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Today in History

GHT

GHT

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On this day in 1620, The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists, half religious dissenters, and half entrepreneurs, had been authorised to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the Pilgrims reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.
 
V.C. Brunswick

V.C. Brunswick

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90 years ago today was the premiere of The Jazz Singer, the first movie with recorded music and dialogue.

the-jazz-singer.jpg


 
LizzieMaine

LizzieMaine

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The talkie transition was a question mark for everyone -- actors, writers, directors, producers, distributors, and exhibitors all saw everything they did suddenly and completely upended over a period of about three years. I can't think of a single other industry that underwent so complete an upheaval over so short a period of time. Even the transition from radio to television took the better part of a decade.

The thing with "The Jazz Singer," though, is that it was mostly a silent picture -- and not an especially good one. Remove the song sequences and you're left with a mawkish, sappy melodrama that looks like something left over from 1916 when viewed next to any of the better silent pictures of 1927. Jolson's next picture, "The Singing Fool," was even worse -- except for Jolson himself it had nothing going for it at all. But the sheer thrill of seeing Jolson -- "The World's Greatest Entertainer" -- blasting out of the screen carried both pictures. Watch him doing "Toot Toot Tootsie" in "The Jazz Singer" and just try to say you don't feel his charisma, even 90 years removed. He wasn't the Elvis of his time -- Elvis was the Jolson of *his* time.
 
V.C. Brunswick

V.C. Brunswick

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LizzieMaine said:
The talkie transition was a question mark for everyone -- actors, writers, directors, producers, distributors, and exhibitors all saw everything they did suddenly and completely upended over a period of about three years. I can't think of a single other industry that underwent so complete an upheaval over so short a period of time. Even the transition from radio to television took the better part of a decade.

The thing with "The Jazz Singer," though, is that it was mostly a silent picture -- and not an especially good one. Remove the song sequences and you're left with a mawkish, sappy melodrama that looks like something left over from 1916 when viewed next to any of the better silent pictures of 1927. Jolson's next picture, "The Singing Fool," was even worse -- except for Jolson himself it had nothing going for it at all. But the sheer thrill of seeing Jolson -- "The World's Greatest Entertainer" -- blasting out of the screen carried both pictures. Watch him doing "Toot Toot Tootsie" in "The Jazz Singer" and just try to say you don't feel his charisma, even 90 years removed. He wasn't the Elvis of his time -- Elvis was the Jolson of *his* time.
Click to expand...


Fun Fact: The first person to perform The Jazz Singer's iconic song My Mammy was not Jolson but William Frawley of later I Love Lucy fame.
 
Last edited:
LizzieMaine

LizzieMaine

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And what a lot of people didn't realize even then was that that song was intended to be a satire of drippy sentimental "Southern" songs. But it ended up being taken much more seriously than it ever should have been.

"The Jazz Singer" and "The Singing Fool" ended up inspiring a whole string of similar pictures during the early talkie period, stories about show-business personalities striving for success against a background of family strife and heart-tugging personal tragedy -- "Mother's Boy," "The Rainbow Man," "Is Everybody Happy," "My Man," "Blaze O' Glory, " "Say It With Songs," "Puttin' On The Ritz," ad infinitum. These films didn't have any particular genre name during their time, but modern-day critics have fixed them with the tag "mammy pictures." You'll know them if you see them.
 
1mach1

1mach1

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Today in 1903.

The Joint Commission, set up on January 24 by Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, rules in favor of the United States. The deciding vote is Britain's, which embitters Canada. The United States gains ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska.

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MisterCairo

MisterCairo

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1mach1 said:
Today in 1903.

The Joint Commission, set up on January 24 by Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, rules in favor of the United States. The deciding vote is Britain's, which embitters Canada. The United States gains ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

:mad::mad::mad:
 
Fading Fast

Fading Fast

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1mach1 said:
Today in 1903.

The Joint Commission, set up on January 24 by Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, rules in favor of the United States. The deciding vote is Britain's, which embitters Canada. The United States gains ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

By this time, 1903, when it was decided, did the disputed area have any gold left? Was there any oil to subsequently be discovered?
 
1mach1

1mach1

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Fading Fast said:
By this time, 1903, when it was decided, did the disputed area have any gold left? Was there any oil to subsequently be discovered?
Click to expand...
Very good question. Unfortunately, I do not know the answer. I too was wondering if the gold and oil had all be found at that point or not.

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H

Harp

I'll Lock Up
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Tiki Tom said:
Later, Hawai’i was absorbed by the USA.
Click to expand...

O.T.: Best surfing in Hawaii is at the Marine Beach, Kaneohe, Oahu.:D
...further rumination beyond cursory federal annexation and eventual admittance
to statehood; whatever partisan stripe held therein, is the assimilation of the Hawaiian race
within settled ethnic/racial strains over the past several centuries to the extent that
the aboriginal blood trace of native Polynesian descent may be 'absorbed' almost entirely.
 
Last edited:
Foch

Foch

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Montana
On December 6th, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, ending the institution of slavery. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.
 
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