The Singing Fool

The Singing Fool (1928)

After years of hopeful struggle, waiter and aspiring singer-songwriter Al Stone is on his way. He gets his huge break on a magical night when his song wows big-time producer Louis Marcus and gold-digging showgirl Molly, whom Al fancies. Broadway success and marriage follow, but sure enough, hard times are on the way.

Date of release
1928-09-29
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Drama, Music
Director
Lloyd Bacon

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $5.9M
  • Budget: $388K
  • Earned 15.2× its budget

The Singing Fool is a 1928 American sound part-talkie musical drama motion picture directed by Lloyd Bacon which was released by Warner Bros. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. The film stars Al Jolson and is a follow-up to his previous film, The Jazz Singer. It is credited with helping to cement the popularity of American films of both sound and the musical genre. The film entered the public domain on January 1, 2024.

Production

Like The Jazz Singer, The Singing Fool was a melodrama with musical interludes, and as such was one of the film industry's first musical films. Produced during the transition period between silent film and talkies, the movie was released in both sound and silent versions.

The Singing Fool was a part-talking feature, which featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects along with synchronized musical and talking sequences, although in this film roughly 66 minutes of talking and singing were included. Al Jolson's first all-talking feature, Say It With Songs, would appear in 1929.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended