It was OK

Many factors are taken into consideration for not having the whole film recorded with sound as a whole.

First, even though Warners and Vitaphone were peas and a pod, money, as always, was an issue. In some ways, this film was a test, however, they also realized that most exhibitors did not have the proper connects to show the film, and to 'wire' them all would take years to do (and it did).

Allow me to quote the Trivia section...

- Al Jolson's famous line "you ain't heard nothin' yet" was an adlib. The intention was that the film should only have synchronized music, not speech, but Jolsen dropped in the line (which he used in his stage act) after the song "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face". The director wisely left it in.

- Many documentaries and historians state that immediately after the release and success of the Jazz Singer that all of Hollywood switched to sound. This is not true for several reasons. First, the Vitaphone process was very selective and only was available to select productions. Secondly, the sound process nearly doubled the budget of a film. Thirdly, the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue was Lights of New York (1928). Silent pictures would remain mostly until 1929 and some even were in 1930 and 1931. The monophone process came to films in 1928 and finally made the silent process extinct.


I loved this film for various reasons, one the main ones being it had Jolsy in it, one of my favorite singers.




NI !

Ha! You try investing 1927 figures of $500,000 into an untested piece of equipment like Vitaphone for a full-talking picture. You'd go bankrupt after the first take. Sound was expensive and could double or triple the cost of the picture. What kind of a name is cheesygoodness anyway? Whatever it is, it sure doesn't help you make your point with such little knowledge of the movies of the times. I couldn't help making fun of your name you used for this site but in this case it was worth it.

I just wanna say that this movie sucked.