On the verge of receivership in 1926, Warner Bros. studio decides to risk its future by investing in the Vitaphone sound system. Warners' first Vitaphone release, Don Juan, was a silent film accompanied by music and sound effects. The studio took the Vitaphone process one step farther in its 1927 adaptation of the Samson Raphaelson Broadway hit ...
Al Jolson's "comeback" picture Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is an offbeat Depression-era concoction with script by Ben Hecht and S.N. Behrmann and music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Jolson plays a genial hobo who wanders happily around Central Park, neither seeking nor accepting honest employment. He is imbued with a sense of ...
This barely-disguised portrait of singer Fanny Brice led to Brice's lawsuit against 20th Century Fox for defamation of character, a case which was settled out of court. Alice Faye plays Rose Sargent, a New York singer of the 1920s who falls for handsome, cocky wheeler-dealer Bart Clinton (Tyrone Power in a role patterned on Brice's troubled real ...
Popular film lore has it that The Jazz Singer was the film that established the talkie as the pre-eminent film medium in 1927. But it was Al Jolson's follow-up film, The Singing Fool that actually introduced the sound film to the general film-going population of the United States and it was the popularity of The Singing Fool that paved the way for ...
Based on Al Jolson's 1931 Broadway hit, Wonder Bar transposes the "Grand Hotel" formula to a lavish nightclub in Paris' Montmartre district. Presiding over the evening's entertainment is manager-emcee Al Wonder (Jolson), who after greeting his guests in a multitude of languages (a la Joel Grey in Cabaret) introduces a steady stream of top variety ...
Strictly for Al Jolson's most fervent fans, The Singing Kid casts Jolie as neurotic Broadway star Al Jackson. Facing professional ruin when he loses his voice, Al heads to the country to regain his vocal timbre and to get his head back together. While recuperating, he falls in love with farm girl Ruth Haines (Beverly Roberts), the pretty aunt of ...
On the strength of his previous hits The Jazz Singer (1927) and The Singing Fool (1928), Al Jolson was Hollywood's hottest star in 1929. Jolson's cinematic offering for that year was Say It With Songs, a characteristic blend of music, comedy and treacly sentiment. The star is cast as Joe Lane, a radio star who hits it big then begins neglecting ...
Broadway legend Al Jolson and his second wife Ruby Keeler costarred in this thin backstage musical. In keeping with Jolson's earlier starring films, the plotline is melodramatic to the point of risibility. Jolson plays an irresponsible performer whose unprofessional antics incur the wrath of Actor's Equity. Suspended from the stage, Jolson spends ...
Big Boy may well be the closest a modern audience will ever come to seeing what a genuine Al Jolson Broadway musical looked like. Based on his 1925 stage hit, the film casts Jolson in the blackface role of Gus, a stableboy at a moss-covered Southern plantation. Gus' favorite horse is the magnificent Big Boy, whom he hopes to ride to victory at the ...
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