The Jazz Singer Before
The Jazz Singer, Jolson starred in the talking live-action short
A Plantation Act. This simulation of a stage performance by Jolson was presented in a program of musical shorts, demonstrating the
Vitaphone sound-film process. The soundtrack for
A Plantation Act was considered lost in 1933, but was found in 1995 and restored by
The Vitaphone Project.
Warner Bros. picked
George Jessel for the role, as he had starred in the Broadway play. When
Sam Warner decided to make
The Jazz Singer a musical with the Vitaphone, he knew that Jolson was the star he needed. He told Jessel that he would have to sing in the movie, and Jessel balked, allowing Warner to replace him with Jolson. Jessel never got over it, and often said that Warner gave the role to Jolson because he agreed to help finance the film.
Harry Warner's daughter, Doris, remembered the opening night, and said that when the picture started she was still crying over the loss of her beloved uncle Sam. He had been planning to be at the performance but died suddenly, at the age of 40, on the previous day. However, halfway through the 89-minute film, she began to be overtaken by a sense that something remarkable was happening. Jolson's "Wait a minute" line provoked shouts of pleasure and applause from the audience, who were dumbfounded by seeing and hearing someone speak on a film for the first time, so much so that the double-entendre was missed at first. After each Jolson song, the audience applauded. Excitement mounted as the film progressed, and when Jolson began his scene with
Eugenie Besserer, "the audience became hysterical". According to film historian
Scott Eyman, "by the film's end, the Warner brothers had shown an audience something they had never known, moved them in a way they hadn't expected. The tumultuous ovation at curtain proved that Jolson was not merely the right man for the part of Jackie Rabinowitz, alias Jack Robin; he was the right man for the entire transition from silent fantasy to talking realism. The audience, transformed into what one critic called, 'a milling, battling mob' stood, stamped, and cheered 'Jolson, Jolson, Jolson!'" Vitaphone was intended for musical renditions, and
The Jazz Singer follows this principle, with only the musical sequences using live sound recording. The moviegoers were electrified when the silent actions were interrupted periodically for a song sequence with real singing and sound. Jolson's dynamic voice, physical mannerisms, and charisma held the audience spellbound. Costar
May McAvoy, according to author A. Scott Berg, could not help sneaking into theaters day after day as the film was being run. "She pinned herself against a wall in the dark and watched the faces in the crowd. In that moment just before '
Toot, Toot, Tootsie,' she remembered, 'A miracle occurred. Moving pictures really came alive. To see the expressions on their faces, when Joley spoke to them ... you'd have thought they were listening to the voice of God.'" "Everybody was mad for the talkies", said movie star
Gregory Peck in a
Newsweek interview. "I remember
The Jazz Singer, when Al Jolson just burst into song, and there was a little bit of dialogue. And when he came out with 'Mammy,' and went down on his knees to his Mammy, it was just dynamite." This opinion is shared by Mast and Kawin: '' with reissue title
The Singing Fool With Warner Bros. Al Jolson made his first "all-talking" picture,
The Singing Fool (1928), the story of an ambitious entertainer who insisted on going on with the show even as his small son lay dying. The film was even more popular than
The Jazz Singer. "
Sonny Boy", from the film, was the first American record to sell one million copies. Jolson continued to make features for Warner Bros. similar in style to
The Singing Fool. These included
Say It with Songs (1929),
Mammy (1930), and
Big Boy (1930). A restored version of
Mammy, with Jolson in
Technicolor sequences, was first screened in 2002. Jolson's first Technicolor appearance was a cameo in the musical
Showgirl in Hollywood (1930) from
First National Pictures, a Warner Bros. subsidiary. However, these films gradually proved a cycle of diminishing returns due to their comparative sameness, the regal salary that Jolson demanded, and a shift in public taste away from vaudeville musicals as the 1930s began. Jolson returned to Broadway and starred in the unsuccessful
Wonder Bar.
''Hallelujah, I'm a Bum/Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp'' Warner Bros. allowed him to make ''
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum with United Artists in 1933. It was directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Ben Hecht. Hecht was also active in the promotion of civil rights: "Hecht film stories featuring black characters included Hallelujah, I'm a Bum'', co-starring Edgar Connor as Jolson's sidekick, in a politically savvy rhymed dialogue over
Richard Rodgers music."
Mordaunt Hall of
The New York Times wrote, "The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no Mammy song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director,
Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny ... a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire...." The film resurfaced in 1973, as
The New Yorker noted: "A film to welcome back, especially for what it tries to do for the progress of the American musical...."
Wonder Bar In 1934, Jolson starred in
Wonder Bar, co-starring
Kay Francis,
Dolores del Río,
Ricardo Cortez, and
Dick Powell. It's a movie version of his earlier stage play, a "musical
Grand Hotel, set in the Parisian nightclub owned by Al Wonder (Jolson). Wonder entertains and banters with his international clientele." Reviews were generally positive: "
Wonder Bar has got about everything. Romance, flash, dash, class, color, songs, star-studded talent and almost every known requisite to assure sturdy attention and attendance.... It's Jolson's comeback picture in every respect."; and, "Those who like Jolson should see
Wonder Bar for it is mainly Jolson; singing the old reliables; cracking jokes which would have impressed Noah as depressingly ancient; and moving about with characteristic energy."
The Singing Kid Jolson's last Warner vehicle was
The Singing Kid (1936). The film parodies Jolson's stage persona (he plays a character named Al Jackson) in which he mocks his stage histrionics and taste for "mammy" songs — the latter via a number by
E. Y. Harburg and
Harold Arlen titled "I Love to Singa", and a comedy sequence with Jolson doggedly trying to sing "Mammy" while The
Yacht Club Boys keep telling him such songs are outdated. According to jazz historian Michael Alexander, Jolson had once griped that "People have been making fun of mammy songs, and I don't really think that it's right that they should, for after all, mammy songs are the fundamental songs of our country." (He said this, in character, in his 1926 short
A Plantation Act.) In this film, he notes, "Jolson had the confidence to rhyme 'Mammy' with 'Uncle Sammy'", adding "Mammy songs, along with the vocation 'Mammy singer', were inventions of the Jewish Jazz Age." The film also gave a boost to the career of Black singer and bandleader
Cab Calloway, who performed a number of songs alongside Jolson. In his autobiography, Calloway writes about this episode: "
I Love to Singa", sung by both Jolson and Calloway, later appeared in
Tex Avery's cartoon of the same name. While a pleasant film,
The Singing Kid demonstrates how far Jolson's star had fallen by 1936. He no longer had star billing, the film was only a minor attraction released under Warners' second-echelon "First National" trademark, and the title was a mild, backhanded swipe at Jolson, because the singing kid is really child actress
Sybil Jason, making her screen debut as Jolson's small companion. Jason remembers that
Busby Berkeley worked on the film although he is not credited. Jolson remained off the screen for the next three years.
Rose of Washington Square His next movie—his first with
Twentieth Century-Fox—was
Rose of Washington Square (1939). It stars
Alice Faye and
Tyrone Power, with Jolson billed third, and included many of Jolson's best known songs, although several songs were cut to shorten the movie's length, including "
April Showers" and "
Avalon". Reviewers wrote, "Mr Jolson's singing of
Mammy,
California, Here I Come and others is something for the memory book" and "Of the three co-stars this is Jolson's picture ... because it's a pretty good catalog in anybody's hit parade." The movie was released on DVD in October 2008. 20th Century Fox hired him to recreate a scene from
The Jazz Singer in the Alice Faye-
Don Ameche film
Hollywood Cavalcade. Guest appearances in two more Fox films followed that same year, but his starring career came to a halt.
World War II Japanese bombs on
Pearl Harbor shook Jolson out of continuing moods of lethargy due to years of little activity and "... he dedicated himself to a new mission in life.... Even before the
U.S.O. began to set up a formal program overseas, Jolson was deluging War and Navy Department brass with phone calls and wires. He requested permission to go anywhere in the world where there was an American serviceman who wouldn't mind listening to 'Sonny Boy' or 'Mammy'.... [and] early in 1942, Jolson became the first star to perform at a GI base in World War II". From a 1942 interview in
The New York Times: "When the war started ... [I] felt that it was up to me to do something, and the only thing I know is show business. I went around during the last war and I saw that the boys needed something besides chow and drills. I knew the same was true today, so I told the people in Washington that I would go anywhere and do an act for the Army." Shortly after the war began, he wrote a letter to Steven Early, press secretary to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, volunteering "to head a committee for the entertainment of soldiers and said that he "would work without pay ... [and] would gladly assist in the organization to be set up for this purpose". A few weeks later, he received his first tour schedule from the newly formed
United Services Organization (USO), "the group his letter to Early had helped create". He did as many as four shows a day in the jungle outposts of Central America and covered the string of U.S. Naval bases. He paid for part of the transportation out of his own pocket. Upon doing his first, and unannounced, show in England in 1942, the reporter for the
Hartford Courant wrote, "... it was a panic. And pandemonium ... when he was done the applause that shook that soldier-packed room was like bombs falling again in Shaftsbury Avenue." From an article in
The New York Times: Some of the unusual hardships of performing to active troops were described in an article he wrote for
Variety, in 1942: After returning from a tour of overseas bases, the Regimental Hostess at one camp wrote to Jolson, Jolson was officially enlisted in the
United Service Organizations (USO), the organization which provided entertainment for American troops who served in combat overseas. Because he was over the age of 45, he received a "Specialist" rating that permitted him to wear a uniform and be given the standing of an officer. While touring in the Pacific, Jolson contracted
malaria and had to have his left lung surgically removed. In 1946, during a nationally broadcast testimonial dinner in New York City, given on his behalf, he received a special tribute from the American Veterans Committee in honor of his volunteer services during World War II. In a tribute to Jolson, Larry Parks wrote, "Stepping into his shoes was, for me, a matter of endless study, observation, energetic concentration to obtain, perfectly if possible, a simulation of the kind of man he was. It is not surprising, therefore, that while making
The Jolson Story, I spent 107 days before the cameras and lost eighteen pounds in weight." From a review in
Variety: Parks received an
Oscar nomination for
Best Actor. Although the 60-year-old Jolson was too old to play a younger version of himself in the movie, he persuaded the studio to let him appear in one musical sequence, "
Swanee", shot entirely in long shot, with Jolson in blackface singing and dancing onto the runway leading into the middle of the theater. In the wake of the film's success and his World War II tours, Jolson became a top singer among the American public once more.
Decca signed Jolson and he recorded for Decca from 1945 until his death, making his last commercial recordings for the company.
Critical observations According to film historian Krin Gabbard,
The Jolson Story goes further than any of the earlier films in exploring the significance of blackface and the relationships that Whites have developed with Blacks in the area of music. To him, the film seems to imply an inclination of White performers, like Jolson, who are possessed with "the joy of life and enough sensitivity to appreciate the musical accomplishments of blacks". To support his view he describes a significant part of the movie: This has been a theme which was traditionally "dear to the hearts of the men who made the movies". "Once we accept a semantic change from singing to playing the clarinet,
The Benny Goodman Story becomes an almost transparent reworking of
The Jazz Singer ... and
The Jolson Story." Jolson did a whirlwind tour of New York film theaters to promote the movie, traveling with a police convoy to make timetables for all showings, often ad libbing jokes and performing three songs for each audience. Extra police were on duty as crowds jammed the streets and sidewalks at each theater Jolson visited. In Chicago, a few weeks later, he sang to 100,000 people at Soldier Field, and later that night appeared at the Oriental Theatre with George Jessel where 10,000 people had to be turned away. ==Radio==