Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE JAZZ SINGER
BY
SAMSON RAPHAELSON
(Based on his story, “The Day of Atonement,” inEverybody’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 thewritten consent of the author, or his recognized agents. Applicationshould 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 andproduced “The Jazz Singer” and who, in the long hours of many days andnights, gave values to the play and stage wisdom to me which I hopenever to forget; to Stuart Sherman, who encouraged me when my faithlagged; and to the members of the cast, especially George Jessel andSam 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, andI will answer, true, but New England is dead so far as the America ofnow is concerned. You may show me an integrity in the West where acentury ago pioneers came, and I will answer, that integrity resideswith the elders and not with the mightier young ones. He who wishes topicture today’s America must do it kaleidoscopically; he must show youa vivid contrast of surfaces, raucous, sentimental, egoistical, vulgar,ineffably busy—surfaces whirling in a dance which sometimes is a danceto Aphrodite and more frequently a dance to Jehovah.
In seeking a symbol of the vital chaos of America’s soul, I findno more adequate one than jazz. Here you have the rhythm of frenzystaggering against a symphonic background—a background composed oflewdness, 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 templescollapsing and, silhouetted against the setting sun, a solitary figure,a lost soul, dancing grotesquely on the ruins.... Thus do I see thejazz singer.
Jazz is prayer. It is too passionate to be anything else. It is prayerdistorted, sick, unconscious of its destination. The singer of jazzis what Matthew[10] Arnold said of the Jew, “lost between two worlds,one dead, the other powerless to be born.” In this, my first play, Ihave tried to crystallize the ironic truth that one of the Americas of1925—that one which packs to overflowing our cabarets, musical revuesand dance halls—is praying with a fervor as intense as that of theAmerica which goes sedately to church and synagogue. The jazz Americanis different from the dancing dervish, from the Zulu medicine man, fromthe negro evangelist only in that he doesn’t know he is praying.
I have used a Jewish yout