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Home , Al Jolson, Gaby Deslys, Harry Akst, Jolson, Jolson Sings Again, Miss Show Business

Great Entertainers

Al Jolson Star of stage, screen, radio and , Al Jolson billed himself as ‘The World’s Greatest Entertainer’ and who could argue? Working in , he sang songs about his southern ‘Mammy’ with a passion that endeared him to Broadway audiences. His voice, a leathery blend of ringing brass and amber warmth with a sob in it, was probably the most imitated and parodied in the world. As a musical comedy star, he belted out songs like ‘Swanee’ and ‘Is It True What They Say About Dixie?” with flair and vitality; and always demanding applause for his songs and jokes, he was rarely disappointed. ‘Electric’, ‘dynamic energy’ and ‘like a cyclone’ were some of the terms used to describe his performances on stage; and after singing for three hours with incredible energy, he could still call out: “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!' Though kind and sentimental, he left much to be desired as a human being. His was an enormous ego. He could be arrogant, surly and a braggart and many of his contemporaries disliked him. But he was a giant in the entertainment world, a hit maker, and always last on the bill because no one could follow him. Though four times married, the love of his life was an audience - any audience. He needed applause the way a diabetic needs insulin. Al Jolson did not just sing songs - he rattled your backbone and made you want to get up and dance. He was the greatest entertainer the world has ever known. The Career of Al Jolson The Al Jolson story is typical American rags-to-riches. Born as Asa Yoelson, an immigrant son of a Russian Jewish Cantor, he rose from poverty to international fame and wealth. Beginning as a youth in bur- lesque, vaudeville and minstrel shows, he rose to be a musical comedy star on Broadway, filling the Winter Garden for two decades. As an entertainer he was a pioneer. First to take a top-class Broadway show on tour, first to make a talking picture, first to entertain the troops in three wars, first to have two films made of his life, and the first to cut a long-playing record. He sang the first songs by an ambitious youngster called and gave his first big break. His love affair with an audience lasted for four decades. He was married four times and his first two wives cited his audience as the other woman. Al Jolson was not everyone’s favourite person but the troops he entertained in World War II loved him. The release of in 1946, a film biography of his life starring , resurrected his sagging career and he became immensely popular with a new generation of admirers. At the end of 1947 he was voted the most popular male singer on radio. A successful film sequel, , was made in 1949 and with war erupting in Korea, Jolson again went off to entertain the troops. On the night of his death on 23 they turned out the lights of Broadway and the traffic in Times Square came to a halt - Al Jolson was not just a great singer, he was a giant of the entertainment industry. Musical Medleys

52 Medley

By the Light of the Silvery Moon - (Madden & Edwards) Baby Face - (Shuttleworth, Yates, Wright, Akst & Davies) Rock-A-Bye Your Baby - (Lewis, Young & Schwartz) Here I Come - (Mercer) Give My Regards to Broadway - (Cohen) April Showers - (De Silva & Silver)

53 Medley

Swanee - (Gershwin & Caesar) Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye (Erdman, Kahn & Russo) You Made Me Love You (Monaco) I Only Have Eyes For You - (Dubin & Warren) Anniversary Song (Jolson & Chaplin - theme by Ivanovici) Chapter One: Blackface ‘Blackface with a Grand Opera Voice’ And then there came on the scene a young man, vibrantly pulsing with life and courage, who marched on the stage, head held high with the authority of a Roman emperor, with a gaiety that was militant, uninhibit- ed, and unafraid, and told the world that a Jew in America did not have to sing in sorrow but could shout happily about Dixie, about the Night Boat to Albany, about coming to California, about a girl in Avalon. And when he cried ‘Mammy’, it was in appreciation, not lament.' Jolson was born Asa Yoelson, the fourth surviving child of Cantor Moses and Naomi Yoelson in Srednik, a small village in Russian Lithua- nia. The year may have been 1886 - the exact date is uncertain. Rose was the eldest child, followed by Etta, and then Hirsch who was three years older than his brother Asa. Pearl Sieben: 'Russia in those years was the land of the progrom and the Cossack. Since the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the lot of the Jew in Russia had steadily worsened. Life for the Yoelsons was happy, but hovering over them was the impending threat of violence.' Al Jolson: 'Early life? Well, very early in my life I was born in Russia and named Asa Yoelson. That’s what they tell me. Personally, I don’t remember it. I bet I was left in a basket on a doorstep. I’m Skeezix for all I know. There’s nothing much to tell about me.' Asa was four years old when his father left for America hoping to quickly put down roots. It took another four years before he had saved enough money to pay steerage passage for his family to join him. During the journey the family transferred ship at Liverpool where Asa got lost and was brought back to their lodgings by a policeman. They sailed for America on the Umbria the next day and arrived at Ellis Island in April 1894, seasick and disheveled. 'It was a terrible trip,' Asa related many years later. Moses, who was waiting for the family on the quayside, took them by train to Washington where he had found a job as a cantor in a synagogue - his original ambition to be an opera singer had only been a dream. Settled in a flat over a feed store, the family quickly learned the new customs. It was a tough neighbourhood and the boys joined the local gang. Hirsch and Asa sang the ‘’ at the synagogue but Moses was horrified when they came home singing about ‘Sweet Marie’. He gave them singing lessons, pointing out that each note was a praise to the Lord. Hirsch sang pleasantly enough but Asa was something special - he instinctively knew that singing came from the stomach, not just from the throat. Naomi was often ill but no one realised how desperately so. Nine months after their arrival in America, Asa came home from school one day to be led along with his brother into her room just in time to see the doctor pulling the sheet over her head. Asa just turned and ran. The funeral was held within twelve hours in accordance with Jewish law and in the bitterly cold wind, unable to hold back the tears, Asa dabbed at his eyes with little fists covered by socks. Pearl Sieben: 'Al Jolson was born at the age of eight in the streets of Washington, DC.' Rose took on the mantle of ‘little mother’ while Moses wrote to his wife’s cousin Hessi in the old country, proposing marriage. Hessi ac- cepted by return of post. The girls welcomed their new mother but the boys were resentful. Hessi lacked Naomi’s sense of humour though she tried hard to win them over but they did eventually grow fond of her. Al Reeves billed himself as ‘The World’s Greatest Banjoist and Come- dian’ when he appeared at the Lyceum Theatre, Washington. He cer- tainly impressed the Yoelson brothers with his ‘big finish’, and they applauded when he exclaimed: 'Give me credit, boys.' Hirsch and Asa Yoelson had discovered show business. The Yoelson brothers worked on various moneymaking schemes - singing in the street, selling water melons together, and in competition selling newspapers from street corners. They began to earn dimes and quarters singing popular songs to high officials who sat sipping cool long drinks on the veranda in front of the Hotel Raleigh. The sadder the songs, the more they earned and they used the money to get into the local Bijou theatre. The boys began to frequent shows, became rebellious, smoked, and played hookey. Their father called the theatres 'dens of sin', described ragtime as 'loafer music', and regarded theatre music as less than respectable - not like grand opera. He probably didn’t know half of what his two boys got up to. Hirsch changed his name to Harry, and Asa called himself Al. Harry later explained: 'As Asa and Hirsch we were Jewish boys. As Al and Harry we were Americans.' Harry always got the blame for leading his younger brother astray so at the age of fifteen he took himself off to New York. Harry told Al: 'Look, you heard of Broadway . . . in New York. I’m gonna go there an’ try an’ get into show business. Soon as I get started I’ll send for you.' Some months later when he had heard nothing from him, Al followed suit by hopping on a freight. Unable to find Harry, he sold newspapers and shined shoes for a few cents. As Al said later: 'You get awfully hungry at twelve years of age.' Walking down Broadway one day, Al heard blonde singer Fay Temple- ton rehearsing a song: 'Rosie, You Are My Posie.' When she had finished he couldn’t get the song out of his head and as he walked he got hungrier and hungrier until he reached a grimy restaurant on the Bowery called McGirks. Inside he could see plates of steaming food. 'Will you give me something to eat if I sing for you?' he begged the owner. The proprietor agreed. Through the noisy, smoke-laden atmosphere, Al Yoelson sang Fay Templeton’s song and at the end, a hush descended. Al got his dinner. It was also his first taste of show business and the beginnings of a love-affair with an audience that would last a lifetime. Al eventually found Harry with his nose hungrily pressed up against the glass of a bakery window - singing in the big city was not as easy as he had thought. New York entertainment centred on the Bowery with their vaudeville theatres, burlesque houses and dime museums offering freaks and wonders and a host of acts but the boys couldn’t find work. Broke and hungry after sleeping on park benches and in empty railway wagons, Al returned home. Harry soon followed. Al: 'Harry, my shoes are gone!' Harry: 'Ya should never take anything off when ya sleep in a place like this.' During the summer they obtained jobs as singing waiters on the excur- sion boats on the Potomac. Sometimes they entertained at Snyder’s place near the Navy Yard where according to Harry: 'You could get a huge schooner of beer and a dish of crabs for a nickel’. Despite his disappoint- ment in New York, Al had been bitten by show business and now that his father and Hessi were starting a new family, there was nothing to keep him at home in Washington. Hearing the military band play, ‘Goodbye Dollie I Must Leave You’, he joined the troops that came marching down Washington’s Pennsylva- nia Avenue on their way to Cuba. It was 1898 and America and Spain were at war over the disputed territory of Cuba. Al attached himself as singer and entertainer with the 15th Pennsylvania Volunteers and went all the way to Key West, Florida, before he was ordered home. This wouldn’t be last time he would sing to troops at a time of war. Bandmaster of the 15th Pennsylvania Volunteers: 'Why don’t you become our mascot? You’ll be able to sing.'

WALTER L. MAIN CIRCUS 'We will offer for your indulgence some of the world’s most noted variety entertainers, among them 'Master Albert Joelson.'

Al joined a circus for a while and later claimed to have been introduced as: 'The Champion Buck-and-Wing Dancer of the .' This was some exaggeration since he only developed his eccentric dancing later. Pearl Sieben: 'These were the last days of the ‘Gay Nineties’ . . . The Bowery was the honky-tonk of the city where crime and gaiety flourished side-by-side. Prostitution and bad gin were the vogue. The Salvation Army called for sinners; the sweat shops ground up human souls. The beer halls featured mayhem, high stepping girls and sentimental tenors.' Al was ‘rescued’ while working in a bar in Baltimore by the Gerry Society, a police morals squad. They took him to St. Mary’s Industrial Home for Boys in Baltimore, a ‘home for wayward boys’ run by Roman Catholic monks. 'They didn’t let us smoke,' Al later recalled, 'so I got a plug of tobacco from an iceman. It didn’t taste so good but a fella couldn’t sleep right if he didn’t pull some kind of fast one on the brothers.' He misbehaved so often that they put him in solitary confinement in a monk’s cell where he caught a severe cold. A doctor diagnosed a 'tendency toward tuberculosis' and recommended fresh air and singing to strengthen his lungs. He sang with St. Mary’s choir till Cantor Yoelson came to collect him. In the fall, Al was given a small, non-speaking part in The Children of the Ghetto, Israel Zangwill’s dramatisation of his own novel playing at the National Theatre, Washington. The show folded after only a few performances. Harry had a job as a peanut vendor in the Washington’s Bijou theatre and would sneak Al into the gallery. Al heard the coon shouter Eddie Leonard, one of America’s great vaudevillians, sing: ‘I’d Leave Ma Happy Home for You.’ Leonard would shout to the audience: 'Come on everybody, join in.' Some did, but none so enthusiastically as the boy soprano in ‘the gods’. Leonard was so impressed he made Al sing it as a solo. After a meeting backstage, Leonard arranged for Al to sing it as a ‘stooge’ every night from the balcony. It went quite well but when Leonard wanted to make it a permanent act, Al refused. Not for him singing from a mere balcony, he wanted to be in the spotlight on the stage. ‘Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider’ (appropriated by ), and ‘Roll Dem Roly-Boly Eyes’ were two of Eddie Leonard’s own compositions that later made him famous. Al repeated the routine at the Bijou with Miss Aggie Beeler, the burlesque queen, billed as ‘Jersey Lil’. From the same balcony he joined in the chorus: 'My Jersey Lily, with eyes of blue. No other lily can equal you . . .' Backstage, Aggie was persuaded that Al would make a good foil for her act. Rabbi Yoelson reluctantly agreed and at fourteen years of age, Al joined the Victoria Burlesquers. Really in show business now, he changed his name to Joelson because it sounded more American. Harry left home for good and found a job as a singing waiter in New York. AT LIBERTY FOR NEXT SEASON MASTER JOELSON & FRED MOORE Song Illustrators Introducing Master Joelson, the Phenomenal Tenor, with Victoria Burlesquers for the past two seasons. Both play parts (Mr. Fred Moore is an experienced union electrician)

Al was not happy on tour and spent a cheerless Christmas at Spring- field, Massachusetts: 'I was thoroughly miserable and unhappy. I could see myself - a kid singer warbling questionable songs for a meagre living and dreaming of footlight fame. Not in good standing at home either.' He fell out with Aggie when she would not allow him on the stage and when the show reached New York in January 1901, he teamed up with the company electrician Fred E. Moore as an ‘illustrated’ singing act with scenes projected on a screen. They billed themselves as ‘Master Joelson and Fred Moore’ - the first time Al had received a billing. Fred E. Moore: 'Suppose you and me team up? We could hit the agents and see if we can’t pick ourselves up some bookings. Besides, my wife’s a wonderful cook. She’ll put some meat on those bones of yours.' Jolson was fifteen years old, touring between New York and the Middle West, learning show business arts from the other comedians, dancers and singers in Burlesque - how to come on stage, how to exit, how to win applause and how to end a song. In March 1902 they joined the Al Reeves’ Famous Big Company and Al was able to study his idol Al Reeves in close-up - his walk, manner- isms and how to put up a good front. They soon left the Reeves show to try vaudeville but with few bookings they had to join The Dainty Duch- ess show in burlesque. A year later, when Al’s voice began to break, Joelson and Moore were fired, and a despondent sixteen-year old has- been had to return home to Washington. Al Reeves: 'He was a good boy. Al never drank or smoked. Just a good kid. I predicted he’d go far.' THE HEBREW AND THE CADET featuring the Joelson Brothers

Harry also returned home in straw boater and flashy suit, a singing success in a burlesque show entitled: ‘The Brigadiers’. The brothers immediately decided to form their own act and left for New York. Stealing lines from old burlesque acts, comedian Harry did all the singing, while straight-man Al whistled. The sketch ended with Al marching off-stage and Harry following in a loose-jointed shuffle with his head bobbing like a duck’s. The new act was called: ‘The Hebrew and the Cadet’. Their fortunes fluctuated. There weren’t too many bookings in between sleeping on park benches, in empty wagons and in hallways. Al’s voice came back as a high tenor but it made little difference and a year later they reached the bottom rung of show business with the Dixon and Bernstein’s Turkey Burlesque Show. 'Even with a turkey that you know will fold . . .' A line from an Irving Berlin’s song, ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’. Without an advance on a booking the brothers pawned a typewriter they had bought - and not yet paid for - on the instalment plan. Harry: 'We busked around to raise enough money for doughnuts and coffee . . . It was not easy to get a job busking. In many places we were simply given the bum’s rush without comment. Usually, we applied at places where we knew the boss or head waiter. We told our tale of woe and asked permission to sing . . . Few words were lost whether we were given a job or tossed into the gutter.'

George Burns (pictured) recalled the world of show business in those days: 'I used to sit in the Fitzgerald building which was the HQ for small-time booking agents. One day, a guy came out and asked where he could find Charley Pride. 'I said: ‘I’m Charley Pride’ and he handed me a contract for a week’s engagement at the Dewey theatre for ‘Charley Pride and his Wonder Dog.’ I got myself a piece of beef, caught a small dog, went on stage at the Dewey with the dog under my arm, and did my songs. Went over big!' In New York the Joelsons stayed in a room opposite Lew Schraft’s Restaurant on 14th Street. 'More like a broom closet but I could hear the music,' Al observed. 'I’ll never forget the thrill one rainy night when I first heard Jim Thornton play his song ‘Sweet Sixteen’ . . . and whenever I sing that song, I’m a young kid again staring out on to 14th Street in the rain.' Moses Yoelson: 'The stage! That is no life for a man. Think of the years you’ve thrown away. When I think of my sons I want to say for them. It’s a disgrace!' Harry: 'As many as possible piled into a bed and the others slept on the floor.' A break came for the brothers when Ren Shields, a special material and songwriter (In the Good Old Summertime), wrote a comedy sketch centred around his friend Joe Palmer, an old trouper who had been confined to a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis. The brothers were asked to join in the act if they would help in feeding, washing and dressing Palmer. They jumped at it. Harry played a doctor and Al a wise-cracking orderly. Billed as A Little of Everything, it made vaudeville audiences laugh. To advertise the act, cards were printed ‘Jolson, Palmer and Jolson’ - the printer had to take the 'e' out of Joelson to make it fit. On the same bill in Brooklyn was James Francis Dooley, a blackface comedian and monologue man who advised Al: 'Why don’t you try some of the burnt cork yourself? It’d go perfectly well with that southern accent of yours.' Behind the black mask, Al’s personality blossomed and the act went better than ever. James Francis Dooley: 'Wearing burnt cork is like wearing a mask. You look and feel like a performer.' The act went well hitting the big-time with the Orpheum Circuit at $120 a week until November 1905 in New Orleans when Al and Harry quar- relled over looking after Joe Palmer. After nearly coming to blows - Al kicked a hole through Harry’s brand new Derby - Harry walked out, leaving the act as Palmer and Jolson.

PALMER AND JOLSON

Al and Joe revamped the act and spent most of their time going over new songs and material. With a growing ego the nineteen-years-old Al was willing to try anything. He learned comedy songs like ‘Everybody’, ballads like ‘My Gal Sal’, and how to whistle with two fingers. A bit of a sentimentalist and an extrovert, he was also a moody cuss who alter- nated between bravado and pessimism. Palmer soon felt he was holding Al back, and just as they were due to start a Pacific Coast tour in June 1906 he decided to retire into the laundry business. Joe Palmer: 'You got places to go, boy. You’re gonna be a star. I want you to go. You’ll knock ‘em dead, kid.' Al was a hit when he opened as a solo act in Butte, Montana. Billed as a ‘singing comedian’, he wore white socks, a dark ill-fitting suit with a red bow tie, brown gloves, and a jagged-brimmed straw hat that sat on top of his head. Jesse Lasky, a former trumpet player working for a booking office, recalled Jolson signing a contract at that time. Al showed more interest in a chequered suit lying in open box and he asked Lasky to sell it to him. 'Oh, take it,' Jesse said. 'It cost me sixty bucks.' 'I’ll send you the sixty sawbucks out of my first week’s salary,' Al promised. 'I never saw the money for the suit,' Lasky recalled, 'but I reminded him of it years later while we were playing golf. ‘Forgot completely,’ he said, but offered to play a match for it there and then. I wound up losing my suit for the second time.'

Al Jolson (pictured above) in a few months after the earthquake of 1906 . A circus tent called the National, pitched by ‘Pop’ Grauman and son Sid, was being used as a makeshift theatre and workers were busy building a wooden theatre over the top of it, even while performances were in progress. Al opened on 1 October 1906 - the beginning of the ‘Jolson Legend’. With the worker’s hammering almost drowning out his voice, Al decided to mount a chair in the middle of the audience to sing. He also cleared a space for the girls to dance. His impromptu act, his songs, his jokes and ad libs were so refreshing that the audience quickly warmed to him. 'Not now, papa’s working,' Al ad libbed when a baby in the audience began to cry. Word spread that there had never been a performer so dynamic and by the end of the week crowds were flocking in to see the young singer in blackface. One night the audience were shouting to him, demanding one song after another, and Al, his collar undone showing the line of his chocolate make-up, called back: 'All right, all right folks - you ain’t heard nothing yet.'

Henrietta Keller (pictured above), a cute, strawberry blonde with spar- kling blue-green eyes, was a dancer with the Bell Minstrels Maids troupe. 'I fell for her legs, ' Al later said. Shy she may have been but she accepted when the young black-faced comedian asked her to dinner. Al was an exciting young fellow, able to charm ladies. Other dates followed and Al met her parents. Her father, a former Danish sea captain, didn’t like show people and gave Henrietta strict instructions not to get involved with Mr. Jolson. Al continued to court Henrietta and while on tour of the Pacific coast and Midwest he wrote frequently to her. Considered more a comedian than a singer, Al didn’t crack funny jokes but made the audience laugh with his refreshing spirit. Often playing return engagements, he was usually greeted by ‘a big hand as soon as he first appeared’. By September 1907 he was earning $150 a week and Henrietta agreed to marry him in a civil ceremony in Oakland. Al’s friend, dancer Dick Fitzgerald, was a witness. When Cantor Moses was told that Al had married a gentile girl he sat in a low chair and recited Kaddish - the prayer for the dead. AL JOLSON . . . You don’t know him? . . . You Will!' 'Watch me - I’m a wow!' - Al’s advertisement in Variety

Henrietta loved Al and believed in marriage but she was no substitute for a live audience. Jolson had talent but it came with an enormous ego. The manager of the Wigwam Theatre, San Francisco, offered him $350 for a two-week engagement but Jolson would accept nothing less than $500 - and he got it. Al got excited about everything. At twenty-one years of age with a blossoming career, a loving wife and friends, he had the world before him. Al wanted to play in the ‘melodramas’ he had seen at the Bijou in Washington and joined the playhouse company of the Globe, San Fran- cisco. For five weeks he was ‘principal comedian’, entertaining between the acts with his popular singing and monologue turn. Also appearing in the plays, he played the comedy Hebrew in The Great Wall Street Mystery. A great comedian, Jolson was never at ease with love scenes and best expressed his emotions in song. San Francisco Examiner: 'Al Jolson, the popular comedian of the company, appears as the comedy Hebrew and laughter is hearty while he is on stage'

Al began a tour of the West and Middle West, occasionally billing himself as ‘The Blackface with the Grand Opera Voice’. He was already feuding with his brother Harry (pictured above) over billing via the mailbox when Harry arrived in San Francisco, billing himself as ‘The Operatic Blackface Comedian’. Harry threatened to report Al to the White Rats, a variety artists union. Al said he did not 'give a single damn', expressing his opinion of the union in four-letter words. Al was already getting rave reviews from the Press, and Harry, after what he later termed ‘odorous comparisons’, cancelled his bookings and returned East. Harry later struggled to find work and departed for England to try his luck on the Music Halls. Tribune: 'Jolson has returned and he’s funnier than ever. It’s roar from the minute he pokes his head out from the wings and says: ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ Duluth News: 'In a class by himself as an entertainer.' The was at the height of its success and at Little Rock, Arkansas, Al was asked to join Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels. The salary was only $75 a week but he was promised a big billing and he could choose his own songs, such as the current hit ‘Sweet Sixteen’, and the way the orchestra played the accompaniment. There were also late evening sessions of poker accompanied by whisky and cigars between engagements aboard trains. When ‘Jolie’ became broke he ran out on the show, appearing in ‘Wilkerson’s Minstrels of Today’ at the American Theatre in San Franciso for much higher pay. But the show folded after two weeks and at Dockstader’s demand, Al returned to Dockstader’s Minstrels. Jolie: 'Why should I save money? I’m the greatest entertainer in the world. Some day I’ll be a millionaire. Watch and see if I’m not right.' Arthur Klein, a booking manager for a vaudeville theatre owner, offered his services to Jolson as his manager and Al accepted. After years of trying, Al needed help to get into ‘big time’ vaudeville and Klein booked Al at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Al and Henrietta booked into the Metropole Hotel, New York. Success at Fifth Avenue would put him on the road to fame, but if he flopped it would mean a life in small-time vaudeville. Fifth on the bill in the Monday matinee, he scored such a hit that he displaced , the headliner in the evening. Variety opened an Al Jolson file and Lew Dockstader released him from his contract. Jolie was on his way. Lew Dockstader: 'Well, folks, I knew the kid had it, but I guess I didn’t know how much. Perhaps he should have followed me.' Variety reviewed Jolson’s olio spot in the show: 'Dressing neatly in evening clothes of faultless cut and of a new colour called ‘taupe’, Jolson offers a quiet quarter of an hour of smooth entertainment. As a singer of ‘coon’ songs, Jolson has a method of his own by which lyrics and melody are given their full title . . . As it stands now, Jolson’s offering is capable of holding down a place in any vaudeville show. He is now in the next to closing position in the olio . . .' Jolson toured Eastern vaudeville and returned to triumph at the Colo- nial Theatre on 27 December singing one of the first big ragtime hits - ‘Hello, My Baby’. Henrietta excused herself with a headache and didn’t attend the celebratory party afterwards. Oscar Hammerstein’s new theatre, the Victoria, had a reputation for killing talent. The Monday matinees were torture for performers since the audience was made up of fellow show business people. Jolson was 'so scared to death' that he could hardly hear the orchestra play his opening music and the stage manager had to tell him three times that it was his turn to go on. His new song ‘Hip, Hip, Hypnotise Me’ was so successful that the next act found it impossible go on until he had given a second encore and made a speech. One night Jolson walked to the front of the stage, told the electricians to bring on the houselights and announced: 'Ya know folks - this is the happiest night of my life. Yes siree. I’m so happy. I wanna sing and sing and sing. Ya wanna listen . . .' He sang all of his most cheerful songs. The Billboard: 'Mr. Al Jolson, although not a headliner, was without doubt the hit of the bill. He stopped the show at the opening perform- ance and was a riot from start to finish.' Dramatic Mirror: 'The big laughing hit of the bill.' Chapter Two: The King ‘King of Broadway’

Pearl Sieben: 'This was 1911 and vaudeville was enjoying its golden era . . . Caruso signed a new contract with the Met. for $660,000 . . . In Monterey, California, they were showing ‘Moving Pictures and Illus- trated Songs’ 'In New York 5,000 members of the Boy’s Knee Breeches Makers Union went on strike and the Salvation Army conducted a two-month siege to ‘seek the lost and win drunkards, harlots, moralists and all kinds of sinners.’' Living in a hotel suite in the heart of New York, Henrietta was finding it ever harder to compete with Al’s audiences. She wanted a husband not a show business star and would turn down invitations to parties thrown for him to celebrate his success. At the end of his touring engagements the couple left for California to see her parents whom she hadn’t seen for two years. Henrietta had never met Al’s father and stepmother. Pearl Sieben: 'Like a penniless urchin standing before a candy counter, Jolson wanted what he couldn’t have, and once he tasted it, he wasn’t interested.' After covering the Jack Johnson-James J. Jeffries World Heavyweight boxing match in Reno, Nevada, as a reporter for Variety, Al opened a tour of the Orpheum Circuit in Seattle. Meanwhile Art Klein opened negotiations with the Shubert brothers who were building a new theatre on the site of the old Horse Exchange on Broadway called the Winter Garden and was asked to produce a complete score for the theatre’s first production - La Belle Paree. It was agreed that Jolson would appear in the show at a lower salary than he was getting in vaudeville - Klein had convinced him that it was time for him to be in a Broadway show. Art Klein: 'I went out and bought Al a fur coat. I think the fur was otter. He was living at the Grant Hotel, Chicago, and he just clowned around there, showing the coat off to all performers.' Shubert brothers: 'Jolson’s from vaudeville, Art. We’re legit. This is going to be the classiest on Broadway.'

La Belle Paree Winter Garden, New York (1911) A Jumble of Jollity Music: Jerome Kern Lyrics: Edward Madden

New York Times: 'Among the best features were those provided by the two unctious ragtime comedians, Miss Stella Mayhew and Mr. Al Jolson, both of whom had good songs and the acting ability to deliver every bit of good in them . . .' New York Herald: 'Equally amusing was Al Jolson . . . who possesses genuine Negro unction in his speech and manner . . .' On the night of the opening of the new Winter Garden, 20 March, 1911, the traffic along Broadway was jammed. With thirty principals in the cast of La Belle Paree - Jolson was about tenth in importance in the billing - it was chaos backstage. There were too many acts with little direction. Out front, the audience seemed more interested in an auditorium that was latticed and carpeted with roomy, comfortable chairs, a blue Dutch cafe, a wine room, and a ‘flowered’ ceiling centrepiece to give a garden effect. It was almost midnight by the time Jolson came on for his speciality act. He got through his monologue and sang ‘That Lovin’ Traumerei’ to only moderate applause. Jolson had ‘laid an egg’. Disconsolate, Jolson got drunk and 'walked to 96th Street instead of 54th Street, where I was living, before I realised what I was doing.’ Broadway ‘wag’: 'The Winter Garden is on the site of the old horse exchange. Judging by the smell of last night’s show, things haven’t changed much.' Two morning papers, and New York Herald, favourably singled out Jolson’s comic turn with Stella Mayhew, and the second night of La Belle Paree was the start of a Broadway legend. Jolson demanded an earlier spot in the show and broke through to the audience of the Winter Garden with a loud shrill whistle. Now they laughed, applauded, rose and cheered. Jolson had arrived. The Morning Telegraph: 'Al Jolson sang, talked, and whistled the audience into a frenzy of approval. He began with ‘Piano Man’ . . . talked about the girls he had loved and the way he had loved them. When the girls had nearly laughed themselves into hysterics, Al struck a sort of Romeo pose and pleaded soulfully: ‘Girls, look me in the face. He announced his intention of singing a new song. It was about ‘Missouri Joe,’ a fellow you had to know. The audience boisterously brought Al back for an encore . . .' La Belle Paree was a sell-out and Jolson became known as the ‘Winter Garden Comedian’ - a favourite with the audiences. Folks came from Park Avenue, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and some even by train from Chi- cago to catch this new marvel in blackface. There was no slipping out to the Wine Room, or to the concessionary stand for a 75 cent ‘Winter Garden Ice Cream’ when Al was on stage. And what they saw was an ever-changing routine. Not wanting to be like anybody else, Jolson was going to sing his own songs in whatever way he felt like singing them - despite what the composer Jerome Kern hoped. Jolson revelled in it, even though the musicians were often completely thrown. It certainly sold tickets. Al Jolson: 'I’ve never given the same performance twice for three reasons - I’m always trying something new; I’m a believer in spontane- ous humour and I’d go insane if I had to do the same thing every night.' Al loved his success but even more he wanted his peers, especially those who had thumbed their noses at him a few years earlier, to ac- knowledge his success. Though theatrical performances were illegal on Sundays, producers got round the law by calling them ‘sacred concerts’ where actors played in evening clothes without make-up. A religious hymn sometimes closed the show. Jolson inaugurated the very first Winter Garden Sunday Night Concert on 26 . Appearing in whiteface, he sang and ad-libbed in front of an audience composed of actors and managers on their night off. Winning them over completely, he proved that he could dominate a theatre without the aid of any props. He was the entertainers’ entertainer. Variety: 'The Shuberts may run the Winter Garden, but Al Jolson owns it. That dandy performer does as well with the audience, whether Sunday or on weekdays. He had to sing three songs with his ad lib stuff thrown in for good measure then close with the melodrama.' Winter Garden Sunday Night Program Al Jolson Willie & Eugene Howard Fanny Brice Irene Franklin & Burt Green Charlie Ruggles Frank Fay Fred & Adele Astaire Hale & Patterson & Original Dixieland Jazz Band The Winter Garden Beauties

With his growing success, Henrietta received less and less attention from her husband, who preferred going to the racetracks, and she re- turned home to her parents in Oakland. When La Belle Paree closed for the traditional summer break, Al joined her in Oakland but played engagements in San Francisco and Los Angeles where he was described as ‘extremely funny’. Henrietta didn’t think it so funny when Al returned to New York without her, more concerned with his career. 'Why not take the show on the road?' Al said to the Shubert brothers. 'We’ll take the same scenery and cast and use all the same songs. It won’t cost very much.' La Belle Paree went out on tour - the first time a Broadway show had gone on the road and the first chance people had to see a Broadway show in their own backyard. The Shuberts brothers signed Harry Jolson for The of at the Winter Garden. The star of the show, Mlle. , was the sensation of the music halls after being romantically linked with King Manuel II of Portugal. It was an artful attempt by the Shuberts to keep Al in line by using Harry as competition to his brother - the show closed within weeks. In November 1911, Vera Violetta opened at the Winter Garden featur- ing Mlle. Gaby Deslys and set at a skating rink. Playing a coloured waiter, Jolson took second billing in a cast that included Jose Collins, the darling of ’s Gaiety theatre, singing her famous cockney number ‘Tar-Rar-Rar-Boomdiay’. Also in the cast for a short time playing Mlle. Angelique was a buxom eighteen-year-old named . On opening night, Al danced, marched and hopped up and down the Winter Garden’s aisles, singing and whistling as he went from the front of the stage to the back of the theatre. He stole the show. Though Gaby Deslys’ name was above Jolson’s on the credits, it was Jolson the audience came to see, not the Parisienne star. This greeting was placed in the New Year issue of Variety: 'Everybody likes me, those who don’t are jealous! Anyhow, here’s wishing those that do, and those that don’t, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - Al Jolson.' VERA VIOLETTA. Winter Garden, New York (1911) A Musical Entertainment Music: Edmund Eysler Lyrics: Harold Atteridge Cast included: Jose Collins, Gaby Deslys, Stella Mayhew The New York Times: 'There was Al Jolson in the role of a coloured waiter who succeeded in rousing the audience into its first enthusiasm in the early part of the evening and kept them enthusiastic much of the time afterwards.' Variety: 'Stella Mayhew and Al Jolson made the two hits of the night. Gaby Deslys went big also with Al Jolson singing with her in a song, ‘I Want Something New’ . Jolson just kidded while he sang.' During Christmas week, Jolson cut his first record with the Victor Talking Machine Company - ‘Rum-Tum-Tiddle’ and ‘That Haunting Melody’. To ensure he sang without moving away from the big acoustic horn, they had to sit him in a chair with his coat buttoned back-to-front like a straitjacket. The record helped Vera Violetta run for 136 continu- ous performances. The Whirl of Society opened in March 1912 with Al playing a black- faced character named ‘Gus’ who lived by his wits - an underdog, ‘Gus’ enjoyed a private joke with the audience - the perfect character for Jolson. The newly-crowned King of Broadway now found that the aisles weren’t big enough to contain him. 'Why not perform on a runway right through the middle of the theatre, like the burlesque houses?' Al sug- gested to the Shuberts. 'That way I could get close to the audience while still remaining on stage.' 'Are you crazy? The runway will take up valuable seats,' they argued but had to agree when Al told them that the show would run that much longer. 'You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,' Al called from the runway and the audience roared. More songs usually followed, including ‘Ragtime Sex- tette’ written by Irving Berlin the new ‘Ragtime King’, and then more patter - none of it related to what was in the script. Song pluggers, publishers and writers pestered Jolson to introduce their songs and Al solved the problem by devoting two mornings a week to hearing new songs. In this way ‘Waiting for the Robert E. Lee’ and ‘Row, Row, Row’ found their way into The Whirl of Society. The ‘Winter Garden’ became synonymous with ‘Jolson’. Sime Silverman: 'Jolson probably takes more chances at the Garden than any one else dare do. Sunday night, dressed in a tuxedo, he removed his collar and tie after the first few minutes, remaining neckless thereaf- ter.' Al Jolson said: ‘This is just like playing pinochle.’'

The Whirl of Society Winter Garden, New York (1912) A Musical Satire of Up-to-Date Society Music: Louis A. Hirsch Lyrics: Harold Atteridge

Gilbert Seldes: 'In ‘Row, Row, Row’, Jolson would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars, draw imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny.' Chicago Record Herald: 'Jolson . . . easily dominates things from the rise to the fall of the curtain. He sings ragtime with voice, shoulders, arms and legs; he dances with no thought for the morrow; he tells stories such as the man who started to commit suicide by laying on the Erie railroad tracks and starved to death.' When The Whirl of Society closed for the summer, Al was leisurely driven by his new chauffeur in his new Packard touring car to Oakland where Henrietta was waiting. Al was trying to save their failing marriage - when he had the time. Bronzed and healthy by September, Al began a tour with The Whirl of Society in Chicago. Early in his career, hard as it is to believe, Jolson suffered from interview fright. Fidgety and nervous, he told his first interviewer: 'I don’t remember one line about mah past.' He soon got over it and his tongue 'wagged faster than any other tongue in show business'. When The Whirl of Society reached Washington, Al called home. 'Congratulations, I hear you are a big manager,' Moses said to Al. 'Pop, I’m not the manager, I’m the star. The manager gets $75 a week, I get $500.' 'But you are not the manager . . . it’s very disappointing.'

Hoping to be a grandfather, Moses did ask if Henrietta was pregnant, though he would not agree to meet her. 'God be with you, Asa,' Moses would always say when Al departed.

In Honeymoon Express, Gaby Deslys was still the female lead but Al Jolson as ‘Gus’ the butler was the star of the show and so his name was billed above hers. Fanny Brice, the original ‘Funny Girl’, played a domestic. First night nerves were always a problem for Jolson. Some- times his stomach would be so knotted that he was physically sick though once on stage he could play the mood of the audience. On opening night with the show already running late and only two- thirds of the way through, he called out to the audience: 'Do you want to hear the rest of the story - or do you want hear me?' They shouted that they wanted to hear him. Al had already made a hit with the song, ‘My Yellow Jacket Girl’, so he let rip, singing the songs from his previous shows.

Winter Garden,

New York (1913) A Spectacular Farce with Music Music: Lyrics: Harold Atteridge Cast included: Gaby Deslys (replaced by Grace Larue), Fanny Brice (replaced by Ina Claire). New York Evening Sun: 'Al Jolson is the real star. There wasn’t half enough for him to do . . . but just at the end, he had a Spanish song, ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’, which aroused shrieks of laughter. The audience simply would not let go; even Gaby herself had to take a back seat - which she did with charming grace, by the way - while the audience made Mr. Jolson sing song after song . . . and every bit of it was deserved.'

When the show went on tour, Jolson sang ‘You Made Me Love You’ which he had just recorded for . During the song he went down on one knee and cried: 'Gimme, gimme, what I cry for.' It created a sensation. They wouldn’t let him sing anything else and he gave them one chorus after another. Jolson once dismissed the cast altogether while Gaby Deslys was still on stage. She stormed off to the sound of her crashing high heels. Al sang all the new numbers from Honeymoon Express at the Winter Garden Sunday Concerts and one of them, ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’, written by Billy Merson, an English music hall star, was a bigger hit than in the show. Singing it in a succession of dialects, Jolson aroused shrieks of laughter. It didn’t matter what he sang to the audience, they just wanted him to go on singing. New York Evening World: 'Everything he touches turns to fun. To watch him is to marvel at his humorous vitality . . . he calls forth spontaneous laughter and here you have the definition of a born comedi- an.' Morning Telegraph: 'Jolson has made his audiences laugh and applaud at the Winter Garden and other places, but at the Shubert Theatre in Boston the audience yelled.' Toledo Blade: 'Jolson of course was the hit of the evening. He sang after a fashion of his own, acting them out and putting odd kinks into them. And best of all, he has a good voice.' After severing his contract with Art Klein, Jolson signed his first ‘big money’ contract with the Shubert brothers for five years. Guaranteed $1,000 a week for 35 weeks a year, he also had 10% of the profits on the shows. Now a familiar figure at the racetrack, Jolson gambled on races almost every day. He also became obsessed with medicine. As a small child he had once told his mother he wanted to be a doctor. 'I like to see the smiles of the people when the village doctor made them well,' he told her. Dogged by sore throats himself throughout his life, he patronised a small army of doctors, even though he usually told them that they didn’t know what they were talking about. A small satchel full of bottles of pills, liquids and assorted home medicines were a permanent part of his baggage and he was always first to obtain any new ‘miracle drug’ that came on the market. He always opened Time magazine at the medicine page. To him a perpetual suntan denoted good health and he sat out for hours on the white sand of Miami Beach soaking up the sun. , pianist and friend: 'Al knew enough about medicine to get himself into trouble, but not enough to get himself out.' When Honeymoon Express closed for the summer, Al travelled by car to Oakland. Henrietta went by train. Despite a failing marriage, Henrietta was a very patient woman who saw it as a duty to be a good wife. It would take years of neglect and humiliation to make her change her mind. Al was often indifferent to her and when he did come home after being out with the boys, barely a word passed between them. He was like a child demanding care and attention - when it suited him. Frequently he would totally remorseful, apologise to her and promise to reform his bad behaviour, and was no doubt truly sorry at the time, but it didn’t prevent him repeating his cruel actions. He appeared to give more money to bellhops than he gave to Henrietta. The entertainer was married to the sound of people queuing up at the box office and an audience shouting for more. While in San Francisco, Jolson was so impressed by two youngsters in an act called ‘Kid Kabaret’ at the local Orpheum Theatre that he took the pair of them, Eddie Cantor and George Jessel, to a kosher dinner. Eddie Cantor: 'It was the craziest dinner you ever heard. George and I, the two big mouths, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Jolson did a monologue.' Henrietta did accompany Al when Honeymoon Express went on tour. At their first stop, Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, Al met up with his old partner, Fred E. Moore, who was the house manager. At the Belasco Theatre, Washington, Al invited his father Moses, stepmother Hessi, and their four children to the performance. They all sat in the balcony - Rabbi Yoelson had refused the offer of orchestra seats. After the show Al sent an usher to bring them backstage. Moses refused: 'Tell Asa that a father does not go to a son.' Al was shaken and hurried to see his father. 'How was I?' Al asked, looking for approval. 'You must have been good,' his father told him, 'Every time you weren’t on stage, the people read their programmes.' Al had tears in his eyes. In Toronto, the dancing team of Doyle and Dixon came off stage to prolonged applause holding up Jolson’s entrance. 'Don’t let that happen again,' he told them. Jolson didn’t like competition. In Kansas City, he was encored so extravagantly, and was so generous in his responses that he was almost exhausted when he exclaimed toward the end of the show: 'Haven’t you folks got any homes to go to?' After only doing moderately well in England, Harry Jolson returned to play Brooklyn billed as ‘AL JOLSON’S brother - Harry’. He didn’t like the billing but with a wife to support he had to accept it. It was that or no billing at all. Harry Jolson: 'There were two Jolson brothers appearing on stage and Al was both of them.' After Henrietta had her appendix removed in June 1914, Al sailed with her, along with a few friends, to England as part of a European holiday. Travelling on to France, Venice and the Swiss Alps, they sailed back home in late July. New York Review: 'Every manager and agent in London made Jolson offers of record salaries for appearances in the music halls of London . . .' Jolson received top billing on opening night of Dancing Around in what was another Winter Garden hit. The hit songs weren’t necessarily those of the show’s composer . Jolson sang ‘Its A Long Way To Tipperary’ imported from England and the war in France, and an English tongue twister: ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers’, after which Jolson offered $10 to anyone in the audience who could sing the chorus through without a break. For the matinees, provided another tongue twister - ‘Brother Bennie’s Baking Buns for Belgians’. Theatre folk, even in vaudeville, were expected to keep their place behind the footlights, but defying tradition, Jolson sat on the edge of the stage with his legs dangling in the pit, loosened his collar and tie, and went into a routine of songs and patter. Playing ‘Clarence’ in the show was a young . Still King of the Winter Garden Sunday Concerts, Jolson would close the show and hold the audience for half an hour or more after all the other acts had gone before. He always appeared to be having a good a time as the house. Dancing Around

Winter Garden, New York (1914) A Musical Spectacle

Music: Sigmund Romberg and Harry Carroll Lyrics: Harold Atteridge Cast included: Kitty Doner, Clifton Webb, Doyle & Dixon. The Strand: 'There was as much art in Jolson’s rendition of ‘Venetia’ as there is in Caruso’s singing of ‘Canio’s Lament’.' New York Sun: 'Nothing ever checks the wave of contagious magnetism that spreads through the theatre whenever he appears . . .'

Dancing Around went on tour in February 1915 and reached San Francisco in June where Henrietta was staying with her parents. Jolie spent little time with Henrietta and was seen dancing at the Pacific- Panama Exposition with Kitty Doner (pictured above). Rumours were rife that Jolson shouted at Henrietta and called her names. She told friends: 'A wife does not enjoy being insulted by a husband who is a star any mailure.' In October the touring show ran into trouble. A bad spot on Jolson’s lung became inflamed and for a few days he had to check into a sanato- rium. Doctors told him he needed a long rest and a despondent Al wired Henrietta to join him in Baltimore. Al wanted sympathy but Henrietta was more concerned at his gambling. 'If you’re so sick,' Henrietta asked him, 'why are you going to the races?' Al explained: 'Dr. Outdoors is the best medicine in the world.' Just as Jolson shared his joy with audiences, he now inflicted his misery, and his performance at Baltimore’s Academy of Music was second rate. Henrietta told him straight: 'Yes, you’re a big star now, but you keep giving performances like that and you won’t be for long.' A stand-in took over for the last two performances. An angry letter to the Baltimore Sun read: 'Mr. Jolson proceeded to kid the audience unmercifully, saying that he sometimes sang, but wasn’t going to sing tonight. Two of the scenes from the last act were cut out, and the entire performance given with an arrogant indifference that was insulting to the last degree.' A few days later in Washington, Jolson had mysteriously recovered and treated the Belasco Theatre audience to a flat-out, rip-roaring Jolson performance. It was while he was in Washington that Jolson received a message on White House note paper from President Wilson asking him to meet him for breakfast the next day. 'I’m Al Jolson and I want to see the President.' 'I am the President,' said Wilson, holding out his hand. 'I’ve heard some of your records and I’ve read of your great success on Broadway, but I haven’t seen you perform.' 'Wait a minute,' said Al, rolling his eyes, 'wait a minute - you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.' He sang ‘You Made Me Love You’ to Woodrow Wilson as he sat with his aides. The half a dozen tickets that Al sent to his father for the evening’s performance at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, weren’t used. 'Why didn’t you come?' Al asked his father afterwards.

'On Shabbes eve? I couldn’t.' 'Couldn’t you make an exception? I was singing for the President?' 'I was singing for God!' For the opening of Robinson Crusoe Jr. early in 1916, Al Jolson was not just billed as the star but as ‘America’s Greatest Entertainer’. He played Man Friday but it soon became clear that the plot would not be allowed to interfere with his domination of everything on stage; and the ridiculous scenario provided ample opportunities for comedy - in one scene, hunted by cannibals, Jolson popped out of a tree trunk to ask: 'Anybody got any aspirin?' Jolson would ask the audience: 'Well, what do you want to hear? . . . Wait a minute - you want ‘You Made Me Love You’? . . . Professor, pass the mustard . . . ‘You Made Me Love You’'. 'This show’s a lot of bunk,' Jolson told the Shuberts. 'Let’s get a Negro chorus to sing in the background and I’ll do a couple of spirituals . . . I’d like that.' The Shuberts agreed. Wasn’t Jolson the star?

Robinson Crusoe, Jr. Winter Garden, New York (1916) A Musical Extravaganza Music: Sigmund Romberg and James F. Hanley Lyrics: Harold Atteridge Cast included: Kitty Doner, Barry Lupino, Frank Holmes. Chicago Herald Examiner listing the cast of Robinson Crusoe Jr.: 'Al Jolson ...... AL JOLSON' In an attempt to revive his crumbling marriage, Al promised to take Henrietta to Hawaii when the show closed for its summer break. After driving to Los Angeles to see a brilliant Eddie Cantor starring in a show called Canary Cottage, Al changed his mind. Competition had to be faced. He cancelled Hawaii, left Henrietta with her parents at Oakland and began a national tour with Robinson Crusoe. The show toured for fifteen months in mostly one-nighters, though he did manage to fit the Chicago World Series Baseball between dates. The tour appeared to be part of Al’s increasing great search for something up ahead at the next outpost. Newspaper adverts now began to refer to him as ‘The Worlds Greatest Entertainer’. Jolson would remark on stage: 'If those three-dollar seats are filled we are out of trouble already.' The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat and America entered the war. Jolson began to joke about being called up for service: 'I know two guys who ain’t going - me and the guy they send to get me.' Nevertheless he began to devote time to American servicemen, singing to the troops leaving New York, touring training camps and hospitals, and meeting hospital ships returning from Europe. Often he would stop a show in order to appeal for Liberty Bonds. The comedy-singer had now gathered the trappings of a star - a valet, a chauffeur, a wife in California, and a new manager named Louis Epstein, who some years earlier had taught Jolson how to whistle using two fingers. Epstein was managing the Majestic Theatre in his native Scran- ton, Pennsylvania, when Jolson offered him the job, and ‘Eppy’, as Al affectionately called him, remained his manager until Al’s death. Al liked a song called, ‘N’ Everything’, and took a liking to the writer, a young ukulele player named Buddy DeSylva who was playing in an Hawaiian band. Jolson sang it in his next Winter Garden show and within six months it earned the young songwriter $20,000. Chapter Three: ‘You Ain’t Heard ‘You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet!’

On the opening night of Sinbad in , Jolson was, as usual, a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth backstage. Nerves disappeared however after Jolson had sung the opening number, a ballad that was to become his own favourite, ‘Rockabye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody’. It caused near hysteria in the audience. Added later to the show was another song that also became a sensation - Irving Caesar wrote the lyrics and George Gershwin wrote the music to what would be his greatest hit - ‘Swanee’. The song had already flopped at a well-known theatre when the two songwriters sang and played it to Jolson at one of his parties. 'I’ll introduce it into the show,' Jolson said. So he did, dancing up and down the runway, singing and whistling it with the audience stamping their feet in accompaniment. The song stopped the show. Sinbad

Winter Garden, New York (1918) A Spectacular Extravaganza Music: Sigmund Romberg, Al Jolson Lyrics: Harold Atteridge Cast included: Frank Holmes, Kitty Doner, Ernest Hare. The World: 'Jolson, whether he knows it or not, hits the singing mark of his career with ‘Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’'. By adding a few extra lyrics to the songs, Jolson was listed as co-writer to six published songs in Sinbad. Jolson argued that it was his interpreta- tion that sold the song and who could argue? He had the knack of picking a good tune and if he sang it, then it would be an instant hit. 'It’s all in the delivery,' he once said. 'I could pick up a telephone book and make the folks cry if I wanted to.' His royalties were finally donated to the tuber- cular ward at Saranac Lake, New York. Variety: 'The best second chorus writer in the business.' Buddy DeSylva found a new conductor named Al Goodman for Sin- bad. Eager to try new ideas, Goodman liked Jolson and his dynamism, though they often argued. Goodman was always ready to follow Jolson when he changed songs in the middle of a performance. Dan Wheeler: 'Al Goodman was different. He liked Jolson in the first place, and sympathised with what he was trying to do . . . Under Goodman’s direction, Sinbad took on a new sparkle and colour. Every performance was an adventure instead of a routine.' Irving Caesar: 'Al’s energy ate you alive.' Harry Jolson was struggling in vaudeville and Al became his manager, offering him his own orchestrations. For the next ten years, Harry was never out of big-time vaudeville, even if occasionally billed as ‘Al Jolson’s Brother’ Samuel Raphaelson, describing Harry: 'A somewhat taller, thinner version of Al with a higher voice but without the power.' Jolson may have lived for applause but he suffered terrible first night nerves - buckets were placed in both wings in case he vomited. The first duty of Frank Holmes, Jolson’s dresser, was to turn on the dressing room taps so that Jolson couldn’t hear the audience applaud the other acts. If he heard that applause he would be far too nervous to go on. It was as if he believed that there was only so much applause to go around and other performers were taking it away from him. Pearl Sieben: 'On opening nights the Shuberts posted a guard on his dressing room knowing that Al was bound to lose his voice before the curtain and try to bolt the theatre.' Eddie Cantor: 'The minute the curtain came down, Jolson died.' As well as on top, it was also important for Jolson to be first. One day at the racetrack the horses reached the final stretch and Jolson began to holler: 'Come on, boy - come on.' George Jessel turned to him and said: 'But Al, you bet on the other nag.' 'I know,' Jolson replied. 'But I changed my mind. I gotta winner. Ha! Ha! I told you so. I got a winner.' Often he would back all ten horses in a race just to show he had a winning ticket. Harry Akst called him ‘Next Town Reilly’ after a charac- ter they had known around the racetracks. Reilly was a trainer who was always losing but would go on to the next track and try all over again. For Reilly it was always ‘the next town’. George Burns: 'The only thing as big as Jolson’s talent was his ego.' Irving Caesar: 'Jolson would be jealous if somebody opened a success- ful laundry.' Jolson was invited to a special dinner at the Hotel Astor in where the guest speaker was Colonel J.S. Dennis of the Canadian Forces. Concluding his speech, the Colonel said: 'If others were to use Mr. Jolson as an example there would be no need for me to relate the horrors of war in detail. He has gone into the hospitals and seen for himself what war has done to our men.' So impressed was Jolson, that the next morning he went to enlist, taking his chauffeur with him. His chauffeur was turned down on medi- cal grounds but Al was accepted. The war ended before Al was called. Al’s chauffeur: 'Al, after the women and children are gone, they’ll call us. All we gotta do is wait.' Al: 'This is no time for jokes.' After Sinbad had closed, Al and his pianist drove across country entertaining thousands of servicemen at numerous military installations. 'I’m looking for barbed wire - to knit a sweater for the Kaiser' was one of Al’s jokes that reached the front line in France. A mammoth concert was organised in aid of World War I soldiers at the Century Theatre and Al Jolson was just one among a large number of star names on the bill. When Enrico Caruso went off to a great ovation after giving a rousing rendition of ‘Over There’, Al ran on to the stage before the applause had died down, threw out his arms and called out: 'Folks, you ain’t heard nothing yet.' The audience cheered. They were in the palm of his hand just as they were at the Winter Garden. The opera critics were up in arms - Jolson had insulted Signor Caruso. But Caruso himself confessed he was delighted and invited Al to join him in his hotel suite where Al gave him an impromptu performance of ‘Swanee’ and ‘Rockabye’. Enrico Caruso: 'Come and sing with me at the Met.' Al Jolson: 'No, Rico. They couldn’t have two of us on the same bill again. The critics would go daffy.' 'Hiya, folks. I’m Al Jolson and I wanna sing for ya,' Jolson opened at his one-man song recital at the Boston Opera House. Every seat was taken and more than 1,800 people turned away. He sang seventeen of his favourite songs accompanied by the fifty-piece Boston Symphony Or- chestra conducted by Al Goodman. Musical Chronicle: 'His spirited singing made Boston’s first jazz recital a brilliant success.' Al Jolson may have been the world’s greatest entertainer but not the world’s greatest husband. He couldn’t understand Henrietta and she resented his constant restlessness. Once he told her that she was 'just a dumb hick and I love you better when you are 3,000 miles away'. After they had agreed to a separation and he had promised to provide her with money, a car and her own house in Oakland, Al went back on his word. Henrietta called Al, long distance: 'The deal is all set. I need a down payment of-' 'Down payment? For what?' 'The house. It’s got . . .' 'Oh, that . . . Look, I changed my mind. Forget it. Tell the guy the deal’s off.' 'What?' 'I said the deal’s off. I’m not buying it.' 'This is the most inconsiderate, stupid thing I ever heard of-' 'Look, don’t open your mouth to me. There’ll be no house. That’s final!' It was the last straw for Henrietta and she filed for divorce. 'Al cannot stand success,' Henrietta alleged, 'because with that success his tastes ran far stronger - to wine, racehorses and other women.' Al said he was dumb struck by Henrietta’s charges and added: 'Outside of my liking for wine, women and racehorses, I’m a regular husband.' Al tried hard to get her to change her mind and pleaded in a note: 'Come back to me and I’ll give you all the money and clothes and motors that you want.' Henrietta refused: 'I don’t want Mr. Jolson’s money and motors now. What I want is my freedom.' Standing on the terrace of a skyscraper watching the lights flickering below, Al Jolson would smile and say: 'Broadway - that’s my street.' And it was. He knew the magic word that gained him entry to the ‘speakeasies’ now springing up in New York - he just mentioned his name. There were shouts of 'Al . . . Al . . . Al,' every time he entered or left a theatre. So famous now that he was mobbed wherever he went. And for Al himself, their acclaim was vital. Pearl Sieben: 'In 1919, Harry Houdini was breaking out of vaults. The beautiful Marilyn Miller was the Toast of the , and the winsome beauty of Lilian Gish was seen in the movie Broken Blossoms . . . The movies were here to stay, although most Broadway people refused to believe it, and Americans were playing with a new toy - the radio.' Sinbad went on tour advertised as ‘Al Jolson in Sinbad’. Al consulted a throat specialist who advised him to rest for a few days. When attend- ances began to drop off, Jolson took a train to Florida. 'Gotta terrible sore throat. Can’t sing a note' was his excuse to Jake Shubert. It took $2,000 for two Sunday concerts to entice him back. Still trying to persuade Henrietta to halt the divorce, Al visited her at her mother’s house in Oakland. After taking her out to various places, he pleaded with her to return to him, and after saying no a dozen times, she began to waver. 'Come out to the house for dinner tomorrow night,' she invited, 'and I’ll let you know my decision.' Al never showed. The phone rang later: 'Henrietta? Yeah, the crowd was going over to Catalina Island, so I just went with ‘em.' After 12 years Henrietta had enough of her mercurial and egocentric husband. 'What would have been the use,' she said, 'I just would have been bounced around again.' The divorce became final two months later. Henrietta: 'When Al and I were poor we were always happy. Al was ambitious and I was ambitious for him. I did everything possible for him to succeed and what did I gain? Nothing, I lost him.' Jean Carlson: 'If he hadn’t pulled one of his stunts, she would have married him again.' Jolson signed up to work with Warren Harding, the Republican candi- date for the Presidency. 'I like to be with the winner,' Jolson told report- ers. The party’s that Jolson helped to write, ‘Harding You’re The Man For Us’, was launched by Jolson himself in a ceremony at Harding’s home in Marion, Ohio. Whilst no one could predict the scandal to beset the future President, the lyrics were worse than the music, and the candidate even worse.

Sinbad re-opened on tour in August 1920 with Al’s new song hit ‘Avalon’ to mostly sell-out audiences. Saul Bernstein, manager of Irving Berlin Music and who greeted everyone he met with 'How’s your moth- er?', offered Jolson a number called ‘’. On 31 January 1921 at the Shubert-Majestic Theatre in Providence, the song became another show stopper and soon became Jolson’s theme song. The song seemed to be wrung out of the very depths of him. Inserting his own lines into the second chorus - 'Mammy, look at me. Don’t you now me? I’m your little baby,' - the ‘mammy singer’ was born. Al Jolson: 'I always have a picture in my mind of a black boy and his life story when I sing that song. A southern Negro boy who has found life a bitter and terrible tragedy . . . just about ready to give up the battle of life in despair, broken hearted over cruel fate when he thinks of his ‘Mammy’ . . . There was the one who loved him, whose arms are open to him, one who is ready to comfort him, and the thought gives him renewed faith in life and in the future.' When Sinbad closed for the last time in June 1921 at St. Paul, Minne- sota, Jolson returned to New York to take in the Dempsey-Carpentier fight. After buying a couple of racehorses, he then spent the next few weeks setting up his own racing stable. Ethel Delmar, real name Alma Osbourne, was a classic beauty with hazel eyes, raven hair and a show-stopping figure. She liked parties, chewed gum, took small dogs with her everywhere, and surely belonged to the ‘’. When Al saw her in the chorus of George White Scandals she knocked 'Al off his feet - right off the reel'. was due to open on 6 in Shubert’s newly-built Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre. Every one of the 1,654 seats were filled. Al nervously walked up and down the streets and by curtain time had developed a psychosomatic case of laryngitis. After standing in the wings nervously sweating and begging the stagehands not to raise the curtain, he had to pushed on to the stage when his cue came. The overwhelming ovation he received brought back his voice, and he had never sung better, even though every time he came offstage he swore he couldn’t go on again and had to be pushed back on. At the end of the show the audience stamped its feet and chanted: 'Jolson! Jolson!' After 37 curtain calls, he made a final speech in which he thanked the audience, told them how proud he was to have a theatre bear his name but said he wouldn’t be able to stand any more openings of new shows. Al Jolson: 'I’m a happy man tonight.'

Bombo Jolson’s 59th Street, New York (1921) A Musical Extravaganza Music: Sigmund Romberg

Jolson’s songs included: ‘April Showers’ ‘That Barber in Seville’ ‘Give Me My Mammy’ ‘Down South’ ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie’ ‘Who Cares’ ‘Arcady’ ‘I’m Going South’ ‘California, Here I Come’ Joe Meyer: 'Buddy came up to me and said: ‘Al likes you and wants you to write a song for him to do this season.’ Well, I just went to one of the composing rooms at Clarke & Leslie, and I just sat down and wrote ‘California, Here I Come’. It was the greatest inspiration I ever had.' New York World: 'Jolson can take a song and make it do things its composers did not dream were in it.' Bombo ran for six months on Broadway, Jolson singing tunes that Sigmund Romberg had not written and substituting his own wisecracks for the original script. Depending on the mood he was in, he sang twenty or thirty other songs along with the fabulously successful ‘Mammy’ from Sinbad. In his new song ‘April Showers’, Jolson would point to the gallery and proclaim: 'Look, look, they’re not clouds, no, no - they’re crowds of daffodils.' It brought the audience to a frenzy. During the last week of the run of Bombo at 59th Street Theatre, audiences were espe- cially enthusiastic. Jolson would sing up to fifteen songs and the curtain was often up until after midnight. After the chorines complained that this was interfering with their social life, Al gave them all a big party on the stage on Saturday night. Dorothy Wegman: 'To Al, there were, basically, two kinds of girls - the ‘nice ones’ and the ‘others’. I was one of the ‘nice ones’ . . . Once we went to a cabaret after the show and someone told a joke that was off colour. Everyone laughed, including me but Al said: ‘Get your coat Dorothy, you’re going home.’' When Bombo played in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, Gus Khan provided another hit number called ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie’. One night, Al finished the show early and waited at the stage door of George White’s Scandals: 'Miss Delmar? Do you remember me?' 'Of course I remember you Mr. Jolson. Congratulations on the success of your new show. That certainly is a beautiful theatre they built for you.' 'Maybe you’ll join me in a late supper and you can congratulate me further with a glass of champagne.' When Bombo closed for the summer season, Jolson left for California and visited Henrietta only to discover that she was going to be married to a Mr. Jack Silvey. Seemingly intent on beating Henrietta to the altar, Jolson returned to New York and within a month had married Ethel Delmar. The newly-weds spent their honeymoon at the Ambassador Resort in Atlantic City before returning to New York where Al started rehearsals for a new season with Bombo. For some unknown reason, Jolson tried to keep it a secret till confirmed by New York reporters. Al promised Ethel that he wouldn’t sign another contract with the Shuberts but the second Mrs. Jolson was also going to find it just as difficult as the first one to compete with the roar of applause. Al wired Ethel: 'Youngstown thinks I’m great.' Ethel wired back: 'Youngstown is the place where they think the Kentucky Derby is a hat.' George Burns : 'Jolson used to walk on the stage in blackface and sing, ‘I gotta a Mammy in Alabammy’, and people believed him.' When Bombo reached Chicago, Al was forced to accept an invitation to accompany two men dressed entirely in black. 'Just be nice and don’t give us no trouble,' one of them told him. 'We got orders to bring ya to the boss in good shape.' Al was driven in a limousine to a big house where he was greeted in a palatial room by a small pudgy man with a scar on his face : 'My name’s Al too. Sing to me.' 'What da yer want?' Al asked. 'April Showers.' For the next hour Al Jolson sang and cracked jokes with Al Capone, the notorious boss of gangland. D.W.Griffith, director of Birth of a Nation, had been trying to persuade Jolson, now in his mid-thirties, to try his luck on the screen. 'I tell yer I’m no actor,' Jolson kept telling him, but eventually did agree, even if rather tentatively. At his first screen test in white face Griffith told everyone: 'His affect on the screen is striking.' Jolson complained: 'It makes me look like a zebra.' Ethel commented: 'I think it’s the worst thing I ever saw.' Preliminary shooting went ahead but as soon as a less-than-confident Jolson saw the first rushes, he walked out. Griffith said: 'Go on Al, give yourself a chance. We’re not even half through shooting the picture.' Jolson sailed for England with his manager ‘Eppy’ and Jake Shubert. A stunned Ethel gave Al a farewell kiss for the newsreel cameras at the dock - she was too occupied with their new house in Scarsdale to make the trip. Griffith sued Jolson for breach of contract. Jolson to reporters: 'Here’s something for ya, fellas. I’m gonna retire from the stage and me and Ethel are gonna settle down in the country.' On his return from England a few weeks later, Jolson was dressed in a grey derby, white spats and sporting a monocle, just to give Ethel a laugh. Ethel didn’t laugh when he signed a lucrative five-year contract with Jake Shubert guaranteeing him $3,500 a week and 25% of the gross receipts. Her dreams of settling down with her husband in a brick mansion at Scarsdale, New York, were shattered and she tried to find solace in the cocktail shaker. 'You could have told me, Al.' 'Ah, Baby, c’mon. The house and all that, y’know how it is, Baby. I gotta sing.' 'Yes, Al, I know how it is.' 'So c’mon, give old Jolie a smile, huh?' 'I don’t feel like smiling, Al.' In October 1923 Bombo opened for its third season in Albany. Since the tour was going to take in the West Coast, Buddy DeSylva suggested an idea for a song about California to Joe Meyer. ‘California, Here I Come’ was the result. House records were broken in Los Angeles but money had to be refunded at Riverside when Al lost his voice with laryngitis. When his voice worsened, doctors ordered a complete rest and the last four weeks of the tour were cancelled. Al arrived back in Scarsdale to find Ethel had been drinking, a habit that was already playing havoc with her beauty. In disgust, Al went back to New York. Toying with the idea of adopting children, Al had earlier told a reporter: 'My wife and I have a lovely country home in Scarsdale. On it, we have horses, dogs, , canaries, and all sorts of other pets, but in spite of that, there’s always been something missing.' Ethel’s drinking wasn’t mentioned. Jolson’s doctor: 'Take an immediate and protracted rest or you will lose your voice for good.' Pearl Sieben: 'The mid-twenties continued to be boom years for Broad- way . . . Millions of Americans owned cars. The Stock Market was a favourite pastime. Tickets to Broadway shows were bringing in prices way above box-office. The speakeasies were at an all-time high . . . Record companies and publishers of sheet music could hardly keep up with the public’s demands.' When Big Boy opened at the Winter Garden in January 1925, Jolson caused a sensation when he appeared on horseback playing a jockey. 'It’s a good thing he’s not an elephant,' he ad libbed. The show brought together his two greatest loves - the theatre and horse racing. Found at the racetrack most afternoons, Jolson had been known to cancel a matinee - treating all of the cast in the show to free bets - so he could back a horse that he thought would be a certain winner. 'A horse is a very good tonic,' he would say. 'Mind you, I’ve had a few relapses in my time.' Notice outside theatre: 'There will be no matinee this afternoon. Mr. Jolson has taken the entire company to the races.'

Big Boy Winter Garden New York (1925) A Musical Comedy Music: James F. Hanley and Joseph Myer Lyrics: Buddy DeSylva Jolson’s songs included: ‘Keep Smiling At Trouble’ ‘If You Knew Susie’ ‘Miami’ ‘Nobody But Fanny ‘’ ‘One O’Clock Baby’

Patterson James of Billboard: 'Jolson has the cynical assurance of a successful clothing salesman. If he can get his finger in the buttonhole of your coat lapel, you buy the pants. That is all there is to it . . . If you like Jolson’s methods and his material, you will enjoy Bombo. I don’t and I didn’t.' Alan Dale of New York American: 'They call him the ‘World’s Greatest Entertainer’. It doesn’t seem exaggerated. There he stood in that stupen- dous auditorium, telling stories, laughing, kidding, dominant, authori- tive, magnetic, and irrepressible, whilst the audience howled, yelled and screamed.' There was one song in Big Boy Al didn’t like and he gave it to Eddie Cantor. ‘If You Knew Susie’ became Cantor’s biggest hit. Al told him later: 'Eddie, if I knew it was that good, you dog, I’d never have given it to you!' Ralph Reader, a young man from England, was in the chorus of Big Boy and Al took an instant liking to him, calling him ‘English’. Reader once had to admit to Jolson that he was scared when standing alone with him on stage. Jolson gave him this advice: 'All you have to do is keep your eyes on me. And whatever I do, whether I stand on my head or turn cartwheels, people will look at you.' Ralph Reader: 'It was the most wonderful piece of advice any man ever gave me.' George Jean Nathan: 'The power of Jolson over an audience I have seldom seen equalled . . . I know of none like this Jolson - or, at best, very few - who, with lines of pre-war vintage and melodies of the cheapest tin-piano variety, can lay hold of an audience the moment he comes on stage and never let go a second thereafter . . . he so far outdistances his rivals that they seem like the wrong ends of so many opera glasses.' One night during the run, Jolson stopped dead right in the middle of the show and called to the audience: 'Do you want me - or do you want the show?' 'We want you, Al, we want you,' the audience shouted back. The entire cast was dismissed and he sang until he could sing no more; then after ordering the house lights up, he asked the audience to sing to him. Larry Adler: 'You’re conceited when you think you are better than anyone else. Jolson knew that he was the best.' At the end of a late show performance, Al and a few friends would often go to a night-club - Ethel stayed home with the gin bottle. One night there came continuous shouting from the other tables for him to sing. 'Folks, this used to be my mother’s birthday,' he answered and the place hushed. 'Because this is my mother’s birthday, I’m going to sing a song that she loved.' Since he was going to sing it in , he first explained that the story was about a tailor, a shoemaker and a coach driver audition- ing a new cantor in a little village in Russia. Chicago Tribune reported: 'For fifteen minutes or a half hour, Jolson sang the song of his mother’s childhood. And in that Saturday night audience, not an eye was wholly dry. There was Jolson, no bigger than five feet six inches, slender, puckish, singing in a foreign tongue of a foreign place.'

President (pictured above with Al on White House lawn) invited Jolson to breakfast at the White House to help him launch his 1925 election campaign. Al took Ralph Reader along with him and as Press cameras clicked on the Presidential lawn, he sang a new campaign song, ‘Keep Cool with Coolidge’. Jolson told the First Lady, Grace Coolidge: 'Your dog must like me, he hasn’t stopped licking my hands since we sat down.' The First Lady answered: 'Maybe he wouldn’t do it if you used your napkin.' Jolson could walk on stage an hour later than he was due to appear with his coat over his arm and say: 'Sorry I’m late folks, but it was cold and I dropped by for dinner at the little restaurant next door. It was so good I couldn’t leave it. But now that I’m here, do you mind if I make up on stage?' Of course, the audience roared: 'No!' After he had finished blacking up, he sang for two hours during which he passed round candy to everyone in the audience, and then said: 'I’m feeling hungry now so I’m going back to the restaurant. There’s a swell piano in there and if any of you wish to join me I’ll sing you a couple more songs.' They did and he sang till three o’clock in the morning. George Burns: 'Jolson never finished - he just wore out the audience.' Maurice Chevalier, seeing Jolson at work: 'I think I had better go back to the boat.'

Although Big Boy was grossing $5,000 a performance, it closed intermit- tently because of Jolson’s recurring bad throat. A trip to Bermuda followed by an eighteen-day cruise off the California coast improved his health but not his marriage: 'Baby, this is gonna be a second honeymoon. We’re gonna lie in the sand and soak in that good Mr. Sol . . . sheer poetry, huh, Baby?' Al played golf and Ethel drank . . . and drank.

Big Boy played fifteen more weeks in New York before moving to the Apollo Theatre, Chicago, where it began to break house records. Eddie Cantor, (pictured above), Jolson’s rival, was playing to packed houses in Kid Boots at the nearby Woods Theatre, and even though suffering from an attack of pleurisy he refused to rest. Jolson also contracted a bad throat, but competition between the two was so fierce that neither of them would close their show. Jolson advised Cantor: 'You need sun, kid. Go to Miami, close the show, get some rest and heat and get well.' Eventually Cantor collapsed and was put on the train back to New York. Seeing him off at the station, Al told him: 'You are being wise.' Next day, Jolson closed his own show. With Big Boy closed, Ralph Reader and eight of the chorus girls were out of jobs. 'What did you lose on that, English?' Jolson asked Reader and paid all of them what they would have made in a complete run of the show. On 20 March 1926 Jolson began a four-week guest appearance in Artists and Models at the Winter Garden to mark its 15th anniversary. On the first night the theatre was packed and he sang seven songs, told a few stories, and explained that his physical condition necessitated the closing of Big Boy. 'Are you a little delicate?' the newspapermen kidded him. 'Delicate?' Jolson shot back. 'After working fifteen years for the Shu- berts?' Life Magazine: 'When Jolson enters, it is as if an electric current had been run along the wires under the seats where the hats are stuck. The house comes to tumultuous attention. He speaks, rolls his eyes, com- presses his lips, and it is all over. You are a life member of the Al Jolson Association. He trembles his under lip, and your heart breaks with a loud snap. He sings, and you totter out to send a night-letter to your mother.' The following July, Al and Ethel, saying they were going to Paris 'for a second honeymoon', sailed for Cherbourg on the Leviathan. Two weeks later Ethel returned to New York on her own aboard the Berengia - she had secretly gone to court in Paris and obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Al returned to New York a week later on the Leviathan. Al and Ethel both denied to the Press that there had been a divorce. Al said: 'Just a little quarrel that meant nothing.' Ethel said: 'A lot of blah. I’m Al’s wife, and will continue to be his wife, time without end.' The decree was granted three months later. Al let Ethel keep the Scarsdale home till the early thirties but she became a helpless alcoholic. He later put her in a nursing home in Amityville, New York. In Atlantic City, the winner of a Charleston contest, judged by Al Jolson and George Jessel, was a pretty blonde dancer named Ruby Stephens. Jolson invited her to spend a weekend with him but she turned him down, deciding to stick to her career and become an actress. She also decided to change her name to Barbara Stanwyck. Jolson: 'What right have I got asking a woman to understand a goofy feller like me?' In April 1927, Al’s elder sister, Rose, came with two of her daughters to see him at the Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, and became too ill to leave her hotel bedroom. Al wasted no time in calling two physicians and the early diagnosis of cancer helped to save her life. Two weeks later Jolson’s father and stepmother graciously accepted the house he bought for them in the posh area of Washington. It was a reluctant move - they left behind a lot of fond memories at the old apartment. Jolson explained in an interview: 'I yanked them out by main force and set them up in a swell dump, four doors from the White House. Got a music room and everything. I told them: ‘There’s just one thing. You can’t keep coal in the music room.’' was at the University of Illinois when he first met Jolson backstage after a performance of Robinson Crusoe. Stirred by a feeling that Jolson had the spirit of a Cantor in him, he wrote the story ‘The Day of Atonement’. The story tells of a Jewish boy who ran away from his home in the Ghetto, became a Broadway idol, and returned home on the eve of the Day of Atonement to sing Kol Nidre in the synagogue in answer to the pleadings of his dying father. Raphaelson turned the story into a play and when it opened as at Stamford, Conn., in July 1925 starring George Jessel, Jolson told Sam- son: 'Son, if there’s anything I can do to make this show a success, just say the word. If it flops, I’ll put my own money into it to keep it alive.' Jolson had also mentioned to his interest in the story. In between starring in The Jazz Singer on Broadway and going on tour with the play in the fall of 1926, George Jessel made a successful silent comedy for Warners called Private Izzy Murphy. On 20 April, 1926, Warner Bros. and Western Electric had joined forces to form the Corporation to make sound films. The sound was first recorded on disk and synchronised with the action. The new Vita- phone process was first used to make sound films of leading vaudeville and concert artists, and in the following September, Jolson appeared in a Vitaphone short film with sound called Al Jolson in A Plantation Act. Appearing in blackface, a big straw hat doing a brief monologue, he sang three songs. No one thought that sound films were here to stay. Chapter Four: Jazz Singer ‘The Jazz Singer’

Darryl F. Zanuck, a young executive with Warner Bros., suggested they use Vitaphone sound system in the song sequences of a full-length film. The company chose The Jazz Singer for which they owned the screen rights and which was already running to packed audiences on Broadway. The star of the show, George Jessel, wanted $10,000 as insurance before he would chance his career in these new-fangled talkies. Jack Warner couldn’t agree to that so he approached Jolson who he knew was inter- ested the role. Darryl F. Zanuck: 'Jessel wants $10,000? For that kind of money, we could get Jolson.' Jessel arrived in Los Angeles to make two silent films for Warners and stayed in the same hotel suite of the Biltmore Rendezvous as Jolson. Not saying a word to Jessel about The Jazz Singer, Jolson left early the next morning and signed with Warners Bros. to do the film. Jessel read it in the papers the next day and never forgave him. Jolie: 'Go back to sleep, Georgie, I’m going to play golf.' Jolson was initially paid one-third $75,000 cash down and rest in weekly instalments. He could never have imagined what The Jazz Singer would do to show business, but Jolson had this uncanny knack of breaking new ground and being the first to do anything. Eppy: 'It might not be a bad deal, Al. The story is down your alley, and this new sound thing might put you over.' George Jessel: 'Is it any wonder I always felt bitter? It was my part and partly my story. Jolson got the role because he put money into it. But he was better at it than I would have been.' In Hollywood, the King of Broadway posed for pictures with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks and was fêted as if he was now the King of Hollywood. It was typical Hollywood hype for nobody believed that Al Jolson and talking pictures would have any impact on their world. Shooting for The Jazz Singer began on 11 July 1927. 'You tell me what you expect me to do and I’ll try to learn it and do it the best I can,' Jolson told surprised film director, , who had been briefed on the notorious Jolson temper. Jolson later told a reporter: 'Everything was new and strange to me. I would do a scene five times with tears in my eyes and then Alan Crosland would say: ‘Do it again - and put some feeling into it.’' To watch Jolson in action, employees deserted all the other Warner film sets. Jack Warner, on a crowded film set: 'Guess we just better declare today a holiday. Tell everybody we’ll hold up the scene until they get here and they can hear Al sing. The set is packed but we’ll make room for more.'

The Jazz Singer (pictured above May McAvoy and Al Jolson in scene from film) was originally planned to have no dialogue, only the songs recorded in sound. With Jolson on set it couldn’t possibly turn out the way it was planned. The first sound recorded scene was filmed with Al singing ‘Dirty Hands, Dirty Face’ to a crowd at Coffee Dan’s in San Francisco. The audience applauded as if he was on stage and Al - he never did take too much notice of a script - got right into the spirit of the thing: 'Wait a minute, wait a minute,' he cried. 'You ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Wait a minute I tell yer . . . you wanna hear ‘Toot Toot Tootsie?’ All right, hold on.' He called to orchestra leader Lou Silvers: 'Lou, listen. You play ‘Toot Toot Tootsie’. Three choruses, you understand, and in the third chorus I whistle. Now give it to ‘em hard and heavy. Go right ahead.' The film was still running with the mikes switched on and those sentences were preserved for posterity. After Warners had seen the rushes they knew they had a hit and an additional scene was added where Jolson, as Jack Robin, talks to his mother: 'Did you like that, mama? I’m glad of it. I’d rather please you than anybody I know . . . Mama, listen, I’m gonna sing this like I will if I go on the stage. You know, with this show. I’m gonna sing it jazzy. Now get this.' It was all ad lib and he then launched into another chorus of ‘Blue Skies’. The ‘talkies’ had begun and the film industry would never be the same again. Pearl Sieben: 'Choked with emotion he went into his song. The sob was there, the clenched fists, the tears ready to brim over. This was the maudlin sentiment for which many critics had condemned him, but it wasn’t false. He felt it. It was part of his unstable nature, but it was sincere and never failed to touch an audience.' Instead of reopening in Big Boy, Jolson gave five performances a day at the Metropolitan in Los Angeles breaking box-office records. Regular vaudeville soon found it could not compete with this new ‘picture house’ vaudeville where small musical productions were offered with a feature film. The Jazz Singer Warner Bros. (1927) Based upon the play by Samson Raphaelson Director: Alan Crosland Scenario: Alfred A. Cohen Conductor: Louis Silvers Cast includes: May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer, Can- tor Josef Rosenblatt, . Herald Tribune: 'One of those milling, battling mobs, that used to blockade cinema premieres to watch the stars pass by in the days before they moved all the studios to Hollywood, flooded the sidewalk and street in front of the Warner Theatre that night.' On the night of 6 , The Jazz Singer was premièred at the Warner Theatre, New York. People queued for hours jamming the sidewalk and Jolson had to fight his way through the surging mob to get into the theatre. Once inside, he said: 'This picture better be good, or I ain’t coming out again.' The crowded theatre of 1,800 people had no idea what was going to hit them and what they saw was a charismatic feature that made them screech and shout and nearly go crazy. The film ended with Jolson singing ‘Mammy’ to great applause and with the audience jumping to their feet, demanding: 'Jolson, Jolson, Jolson! We want Jolson!' Running down the centre aisle to the stage, Jolson, in full view of the audience, wiped the tears from his eyes. It was the greatest moment in Al Jolson’s stupendously successful life. Next day wires buzzed between New York and California with instruc- tions from movie moguls to wire their studios for sound. 'Hear ya got another hit, Al.' 'Never had anything else!' Some stars dismissed it as a novelty - Charlie Chaplin stuck to his cane and little moustache vowing never to make a talkie. But The Jazz Singer tolled the knell of silent pictures and killed off vaudeville. The film made $3,500,000 net profit. With a year to run on his contract with the Shu- berts, Jolson had to re-open in the stage show Big Boy. Within days he had contracted a sore throat and the show finally closed. : 'Al feels fine until its time to go to work for me. Then he goes sick.' After taking a vacation in Palm Beach, Florida, Jolson accepted Shubert’s offer of $12,500 a week for a four-week engagement in A Night in Spain at Chicago’s Four Cohans Theatre. 'I hope you know,' said Lee Shubert, 'that this makes you the highest paid actor in the world.' 'I should be,' answered Al. 'I’m working for the world’s richest produc- er.' 'I won’t stay rich if I have to keep paying actors like you.'

Naturally, Warner Bros. wanted Al for another film, , in which he would play the father of a dying boy. DeSylva, Brown and Henderson received a telephone call from Jolson asking them to write a song for the film. It sounded urgent: 'Listen fellers, I’ve gotta have a song, yah hear? It’s a song to a little boy - a little guy who’s dying and his dad’s near heartbroken about it. Do Jolie a favour and yer won’t regret it.' As a gag, the songwriters put into the song every ounce of schmaltz they could muster. Audiences wept when they eventually heard it and Jolson laughed all the way to the bank. The recording of ‘Sonny Boy’ became the most commercially successful song of Jolson’s career and The Singing Fool became the most successful movie of all time - till replaced by Gone with the Wind.

In The Singing Fool (a scene pictured above) Jolson sang 'The Spaniard That Blighted My Life' written and performed by Billy Merson, a British music hall comedian who was born in Nottingham. Billy went to court claiming that people would now associate the song with Jolson and not himself. Refusing an out of court settlement, Billy won the case but then lost on an appeal technicality and had to pay the full costs of the case. Jolson: 'One reason I wanted to make a movie is to give a fifty cent show. Many’s the time I’ve stood in the box office in New York and seen someone ask: ‘Have you got anything for fifty cents?’ and the ticket seller would bark out: ‘Naw, nothing under two dollars.’' The Singing Fool Warner Bros. (1928) Director: Cast includes: , Josephine Dunn, Davey Lee. 'There was not a dry eye in the house when the film ended at the Win- ter Garden premiere of The Singing Fool. Shouts of ‘Jolson! Jolson! Jolson!’ by the audience brought Al up on the stage. ‘What can I say?’ asked Al. ‘Sing!’ they demanded.' New York Times: 'The chief interest in this production is not in its transparent narrative, but in Mr. Jolson’s inimitable singing. One waits after hearing a selection, hoping for another, and one is not in the least disappointed when he, as Al Stone, announces to the patrons’ of his night club that he is going to sing a thousand songs was the girl friend of Johnny ‘Irish’ Costello, a gangster who frequented Broadway speak-easies. He protected the interests of Owney Madden who supplied bootleg whiskey to New York clubs. A trim, eighteen-years-old beauty, Ruby was also a speciality tap dancer in a show called Sidewalks of New York and as soon as Jolson saw her, he was smitten. Ruby was no innocent, knew all about speakeasies, but recognised the value of her naive charm when the occasion demanded. The attraction for Al was that she was unattainable, unspoiled and appealing to the decency of men who had any decency left. And there was a risk - a suitor could exit life in concrete boots. After Sidewalks of New York closed in Chicago, Ruby was booked for a tour of West Coast picture houses and set off by rail accompanied by her sister Helen. When their train pulled into Los Angeles station, Ruby was surprised to find Al greeting her like an old friend. He insisted that he could get her more money as a dancer at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, one of Hollywood’s smartest clubs. Ruby was a little frightened - Johnny Costello might not have approved - but she accepted. After each show at the club, Ruby would receive a box of long- stemmed roses with a card signed ‘Guess who?’. This would be followed by a request from Al to take her to dinner. Ruby resisted at first but eventually agreed and the couple became an ‘item’ in the Hollywood gossip mill. She was seen wearing a 5-carat diamond ring on her return to New York. Ruby Keeler: 'I was doing five shows a day. A mutual friend invited me and my sister to dinner and I agreed. Al was at their home and that’s how it went. He had a big ring he had bought me and I said yes, I would marry him.' Ruby told Johnny Costello that she loved Al and wanted to marry him. Johnny sent word he wanted to see Al. The singer’s visit was similar to a prospective bridegroom calling on his future father-in-law. 'Ruby loves yer,' Costello told him, 'so you’d better marry her - or there won’t be a certain singer on Broadway no more. Get me?' Jolson bridled; he wasn’t used to being pushed around: 'See, I got this picture opening next week. As soon as it opens, I’ll marry her . . . I love the dame, I tell yer.' Costello had heard that Al had often slapped his first wife: 'You got a bad rep with dames and I need some insurance. Be a generous guy and give Ruby $1 million as a wedding present - OK?' Al had no choice but to agree. Word of Jolson’s ‘present’ spread throughout the underworld and Jack (Legs) Diamond, thinking Al might be an easy touch, called him de- manding $50,000 - 'or else'. Jolson explained the situation to columnist Mark Hellinger who said he would see what he could do. The columnist rang Owney Madden and next morning Al received a telephone call from ‘Legs’ Diamond claiming he had 'only been kidding'. In return for the favour, the entire scoop of Al and Ruby’s wedding went to Mark Hell- inger. On 19 September 1928 there was not a dry eye in the Winter Garden at the end of the premiere of The Singing Fool and inside eighteen months the film had grossed $5 million.

Two days after the premiere, Al and Ruby were married at Port Chester, New York. She was 19 and he was 43. That same evening the newly- weds boarded the Olympic about to sail for Europe (pictured above) and Al became angry when a small horde of reporters burst into their state- room. 'Who’s the dame?' a reporter demanded and Jolson went for him. Someone intervened to break them up and it was left to Eppy to announce that Al and Ruby were married (pictured above Al and Ruby on honey- moon). After being fêted in Paris the couple moved on to London where Ruby began to wonder if she had married a man or a cult. Following the screening of his picture The Jazz Singer at the , Lon- don, Jolson went on stage and for twenty minutes kept the audience entertained with funny stories. They didn’t want to let him go and thrilled by his reception, he said: 'It’s better than New York. After this, I simply must appear on the London stage.' When the newly-weds returned to America, Ruby started rehearsals for Ziegfield’s new Broadway show starring Eddie Cantor. Al went on to Los Angeles where he signed a contract with Warners for three more films worth $500,000 each. Every night Al called Ruby long distance, and after Whoopee had successfully opened in Pittsburgh, Ruby put a call through to Al. 'Honey, am I glad to hear your voice,' Al told her. 'Oh, Al, it’s wonderful. It’s a really great show . . .' Ruby began enthusiastically. 'That’s swell baby, swell. I’m in the midst of some tough shooting and I’ve not been feelin’ so well.' 'I’m sorry, Al. What’s wrong.' 'Ruby, I don’t know. These doctors tell me that I’m run down. They want me to sit in the sun, but how do I do that with all these Warner brothers running around loose?' 'You ought to lie down.' 'Lie down? That’s a laugh. Listen, baby, I need ya. Need ya awful bad. Why don’t you take the next train to Hollywood?' 'Al, I’d love to, but you know I can’t leave the show.' 'Can’t leave the show? What do you mean can’t leave the show? Listen, I’m your husband. Nobody has to go on.' Al’s appeals continued for a week until a worried Ruby finally broke her contract and quit the show. She arrived in Palm Springs to find him in radiant good health. 'Just knowing you were coming has done me wonders, Babe,' Al explained. Ruby was too stunned to reply. The Jolsons settled in a rambling Spanish-style ranch house in Palm Springs and with more leisure time, Al dabbled in various contracts. Unknown to Warners, Al secretly signed a contract with Joseph M. Shenck, president of , to star in four pictures. Signed on a brown paper lunch bag, it later became known as the ‘banana bag’ contract. Al also became Ruby’s business manager and he signed her up to dance for $1,000 a week in Flo Ziegfield’s new show called , written by George and . Ruby: 'Flo called today. He’s putting a new show together . . . Al, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never been as happy as I’ve been just being your wife, but to be honest with you, I do miss the stage.' Jolson’s next film, , was shot in 28 days and Jolson was not too happy during filming. With Davey Lee as ‘Little Pal’, critics noted that it was the same offering as The Singing Fool. One critic claimed it was 'suitable as entertainment only to immature personalities'. It was the first flop of Jolson’s career. A month later on 16 May 1929, at the first ceremony, the Warner brothers were given a special award for the first talking picture. Show Girl opened for a pre-Broadway run in Boston on 25 June 1929. The high point of the number ‘Liza’, easily the best song in the show, was where Ruby stepped into the spotlight at the top of a magnificent series of platforms. Jolson was sitting in the second row next to Ziegfield and couldn’t resist getting into the act. Rising from his seat, he stood in the aisle and joined in the chorus: 'Liza . . . Liza . . . skies are grey . . . When you belong to me . . . all the clouds will roll away.' The audience cheered and went crazy - a famous moment in musical comedy history. Ziegfield told him: 'Do that every night, Al, and you can have half the show.' So when the show moved to Broadway, Al went with it too. Ruby tried to tell him that she didn’t want him to upstage her but it made little difference. They quarreled - not for the first time. Show Girl was not the best of Ziegfield shows and when Al returned to Hollywood to start a picture and Ruby broke her ankle in a fall from the spiral staircase, the show folded. Ruby: 'I don’t know why he did it. I was just as surprised as anyone. I guess he just liked to sing.' Patsy Kelly: 'That was her show, not his.' Variety’s headline on 30 October 1929 read: ‘Wall Street Lays An Egg’. Wall Street had crashed. Jolson was not as badly hit as many of his colleagues since most of his money was tied up in real estate - Ziegfield was financially ruined and Eddie Cantor wiped out completely. Whatever losses Jolson had, he took philosophically - he looked on making money as a game and saw the stock market as a sort of indoor racetrack. His stockbrokers and accountants rang round all his friends offering financial help if they needed it. Why he didn’t call himself, nobody will ever know - that was Jolson. Jolson’s next two films with Warners, Mammy and Big Boy, added up to three flops in a row. Only a glimmer of the real, vibrant Al Jolson came through. The minstrel sequences revealed Jolson as a great singer and comedian but his acting was embarrassing, and none of the magic of the stage show Big Boy came through on screen. Public tastes were chang- ing. The audience tired of the same old formula and tired of Jolson’s acting. As George Jessel was to say: 'It was attempting to trap the Pacific ocean in a bottle.' In London the great showman C. B. Cochrane remarked: 'The Jolson I saw on screen is not the Jolson I knew in the flesh. It was a Jolson without a soul.' Jolson told a Screenland reporter: 'I made two good pictures. I made The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool. I showed ‘em what I could do. Then they start telling me they can’t find enough good pictures. All right - I’m reasonable. Can you find me two good pictures a year? No. Can you find me one? It seems they can’t. So I take what they give and live in hope. And I find that the pole is only greased one way - down.' Pearl Sieben: 'The roaring twenties were drawing to a close . . . Mae West wrote a play called ‘Sex’ and when it opened at Daly’s 63rd Street Theatre her manager and producer were arrested. She was sentenced to Welfare Island for ten days for ‘corrupting the morals of youth’. Jack Dempsey knocked out Carpentier in New Jersey before 75,000 fans and came to radio and became ‘The King of Jazz’. Everyone was saying ‘Hot dog!’, and ‘Ain’t that the cat’s pyjamas’, and ‘That’s the cat’s meow’, and ‘You tell ‘em, kid, I stutter.’' Gossip circulated that Al and Ruby were scrapping but to outsiders they were a happy couple. Ruby accompanied him to the races and prize- fights and painfully aware that his neglect had ruined his first two marriages, Al shouted about Ruby from the rooftops. And contrary to most mother-in-law jokes, Al was genuinely fond of Ruby’s mother, who in turn considered Al as the head of the family. She often came to him for advice. Al got on well with all the Keeler family, liked their close Irish family ties, and bought his mother-in-law a house not far from their own. Al: 'I put Ruby before my singing and singing is pretty sweet to me. Ruby is heaven’s harmony. She simply has no faults.' Jolson was scheduled to make Sons o’ Guns for United Artists in November 1930. In the meantime he played a week at Capitol Theatre, New York, doing five shows a day and filling the theatre with folks demanding encores. Many of the customers stayed all day. When he returned to Hollywood he found Joe Shenck had postponed Sons o’ Guns for two years - United Artists were predicting a bad time for screen musicals. As the depression bit harder everyone was in need of laughter and early in 1931 the Shuberts asked him to appear as Monsieur Al Wonder in their new show The - his first show on Broadway for five years. It was also revolutionary. Set in a nightclub-cum-restaurant in Paris, the show had no curtain and the café staff moved continually about the stage during the performance. Jolson sang Irving Caesar’s ‘Oh, Donna Clara’ in English, German and Russian and it so impressed Chaliapin, the great Russian bass singer, that they became good friends. Irving Caesar: 'Jolson had no trouble with it. He was a Litvak; he talked Litvak Yiddish. But he couldn’t read it. Neither could I. I had to learn it by ear from a folk singer . . . I taught it to Al, and it was one of the greatest things he ever did.'Fedor Chaliapin: 'Arll, we both have no matinee today. Why not come around to my hotel and we have some wine and we have some caviar and perhaps a couple of girls . . .?'

Wonder Bar opened at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, and Al visited his parents in Lanier Place (pictured above with his father). Al tried to explain the show to his father: 'Pop, this is the greatest show ever done. I sing in Yiddish. I sing in French.' 'It’s almost eight o’clock.' 'It takes place in a night club, and the scenes are all picked out in spots.' 'Almost eight o’clock.' 'Pop, I’m trying to tell you about the new show. What’s at eight o’clock?' 'Amos ‘n’ Andy Show.'

The Wonder Bar , New York (1931) A Continental Novelty of European Night Life Lyrics: Irving Caesar Music: Robert Katscher And Rowland Leigh Los Angeles Times: 'He also passed around the soft drinks, then he told a sad tale about his wife’s shoes - wooden shoes perforce, and becoming very sobby about it, finally rushing down the aisle to where Ruby Keeler was sitting and kissed her.' The Wonder Bar didn’t get the usual Jolson rave revues and when matinee audiences declined, Jolson’s throat predictably hurt him. The doctors announced: 'A four-day vacation is necessary to safeguard his health.' The next five performances were cancelled and the show closed altogether two weeks later. The Jolsons spent the following weeks going to the races till The Wonder Bar opened a tour in the September. Eppy had secured Jolson a $6,000 weekly guarantee and the show played 76 performances in 37 cities. Each opening, in a new city, before a new audience, played havoc with Jolson’s nerves. 'The man was a raving maniac on opening nights,' recalled Patsy Kelly who played Elektra Pivonka in the show. 'Once I found him in a garbage can, saying: ‘I won’t go on’. But we’d push him on, and then . . . you couldn’t get him off.' Warners wanted to sign up Ruby for a film but Al didn’t like the idea of Ruby playing in pictures. Since he had created Ruby’s career, he thought he could do with it what he liked. But after Warners pointed out to him that a little tap dancer couldn’t be much competition to a singer, Al agreed, and at $2,000 a week she was signed up for a part as a tap dancer in . Ruby: 'I know its hard work, Al, but I would like a try at this.' Al: 'Don’t expect me to see yer work, Baby, I don’t want to watch other guys kissin’ yer.' Chevrolet offered him his own radio show on the NBC network. He sang all his hit songs, including ‘Brother Can You Spare A Dime’, and introduced a galaxy of other stars. Never happy with the script, he kept telling producers: 'I’ve just got a load of bum jokes here.' They smiled indulgently. Al couldn’t understand why everyone went crazy in the control booth when he threw away the script and ad-libbed his way through. Nor did like the way he moved about and away from the microphone. Eventually they gave him two microphones. George Burns: 'When Al sang ‘Brother Can You Spare A Dime’ and turned his coat collar up and the brim of his hat down, you believed him so much that you wanted to empty your pockets to give him a dime for a cup of coffee. Yet everyone knew Jolson was worth $20 million.'

Joe Schenck and director (All Quiet on the Western Front) decided that Sons o’ Guns was dated and chose instead an original story entitled The New Yorker by which took as its theme the Depression and its effects. Chapter Five: Hallelujah 'Hallelujah I'm a Bum'

Hallelujah I'm a Bum, made by United Artists, was an adventurous film. Starring Al Jolson (pictured above) and directed by Lewis Mile- stone, it was about a gang of tramps who drop out of society in New York's Central Park. Its title supposedly summed up people's feelings about the depression. The film was the most imaginative that Jolson ever made. He didn't black his face and he had to cope with rhythmic dialogue. 'What do you mean giving me a script like this?' he demanded, 'In rhyme yet! You really think the public wants this kinda stuff?' They didn't. Hallelujah, I'm A Bum United Artists (1933)

A story by Ben Hecht Director : Lewis Milestone Music : Lyrics : Lorenz Hart Cast includes : Frank Morgan, , Harry Langdon, Chester Conklin. World-Telegram: 'No Hallelujahs shall be shouted here, for the pro- duction is a far from enthralling example of motion picture art.' Herald Tribune: 'The result of so much activity of so many master- minds is not a happy one.' Screen Book Magazine: 'Is Jolson through?' On its opening, Hallelujah, I'm A Bum was panned by the critics. It was a complete flop. Jolson's career, already slipping before he made the film, now slumped. Though he was contracted to make two more pictures for United Artists, they were never made and Jolson's banana-bag contract with United Artists was never fulfilled. All the studios stopped knocking on Jolson's door. Screen Book: 'Maybe Jolson, as does Broadway, feels that he has had his brief day of success on the screen.' Jolie : ''You don't understand, Al.' they'd tell me. After thirty years in show business, I don't understand?' If Al's star was waning, Ruby's was rising. 42nd Street created a new film musical where each number had a distinctive touch. Where Rodgers and Hart tried to integrate musical numbers into the story of Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, Busby Berkeley made each production number a world unto itself with overhead shots and a kaleidoscope of arms and legs. Ruby played an aspiring dancer who taps her way to instant stardom and her 'ingratiating personality, coupled with her dances', turned out to be a highlight of the film. New York Herald Tribune: 'Ruby Keeler was rather more valuable as a cinema player than her celebrated husband, Al Jolson.' Al began a radio series Presenting Al Jolson with NBC while Ruby began again opposite . This film was as big a hit as 42nd Street and Jolson quipped: 'I'll be known as Mr. Ruby Keeler yet.' , the Broadway columnist, wrote a story about a murdered gangster and a woman now happily married to another man. Ruby believed the characters were based on herself and Johnny Costello. Al became indignant, and when he saw Winchell at a boxing match, he walked over to him, snarled: 'Write stories about my wife, will you?' and swung a couple of punches. The encounter ended with Mrs. Winchell's shoe conking Al on the head. Next day, newspapers dubbed Jolson - 'The Hollywood Carnera'. Winchell took the whole thing very calmly and they made up later when Jolson sent him a jar of his famous ointment that could cure diseases that no one had ever heard of. An all-star cast was used when Jolson returned to Warner Brothers to make a film version of The Wonder Bar - his name was no longer big enough to sell a film. Though almost everybody in the picture claimed Jolson tried to hog the scenes during filming, he was frequently swamped by Dolores Del Rio, Dick Powell, and . 'Headin' for my last close-up. Git along, little Jolson, git along,' Jolson would sing between filming scenes. Wonder Bar didn't live up to expectations and did nothing to resurrect Jolson's career. Dick Powell : 'Jolson took the good song that was assigned to me and gave me in exchange the eight bars he didn't like.'

Wonder Bar Warner Bros. (1934)

Director : Lloyd Bacon Choregraphy : Busby Berkeley Music : Lyrics : Cast includes : Kay Francis, Dolores Del Rio, Dick Powell, Ricardo Cortez, .

Not content just to be in the public eye, Jolson had to positively shine. He didn't like sharing the spotlight with his wife and it was turning their marriage into a ping-pong match. Ruby wanted to show him how big she really was in pictures while he constantly tried to prove to her that the great Al Jolson was not a has-been. He would call her a 'big shot' and a row would ensue. As a distraction from films, Al determined that Ruby learned to play golf. Being a natural athlete she turned out to be on a par with America's top amateur women golfers and when she beat Al, he wouldn't play with her again. Jack Warner suggested that instead of competing against each other they should team up and make a film together. The couple agreed and went into . 'We won't quarrel, will we, Ruby?' 'No, we won't quarrel, Al.' Irving Caesar : 'Basically, he was very hard. Al had no patience with the weak, only with those who stood up to him. He liked me - I used to fight with him.' Warner's studio publicity machine went into action stressing how happy the Jolson-Keeler marriage was and there were no quarrels. Except the director of Go Into Your Dance was driven to distraction by Al advising Ruby about when - and where - to move during the filming. The film turned out to be only a moderate success, though the number with Ruby dressed in a flowing evening gown walking arm in arm with Al in , white tie and tails singing 'About A Quarter To Nine', by Harry Warren and Al Dubin was a big hit. The public wanted to see more Jolson-Keeler pictures but Al wasn't happy: 'They don't want to see me any more. They want to see us. I'm going back to radio.' What really rankled Al was that Hollywood no longer trusted him to carry a film on his own.

There were no more films with Al and Ruby doing a double act (pictured above in Go Into Your Dance). Harry Warren : 'Jolson knew 'About a Quarter to Nine' was going to be a hit and kept pestering Dubin and myself to let him write an extra set of lyrics to the chorus. We knew what his game was - to cut himself in on the credit and royalties.'

Go Into Your Dance Warner Bros. (1935)

Director : Archie Mayo Music : Harry Warren Lyrics : Al Dubin Cast includes : Ruby Keeeler, Glenda Farrell, Helen Morgan, Barton Maclane, Patsy Kelly.

On completion of Go Into Your Dance, Jolson did return to radio. He had already starred in 26 one-hour radio shows for Kraft Music Hall during 13-34 on his own terms - $5,000 a broadcast and with control over his own material, and in March 15 signed as star and master of ceremo- nies for Shell Chateau, a weekly radio variety show. In a radio interview a few years earlier, a reporter had asked Jolson what he thought to English beer and Jolson had replied: 'They drink it warm in England. Personally, I think they should have put it back in the horse.' These sort of remarks over radio channels sent shivers down the spines of radio producers so his contract with Shell Chateau specified that he had to stick to the jokes in the script - such puns as his greeting to Dixie Lee, wife of : 'It just goes to prove that love is just around the .' The last thirteen shows were broadcast from Los Angeles. Pearl Sieben : 'Jolson was a singer who had never mastered the acting craft. He was a magnetic personality on the stage, but in 1935 the movies were growing up, and Al's type of talent - his stock-in-trade - was too maudlin, too corny for an audience that was growing in sophistication. The advent of radio had changed the tastes of Americans, and the movies had to keep up . . . The times were simply out of step with the Jolson talent.' During the filming of Go Into Your Dance, Al bought a five-acre orange grove in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley, and plans were drawn up for a colonial-style house. Realising that Al was not going to be able to give her a child of her own, Ruby decided she wanted to adopt. The couple adopted a seven-week-old half-Jewish, half-Irish baby boy from a foundling home and Al turned his attentions to being a father. Only the best clothes, the biggest pedal cars and teddy bears were good enough for his son, re-named Al Jolson Jr. Al called him 'Sonny'. Wheeling his baby through the orange grove, he would say to his gardener: 'Don't you think he look likes me?' Convinced the boy was going to follow in his father's footsteps and become the World's Second Greatest Entertainer, he'd say to friends: 'Why not? He's my son, ain't he?' Ruby : 'The baby can't say 'Mammy' yet but he cries beautifully.' Early in 1936 Jolson co-starred with Beverley Roberts in The Singing Kid. Warner studios were never happy during production, and neither was Jolson, who behaved like the big star he had been six years earlier. Rows there were bound to be and for the first time crew members talked about the 'cruel Jolson'. Full of snappy, patter songs, the film presented a 'streamlined' Jolson singing a medley of his best-known numbers. gave the musical numbers some lift and sparkle but handicapped by a poor script the film was not very successful. Needing to re-capture the great popularity he had enjoyed with The Singing Fool, Al found that anything less than 'super stardom' wasn't good enough. So most of his time was spent sunbathing by the pool and visiting the racetrack, telling bigger stories of his successes and trying to convince himself he was happy. Jolie: 'That's it, no more crummy pictures for me. I'll decide in the future what I'll play.' 1936 was the year of his parent's fortieth wedding anniversary and Al arranged for them to visit Palestine. Moshe, now seventy-eight, had always wanted to go to the Holy Land. Al was fond of his youngest sister Gertrude and insisted that she accompany them; and through his contacts in the State Detment, ensured that they also had an armed escort. Arrangements at Al's own home weren't going so well. Apart from radio work, Jolson was more or less in retirement. The inactivity made him tense and restless that turned to resentment at Ruby's success. Always too proud to let anyone help him, he would flare up at sugges- tions that his career was through and storm out. Al went to New York for the broadcast of his radio show Cafe Trocadero. After a few weeks he sent for Ruby and as soon as she arrived he sent her back again. Al also resented the way Sonny preferred Ruby and her family to him, and he gradually became disenchanted with Al Jolson Jr. Returning from one of his trips to New York, Al landed at Los Angeles airport where Al Jolson Jr. was on hand to greet his father. Al lifted the two-and-a-half- year-old off the ground and asked: 'Who am I?' 'You're the Jew,' replied the child. Perhaps for the only time in his life, Al looked humiliated. The novelty of fatherhood began to wear off and as their marital problems worsened; Ruby played golf in the mornings and Al went to the races in the afternoon. Jolson's mood improved after accepting a supporting role to and in Rose of Washington Square. Playing a vaude- ville character in blackface, he sang his most famous songs. Reviewers said he stole the picture but it set no records. Then came a small part in with as the male lead and again featuring Alice Faye. Jolson sang just one song, 'Kol Nidre', re-creating the synagogue scene from The Jazz Singer. At fifty-three, Jolson had become 'nostalgia'. The Jolson-Keeler marriage was in deep trouble by the time Al began playing the part of the minstrel E. P. Christie - Don Ameche was again the male lead as - in the film Swanee River. Ruby had tried hard to hold their floundering marriage together but it reached a climax the day Swanee River was completed. Al returned home to find Ruby had packed and gone, taking Al Junior with her. She had driven to her parents' home at Toluca Lake. Al was visibly upset, writing to her, telephoning, begging her to come back, but Ruby had made up her mind. Jolson told the Press: 'These are family troubles - not important enough for divorce.' Ruby filed for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and physical suffering and was granted legal custody of Sonny. Al still hoped for a reconciliation, telling reporters: 'It takes a year for a divorce to become final. And Ruby's a wonderful girl.' Al was allowed to see Sonny on Saturdays and Sundays - he took him to the premiere of Swanee River - but found the boy was growing away from him. It became too painful after a while and he turned to the racetrack. Al : 'It just seems to happen to people out here. They called ours a perfect marriage and I never thought it would happen to us. But it did.' Ruby : 'I went to confession every day I was married to Jolson.' With Ruby gone, Jolson was anxious to get back into a Broadway show. A stockbroker friend had come to Al with a production entitled Hold On to Your Hats about a radio singer's dream of the Wild West. Jolson bought 80% of the show and became its star and producer. After much persuasion, Ruby was contracted as lead dancer - she finally agreed after Al had asked her 'like a friend'. Rumours flew about a reconciliation but if Al saw it as a means of recapturing his wife as well as his old stardom, it didn't show. During rehearsals he would became edgy, find fault with Ruby's dancing, shout and rave, and Ruby would walk out. It seemed more like he was trying to punish her. Roses and gifts would follow in the evening but Ruby sent them back. After three weeks of confused rehearsals the show opened in Detroit where Ruby suffered in silence at Al's 'personal remarks' delivered to the audience. Ruby's patience finally ran out when the show reached Chicago two weeks later and she asked to be released from her contract. Jolson claimed to have trouble finding a replacement at short notice and Ruby reluctantly agreed to stay for another month. Ruby : 'Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I know now that Al hoped our working together would bring a reconciliation between us. That is and always has been impossible, and I haven't been able to understand Al's strange attitude.'

Hold On To Your Hats Shubert Theatre, New York (1940)

A Musical Comedy Music : Burton Lane. Lyrics : E. Y. Harburg. Cast included : Margaret Irving, .

New York Times: 'He is a little older now, his hair is a little thinner but none of the warmth has gone out of his singing and none of the gleam has deted from his story telling. By great fortune, he is appearing in one of the funniest musical plays that have stumbled on Broadway for years. Hold your sides as tightly as the title directs you to hold your hat.' In September 1940, Hold On to Your Hats opened at the Shubert The- atre on Broadway to reveal a prodigal son returned. After an absence of nine years, Jolson was back with an expensive and handsomely- mounted production. The first-nighters screamed at the scene between Al and Martha Raye at the end of the first act but nothing could match the broadcast scene where Al tore the roof down with his old songs.

'You ain't heard nothin' yet,' he told the audience (pictured above), and throwing away the mike, he added: 'We don't need this gadget any more than we did before.' He then sang 'Swanee', 'April Showers', 'You Made Me Love You', 'Sonny Boy', and 'My Mammy'. If there were any late arrivals he would stop his monologue and say: 'My name's Jolson, the owner of the show. There are your seats. Now are you comfortable?' The King of Broadway was back. New York Post: 'It took Al Jolson in person to remind us what an extraordinary entertainer he really is. His throaty hymns to Mammy may in memory have become easily resisted. But Mr. Jolson in person and in action is quite a different proposition. The people who can match his personality are rare. He is at once host and performer, minstrel and crooner, hero and autobiographer.' On 28 December 10, five months after quitting the show, Ruby obtained her final decree from a Los Angeles judge. Al had already become friendly with an eighteen-year-old chorine named Joanne Mar- shall but their relationship ended after an argument at a night club. Joanne Marshall went to Hollywood and became . Jolson didn't like to be alone for a minute and it was Eppy who now kept him company, sleeping in the twin bed alongside. Jolson at 3 a.m : 'I can't understand it, Eppy. I loved that girl, and I did everything to make her happy. Got her into Showgirl and the movies. The least that she could do is see me now and then. But she won't even talk to me. Hey, Eppy, ya awake? . . . Ya know I wonder sometimes, Eppy, will there be anyone to say the Kaddish for me?' 'They'll say it, Al.' 'Who?' 'Jessel and Cantor - who else? Go to sleep, Al.' Hold on to Your Hats ran until February 11 when Jolson contracted a severe chill. Diagnosed as suffering from pneumonia, he went into hospital for a week and then left for Palm Beach, Florida, to recuperate. By late August he was in good spirits and the show was revived in Atlantic City. Unfortunately, times were changing and it played to half-empty houses while crowds queued for a movie. The show only grossed $9,800 in four performances and finally folded in November at Columbus, Ohio. On 6 December 11 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. Al heard the news bulletin on the radio and half an hour later put through a call to Stephen Early, Press Secretary to President Roosevelt: 'Must be somethin' I can do.' Jolson then bombarded Washington with letters and phone calls offer- ing, without pay, to head a committee for the entertainment of soldiers. The War Department formed the United Services Organisation and booked Jolson to appear at training camps in the deep South. Accompanied by Martin Fried on piano, they began the tour on 21 January 1942 at Jacksonville Naval Station in Florida. Opening with 'Swanee', Jolson followed with ten more songs in between clowning and gagging. The sort of jokes he told were what the soldiers could under- stand: 'Gypsy Rose Lee was gonna be here with us but she couldn't make it - she'd already signed to appear on the Bare Ass-prin Show.' He received a tremendous ovation. Two weeks later they had completed 22 performances in 11 different camps and entertained 60,000 soldiers, sailors and marines. The USO wanted to charge admission for these shows but Al insisted they be free. Jolson told Variety : 'We don't want to see any boy stand when we do our concerts, so we do two houses nightly and they average 4,500 boys per show . . . Sure, I have to catch a two a.m. milk train, or thereabouts, to make my one-night stand, but I'll do this as long as Uncle Sam will have me.' Jolson : 'I've worked in many a town before, many an audience in my long career in the theatre from Lew Dockstader's Minstrels to Shubert musicals, but I've never had such a thrill as entertaining these boys.' In May, Jolson bought the first ticket for the premiere of . It cost him $25,000 in war bonds. Chapter Six: The Troops ‘Entertaining the Troops Overseas’

Jolson lobbied to entertain the troops overseas and in June arrange- ments were made to send him to Alaska, via Seattle and Washington. As Al reported in a dispatch to Variety: 'We arrived in Anchorage at 9:10 p.m., Anchorage time, and stayed at the Westward Hotel. When they told me to observe the blackout regulations and put my lights out I had to laugh, for in this part of Alaska at midnight you can thread a needle on Main Street. We gave two performances in Anchorage, each for an audience of 1,500 soldiers. Each show lasted an hour and I almost wore out the knees of my pants singing ‘Mammy’. Al didn’t mention that rumours had swept the camp at Anchorage that Lana Turner was coming. 'No she wasn’t - it was Dorothy Lamour,' some one else had said. When Jolson arrived on stage the soldiers’ disappoint- ment expressed itself in the silence. 'Hello boys - I’m Al Jolson. You’ll see my name in the history books.' One soldier laughed, then another. Al told a joke, and another, and the laughter grew. He chatted about home, told them what he thought of Hitler and Hirohito and the laughter spread all round. Someone called for a song. Al gave them what they asked for and he was swamped by whistling applause. Al Jolson had found a new audience; and the soldiers had discovered Al Jolson. Jolson: 'Don’t you feel well, son?' Soldier: 'Oh, yessuh, Mista Jolson. It was on’y when you got to singin’ about Dixie. Well, Mista Jolson, it jest kinda got me - thass all . . . You know Mista Jolson, dis heah Arctic Ocean is an awful long way f’m tu-tty miles t’other side of Bummin’ham, Alabama.' 'Until now,' Al reported to Variety, 'the transporting of our small piano had been an overture to an aspirin tablet, but from here on in it became a major headache. In order to entertain all the boys detailed in the vicinity of Anchorage, it became necessary to give shows in foxholes, gun emplacements, dugouts, to construction groups on military roads, in fact, any place where two or more soldiers were gathered together, it automat- ically became a Winter Garden for me and I gave a show. Imagine carting the piano to these locations. Sometimes it was by truck, once on a side car and once on a mule pack.' It was during the Alaskan tour that one young soldier called out: 'Kiss my wife for me when you get back to New York, will yer Al?' 'I’ll do better than that,' Al called back. 'I’ll take her out to dinner. What’s her name?' After writing her name down with her telephone number, he called out: 'Any more?' Everyone shouted at once and Al wrote down as many names as he could. 'I’ll call them all when I get back,' he said. And he did, informing mothers, wives and girlfriends that their loved ones were in fine shape. Jolson spent time talking to the servicemen, establishing a relationship, till his arrival in a jeep was always met by a collective: 'Hiya, Al!' Stopping soldiers in the street, Jolson would say: 'My name’s Jolson. Do you wanna hear me sing?' ‘Next Town Reilly’ was a one man Department of Morale Boosting. 'Those guys wouldn’t exactly be immune to a shapely dish once in a while, too,' Al told the USO, 'whether she could sing or not.' Jolson: 'We woulda brought Lana Turner but she’s busy with the Second Front.' In July 1942 Jolson and Fried toured all the US bases in the Caribbean before the USO flew them, along with actress Merle Oberon and singer , to England and Northern Ireland. Singing whatever was wanted, wherever he wanted, even to troops on street corners, he enjoyed every round of applause. He told servicemen what he had told their fathers about English beer: 'It should have been put back into the horse.' The troupe had been scheduled to appear at the with Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels but Merle Oberon refused to appear. 'We are here to entertain the troops, not the general public,' she said. Jolson was furious and announced he was returning to the United States - alone. 'I just feel that I could better on my own than I could as a member of a troupe,' Jolson explained to the New York Times. 'If I want to crowd in an extra show for defence workers in factories, I’d be able to do it.' Jolson hadn’t ‘gone over’ as well as he hoped with some of the English audiences and as he sat depressed in the bar of the , Ralph Reader walked in whistling ‘Keep Smiling at Trouble’. 'English, English!' he excitedly greeted Ralph and they reminisced about their days at the Winter Garden. 'They were great days, English, great days,' he said with a tear in his eye. New York Times: 'There were few jokes in his talk. The comedian was playing a straight part . . . For, like many other comedians, at heart, Jolson is serious and sentimental.' New Yorker: 'We’ve just heard from a soldier who was fortunate enough to be on hand at one of the entertainments presented before the troops in Ireland by Jolson and some of the other performers from the States. Jolson, our soldier reports, concluded the entertainment with what was obviously considered to be the best number in his repertoire. It was ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime?’ - and Jolson gave it, as the people say, everything. No other happening in recent weeks has given us such a sense of this significant moment in history.' ‘The Colgate Show Starring Al Jolson’, a weekly radio show that CBS signed Jolson to do, ran until June 1943. Usually opening the show with an up-tempo number like ‘The Yankee Doodle ’, or 'I’m Sitting On Top of the World’, he usually ended with a sentimental ballad like ‘Sonny Boy’. The show’s female vocalist was Jo Stafford and the musi- cal director was Gordon Jenkins. Gordon Jenkins commenting on and : 'Neither one, I have to tell you, had the electricity that Al had.' In July 1943, Al left on an overseas tour to entertain the troops. Since Martin Fried had been drafted, Al needed a pianist to accompany him and asked his friend Harry Akst. At their first stop, Georgetown, British Guiana, Al found he couldn’t reach the high notes at the close of ‘Swanee’. In a panic, he was ready to give up the whole tour. Harry had to convince him that he didn’t have to cash in on high finishes - Crosby didn’t. 'They died with vaudeville,' Harry explained. The new Al Jolson voice was born - not so light and breezy but deeper and more mellow. Jolson: 'Harry, gimme a chorus of ‘April Showers’ in D. We’ll try one chorus.' Akst: 'I gave it to him. He tried it and it was only great. Right then and there in Georgetown, British Guiana, the new Jolson was born.' In Natal, they lived on Spam ('Oucha-ma-goucha! - Spam!'), and yet more Spam while giving a series of concerts to hospital patients. Al told the Press: 'Those guys deserve the best. It ain’t fair that they have to doctor a can of Spam so it looks different three meals in a row. They called it breakfast but we called it lots of other things - powdered eggs, powdered milk, and if there’s anything else that wasn’t powdered, we’d like to know what!'

Then came a nine-hour flight across the Atlantic to Dakar, West Africa (Al and Harry pictured above before take-off). Al reported: 'Dakar is the filthiest hole I have ever seen. Every known insect is here, breeding every known disease. At seven, we had dinner. Yes, you guessed it - Spam, and for dessert a substitute for quinine called Atabrin - little yellow pills - which Akst mistook for soda mints. They gave him bellyache, which so far, is the only bellyaching he’s done.' After the show Al was kept busy autographing anything they gave him. One soldier had nothing else but a $10 bill. 'Son, my autograph isn’t worth tying up in that much dough,' Al told him, taking a crisp $5 dollar bill out of his own pocket and autographing it. 'Here, Sergeant, this is on the house.' A soldier: 'As he sang, I felt as though I were back in New York. Only a short time ago, New York seemed a million miles away. Then along comes Al Jolson and he drops the city right into my lap - Empire State Building and all - Boom!' After Morocco, came Casablanca, Oran and Algiers where he caught up with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Before Al had left America, Mrs. Eisenhower had given him a message to deliver to her husband. It read: ‘Dear Ike, Al will give you this note and give you a sweet kiss from me - and also a swift kick, too, because you haven’t written for so long.’ At the General’s H.Q, Ike instructed Jolson to return the kiss and lifted up the skirt of his jacket . . . 'Darned if Al didn’t deliver the message.' It was in World War II that Al Jolson proved himself ‘The World’s Greatest Entertainer’. Singing to soldiers in foxholes and giving extra shows in out-of-the-way places, he came closer to servicemen than any other entertainer. Pearl Sieben: 'No matter how hard he pushed himself there was always a further distant horizon to scan. For the Jolson nature this was ideal. ‘Next Town Reilly’, as Harry Akst fondly dubbed him, was right at home.' From Algeria, Al and Harry went on to Tunisia and then they followed the advancing Allied troops through the ‘hell and mud’ of Sicily and Italy, sometimes giving four shows a day. When Jolson sang, ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime?’, he gave it everything; and when he sang, ‘Give My Regards To Broadway’, some of the men felt they were back home. Al often admitted to Harry: 'What I’m doing for these boys ain’t nothin’ compared to what they’re doin’ for me.' Jolson had already cancelled his thirteen Colgate radio shows pro- grammed for the fall when he suddenly began to feel bad. In an emer- gency flight, Al and Harry flew home to Miami Beach on 21 September 1943. Less than two weeks later while standing in a hotel lobby in New York, Jolson suddenly collapsed. Joe E. Lewis: 'Al did a fine job in the war, at least until the Confederates captured him.' Jolson woke up in a hospital bed to find he had picked up malaria from overseas and it had turned into pneumonia. His temperature reached 105F and doctors had to contact a military hospital for the proper serum before he began to recover. 'No more overseas tours for you,' the doctors told him. After recuperating in Miami he went back to work playing himself in a film biography of George Gershwin called Rhapsody in Blue. , head of , invited Jolson to be a film producer. No one was sure why until Cohn later divulged to Sydney Skolsky: 'I was a song plugger in my twenties and I used to go backstage at the Winter Garden. Sometimes Jolson would see me and sometimes he would treat me like a jerk without looking at the song. I vowed that one day I’d have that son of a bitch working for me.' Jolson did very little as a producer. His phone never rang and when it eventually did, a voice asked: 'Is that Shapiro, the plumber?' After accepting an offer to headline the Philco Hall of Fame radio show in Philadelphia, Jolson flew with Harry Akst to Washington to see Moshe and Hessi. Jolson still suffered from a bug, a permanent one - being worshipped by an audience. After incessantly ringing the USO offices demanding work, he was asked to tour out-of-the-way service hospitals - the ones without railroad connections. Driving their own station wagon, Al and Harry barnstormed their way west on a zig-zag course cheering up a lot of boys who had lost arms and legs, for this was the ‘Purple Heart Circuit’. The applause considerably improved Al’s own health. Harry Akst: 'What’s the crazy cuckoo up to now? So sick they thought he was dying a few weeks ago and now he’s probably cooked up some crazy scheme that’ll take us to Tim-Buck-Too!' Erle Galbraith was an X-ray technician at the Eastman Annex, Arkan- sas. She had long, dark hair and flashing white teeth and because of her civilian dress she stood out amongst the audience during Al’s perform- ance. Afterwards, Erle stood nearby when Al asked the colonel in charge to authorise some petrol coupons. Al asked to be introduced. 'I just wanted to see if you were as pretty close up as you were from the stage,' he casually explained. 'How would you like to be in movies?' Erle gave no definite answer and Al and Harry drove on to Texas. Newspapers later reported that Erle had asked Jolson for his autograph - perhaps she did. Hospital surgeon: 'Eastman Annexe in Hot Springs is a little off the beaten track. The boys haven’t had a show in a long, long time. If you could find the time to run down there . . .' Al was smitten. Unable to get Erle out of his mind, he wrote to her, telling her that he was a film producer and invited her to come out to Hollywood for a screen test. Soon after arriving back in Hollywood, Al received a visit from an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as a lawyer friend of the Galbraith family. 'About this offer you’ve made to Erle. The Galbraiths are one of the oldest families in Arkansas. Naturally, a girl would be attracted by the glamour of the movies, but the family doesn’t like it at all. I’ve come here to explain these things to you, sir, because it would be most unfortunate if everything wasn’t exactly as it is represented.' Al assured him that indeed he was a film producer and that Erle would be properly placed under a contract. Harry Akst: 'Al, you’re out of your mind. You can make a damn fool of yourself if you want to, but I won’t help you do it.' 'She has a voice like an angel and is going to be the new Rita Hay- worth,' Jolson told everybody and when her train pulled into Union Station, Al found her as beautiful as he remembered. What he had forgotten was her Southern drawl - her face was made for the movies but not her voice. Jolson did some fast talking and got her placed under a six-month contract at $100 a week. An extra in A Thousand and One Nights was the summation of her screen career but it never bothered Erle. She enjoyed being taken by Al to night clubs, prize fights, and of course, the races. Erle Galbraith: 'I knew I’d never be an actress. For one thing, there’s my pronounced Arkansas drawl. And I haven’t that kind of ambition. But who could resist the chance for a wonderful vacation, and it was in that spirit I accepted it.' In October, Al and Harry began another tour of army hospitals. Wind- ing up in Florida, they then drove up to New York, before driving west playing to a string of hospitals en route to California. By the time they reached Los Angeles, Al was complaining of feeling run down. Suddenly struck down by severe chest pains, Al was rushed into the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Malaria had struck again and this time with a malig- nant strain to it. The Warner brothers, Harry and Jack, were gravely concerned and requested General Arnold, head of the Army Air Services, to fly two of his top physicians to Los Angeles. Because of Al’s tremendous war work the request was granted. The doctors saved his life but had to remove parts of two ribs and cut a malignant slice out of his left lung. Not allowed any visitors for a week, Jolson told his nurse: 'I’ll never sing again.' Al’s first visitor, Erle, was the only one who managed to get him to smile and break him out of his depression. Al felt sorry for himself, believing his career was at an end but Erle convinced him that the future did hold some promise for him. Sydney Skolsky had already approached Harry Cohn about producing a musical based on Jolson’s life and Harry called on Jolson at the hospital. Walking straight up to him and without removing his cigar, Harry looked into his eyes and demanded: 'You gonna die on me? Can you still sing?' Jolson pushed aside a medicine chest, jumped out of bed and warbled ‘April Showers’ on his one lung. Cohn told him: 'I’ll tell ya one thing Jolie - you die on me and I’ll kill ya.' Then he left, muttering: 'The guy’s gonna die; the guy’s gonna die.' Jolson returned to his oxygen tent for three more days. Harry Cohn to : 'Take Jolson to the studio and record everything he knows. I want to be insured in case the son of a bitch drops dead.' Near the end of his stay in hospital, Al proposed to Erle and she accepted. Erle was twenty-one and Al was sixty. He told her: 'Sure, I’m old enough to be your grandfather, but I love yer.' Al wrote to Erle’s father asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Her father strongly objected but Erle told Al not to worry: 'I can twist dad around my finger.' She returned home to Arkansas and was back in Hollywood within days - her father had been persuaded. Al and Erle were married on 23 March 1945 at the old mining town of Quartzite, Arizona. Erle’s father: 'You are old enough to be my daughter’s father. The idea is preposterous.' Erle to reporters: 'I’m surprised that my relationship with Al has not been known before.'

Wanting to be with him by the swimming pool during the day, Erle knitted socks for him in the evenings while he gently sang to her. It was her maternal qualities that kept Al happy and knowing how to deal with his temper - she abruptly left the room when he got angry and came back later, acting as if nothing had happened. 'Tell Erle how great I was,' Jolson would implore visitors to their home. Feeding his ego was as important as feeding his stomach, Erle realised, and encouraged him to start singing publicly again. Crosby, Como and Sinatra were the singers in demand now, but Milton Berle invited Jolson to be the star guest on his weekly radio show. The new Jolson voice, four keys deeper than before, was heard again in public. Erle: 'Why don’t you sing again in the movies?' Al: 'But, Erle, I can’t sing any more - you know that.' Erle: 'You’re singing now, aren’t you?' Sidney Skolsky, newspaper columnist and studio writer, had for years nursed the idea of adapting the story of Al Jolson to the screen. Metro, Warners, Twentieth Century Fox and United Artists all ridiculed the idea: 'You’re daffy, Sidney. Today he doesn’t mean a thing. Save your breath and we’ll save our dollars.' Harry Cohn didn’t laugh. 'Sounds interesting,' he had said. 'I’ll take it up with New York. Get back to you soon.' Four months later Skolsky’s phone rang. It was the unmistakable gruff tone of Harry Cohn: 'Get your ass over here. You’re working on the Jolson picture.' Chapter Seven: Jolson Story ‘The Jolson Story’

Skolsky started on the outline of The Jolson Story and sent some pages to executive producer Sidney Buchman. Harry Cohn then called Skolsky into his office. 'I figure it’s about time we call Jolson in and have him sign the contract,' Skolsky told him. 'Jolson doesn’t know anything . . . You know what a blabbermouth he is. Everybody would know about it and we’d lose it.' Cohn exploded: 'You mean I bought the life of Jolson from you, pay you a weekly salary, and Jolson doesn’t know a thing about it?' A few days later, Harry’s brother, Jack Cohn, had lunch with Jolson, who was surprised and pleased. A deal was signed. The film was going to be Columbia’s big picture of the year, just the opportunity Jolson had been waiting for. Skolsky talked it over with him at the Beverley Hills Hotel. 'Everybody’s making biographical films, but no one’s done one of the king,' Al said. Believing his new deeper voice would go down better than before, Jolson didn’t seem too concerned that his voice would come out of someone else’s lips - at first. Al: 'This is it, babe, I’m going to be great again.' Erle: 'Sure you are, Al.' Al began to sing everywhere he went just to prove to everyone he could. Guests were treated just like an audience. Desperately wanting to play the part himself, he began to worry about some else playing him in the film. Harry Cohn had to tell him he couldn’t play himself and that was final.

The first name on the list of Columbia contract players to be tested for the part was Larry Parks (pictured above), who had appeared in a handful of B pictures. He mimed to a Jolson track of ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and they never tested anyone else. Larry had a special room next to his dressing room with mirrors on three walls. Playing Jolson’s records, he’d use the mirrors to synchronise his gestures and his lips with Jolson’s voice. Jolson worked with Parks for hours until every nuance was perfected, so well, that even difficult close-ups could be used in the film. Harry Cohn: 'Al, we got the best damned make-up department in Hollywood. They can work wonders but they can’t make you look twenty-one years old.' All the old arrangements and orchestrations of Jolson’s songs were changed by George Dunning and the rest of Columbia’s musical depart- ment, making them new again. With the exception of ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’ Jolson’s old comic numbers were abandoned - no one could be expected to take them seriously now - but all of Al’s own favourites, ‘Mammy’, ‘April Showers’, ‘Swanee’ and ‘California Here I Come’ were retained. From his first test recording Jolson found he could not only sing, but was singing better than he had ever done before, though there was a row when Saul Chaplin innocently pointed out to Jolson that he had missed something. 'Of course I can’t do the song like I used to,' Jolson exploded, 'I haven’t the breath anymore.' Pulling out a bundle of bank notes, he demanded of Chaplin: 'I made this in show business. What did you make?' Jolson was not aware that he was humming a particular tune whenever he was waiting to hear a playback till Sydney Skolsky pointed it out to him. 'God, I didn’t know I was doing that,' Al said. 'That’s an old song my mother used to hum to me when I was a little child and she rocked me to sleep.' The tune was J. Ivanici's ‘ Waves’ and became ‘The Anniversary Song’ in the film. Saul Chaplin, who wrote most of the lyric, was told by Jolson that he would make a fortune from the song. Saul Chaplin: 'Jolson told me Mood Music wanted us to take a cut on the royalties of ‘Anniversary Song’. I agreed we both take a cut from 4 to 2½ cents a copy. I later discovered Al hadn’t taken any cut. He had got out of it by having me take the full cut. But to be fair to Al: one hospital wanted an iron lung; someone mentioned it to Jolson and he wrote them a cheque for the full amount - $15,000. One last thing about Jolson: I’ve seen all the great performers and he was the greatest. None of the others could touch him.' The theme of The Jolson Story was of the craving of this one man for the sound of people applauding him until their hands were sore and their voices hoarse. The ‘other woman’ in the man’s life turns out to be an audience. Al sat in on story conferences and agreed there was nothing sacred about the truth, so events and dates were juggled and characters left out, or added to suit. , who had been on Columbia’s payroll as long as Larry Parks, and so far had made as much impression, pestered Harry Cohn for the part of Ruby Keeler in the film until he finally gave in. Ruby herself refused to allow her name to be used in the picture and was paid $25,000 for non-use of her name. Ludwig Donah played Cantor Yoelson; and William Demarest, who had played with Jolson in The Jazz Singer, played his manager. The story was never to be as important as the songs - once again the Jolson voice was going to knock them in the aisles. Evelyn Keyes: 'I worked harder at getting that role than anything else in my life. I sent Cohn telegrams every day. I phoned him twice, three times, sometimes a dozen times a day.' Ruby Keeler: 'To hear Ruby Keeler from the screen and Jolson singing love songs to her, making speeches to her, saying: ‘Baby, everything you want you’ll have. This is Jolie talkin’ to you.’ . . . I want none of that.' The film was originally planned to be in black and white, but after Cohn saw the first rushes he decided to pull out the stops and film in colour. It was impossible to walk on The Jolson Story set without needing to plug your ears with cotton wool - Larry Parks would be miming to the Jolson songs with the volume turned right up, and to make it look authentic he sang at full force himself. Parks researched the role assiduously, listening to every one of Jolson’s old records and watching all his old films. But what made it so difficult was the fact that Jolson never sang the same song, the same way twice; nor did he ever come in on the same beat. Jolson did help Larry get into the spirit of the thing by taking him to the racetrack and a synagogue. Larry Parks: 'The big problem was that Jolson sang every song as if he were going to drop dead at the end of it - at full volume all the way.' Evelyn Keyes: 'I remember just standing and staring, watching Jolson perform. It was uncanny. He was in the booth singing - but we could see him moving and the people were just overwhelmed.' Insisting he had to be in the picture some place, Jolson finally managed it in a short sequence, in the distance, on the Winter Garden runway, doing his famous dance steps in the middle of singing ‘Swanee’. During one rehearsal Jolson picked up Parks on a certain gesture. 'Don’t you remember how I used to do that bit?' Jolson asked. 'I’ve never seen you work before a live audience, Al,' Parks admitted with embarrassment. 'Wait a minute, wait a minute, son. You ain’t heard nothing yet,' Jolson answered and proceeded to give a special show just for Parks. During filming on 23 December 1945 Moses Yoelson, around his eighty-eighth birthday, died in Washington. The funeral was held within twelve hours and Al couldn’t make it. Despite his father’s stubborn refusal to give him wholehearted praise, Al always admired the man whom he described as 'a scholarly gentleman'. The picture was completed by April 1946 and proud to show Erle that he could be top again and show his fellow entertainers what he could do, Jolson topped the bill at a benefit concert. The show on 20 July was to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles. After had introduced Danny Kaye, Danny Thomas, Van Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Margaret O’Brien, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Red Skelton, Jose Iturbi, Xavier Cugat, Carmen Miranda and George Burns, and four hours had gone by, Al Jolson bounced on to the stage to the opening bars of ‘Mammy’. He looked forty years younger. 'Danny Kaye said he was a young man when he came here tonight,' he gagged, 'and that he was old by the time he got in. Well, Jolie’s case is different. When I got here I was an old man already.' He joked, sang and reminisced about the days when being an enter- tainer meant more that being able to hold a microphone properly. Jolson was back and in charge. Jolson: 'My biggest thrill is not seeing all you people out there - but having my wife with me. All she knew about me as a performer came from my old scrapbooks or what Jack Benny and Groucho Marx told her. Tonight I’ve been showing off to impress her.'

The Jolson Story Columbia (1946)

Director: Alfred E. Green Producer: Sidney Skolsky Screenplay: Stephen Longstreet Conductor: Cast includes: Larry Parks, Evelyn Keyes, William Demarest, Bill Goodwin, Ludwig Donath, Tamara Shane, , The Mitchell Boychoir. Rudy Wissler dubbed the songs for Scotty Beckett Al Jolson dubbed the songs for Larry Parks Songs ‘Let Me Sing and I’m Happy’ ‘Banks of the Wabash’ ‘Ave Maria’ ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ ‘After the Ball’ ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’ ‘Blue Bell’ ‘Ma Blushin’ Rosie’ ‘I Want a Girl’ ‘My Mammy’ ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World’ ‘You Made Me Love You’ ‘Swanee’ ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (Goo’ Bye)’ ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’ ‘April Showers’ ‘California, Here I Come’ ‘Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away)’ ‘There’s a Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder’ ‘Avalon’ ‘She’s a Latin from Manhattan’ ‘About, a Quarter to Nine’ ‘Anniversary Song’ ‘Waiting for the Robert E. Lee’ ‘Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’

Herald Tribune: 'Only the deaf could fail to be enchanted by the musical numbers, from ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’ or ‘Swanee’ to ‘Liza’ . . . The film is essentially a testament to the excitement of show business and the appeal of popular melodies. As such, it is a captivating musical.' Margaret Hinxman: 'But I loved it then and I love it now, every last sentimental showbiz cliché, every over-sung song. I know it so well that I can recite the throbbing dialogue; anticipate the last bar of ‘Good-bye My Bluebell’ when little Asa’s voice breaks . . . and spot the brief appearance in long shot of the real Al Jolson singing ‘Swanee’. The Jolson Story was previewed in Santa Barbara on the following Sunday, in between the showing of Ziegfield Follies which had an all-star cast including Judy Garland and . Jolson was so nervous that he made frequent trips to the back of the theatre, to the lobby, and back to his seat again. But the audience’s response to the film was overwhelming. 'Its great, Al,' Harry Cohn said at the picture’s end, slapping Al on the back. Erle gave her husband a big kiss. Al: 'How was it , Baby?' Erle: 'Oh Al, it was wonderful; just wonderful.' Elderly lady to her friend on leaving the theatre: 'Isn’t it too bad that Jolson couldn’t have lived to see it.'

Premiered at the Radio City Music Hall in New York on 10 , The Jolson Story turned out to be a smash hit. The reviews were ecstatic and within four months the country had gone ‘Jolson crazy’. Al Jolson had proved that the kids were not always content with syrupy crooning and his robust voice was just what they needed. In Britain, where Jolson was barely even a memory to most people, The Jolson Story made an even bigger impact than in America. Jolson might have been all of sixty-one years of age but he began behaving like a youngster, walking sprightly, dancing and singing. After being in semi- retirement for three years, he appeared like a new singer to the post-war ‘bobby soxers’, most of whom thought Al Jolson looked like Larry Parks. Two weeks after the film’s opening, Jolson turned up with Harry Akst on Barry Gray’s WOR radio show in New York at 3:45 in the morning. Al asked if he could sing a song and completely unrehearsed, the show became an interview-cum-concert for an hour and a half. Jolson told anecdotes about his career and sang nine or ten songs while the studio began to fill with people. Listeners called other people, saying: 'You’ve got to turn on the radio; Jolson’s on the air.' Jolie: 'I’ll sing anything.' Barry Gray: 'My favourite in the movie is ‘Rosie’.' Barry Gray, after Jolie had sung it: 'You can shoot me now while I’m happy.' To help launch The Jolson Story, Harry Cohn wanted an album of its songs to be released on record. The recording companies weren’t inter- ested, until , head of Decca, saw the film and told Harry Cohn: 'You make the pictures with Jolson and I’ll make his records.' Youngsters got excited about this new ‘hep singer Al Jolson’ and once again Jolson’s voice could be heard on Broadway, blaring out from the speakers outside the record shops. ‘April Showers’ sold a million copies in one month, and for five weeks ‘The Anniversary Song’ topped the British Hit Parade. Sydney Skolsky: 'Parks got an Academy Award nomination and in my opinion should have won the Oscar for the Best Actor.' Young girl: 'Gee Mr. Jolson, you’re much better looking on the screen.' In Denver, Jolson was presented with the Rose Award - named after Major General Rose - ‘for services to the Forces in the War’. At the Hotel Astor in New York, the Americans War Veterans Committee gave a testimonial banquet in Jolson’s honour. James J. Walker, former mayor of New York: 'We are gathered to pay tribute to Al Jolson. We are saluting a great showman - and New York loves great showmen. The man whose very name means Broadway . . . .'

At the end of 1947 Jolson was voted the most popular singer on the air above Crosby, Como and Sinatra. Bing Crosby (pictured above) invited him to guest on his radio show and together they sang ‘April Showers’. Bing: 'Al, what’s that badge on your lapel?' Al: 'That’s what you get for seeing The Jolson Story 100 times.' The next time Jolson appeared on the Crosby show, he wore a badge with the letters AJTWGE. Bing: 'What’s does that stand for, Al.' Al: 'That, son, says: ‘Al Jolson, The World’s Greatest Entertainer.’' Jack Benny, Amos ‘n Andy, Burns and Allen, and Eddie Cantor, his arch enemy from the old days, all invited him on to their radio shows. Bob Hope asked him why he didn’t have his own radio show. 'What - and be on the air only once a week!' Jolson quipped. But it wasn’t long before he did appear in his own radio show. Jolson explained: 'Sign, ha! I didn’t want to sign anything for nobody. So I tell ‘em ‘All right - $7,500 a week.’ They says ‘yes’ and I almost drop dead.' On the show, pianist ribbed him about his age: 'Al, weren’t you there when Tchaikovsky first played his piano concerto?' Al, pretending to be hurt: 'Of course not, Oscar, I was on tour at the time.'

Judy Garland (pictured above) guested on the show duetting on ‘Pretty Baby’, marking the second and last time ‘Mr. and Miss. Show Business’ would ever work together. Judy Garland, jokingly: 'I’ve admired Al ever since I was a little girl. And my grandmother admired him ever since she was a little girl.' The only live shows that Jolson wanted to do were benefits. 'I die every time I go on stage,' Jolson explained. 'What’s the use of falling on my face now?' A nation-wide appeal was launched to raise money for the relief of European refugees. Within a week, Jolson had raised more than a million dollars by persuading show business folks to contribute. Jimmy Durante: 'Notice Mr. Jolson, I don’t need a Larry Parks to play the black notes.' After giving his brother Harry a job with Al Jolson Enterprises and donating the deeds of his house in Hollywood Hills to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital - he would finally donate all his future song royalties to the tubercular ward at Saranac Lake, New York - Al moved with Erle to Palm Springs. Al explained to a reporter: 'Look, I may not be here ten seconds from now; but I feel better than I did twenty years ago.' After waiting a few months for adoption agency approval, Al and Erle adopted a six-month-old blond baby boy whom they named Asa Albert Jolson Jr. A proud father again, Al told reporters: 'We’ll send him to a good school - and a hard one. Want no spoiling of the boy.' They hired a nurse though Erle enjoyed taking care of the baby herself. Erle found the home that she wanted, a ranch-style house owned by Don Ameche. 'That’s swell, Baby. I’m glad you found a house you like,' Al said uncertainly. He knew the house, having sold it to Ameche after his divorce from Ruby. Erle said it was ideal and Al bought it as a third anniversary present. The couple moved in - despite Al’s painful memo- ries. Erle: 'Al, I love you and I want to make sure that the past is just that, the past. It’s a beautiful house and we can have a wonderful life in it.'

The Jolson Story was so successful that Columbia decided to film a sequel, Jolson Sings Again. The film picked up where The Jolson Story left off to include sequences of him entertaining the troops abroad, his ‘retirement’, and his meeting his new wife Erle. Al saw no reason why he still couldn’t play himself but Larry Parks had received an Academy Award nomination for The Jolson Story and so retained his role as Jolson. Barbara Hale played the new Mrs. Jolson. 'This time she’s really got to look like Erle,' Jolson insisted.

Jolson Sings Again Columbia (1949)

Director: Henry Levin Producer: Sidney Buchman Screenplay: Sidney Buchman Conductor: Morris Stoloff Cast includes: Larry Parks, Barbara Hale, William Demarest, Ludwig Donath, Bill Goodwin, Myron McCormick, Tamara Shayne Al Jolson dubbed the songs for Larry Parks

Songs ‘Is It True What They Say About Dixie’ ‘For Me and My Gal’ ‘Back in Your Own Back Yard’ ‘I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover’ ‘When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along’ ‘Give My Regards to Broadway’ ‘Chinatown, My Chinatown’ ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’ ‘Baby Face’ ‘After You’ve Gone’ ‘Sonny Boy’ ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (Goo’ Bye)’ ‘Pretty Baby’ ‘’ ‘Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with Dixie Melody’

New York Times: 'Mr. Jolson’s name is up in lights again and Broadway is wreathed in smiles. That’s as it should be, for Jolson Sings Again is an occasion that warrants lusty cheering.' Herald Tribune: 'What Broadway used to describe as ‘great’ and that raspy, pleading Jolson delivery still makes the heart beat faster.' To plug Jolson Sings Again, Jolson toured the film theatres in and around New York, telling audiences, that unlike Hollywood stars who do nothing on personal appearance tours, he was going to entertain them. And he did, though before beginning to sing he usually announced: 'I will now do an imitation of Larry Parks.' In the Chinese district of New York he sang ‘Chinatown My China- town’; in the Italian district he gave an imitation of Caruso with ‘Come Back to Sorrento’; and in Brooklyn and the Bronx he sang ‘The Cantor for the Sabbath’. Extra police had to be on duty as crowds jammed the streets. This was Al Jolson live. Jolson Sings Again wasn’t quite as big a success as The Jolson Story, and the song ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ was not as big a hit as ‘The Anniversary Song’, but in five years the picture still took $5 million at the box-office. It kept Al Jolson on top. 'When I die, they’ll bury Larry Parks,' he often gagged, and in between receiving awards, radio appearances and recording, the Jolsons adopted a baby girl called Alicia as sister to Asa Albert Junior. Proud parents made big plans for both of their children and Al talked of making a trip to Israel. In Chicago, 19 August became ‘Al Jolson Day’. In Britain, Jolson’s name with songs from Jolson Sings Again was on the very first batch of long-playing records produced. More radio shows with Bing Crosby followed and he seriously started to think about televi- sion. Groucho Marx: 'Well, Al, see you on television.' Jolson: 'Nuts to television.' Honoured by Variety as ‘Personality of the Year’, he was received by President Truman at the White House who recalled seeing him with Dockstader’s Minstrels. Al greeted him with a snatch of 'I’m Just Wild About Harry' and gagged about being friends with Coolidge, Harding and Roosevelt - but 'no cracks about me being palsy-walsy with Abraham Lincoln.' An offer of a television series was made by NBC - a minstrel show with all the performers, including guest stars, appearing in black face. But Jolson was thinking of making a big trip to Israel and said: 'TV can wait until the fall of ‘51.' President Truman: 'Well, Al, don’t quit. It’ll kill you.' Bob Hope: 'Jolson couldn’t come tonight - he couldn’t get a sitter for the Bank of America.' In the summer of 1950, the United States answered the call of the UN Security Council and entered the Korean conflict. Jolson immediately called the White House: 'I’m gonna go to Korea and its up to President Truman to get me there.' Nothing happened for four weeks till he re- ceived a telegram from the Secretary of Defense: ‘Sorry delay but regret no funds for entertainment. USO disbanded.' 'What are they talkin’ about?' Jolson thundered. 'Funds! Who needs funds! I got my own mazzuma ain’t I? All I’m asking for is clearance. Comin’ too, Harry?' It was ‘Next Town Reilly’ again and Harry Akst wasn’t too keen this time. Against his better judgement he was persuaded. Harry: 'I felt he wouldn’t go if I didn’t - I didn’t think he could stand the trip. Not that he was ill, but he was too old - sixty-four.' Erle was in tears at the airport and Al tried to allay her fears: 'Hey, don’t look so sad. I’m gonna be around for a long time. My father lived to be ninety-five years old.' 'Daddy gone okyo-okyo,' Asa Jr. shouted. 'Hey, boys, how do ya like that kid? Ain’t he something?' Al told reporters. Erle: 'You’ll take care of him, won’t you, Harry?' Harry Akst: 'Don’t mention it. They say God takes care of fools and drunks. They should add: Al Jolson.' Their plane had to stopover at Wake Island with engine trouble and Al and Harry had to spend the night in a damp and draughty, rat-infested hut. By the time the two entertainers arrived in Tokyo, Al had a cold and a cough. A young medic peered down Jolson’s throat: 'This man can’t sing. He has a bronchial infection.' 'Listen, son. I gotta sing. Whaddaya think I came here for - to see the geisha girls? Give me something to clear it up.' In between inhaling mentholated steam with a towel round his head half hour at a time, he entertained the troops in the military hospital with jokes and sang as best he could. 'Harry isn’t exactly a beginner at this racket either,' Al would tell the audience. 'He’s knocked off some hit tunes in his time - ‘Baby Face’, ‘Dinah’ - you tell ‘em the rest, Harry.' Doctor: 'Mr. Jolson, you have a bronchial infection and running a high fever. You should be in bed and stay there till it clears up.'

While Jolson gargled with some solution that Harry had wangled from the Red Cross, the Jolson-Akst show moved on to Korea (pictured above) and places they’d never even heard of - Chinghai, Miryang, Masan and Kyonson. Scheduled to do six shows a day, they travelled by jeep and helicopter, always with their ‘Purple Cow’ in tow - a small piano painted a deep purple. Al called it 'a latrine on wheels.' Jolson: 'Why can’t those crazy guys stop their rifle practice and come to the show.' Army officer: 'They’re not our boys, they’re snipers, but don’t worry, Al, - they’re lousy shots.' On the their return to Tokyo, they were invited to lunch with General MacArthur and his wife. '‘Sonny Boy’ was always my favourite,' Mrs. MacArthur remarked in her southern accent that reminded Jolson of Erle, and cough or no cough, Al sang it especially for her. General MacArthur and Jolson then spent two hours talking about the fighting, life back home, and Jolson’s singing. Jolson to reporters: 'If anybody tells me anything bad about MacArthur again, I’ll punch him on the nose.' Harry thought Al looked tired when the pair left Tokyo for home the next morning - the old familiar Jolson bounce was missing. It was not surprising - Jolson, sick and on one good lung, had done an incredible forty-two shows in seven days. Yet newspapermen saw the same old Jolson, bubbling with jokes as he chatted to them on the flights from Wake to Honolulu, and then on to Los Angeles. MacKinley Kantor: 'Conversationally, he bounded like an eager puppy from the back to Dockstader’s Minstrels, to Georgie Jessel, to New York, to girls, to Hollywood, to World War II in Italy, to Eddie Cantor, to girls, to Broadway, to Korea again. People wanted to keep buying drinks, but we had an awful tussle every time money was men- tioned. He kept pressing crumpled dollar bills upon the stewardess.' Erle and Asa Jr. were both waiting at Los Angeles airport. After giving both of them a big hug, Al gave Asa a sombrero that he had picked from somewhere, and was honest with reporters - the trip had been rough. What was totally unexpected was the interview Jolson gave to a news- man a few days later: 'I’m not interested in anything. I’m really two shakes ahead of a fit. My pulse is fast. I don’t sleep good. So I think I’ll go up to some place . . I don’t know . . . maybe Arrowhead or Palm Springs, or someplace and take . . . well, I think a week will do it - if I can sleep . . . One of the things I’ve got to do is to go round to Columbia to tell Harry Cohn that maybe I won’t do a third picture.' The Jolsons went down to Palm Springs, soaked up the sunshine and with Al feeling better, they returned to Beverley Hills. Al: 'How do I look, Harry?' Harry: 'A few days in Palm Springs does wonders for you, Al.' A doctor was called when Al complained of indigestion. 'Nothing to worry about,' the doctor told him after taking a cardiograph. 'But don’t go to any more Koreas.' Next day Al took a second opinion. 'This is the same heart that was okayed for a million dollars worth of insurance, isn’t it?' the physician said with some assurance. Al felt relieved. 'You say you’re going to San Francisco?' the physician then asked. 'Great heart specialist up there - Dr. William Kerr.' Al made a mental note of the name. Harry: 'Why do you eat Spanish food, Al? You know it gives you indigestion.' Just a few days later, on 23 October 1950, Jolson, Harry Akst and Martin Fried arrived in San Francisco on an afternoon flight from Los Angeles. Jolson was scheduled to appear as a guest on the Bing Crosby Radio Show and after booking into St. Francis Hotel they had a seafood dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf. On returning to their hotel, they played cards for a while before Jolson said: 'I’m feeling a bit tired. Think I’ll just have a lie down . . . Do Jolie a favour, Marty, willya? Call room service and get me some bicarbonate of soda - I have a little indigestion.' Harry decided to call for the house doctor. There were two, but both were on call. Remembering the name his physician had given him, Al told Harry: 'Look up Dr. Kerr and ask him to come over.' Dr. Kerr answered the call: 'It’ll take some time to get there.' 'You don’t understand, doctor. This is Al Jolson and it’s an emergency,' said Harry. Jolson waved his hands: 'You crazy bastard! You want everybody to read in the papers tomorrow morning that Al Jolson had to get a doctor for indigestion?' The doctor heard and assured him: 'Don’t worry, I’ll be there in half an hour.' Al: 'Harry, I’m not going to last.' Harry: 'My heart jumped. I looked down and saw he had been taking his pulse. I said: ‘Al, don’t talk that way. It’ll pass. It’s nothing but indigestion.’' The hotel nurse arrived first. 'Don’t tell me this is the patient . . .' she started cheerfully - Al was still tanned from Palm Springs. 'Nurse,' said Al, 'I’ve got no pulse.' She took his wrist: 'You’ve got a pulse like a baby.'The house physician also arrived about the same time as Dr. Kerr. 'I’m a little embarrassed about this, gentlemen,' Jolson said as the two doctors got ready to examine him. First they asked him what he had done that day and what he had eaten. 'Pull up a couple of chairs and let’s talk,' Jolson told them. Two chairs were brought and Dr. Kerr told him how much he admired him: 'I saw you in London in 1929.' Al joked: 'You know, President Truman only had one hour with Gen- eral MacArthur. I had two.' Suddenly Al reached for his pulse. 'Oh, I’m going,' he said sadly, before sinking back on his pillow, his eyes closed. Jolson had gone. Erle received the news over the telephone and went into shock. 'When Jolie goes it’ll be front page news; no two-inch blurb on page fifty,' Jolson had once said and it was true. That evening the lights of Broadway were turned out and the traffic brought to a halt in Times Square. Variety: 'An institution and an era of show business stopped breathing on Monday night in a St. Francis hotel suite in San Francisco. A legend now begins to live. Al Jolson, the greatest musical comedy star of his time and perhaps all time, died at the age of sixty four. The end came suddenly and dramatically. It came at the height of his career, with the cheers of the GIs in Korea fresh in his ears . . . He had a record to be envied, both for his war work and as a star. He hit the top in every medium he tried and was already considering television when he died. There is no question that Jolie would have been great in television too . . .' Three days later on the afternoon 26 October, 1950, the funeral was held at Temple Israel on Hollywood Boulevard. Police estimated up- wards of 20,000 people turned up. George Jessel opened his eulogy: 'And not only has the entertainment world lost its king, but we cannot cry, ‘The king is dead - long live the king!’ For there is no one to hold his sceptre. Those of us who tarry behind are but pale imitations, mere princelings . . .' After an additional private ceremony later in the day, attended by Erle, Asa, Jr., Harry Jolson and his second wife Sylvia, and the rabbi, Al was buried at Beth Olam Cemetery in Los Angeles. Jolson’s published Will showed that he was worth almost $4 million and most of it went to charity. A trust was provided for Erle and her children and $10,000 left to his brother Harry with equal amounts to his step-brothers and sisters. Louis Epstein, Martin Fried and Harry Akst were left only memories. President Truman posthumously awarded Jolson the Civilian Order of Merit for ‘extraordinary fidelity and exceptionally meritorious conduct.’ Jack Benny once commented at a benefit concert where he and Jolson were featured: 'How do you like that Jolson? He’s worth at least $8 million and what does he leave us? Moonbeams!' Pearl Sieben: 'Jolie left a heritage for all time. He left gay songs to be sung in childhood, romantic songs for our youth, inspirational songs to touch our souls, naughty songs to tickle our funny bones, melancholy songs to remind us of the ever lurking tragedies in life, and mellow songs for our old age . . . Some magic that was Jolson still reaches out and touches us. What it is, is hard to say.' Bing Crosby: 'Al Jolson invented the vocal solo, I think. I certainly didn’t. I did have his records, and I saw him many times when he came through my home town with touring musical comedies. If you ever saw him in person, he had the capacity for generating some kind of electricity that just communicated itself to the audience. And he’d get carried along on that, and the audience would go with him. I’ve seen him do shows where he’d sing 10 or 12 encores. They wouldn’t let him off. He was so magnetic in his delivery and his actions - the way his body moved, the way he used his hands. It all seemed to be part of it. I would call him a great, great performer.' Charlie Chaplin: 'A great instinctive artist with magic and vitality . . . He personified the poetry of Broadway, its vitality and vulgarity, its aims and dreams.' Ralph Reader: 'It wasn’t that he wanted to give so much; its just that he had to.' Herbert G. Goldman: 'Al was an inspiring performer - the embodiment of optimism who made one think the human soul could never be defeated.' : 'Jolson lives on in memories, in legend, and in voice.'

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