Act" as a special feature among other things.

(However, nothing on a 2-disc SE for Lights of New York)
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 08-07-2004, 10:10 PM:
 
I can see why some of you would be bored and such with the Jazz Singer....it would be the same as a non-Cristian getting all excited and wound-up about a Christian film!

But the Jazz Singer is significant in that it deals with maintaining your roots/heritage/religious faith while also attempting to assimiliate into society.

These are topics that still hold true for people of all backgrounds today.

Relating the Jazz Singer to the Holocaust also comes into mind...the attitudes of those who thought they were immune because they had assimiliated into society...and were important for whatever reason.

As the old poem goes...first they came for this group, then that group, then the next and so forth.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-08-2004, 01:10 PM:
 
Point taken, and I wasn't trying to belittle the content of the film in any way - in fact, that's one of the reasons I wanted to see it again. I was, however, agreeing with Mark that (unless my memory of it is by now pretty inaccurate), the technical aspects of The Jazz Singer really do give away the fact that it was only the second attempt to make a feature-length film with synchronised audio all the way through.

Incidentally, one of the earliest British sound films to survive is also about Judaism - a 1924 experimental short made by De Forest Phonofilms of the Music Hall (Vaudeville) star Teddy Elben performing his sketch 'When the Yiddisher Band Played an Irish Tune'. It's about a Jewish band which is invited to play at an Irish wedding and failing miserably to perform the right kind of music, which grew out of the fact that in the 1920s, East London had very strong Irish and Jewish communities living in the same area. The film contains about every politically incorrect joke about the Jews and the Irish you can think of, and then some. You ought not to laugh, but can't help it. Being a De Forest Phonofilm it runs at 20fps (although the National Film & Television Archive corrected the offset when reprinting it - originally, De Forest Phonofilms printed the track behind the picture, and the optical sound reader sat on top of the projector, like a Dolby digital penthouse), but still sounds pretty good nonetheless.
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 08-08-2004, 03:16 PM:
 
Leo...

Get a copy of "The Official Jewish/Irish Joke Book" by Larry Wilde

But did'nt ya know that the Irish are actually Jewish?...After all, Corned Beef is actually an Eastern-European Jewish concoction!
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-14-2004, 10:00 AM:
 
Sorry Will but the Jewish theme of "The Jazz Singer" has absolutely nothing to do with how awfully primative it looks. It has the appearance of being shot on 16mm with a cheap Russian Krasnagorsk camera! I actually enjoy watching films with religous themes to them anyway but this one rates a zero in my book except for its historical sound track.

Mark
 

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Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-14-2004, 07:16 PM:
 
I've seen Jazz Singer in 16mm many times. In 35 on TCM once. It was like night and day. The 35/TV version looked so nice and clean. Decent contrast. etc. I like the soundtrack the most, too.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-14-2004, 07:42 PM:
 
The only time I've seen the film was on 16mm - and the print looked like an umpteenth generation dupe to me. It was abnormally flat and fuzzy. Based on lots of other Hollywood films from the late '20s I've seen, I really don't think that represented in any way what an original release 35mm print would have looked like. I certainly hope that better elements survive.

But I do agree that, from my dim and distant memory of it, that the content of the film is pretty primitive. The continuity is clumsy, and it's as if some scenes were paced to fit the music cues rather than how they'd naturally have been directed and acted if there wasn't any synchronised music to worry about. I'd be interested to see Don Juan, to find out if it suffers from a similar problem.

What prompted me to start this thread was recently seeing a restored print of The Wrecker, a 1929 British film which had a music track synchronised with RCA Photophone, but no dialogue. The first British feature which actually had recorded and synchronised dialogue, Blackmail (directed by Hitchcock), followed a couple of months later. So for obvious reasons I was comparing The Wrecker to The Jazz Singer in my mind several times while watching it, therefore, and thought that I could answer a lot of the questions which cropped up simply by ordering a DVD from Amazon. When I found that I couldn't, I started this thread.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 09-24-2004, 02:37 PM:
 
I ran this in 35mm, in a 1922-vintage 1,100 seat showplace in the mid-80s. Wonderful!
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-25-2004, 10:23 AM:
 

 

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Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 10-01-2004, 01:44 PM:
 
I still prefer the 1980 version for the music. Great soundtrack on that film; the MFSL pressing of the soundtrack sounds soooo nice.

danny
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 10-02-2004, 03:04 PM:
 
There have actually been three versions of The Jazz Singer:

Jolson, Danny Thomas (mid 1950's) and Neil Diamond's.

All three are available.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-02-2004, 03:07 PM:
 
And all three are

Mark
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 10-10-2004, 04:57 PM:
 
The 1927 version was on Turner Classic Movies this past week, and it was a very clean print!

Another historical aspect of this film that I had almost forgotten: Many celebrated Cantors were also major opera stars: Jan Pierce, Richard Tucker and others.

Actually, The Jazz Singer is largly based on Jolson's life.

One of these reknown stars, Yossi Rosenblatt, was featured in this 1927 version.
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 10-10-2004, 08:23 PM:
 
The Diamond version had some 70mm blowup prints. Was this perhaps one of the last attempts at a roadshow release?
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 10-11-2004, 02:02 AM:
 

quote: Will Kutler

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The Jazz Singer is largly based on Jolson's life.

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quote: Steve Kraus

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The Diamond version had some 70mm blowup prints. Was this perhaps one of the last attempts at a roadshow release?

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quote: Will Kutler

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One of these reknown stars, Yossi Rosenblatt, was featured in this 1927 version.

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Wasn't he he a close relation of Og Ogelby?

Mark
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 12-15-2004, 03:50 PM:
 
Watching a short documentary today, I learned that another beloved American actor was also in the Jolson "Jazz Singer"....who was it?
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 12-15-2004, 04:08 PM:
 
Was it William Demarest?

If you can't find the DVD, what about the poster.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2319&item=3859437168&rd=1

Well today the bidding is at $18,100.00 12/15/04 and the reserve has not been met yet.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-15-2004, 04:52 PM:
 

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen

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Ahhhh, but the diamond version wasn't released with its soundtrack on disks..... it would have been a nice touch though.

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It might almost have been possible! Some sound on disk installations survived for an amasing length of time. I think the last time I saw one, in a cinema, with the projectors still in use, not a museum exhibit, was in the very early '70s. That must have been about 40 years after they last saw any disks. Were there any still intact after this?

Equally surprising is how many of the disks still survive; the Vitaphone Project are still making major discoveries. web page

Edit:

The Vitaphone Project website seems to have moved; it can now be found here

[ 10-13-2007, 02:46 AM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 12-15-2004, 07:21 PM:
 
Bill Gabel knows his stuff!

There was a little tribute to William Demarest today on Turner Classic Movies that I recently saw.

Cheers!

K
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 12-16-2004, 02:20 AM:
 
William Demarest told a great, classical vaudeville-structured story once on the old Tonight Show:
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The manager of this burlesque theater noticed that a kid had sneaked in & was watching the show from the back of the house. Instead of throwing the kid out, he decided to just watch him for a while. The comics came on & did a sketch, then the strippers came out & went into their act. The kid turned around & started to try to slip out of the theatre. The manager stopped him & said, "Hey kid, what's the matter, don't you like the show?"

The kid says, "Yeah, I liked it."
"Why are you leaving, then?"
The kid says, "Well, my mother told me that if I ever saw a naked lady, I would turn to stone."
"So?"
"I was starting to turn to stone."

----------------------------------

I think Warner Oland's a very interesting guy in the Jazz Singer: First person to lip sync in a movie, first person to sing onscreen *dubbed by another singer*, first movie werewolf, well-regarded Shakesperean actor, spoke several languages & translated plays from them to English, weirdly a Swede who not only became typecast as Chinese but was identified with the strongest stereotypes of Charlie Chan & Fu Manchu, had some great, varied, strong performances in silent movies before talkies.
 

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Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 01-29-2005, 11:44 AM:
 
For those interested in the UK "The Jazz Singer" 1927 is on TCM Tuesday 1st February at 13.00 hours.
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 01-31-2005, 02:08 AM:
 
What is Bernard Tonks doing in his picture?

It looks like he's trying to find the circuit breaker for the popcorn machine.
 

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Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 10-12-2007, 02:49 PM:
 

It has been 984 days since the last post.

 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-12-2007, 02:49 PM:
 
Well the wait is over for region 1. Warner Bros. has released the 80th. Anniversary Edition of "The Jazz Singer" on DVD. The three disc Deluxe edition features a new digital transfer and immaculately refurbished soundtrack from restored picture elements and original Vitaphone sound on disc recordings. Commentary by Ron Hutchison, Founder of the Vitaphone Projects and Nighthawks Bandleader Vince Giordano. Vintage Al Jolson shorts, radio show adaptation and movie trailer gallery. Classic homage cartoon "I Love to Singa". That's disc one. Disc two is called The early sound era it features a new feature length documentary "The Dawn of Sound: How the Movies Learned to Talk". Surviving sound excerpts from 1929's "Gold Diggers of Broadway" and Studio shorts from celebrating the early sound era. Disc three has over 3 1/2 hours worth of rare, historic Vitaphone comedy and music shorts starring the Greats of Vaudeville and the early sound era and many recently recovered and restored after being thought lost forever.
Also in that three disc set it comes with 10 behind the scenes photo cards, 12 page Vitaphone program, 20 page souvenir program, 4 page theatre herald, 16 page book with vintage document reproductions and dvd features guide and post premiere telegram from Al Jolson to Jack Warner.

The movie looks better than I've every seen it before.
They've included a 4 minute overture and exit music to this version of the film.

In the trailer gallery it features:

• The Jazz Singer
  The Singing Fool
  Mammy
  Wonder Bar
  Go into Your Dance
  The Singing Kid