Chapter I: Front Matter

THE JAZZ SINGER

BY

SAMSON RAPHAELSON
(Based on his story, “The Day of Atonement,” in
_Everybody’s Magazine_, January, 1922.)

NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1925, by
SAMSON RAPHAELSON

All rights, including stage, motion picture, and amateur production, are reserved. No performance or public reading may be given without the written consent of the author, or his recognized agents. Application should be made to the author, in care of his publishers.

_Printed in the United States of America_

To

Albert Lewis

_A gentleman from the East Side and a scholar from Broadway_

_FOREWORD_

I wish to express my gratitude to Albert Lewis, who directed and produced “The Jazz Singer” and who, in the long hours of many days and nights, gave values to the play and stage wisdom to me which I hope never to forget; to Stuart Sherman, who encouraged me when my faith lagged; and to the members of the cast, especially George Jessel and Sam Jaffe, for the many happy touches they have contributed.

Samson Raphaelson.

_PREFACE_

American life, in this year 1925, consists essentially of surfaces. You may point out New England communities and say here is depth, and I will answer, true, but New England is dead so far as the America of now is concerned. You may show me an integrity in the West where a century ago pioneers came, and I will answer, that integrity resides with the elders and not with the mightier young ones. He who wishes to picture today’s America must do it kaleidoscopically; he must show you a vivid contrast of surfaces, raucous, sentimental, egoistical, vulgar, ineffably busy—surfaces whirling in a dance which sometimes is a dance to Aphrodite and more frequently a dance to Jehovah.

In seeking a symbol of the vital chaos of America’s soul, I find no more adequate one than jazz. Here you have the rhythm of frenzy staggering against a symphonic background—a background composed of lewdness, heart’s delight, soul-racked madness, monumental boldness, exquisite humility, but principally prayer.

I hear jazz, and I am given a vision of cathedrals and temples collapsing and, silhouetted against the setting sun, a solitary figure, a lost soul, dancing grotesquely on the ruins.... Thus do I see the jazz singer.

Jazz is prayer. It is too passionate to be anything else. It is prayer distorted, sick, unconscious of its destination. The singer of jazz is what Matthew Arnold said of the Jew, “lost between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.” In this, my first play, I have tried to crystallize the ironic truth that one of the Americas of 1925—that one which packs to overflowing our cabarets, musical revues and dance halls—is praying with a fervor as intense as that of the America which goes sedately to church and synagogue. The jazz American is different from the dancing dervish, from the Zulu medicine man, from the negro evangelist only in that he doesn’t know he is praying.

I have used a Jewish youth as my protagonist because the Jews are determining the nature and scope of jazz more than any other race—more than the negroes, from whom they have stolen jazz and given it a new color and meaning. Jazz is Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, George Gershwin, Sophie Tucker. These are Jews with their roots in the synagogue. And these are expressing in evangelical terms the nature of our chaos today.

You find the soul of a people in the songs they sing. You find the meaning of the songs in the souls of the minstrels who create and interpret them. In “The Jazz Singer” I have attempted an exploration of the soul of one of these minstrels.

Samson Raphaelson.

New York, October, 1925.

_CAST OF CHARACTERS_

Cast of characters in the first production of “The Jazz Singer,” by Lewis and Gordon in association with Sam H. Harris at the Fulton Theatre, New York City, Sept. 15, 1925.

CANTOR RABINOWITZ _Mr. Howard Lang_

MOEY _Mr. George Shafer_

SARA RABINOWITZ _Miss Dorothy Raymond_

YUDELSON _Mr. Sam Jaffe_

JACK ROBIN _Mr. George Jessel_

CLARENCE KAHN _Mr. Robert Russel_

GENE _Mr. Ted Athey_

EDDIE CARTER _Mr. Barney Fagan_

HARRY LEE _Mr. Arthur Stewart Hull_

MARY DALE _Miss Phoebe Foster_

RANDOLPH Dillings _Mr. Robert Hudson_

MISS GLYNN _Miss Mildred Leaf_

FRANKLYN FORBES _Mr. Paul Byron_

A STAGE DOORMAN—JIMMY _Mr. Tony Kennedy_

LEVY _Mr. Nat Freyer_

SIX CHORUS GIRLS _Misses Mildred Jay, Ruth Holden, Eleanor Ryan,
Mildred McDonough, Viola Thomas, Betty Wilton,
Rita Crane_

A SCENE SHIFTER _Mr. Jack Hill_

DOCTOR O’SHAUGHNESSY _Mr. Tony Kennedy_

THE JAZZ SINGER

_SYNOPSIS OF SCENES_