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Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first Hollywood film to incorporate both sound and dialogue. While the film is mostly silent (replete with dialogue cards), there are half-a-dozen musical numbers and a handful of spoken lines thrown in. Audiences in 1927 were stunned when popular entertainer Jolson spoke his famous ad-libbed line, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet" after singing "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face." The film is also notorious for his version of "Mammy," sung in black face. Does the story of a fiery-eyed crooner who inflicts much anguish and shirt-ripping on
his conservative Jewish family sound familiar? Does the tag line "Sometimes you've got to risk it all" ring a bell? Then you may have seen the Neil Diamond remake, and for that we are truly sorry.
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