Follow The Bouncing Ball

Matinee At The Bijou posted an excellent article about the "screen songs" that encouraged audience participation at the theaters by using the bouncing ball over the lyrics.  Think of it as early mass karaoke.

Audience sing-alongs to words projected on a screen go back before 1900 -- when magic lanterns were used in vaudeville shows. The famous "Bouncing Ball" debuted in 1924 in the Max Fleischer Ko-Ko Song Car-Tune Oh Mabel.

Fleischer made many sing-alongs in the silent era with a seamless transition into sound that produced 108 cartoons from 1929 through 1938, plus the offbeat Let’s Sing with Popeye (1934) that added words to a segment of the first Popeye cartoon

Matinee posted this example from 1945 called, When G.I. Johnny Comes Home.  The sing along starts out as the standard version of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," but it gets a bit hip and swinging toward the end.