JOLSON: The Legend Comes to Life

by Herbert G. Goldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

Once billed as ""The World's Greatest Entertainment,"" Al Jolson fell into neglect following his death in 1951--and has yet to rise again. In his preface, Goldman laments that his book was two or three times its present size before cutting. But this pruning brings life to what must have been an overburdened work. A rabbi's son, Asa Joelson was born in Lithuania. In 1894, with his mother, brother, and two sisters, he followed his father to Washington, D.C. The next year his ailing mother died and his vision of her, round-eyed and screaming, influenced his most famous song, ""My Mammy,"" into which he mixed his own beseeching lyrics to the dying woman. Jolson held back in his early stage work until a fellow performer told him to work in blackface. He found himself not only released by burnt cork but energized. His rise in vaudeville was tremendous, to be capped by his singing in the first talkie, The Jazz Singer (""You ain't heard nothin' yet!""). Its story, about a cantor's son who goes on the stage but stays unpraised by his father, is not unlike Jolson's own. His fame leveled off in so-so films during the 30's. His wives include song-and-dance star Ruby Keeler; his fourth and last wife was about 37 years his junior. And his greatest comeback was the postwar smash movie The Jolson Story, a vastly fictionalized bio-pic in which Larry Parks mimed to Jolson's singing voice, followed by a second Parks-Jolson smash, Jolson Sings Again (in which his voice hits a sustained amber richness unreached before). Unlike that of the richly documented Judy Garland, his only stage rival this century, Jolson's electric tie to a live audience, his torrential zip in blackface, was never caught fully by phonograph record, film, recorded TV, or radio program. Often childishly egoistic, he sighed that he would be forgotten. . . Jolson struts, sings, and dances--and argues and boasts, is cynical, giving, a boor and a wit, and inspiring and magical. This is grounds for a Jolson Story remake.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION