A perfect tribute to Al Jolson, this movie is as schmaltzy, spirited, and unforgettable as the singer himself. It affectionately traces Jolson’s tune-packed, knee-bending fifty years in show business.
With Larry Parks catching the Mammy singer’s eye-rolling exuberance in a bang-up impersonation, the film highlights in Technicolor such Jolson lore as his bouncy blackface routines, his one-man shows at Broadway’s Winter Garden, and his pioneering in talking pictures. Read the rest of this entry »
Al Jolson, “The Jazz Singer,” died at the St. Francis Hotel here tonight. He had recently returned from Korea after entertaining troops there.
Death came just after 10:30 P.M. (PST) as Mr. Jolson was playing cards in his room with friends. He was in San Francisco to be the guest star on the Bing Crosby radio program scheduled to be recorded Tuesday night.
Mr. Jolson checked in at the St. Francis today. He was playing gin rummy with Martin Fried, his arranger and accompanist, and Harry Akst, songwriter and long-time friend. Read the rest of this entry »
Variety, October 12, 1927.
Undoubtedly the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen. The combination of the religious heart interest story and Jolson’s singing “Kol Nidre” in a synagog while his father is dying and two “Mammy” lyrics as his mother stands in the wings of the theatre, and later as she sits in the first row, carries abundant power and appeal. Besides which the finish of the “Mammy” melody (the one that goes “The sun shines east, the sun shines west” is also the end of the picture with Jolson supposedly on a stage and a closeup on the screen as his voice pours through the amplifiers. Read the rest of this entry »
excerpt from:Music and the Racial Imagination By Ronald Michael Radano, Philip Vilas Bohlman (2000)
The film A Star Is Born further complicates the issue of impersonation by having Judy “do” Al Jolson. . . . But the key moment in the number is Garland’s version of Al Jolson’s “Swanee.” By the early 1950s, Jolson’s blackface was a central figure of nostalgia in “American” mass culture, not only due to its role in the history of cinema from Singin’ in the Rain, but also in relation to the very popular new Jolson films of the late 1940s, The Al Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again, the latter being the top grossing film of 1949. Not only was Jolson’s figure a central mnemonic for an imagined national past, but Garland’s stardom was intimately associated with the nostalgia that this mnemonics guaranteed.
Garland did a tribute to Jolson in her concerts of 1951 at the London Palladium and at New York’s Palace Theater. Both concerts were central to this first of Judy Garland’s many comebacks and centered around her impersonation of Al Jolson and revival of vaudevillian “tradition.” Fricke quotes Garland as saying about the Palladium: “I suddenly knew that this was the beginning of a new life. . . . Hollywood thought I was through; then came the wonderful opportunity to appear at the London Palladium, where I can truthfully say Judy Garland was reborn.” The song “Swanee” then, as it appeared in A Star Is Born, was clearly identified with its blackface history, but further, Garland performing “Swanee” in her odd vocal drag of Jolson makes a claim about the relationship of this blackface tradition to the star’s own comeback, to the “rebirth” of Garland as star.
As Garland does “Swanee” in the film within the film, the connection to Jolson is made explicit in a number of ways. The dance number features what are referred to in the shooting schedule for the scene as “six colored dancers.” These dancers might well not be whites in blackface, but the dance moves they do behind Garland are clearly intended to be impersonations of vaudevillian minstrels. Four of the dancers are playing large tambourines, and the other two are holding stylized banjos as they dance. Each of the dancers smiles his way through the number, to make the impersonation of minstrel performance practice complete.
As the black dancers are doing impersonations of whites in blackface, Judy Garland is doing a drag impersonation of Jolson – not in blackface. Dressed with a top hat, a jacket and tie, and white gloves her costume is a stylized version of the Jolson attire. The crossing of gender that Judy’s drag performs stands in for the blackface she is prohibited from putting on. But the story doesn’t end here: her drag as Al Jolson is guaranteed a position as authentic and real by the implied blackface that his /her character enacts, by the claim to American folkishness that minstrel traditions in cinema seem to represent.
Excerpts from article “The Winter Garden, Al Jolson and the Shuberts”, by Paul A. Bowers
“The New York Times remarked, “New York’s latest plaything, is a very flashy toy, full of life and go and color, and with no end of jingle to it.” With a capacity of over 1500 seats, the new Winter Garden became the Shubert’s largest theatrical house.
“Although the Winter Garden was impressive, it wasn’t just the structure that captured the American imagination. The theatre’s very first production featured Broadway newcomer Al Jolson. From that point on, much of the early Winter Garden history paralleled his spectacular ascent in American show business. The next seventeen years would find Al Jolson, the Shuberts, and the Winter Garden inextricably linked.”
Excerpt from : Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows, and Blues by Edward Jablonski (1998)
Around the same time Arlen took his camera to a location shoot of “The Singing Kid” in nearby Franklin Canyon on a misty, coolish morning. Anya, not in this film, wore a heavy coat with a stylish fluffy white fur collar. Her companion was equally modish in an overcoat and scarf, no hat. He carried a pipe and sported a neat mustache. The proletarian Harburg came simply in slacks, sweater, and sport jacket. They waited for the filming, under the director William Keighley, to begin, comfortably seated on a pier near a small lake; there was a small upright piano on the pier.
Excerpts from The Songs of Hollywood By Philip Furia
“Blue Skies” thus resonates with the dramatic moment in “The Jazz Singer” when Jolson, after many years of missing his beloved mother, is reunited with her. Before he sings, the scene is silent. Jolson enters his parents’ apartment, surprising his mother, and we see his father giving Hebrew lessons in another room. After a few moments of title-card dialogue, Jolson offers to demonstrate one of the songs in his new Broadway show. As synchronized sound comes up again, Jolson strides to the parlor piano and launches into “Blue Skies.” While he renders the song as a performance, his hammy, flourishing rendition portrays him as a kid showing off for his mother.
