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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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The death of an art form

October 5, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I reflect on The Jazz Singer, which was released ninety years ago tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Ninety years ago this week, a New York audience saw—and heard—Al Jolson step in front of a camera and say “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” Those 11 words changed the world. Jolson’s signature line, spoken in “The Jazz Singer,” was the first lip-synchronized speech heard in a feature-length film. Before then, feature films were “silent.” When actors moved their lips, their dialogue was printed on title cards flashed on the screen. All you heard was background music played live by a pianist, an organist or a pit orchestra. “The Jazz Singer” changed that forever. Within two years of its release, Hollywood stopped making silent movies. In a single dazzling stroke of innovation, the “talkies,” as sound films were initially known, had made them obsolete….

Writing a few weeks after its release, Robert E. Sherwood, a movie critic who later became one of America’s top playwrights, found it to be “fraught with tremendous significance,” but not for its artistry. “I for one suddenly realized that the end of the silent drama is in sight,” he wrote. Sherwood may have been the first writer to fully grasp the culture-changing power of “The Jazz Singer”: Not only did it introduce a new storytelling medium, but it killed off an old one.

By 1927, silent film had produced a considerable number of works of art that are—or should be—as watchable today as they were then Thanks to TCM, it’s possible for contemporary audiences to view Buster Keaton’s “The General,” Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise” and see how much a movie without words can say. But the existence of these masterpieces made no difference to ordinary moviegoers, then or now. They preferred the talkies, and the film industry, both here and abroad, unhesitatingly gave them what they wanted….

Is this a bad thing? I suppose so, though I’m more inclined to see it as an example of what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” He believed that capitalism “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” That’s more or less what happened to silent film: It was destroyed by a technological innovation that was instantaneously embraced by vast numbers of people. As a result, the careers of many gifted artists dried up and blew away—but without it, we’d still be reading sketchy fragments of dialogue off title cards instead of hearing for ourselves the unforgettable sound of Humphrey Bogart growling “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine” in “Casablanca.” So who made out on the deal? We all did.

What I find most interesting about this radical transformation of mass taste, however, is that it is nearly unique in the history of art….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Al Jolson’s first dialogue scene in The Jazz Singer:

So you want to see a show?

October 5, 2017 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Prince of Broadway (musical revue, PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Mary Jane (drama, PG-13, extended through Oct. 29, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN PHILADELPHIA:
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (musical, PG-13, closes Oct. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:
• A View from the Bridge (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN BOSTON:
• Merrily We Roll Along (Sondheim, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 15, reviewed here)
• The Madness of George III (drama, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING TOMORROW IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:
• Cyrano de Bergerac (verse drama, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:
• A Flea in Her Ear (farce, PG-13/R, closes Oct. 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN LENOX, MASS.:
• God of Carnage (comedy, R, closes Oct. 8, reviewed here)

Almanac: Jorge Luis Borges on time and love

October 5, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Threatened”

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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