Lucky Boy is a 1929 American sound part-talkie musical comedy-drama film directed by Norman Taurog and Charles C. Wilson, most notable for starring George Jessel in his first known surviving feature picture. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score, singing and sound effects along with English intertitles. The sound was recorded using the Tiffany-Tone system using RCA Photophone equipment. The film's plot bore strong similarities to that of the hit 1927 film The Jazz Singer, which had originally been intended to star Jessel before Al Jolson took over the role.
Lobby card using the working title The Ghetto
Lobby card
Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director and screenwriter. From 1920 to 1968, Taurog directed 180 films. At the age of 32, he received the Academy Award for Best Director for Skippy (1931), becoming the youngest person to win the award for eight and a half decades until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land in 2017. He was later nominated for Best Director for the film Boys Town (1938). He directed some of the best-known actors of the twentieth century, including his nephew Jackie Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Elvis Presley. Taurog directed six Martin and Lewis films, and nine Elvis Presley films, more than any other director.
Norman Taurog
Norman Taurog (foreground, second from left) and MGM camera crew at K-25, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in July 1946, filming The Beginning or the End (1947)