''The Jazz Age'' (1929) is a film starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.,

Marceline Day Marceline Day (born Marceline Newlin; April 24, 1908 – February 16, 2000) was an American motion picture actress whose career began as a child in the 1910s and ended in the 1930s. Early life Marceline Newlin was born in Colorado Springs, Color ...

, and

Joel McCrea Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990) was an American actor whose career spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns, for which he beca ...

in his first leading role. The film, directed by

Lynn Shores Lynn Shores (1893–1949) was an American film director. Shores was born on September 22, 1893, in Binghamton, New York, and is best known for directing Sally's Shoulders (1928), A Million to One (1936) and Here's Flash Casey (1938). Lynn died on ...

and written by Randolph Bartlett, was released by

RKO Radio Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orphe ...

soon after RKO was created from

Film Booking Offices of America Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the Silent film, silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an ...

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

, and the

Keith-Albee-Orpheum The Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation was the owner of a chain of vaudeville and motion picture theatres. It was formed by the merger of the holdings of Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee II and Martin Beck's Orpheum Circuit. Histo ...

theater chain.

Plot

Steve Maxwell (Fairbanks) and Sue Randall (Day), during an escapade, wreck one of her father's streetcars. The elder Randall uses this incident to stop the elder Maxwell (Walthall) from opposing Randall's illegal contract with the city. When Steve tells all to the city council, Mr. Randall (Ratcliffe) threatens Steve with arrest, Sue admits her culpability, and announces her intentions of marrying Steve.

Cast

* Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Steve Maxwell *

as Sue Randall *

Henry B. Walthall Henry Brazeale Walthall (March 16, 1878 – June 17, 1936) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915). Early life Henry B. Walthall was born March 16, 1878 on a ...

as Mr. Maxwell (billed as H. B. Walthall) *

Myrtle Stedman Myrtle Stedman (born Myrtle Lincoln; March 3, 1883 – January 8, 1938) was an American leading lady and later character actress in motion pictures who began in silent films in 1910. Biography Stedman was born Myrtle Lincoln in Chicago, Illi ...

as Mrs. Maxwell *

Gertrude Messinger Gertrude Dolores Messinger (April 28, 1911 – November 8, 1995) was an American film actress known for her B-movie roles from the 1930s through the 1950s. She began as a child actor in silent films, but found her greatest fame in talkies of ...

as Marjorie *

as Todd Sayles *William Bechtel as Mr. Sayles *

E. J. Ratcliffe Edward J. Ratcliffe (10 March 1863 – 28 September 1948) was an English actor of stage and screen. He had an established stage career behind him when he came to films in 1915. He then spent nearly twenty years before the cameras before making hi ...

as Mr. Randall *Ione Holmes as Ellen McBride *

Edgar Dearing Edgar Dearing (May 4, 1893 – August 17, 1974) was an American actor who became heavily type cast as a motorcycle cop in Hollywood films. Biography Born in 1893, Dearing started in silent comedy shorts for Hal Roach, including several with La ...

as Motor Cop

Preservation status

*The film is preserved in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

collection

Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation The National Audiovisual Conservation Center, also known as the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, is the Library of Congress's audiovisual archive located inside Mount Pony in Culpeper, Virginia. Establishment From 1969 to 1988, th ...

Production background

RKO released ''The Jazz Age'' in both a silent and

part-talkie A part-talkie is a partly, and most often primarily, silent film which includes one or more synchronous sound sequences with audible dialog or singing. During the silent portions, lines of dialog are presented as "titles"—printed text briefly ...

version, so the film could be shown in theaters equipped for sound, and for those not equipped for sound. The part-talkie version was recorded in

RCA Photophone RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was an opt ...

. There was a later

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

produced by NBC News Project 20, narrated by

Fred Allen John Florence Sullivan (May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956), known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist, topically pointed radio program ''The Fred Allen Show'' (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and for ...

also titled ''The Jazz Age'' (1956), and a 15-episode

TV series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

of the same name on the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

(1968). Both the IMDB and TCM websites, for the 1929 film, show the 1956 film as available on DVD for purchase. No info is given about the availability of the 1929 title.

References

External links

* *
The AFI Catalog of Feature Films:''..The Jazz Age''
AFI Catalog) American silent feature films Transitional sound films 1920s English-language films 1929 films Films set in the Roaring Twenties American black-and-white films Film Booking Offices of America films Films directed by Lynn Shores 1920s American films {{1920s-US-film-stub