The Jazz Singer DVD

The Jazz Singer DVD is a DVD box set that was released by Warner Home Video on
October 16, 2007. It contains not only The Jazz Singer, the 1927 Al Jolson film hailed as the first talkie motion picture, but it is a collection of a wide variety of short subjects from the early days of talking pictures, as well as documentaries.

Disc 1

Disc 1 contains the feature film The Jazz Singer, restored and remastered. It includes the rarely seen intro and outro music. The movie includes an optional commentary track with Ron Hutchinson, founder of the Vitaphone Project and Nighthawks Orchestra bandleader Vince Giordano.

There are four vintage shorts featuring Al Jolson:
*A Plantation Act
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There is a cartoon, I Love to Singa, which features a young jazz-singing Owl Jolson

There is an audio recording the Lux Radio Theatre presentation of the Jazz Singer, broadcast June 2, 1947, also starring Al Jolson.

And there is a collection of trailers from a number of Al Jolson movies:
*The Jazz Singer
*The Singing Fool
*Mammy
*Wonder Bar
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Disc 2

Disc 2 includes a new feature-length documentary: with interviews with Leonard Maltin and many others.

Then there are what survives of the sound excerpts from 1929's Gold Diggers of Broadway.

Then there an assortment of other shorts:
*The Voice from the Screen a 1926 demonstration of the new invention of Vitaphone.
*, a Max Fleischer cartoon demonstrating how sound is put onto film.

And there are three shorts from the 1940's and 50's that give retrospectives on sound films:
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*
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Disc 3

Disc 3 features over 4 hours of rare and historic Vitaphone Shorts from 1926 through 1936. Many include long-forgotten vaudeville performers from the late 1920's.

*Elsie Janis in a Vaudeville Act:
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*Van and Schenck:
*Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields with the Music Boxes
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*
*:
*Stoll, Flynn & Company:
*:
*The Foy Family in
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*Gus Arnheim and His Ambassadors
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* Directed by
*Trixie Friganza in
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*
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*Baby Rose Marie, The Child Wonder
*Burns & Allen in
*Joe Frisco in

Extras

The DVD collection includes a lot of collectables and readables, including:

*a 16-page book with vintage document reproductions and DVD features guide

*10 behind-the-scenes photo cards

*a 12-page Vitaphone program reproduction, detailing what Vitaphone is, and who were the important figures behind its development.

*a reproduction of a 20-page souvenir program

*a reproduction of a 4-page theater herald

*a reproduction of a Western Union telegram from Al Jolson to Jack Warner

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See Also

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