page_title: American Theatre in the 1920s
section_title: Talkies
hierarchical_section_title: American Theatre in the 1920s / Cinema / Talkies
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for the movie The Jazz Singer (1927), featuring stars Eugenie Besserer and Al Jolson. Warner Bros. (original rights holder)
context_page_description: In the 1920s, Theater in the United States and the Cinema of the United States were both increasingly active. Broadway was reaching its peak, classic theatre was working to be recognized, and the cinema business was growing as well. Within this decade, there were lots of changes within the social, economic, and legal environment in the United States, and these changes were often reflected into the art forms of the time period. In the '20s, theatre utilized jazz, vaudeville, straight plays, musicals, and movies.
context_section_description: The first film including synchronized sound and audible lines was The Jazz Singer in 1927. Many of the talking films in the twenties revolved around Broadway in plot and theme. For example, The Jazz Singer was about a boy who followed his dream of performing rather than working in church with his father. Many movies were less explicitly connected to Broadway and instead just had themes that visibly reminded the viewer of New York, and other such cues. In the very end of the decade, movie musicals were popular, especially in 1929, since they took special advantage of the addition of sound—singing. Some prominent examples of movie musicals from this time were Broadway, Gold Diggers of Broadway, and, The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Most of the big film companies took advantage of the income increasing movie musicals until 1930, when they were deemed to expensive and impractical to continue mass-producing.
caption: Poster for the movie The Jazz Singer (1927)
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