Why Did Negroes Love Al Jolson andThe Jazz Singer?: Melodrama, Blackface and Cosmopolitan Theatrical...

<label>Abstract</label> <p>This essay offers a reassessment of<italic>The Jazz Singer</italic>(1927) and Al Jolson by challenging several different lines of persistent criticism: its lack of artistic merit, its effacement of Jewish identity and its racist depictions in light of Jolson's use of blackface. Rather than a failed adaptation of Samson Raphaelson's play of the same name, the picture innovatively reworked both that play and E.A. Dupont's film<italic>The Ancient Law</italic>(<italic>Das Alte Gesetz</italic>, 1923), further placing it within a framework of Jewish culture. The black press and Negro moviegoers warmly embraced both<italic>The Jazz Singer</italic>and Jolson for a variety of reasons, including his promotion of black artists. Among African Americans, he was the most popular Hollywood movie star of the late 1920s.</p>