Warner celebrates Jazz Singer with 80th anniversary edition

Classic 1927 film was the first to have synchronized dialog

By Laurence Lerman -- Video Business, 7/9/2007

JULY 9 | On Oct. 16, Warner Home Video will debut the DVD of the studio’s 1927 landmark movie The Jazz Singer, which was the first feature-length film to have synchronized dialog and musical sequences.

The Al Jolson-starring title will be issued in a three-disc 80th Anniversary Collector’s Edition that contains, among other things, a restored and remastered version of the film featuring a refurbished soundtrack, a collection of period cartoons, shorts and rare Vitaphone comedy and music pieces, a handful of early sound era shorts and the newly produced feature-length documentary The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk. The package will carry a list price of $39.98.

The Jazz Singer “is going to be one of the landmark releases for 2007,” said WHV’s senior VP of theatrical catalog marketing George Feltenstein, who’s particularly proud of the new documentary.

“The story of the emergence of sound and its early days is such a fascinating one,” Feltenstein said. “There were competing technologies, competing studios, lots of egos and differences in public taste and perception. Sound familiar?”