When The Jazz Singer, a musical about a Jewish cantor’s son who longs to sing on Broadway, premiered in New York on October 6, 1927, silent movies became history and the sound era began. The Jazz Singer is popularly believed to be the first talking picture, but technically, 1926’s Don Juan, with its use of a music track recorded on phonograph records synchronized to the film, predated the landmark musical. Originally, Warner Brothers Studio planned to record only the songs on disks while telling the story in silent sequences. Star Al Jolson, however, ad-libbed dialogue in two scenes and opened the talking-picture age with the prophetic words, ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!’
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