Jazz Singer, The

All his life he trained to be a cantor, but now Jerry Golding has other ideas. He wants to see his name up in lights on Broadway! Danny Thomas, star classic TV comedy series Make Room for Daddy, plays Jerry in this 1952 update of the 1927 movie landmark that introduced the Sound Era. Opposite Thomas is musical legend Peggy Lee. Both Thomas and Lee rarely appear in films, which makes this heart-tugging show business story even more exceptional. Exceptional, too, are performances of song standards like Birth of the Blues, If I Could Be with You and I'm Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover. (Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner shared an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Scoring). Watch Lee wrap Cole Porter's Just One of Those Things in vocal silk and smoke and then set Rodgers and Hart's Lover ablaze and you'll know more than one jazz singer graces The Jazz Singer.

• drama
• musical