This is a portion of a Review Of Big Boy from (c) VARIETY,
Volume77, New York City, Wednesday, January 14, 1925.
It gives one an appreciation of Al Jolson's ability to create smashing Broadway hits. Often from mediocre and mundane material. BIG BOY Hardly ever before in the history of musical comedy has there been such an extended list of credits prefacing the program of characters in any musical comedy. Looks as though everybody must have had a hand or two in the mounting of this production, and you know the adage of too many cooks. Looks like it holds true in this particular case.
Yet on the other hand it is really wonderful to watch a theatre that has an audience of 2,000 people in it practically 100 percent hypnotized by a personality, and that is Al Jolson. Jolson had the audience at the Winter Garden Thursday night in the hollow of his hand before he ever stepped on the stage. It was an audience that was on hand to see Jolson and no matter what he did it was great to them. When he came on the stage they were ready for him and the reception that he received almost amounted to a riot. They were all Jolson fans and their king could do no wrong.
But Big Boy, for all the fact that it had a million doctors, directors and what not tinkering on its works before it came to New York, cannot be called a good entertainment outside of Jolson It is Jolson, Jolson, Jolson, some more Jolson and then Jolson again, and after that, for good measure, a little more of Jolson.
The big kick is supposed to be a race horse scene with four horses coming head on toward the audience. Just a little touch of The County Fair and In Old Kentucky. A horse called Molasses in the race is harking back to the days of The Cohans are also a couple of sappy hero roles in the hands of two juveniles who don't mean a thing. They are Frank Beoston and Hugh Banks. Franklyn Batie is opposite Jolson almost all through the show and scores as a straight for him.
In addition to his performance Thursday night, Jolson slipped the audience a little inside info on the show, telling them the night before the audience was hard boiled but they had a right to be as they paid $11 to come in. He personally had a row with the Shuberts, "there are two of them, you know, Lee and J.J. (Joke-Joke),'' is the way that. the comedian put it, over the price for the opening night, he contending that $5.50 would be enough but that the Shuberts held out for the $11 top so that in the event that the show flopped they would have the price of the production right back out of the opening night's receipts.
Jolson followed that with a couple of gags about Polo Negri and giving her a couple of seats after she informed him that she had tried everywhere to get them for "love or money." It must have been new to the crowd that were in the house that night for they laughed. Big Boy with Al Jolson is the "big boy" of show business at the box office. ~. (Fred Schader)
Sound Comes to the Screen
From the time of the first motion pictures many people tried to synchronize phonograph records with films without success. The year 1902 saw the introduction of subtitles--printed clues to the action inserted as separate frames. Some film exhibitors devised machines to emit sound effects behind the screen; others hired actors to read aloud during the film. In early motion-picture theaters, musical accompaniments were provided by pianists and organists, who tried to match their selections to the mood and pace of the action on the screen. Some of the more spectacular silent films were accompanied by full orchestras in many of the large theaters.
Sound films became possible through the development of the means to record sound directly on film and of the audion amplifier, which provided sufficient volume of sound for large theaters. Both of these developments were pioneered by Lee De Forest, who exhibited brief sound films to the public in 1923 . Although the public failed to respond to De Forest's sound films, electronics manufacturers continued to experiment with both sound-on-film and phonograph discs synchronized with film.
In 1926, Warner Brothers released a program using synchronized discs; it included short talking and musical films and a silent feature, 'Don Juan', with a synchronized accompaniment. A short sound-on-film comedy with spoken dialogue was released by William Fox in 1927, and later that year he also released the first sound newsreels. Public acceptance of sound came on Oct. 6, 1927, when Warner Brothers presented Al Jolson singing and saying a few words in 'The Jazz Singer'. The first full-length all-sound film was 'The Lights of New York', issued by Warner Brothers in 1928.
The success of sound revolutionized the film industry. By 1931, few silent films were being made in the United States and Europe, and synchronized discs had been abandoned in favor of the superior sound-on-film process. Theaters had to install sound projection equipment, and film studios had to find methods of soundproofing cameras and stages. Movement in most of the early sound films appeared static, because cameras had to be enclosed in soundproof boxes that were difficult to move. Eventually cameras with noiseless gears were developed; microphones were put on booms, or poles, which could be extended as needed; and dollies and other means of moving the camera came into even greater use.
The sound revolution ended the careers of many silent-film performers whose voices did not record well, but it also brought new performers to the screen who had stage experience in speaking roles. Playwrights who knew how to write dramatic dialogue were hired to replace silent-screen scenario writers, and many plays were filmed for the screen because they provided ready-made dialogue.