(Thrice Told Tales is an ongoing series about stories brought to the screen at least three times.)

In the short film Jack’s Joke, from the Thomas Edison company in 1913, audiences saw a comedy skit and heard it as well. They were amazed to see characters talk on the screen, but it was more than a decade before a feature made sound the hallmark attraction.

Why did it take so long for sound to rule in the theater? 

The biggest challenge was synchronization. Different devices were used for the picture and the sound, so it was difficult to get the two to play together for an extended time. Amplification was another challenge. The picture could be projected in a large theater but it took time to develop a quality sound system. Volume wasn’t the only problem, though. Fidelity was a major issue with primitive sound systems. 

Warner Brothers was the studio that pursued sound most aggressively. In 1926, they released Don Juan, the first feature film with a full musical score and sound effects – but no dialogue. Their big sensation came the next year with The Jazz Singer, which had a synchronized musical soundtrack and also songs. And some dialogue, but still many title cards.

Audiences were greeted with an overture, just like in the legitimate theater. After the credits, they read these words: “In every living soul, a spirit cries for expression – perhaps this plaintive, wailing song of Jazz is, after all, the misunderstood utterance of prayer. The New York ghetto, throbbing with music that is older than civilization.”

It tells the story of a synagogue cantor’s son. Little Jackie Rabinowitz is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become the sixth generation of Rabinowitz men to serve as cantor, but even as a small boy, Jackie has been hanging out in saloons and listening to that new jazz music. He’s going on the stage and enjoying the applause.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, Jackie comes home late from the saloon. Upon learning where the boy has been, the father whips him and tells him that there will be no supper; his holiday fast has begun.

Jackie tells his parents he is running away, and he leaves New York for the West Coast. The father says (or at least, the title card reads), “I have no son!”

In California, Jackie Rabinowitz had become Jack Robin, a jazz singer. We hear him sing Dirty Hand, Dirty Face and then he shouts the famous line, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet!” and breaks into Toot, Toot, Tootsie. This was a huge moment for those first audiences.

Jackie is on his way to becoming a star. It seems everyone he meets tells him, “You’re going to be a star!” (via title cards). He also meets Mary Dale. Jackie writes to his mother, telling her he is making $250 a week under the name of Jack Robin, and he’s on his way to Broadway. He also writes about Mary. His mother hopes that Mary is the girl’s stage name and that she’s not a shiksa.

Jackie’s father, the cantor, is upset his wife even opened the letter because, “I have no son.” 

Meanwhile, Cantor Rabinowitz trains a new cantor to take his place. Jackie visits, but his father won’t take him back: “I never want to see you again… you jazz singer!” 

As he leaves, Jackie tells him, “I came home with a heart full of love, but you don’t want to understand. Someday, you’ll understand, the same as Mama does.”

Two weeks later, Jackie and Mary are prepping for their Broadway show, April Follies. Opening night just happens to take place on Yom Kippur. The day before the show opens, a family friend comes to Jackie and tells him the cantor, his father, is sick. He won’t be able to sing for the holiday and Jackie must take his place.

Jackie must decide between show biz and his father. He goes to sing for Yom Kippur. His father hears his son sing the service and takes it for the voice of an angel. Before he dies, his father says, “Mama, we have our son again!” The cantor dies a happy man.

And Jackie returns to Broadway, a star!

This film had some other things going for it besides sound technology. It featured six songs by Al Jolson, who billed himself as the “World’s Greatest Entertainer.” Jolson was one of the most popular and highly paid performers of the 1920s and the first openly Jewish entertainer in America. He was a key draw along with the new technology.

And the rather maudlin emotional plot was quite popular. The character is torn between choosing religion or success, dreams or family, his heritage or his future. These themes would carry on in future versions of the story.

A couple of other things struck me about this version of the film. It’s puzzling to a modern audience why blackface makeup was thought necessary. Couldn’t My Mammy have worked just as well without it? Of course, it’s followed by the comic moment when Jackie’s mother doesn’t recognize her son because of the makeup. The success of the film probably was a sure thing without burned cork, but it is what it is.

One other interesting thing about the film: the cantor was played by Warner Oland, who would go on to upset many other politically correct souls with his performances as Charlie Chan.

The 1952 The Jazz Singer remake didn’t have nearly as much going for it. Sound film had been around for quite a while, so that didn’t make much of an impression. And the first film had one of the great showmen of its time in Jolson, while this film had, well, Danny Thomas.

I have nothing against Mr. Thomas; founding St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was important, and it does fine work to this day. But he was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairous to Lebanese parents in Deerfield, Michigan, and he grew up in Toledo, Ohio. He was a devoted Catholic throughout his life. Unlike Jolson, this was far from his life story.

He was not a superstar. Sure, he had a radio show and a successful nightclub career, but he was not a star anywhere near Jolson in his day. Make Room for Daddy, the TV show he’s remembered for today (if his entertainment work is remembered at all) hadn’t yet begun.

And he was 40 years old when he played the cantor’s son. Sure, Jolson was also 40 when he took the part, but at the beginning of the 1926 film, a child actor portrayed young Jackie. And the black-and-white cinematography of the time hid Jolson’s age a tad.

The more realistic photography and sound of the 1952 version make it more difficult to accept that a middle-aged man is still working through the kind of daddy issues one expects to find in a teenager. 

It’s still pretty much the same maudlin story as the original, with a few changes that don’t help the film. In this version, Jackie goes out on his own and tries to succeed in showbiz and fails, so he goes back to his father’s congregation with his tail between his legs. He agrees to take his father’s place as a cantor, but when a new opportunity to go back into the biz comes along, he reneges on the commitment he made. This makes him a much less appealing character.

And another difference: Papa Cantor doesn’t die at the end, but recovers from his illness and is able to watch his son on Broadway from a front-row seat in the theater. This lowers the schmaltz level, which with a soap opera like this is not a good thing. It really makes you wonder what director Michael Curtiz (of Casablanca and White Christmas) was thinking when he took this project.

The 1980 version of The Jazz Singer brought the star power the 1952 version was lacking. (Peggy Lee was a big star in 1952, but she wasn’t the star of the film.) Neil Diamond was, without a doubt, a great musical star of the time. My wife remembers her high school English teacher (in 1975 or ‘76) saying, “Mark my words, nobody will remember the Beatles in ten years, but Neil Diamond will still be famous.”

Diamond wrote and recorded ten songs that made #1 on the charts, with 38 reaching the top ten. He’s sold over 130 million records – not too shabby. His influence continues to this day. A millennial friend tells me that whenever he’s feeling down, he plays “Sweet Caroline.” I’m sure quite a few Red Sox fans would agree with him.

Like Al Jolson, it was easy for Neil Diamond to convince audiences that he’d make it big in showbiz. Sadly, as an actor, he proved himself a gifted musician. His line readings are often stilted, and he demonstrates a quite limited emotional range. And, once again, a forty-year-old is playing out the conflicts that usually occur between a father and his teenage son.

One thing that must have drawn Diamond to the project is that – like the character – he grew up in a Jewish home in New York. All four of his grandparents were immigrants from Poland or Russia. He sang in the choir at Erasmus Hall High School with classmate Barbra Streisand.

Many of the plot changes from earlier versions can be attributed to changes in show business over the decades. By the 1970s, Broadway was no longer the highest destination for a musical career. In the original version of the film, Jackie goes to the West Coast to begin his career, but his goal is to make it back to the Great White Way. In this film, he goes to Southern California because that’s the final destination, where he can make his break in the recording industry. 

In this version, the romantic life of Jess (Yussel Rabinovitch) takes up a much larger part of the story. Unlike the other versions, he’s married, and he leaves his wife, Rivka (Catlin Adams), to go Hollywood. Rivka doesn’t want to leave her life in New York, and in California, Jess falls in love with his agent, Molly Bell (played by Lucille Ball’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, in her only major film role).

When Jess achieves stardom, he does become a self-centered jerk, mistreating his coworkers and even Molly. He goes on a pilgrimage to find himself, roaming the roads of the southwest, returning only when he learns that Molly has made him a father. This somehow allows him to reconcile with his father, who is thrilled to learn he is a grandfather.

Diamond’s performance in the film really isn’t good, but it might not be as bad as Laurence Olivier’s hammy work as the cantor. His over-the-top European Jewish accent was considered offensive at the time. Over the years, if anything, it sounds even worse. (It did lead me to fantasize about Larry’s Cantor Rabinovitch meeting his Nazi dentist from Marathon Man.)

On the other hand, I was amused by the way the film paid tribute to the blackface scene in the first film. Jess wants to perform with his black friends in a black club, so at their request, he dons a wig and grease paint. He’s the butt of the joke, and it gets him arrested. Still, most critics of the time were offended by this choice.

(An aside about blackface. It really was a strange phenomenon in show business in the early 20th century, which endures quite awkwardly in such films as Holiday Inn. In vaudeville it was used by white performers to mock African Americans and sometimes, literally, for cultural appropriation.  Somehow, the wonderful film, Tropic Thunder, is allowed an honored place in our culture. But during the panic of the Black Lives Matter movement, Tina Fey took out of circulation the [very funny] episodes of 30 Rock that made ironic use of blackface. Blackface today should only be allowed to be used by Democrat politicians, such as Ralph Northam, and Canadian Prime Ministers.)

The film also has something else that contributed to its financial success – a true sense of patriotism. The film opens and closes with the song “America,” for crying out loud, with footage of people of varying ethnicities and cultures, all part of the same nation. Earlier versions of the film were about the need to break from one’s traditional culture to assimilate with modern American culture. This film celebrates cultures coming together to make something better. 

Released two months after the election of Ronald Reagan, the public was ready to celebrate our country with a renewed sense of optimism. It’s truly a film of its time.

As all three versions are. They’re not films that transcend time, as great works of art do, but they are interesting relics of their respective eras.