May McAvoy's gentle, expressive silent acting deserves more attention than her limited part in The Jazz Singer allows. We value her warmth, but her work also shows how easily a sympathetic heroine can be left with too little to do.
Fi1m perspective
May McAvoy's Mary Dale encourages Al Jolson's character in The Jazz Singer (1927), and is given little opportunity to do anything more difficult. She is sympathetic, but the relationship never acquires much force of its own. Alan Crosland's film comes alive when Jolson sings, leaving McAvoy in the less rewarding business of keeping its stiff melodrama going. To understand her appeal, we need to look beyond this accommodating woman and towards the vulnerable leads of her silent work.
Her expressive face and body language suited the innocent young women she was often asked to play. After buying out her Paramount contract in 1923, she appeared in The Enchanted Cottage (1924), whose romantic vulnerability offers a better introduction to her strengths. The following year brought Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and the role of Esther in Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).
Her lack of spoken dialogue in The Jazz Singer matters when judging what followed. Mary is a silent performance within a film whose main attraction is Jolson's voice, and McAvoy has little chance to compete with that excitement. We grew impatient with the drama because the family scenes kept repeating their grievances; the singing brought the film back to life. That frustration belongs largely to the writing, rather than to an actor asked mainly to offer encouragement.
The Terror (1928), in which she played Olga Redmayne, did give her a leading sound role. Contemporary responses to her voice were mixed, a useful warning against assuming that skill in silent performance would transfer without difficulty. She withdrew from leading roles in 1929 and returned in the 1940s for uncredited MGM bit parts. For McAvoy herself, begin with The Enchanted Cottage; choose The Jazz Singer chiefly if Jolson and the arrival of sound are what interest you.
Biography
May McAvoy was an American actress who worked primarily during the silent film era. She made her screen debut in the 1917 film Hate and appeared in more than three dozen films over the following decade.
Among her notable roles were Esther in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and Lady Windermere in Lady Windermere's Fan (1925). She played Mary Dale opposite Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927). Although her voice was not heard in that film, she spoke in other early sound pictures such as The Terror (1928).
McAvoy married Maurice Cleary, treasurer of United Artists, in 1929 and retired from acting at his request. She later returned to films in small, often uncredited roles during the 1940s and 1950s, with her final appearance in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.
