Wrong!!

You ain’t heard nothing yet

The Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer gets a note in history books, often as the first ‘talkie’.

Was it the first film with sound? Even if you put that into Google, the film comes up everywhere.

Well, no, it wasn’t. Short films with sound, including speech, had been around for some years. In fact, feature films had been released with synchronised scores on disc, long before the Jolson film.

The Jazz Singer is mostly a silent film anyway. What I mean is, there is a synchronised score and titles for nearly the whole film, just a couple of sections where Jolson sings and, in particular, ad libs some speech.

The first full length complete talking picture was Lights Of New York, nearly a full year later.