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Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer
A probing biography of world-renowned Jewish singer and actor Al Jolson and the history of his performance in and the making of The Jazz Singer
Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Thanks to his immense talent and his knack for assimilating into new environments, by the time he reached his twenties he was the most famous and highly paid entertainer in America, making almost $5,000 a week at a time when the average American made $800 a year. Jolson’s public adoration and widespread acceptance as a star marked the beginning of an enriching cultural transformation, a moment when the American mind opened up to ethnic and racial differences, widening the gap of acceptability. And yet Jolson himself, despite being ferociously ambitious and gigantically talented, was crippled by insecurity, often nervous to the point of collapse, prisoner to his many vices.
Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content : The Jazz Singer is all about Jews, Orthodox and otherwise. Bernstein expounds on the making of The Jazz Singer, what the film meant then and now, introducing the many individuals involved in its production, including Samson Raphaelson, a young Jewish writer whose short story was the basis for the movie; the four Warner brothers, who made a fortune off it; and George Jessel, Jolson’s rival and the star of Raphaelson's stage adaptation of his short story. In the background emerges a picture of old Hollywood in the Roaring cutthroat and greedy yet visionary and progressive. And while The Jazz Singer represented the future in many ways, it also dredged up the worst of the past, including Jolson’s use of blackface, common at the time.
At once a tale of the Judaizing of American culture and an acknowledgment of the challenges to come, Only in America is a glistening examination of a man at the center of a watershed moment in the arts.
Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Thanks to his immense talent and his knack for assimilating into new environments, by the time he reached his twenties he was the most famous and highly paid entertainer in America, making almost $5,000 a week at a time when the average American made $800 a year. Jolson’s public adoration and widespread acceptance as a star marked the beginning of an enriching cultural transformation, a moment when the American mind opened up to ethnic and racial differences, widening the gap of acceptability. And yet Jolson himself, despite being ferociously ambitious and gigantically talented, was crippled by insecurity, often nervous to the point of collapse, prisoner to his many vices.
Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content : The Jazz Singer is all about Jews, Orthodox and otherwise. Bernstein expounds on the making of The Jazz Singer, what the film meant then and now, introducing the many individuals involved in its production, including Samson Raphaelson, a young Jewish writer whose short story was the basis for the movie; the four Warner brothers, who made a fortune off it; and George Jessel, Jolson’s rival and the star of Raphaelson's stage adaptation of his short story. In the background emerges a picture of old Hollywood in the Roaring cutthroat and greedy yet visionary and progressive. And while The Jazz Singer represented the future in many ways, it also dredged up the worst of the past, including Jolson’s use of blackface, common at the time.
At once a tale of the Judaizing of American culture and an acknowledgment of the challenges to come, Only in America is a glistening examination of a man at the center of a watershed moment in the arts.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published October 8, 2024
8 people are currently reading
2162 people want to read
About the author
Richard Bernstein
47 books30 followersRichard Paul Bernstein was an American journalist, columnist, and author. He wrote the Letter from America column for the International Herald Tribune. He was a book critic at The New York Times and a foreign correspondent for both Time magazine and The New York Times in Europe and Asia.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 20, 2024
I've seen The Jazz Singer, and while I understand its historical significance....personally, I found it to be boring. I didn't realize until reading this book just how many times The Jazz Singer has been remade( Hollywood being out of ideas isn't new). In case you don't know, The Jazz Singer ( 1927) is considered the first "talkie." It's not actually, but we won't get into that right now. The Jazz Singer was a blockbuster before that word existed. Tickets were selling for $5 (which is $90 in today's money). The average worker was making 32 cents an hour or under $1000 a year. So this movie was making a major bank approximately 2.5 million dollars today.
Al Jolson was the star of that movie and a huge star in his day. Today, he's mostly forgotten, but you can't comprehend how famous this man was in his lifetime. The reason he's not well known today is because his act aged like milk left in the car for hours on 100° day. Google Al Jolson, and you will see lots of Blackface. Jolson was a white Jewish man, but his bread and butter were made impersonating Black people. That's obviously not a popular thing today(unless you're white and it's Halloween). I was surprised to read, though, that in his day, he was very popular in the Black community, not just as a performer but as a person. He may have made a mockery of Black people on stage, but off stage, he was into Black Civil Rights.
Only in America is not only a biography of Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, but it's also a look at how the Jewish community shaped Hollywood in its early days. Without Black people and Jewish people, the entertainment world wouldn't exist. I usually end my positive reviews by saying I plan on watching or listening to more from the person in question...in this case, I'm gonna pass. I watched some YouTube clips of his performances, and I think it's best to leave them in the past.
I do, however, recommend this book!
Al Jolson was the star of that movie and a huge star in his day. Today, he's mostly forgotten, but you can't comprehend how famous this man was in his lifetime. The reason he's not well known today is because his act aged like milk left in the car for hours on 100° day. Google Al Jolson, and you will see lots of Blackface. Jolson was a white Jewish man, but his bread and butter were made impersonating Black people. That's obviously not a popular thing today(unless you're white and it's Halloween). I was surprised to read, though, that in his day, he was very popular in the Black community, not just as a performer but as a person. He may have made a mockery of Black people on stage, but off stage, he was into Black Civil Rights.
Only in America is not only a biography of Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, but it's also a look at how the Jewish community shaped Hollywood in its early days. Without Black people and Jewish people, the entertainment world wouldn't exist. I usually end my positive reviews by saying I plan on watching or listening to more from the person in question...in this case, I'm gonna pass. I watched some YouTube clips of his performances, and I think it's best to leave them in the past.
I do, however, recommend this book!
October 27, 2024
Have you ever entered a book giveaway, forgot that you entered it, won, missed the notification that you had won, and then a book shows up in the mail and you have no idea who sent it to you or why, until you remember that giveaway you entered long ago? Me neither, at least until now. This book arrived recently, and since I eventually realized I was the one who requested it, I figured I owed it to the publisher to give it my prompt attention and a review.
It’s been decades since the last Al Jolson biography was published - understandably, since his legacy has become a lot more complicated and controversial. The first thing, and maybe only thing, that anyone thinks about Jolson today is his performances in blackface. They might know his The Jazz Singer as the answer to a trivia question about the first feature-length talkie, but little about his performance or the plot. So while other legends of his time, like Babe Ruth, or Charlie Chaplin, or Harry Houdini, remain famous today, Jolson “has faded considerably from the public consciousness,” Bernstein writes, “his style outmoded, some features of it retrograde, cringeworthy.”
So why a new book about Jolson, and why now? There are biographical elements to the book, but this is not a biography. There is context and criticism about the use of blackface, but this is not a dissertation about the practice. Jolson’s performances are chronicled, but this is not a study of his career. Instead, Bernstein zeroes in on Jolson’s Jewishness, the Jewish themes of The Jazz Singer, and how “only in America” could the son of poor ethnic immigrants have achieved his level of success.
In the preface and the acknowledgements, Bernstein discusses his own father, Herbert, an impoverished Russian Jew who escaped to America, fought bitterly with his father in disagreement about whether to live a traditional Jewish lifestyle, and was burdened by guilt after his death for not living up to his expectations. Herbert Bernstein’s story, then, sounds very similar to the story of The Jazz Singer’s Jakie Rabinowitz, or of Al Jolson himself.
So Bernstein almost seems to be using Jolson as an avatar in telling his own father’s story, or the story of so many other oppressed Jews of the era who immigrated to this country, forged their own path and achieved success in a way that could happen “only in America.”
While large swaths of Jolson’s life and career are skimmed over, Bernstein gives the most thorough treatment to Jolson’s early years. While Jolson’s rebelliousness and autonomy at an extremely young age is shocking to us today (he and his brother began hustling for jobs in the theater as mere children, and he even ran away to New York to chase his dreams at the age of 12!), Bernstein notes that other sons of Jewish immigrants at the time, like George Burns and Groucho Marx, did very much the same thing. The book frequently invokes Jolson’s Jewish contemporaries, like Burns and Marx and those who are lesser-known today like George Jessel and Eddie Cantor, to illustrate that Jolson was a “type” and his story not necessarily unique.
But his talent and fame were. Jolson ultimately became the biggest star of his era, though Bernstein can’t help but wonder, if we watch his performances and judge him by today’s standards, “he's certainly good, but is he that good?” He acknowledges that Jolson comes across as “a talented amateur” on screen, but his greatest success came on the stage. So in some ways, you just had to be there.
Lest it go unnoticed that the book’s subtitle is “Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer” (emphasis added), the book’s central focus is only partly on Jolson himself, but also on his most famous work. Bernstein provides a detailed history of the story’s conception - inspired partly by Jolson’s own story - its creation, stage production and success long before Jolson became attached to the filmed version. Up to that point, Jolson was known for light entertainment, jokes and songs, but The Jazz Singer was a serious story with echoes of his own upbringing, of Bernstein’s father’s, and of so many others’.
So Bernstein is far more interested in the story and context of The Jazz Singer, and its themes of Jewishness and assimilation, than in its status as a talkie or its place in film history. The film’s final scene may be its most famous - and infamous - featuring Jolson performing “Mammy” in blackface. So Bernstein is forced to confront that issue. He certainly doesn’t excuse it, though he seems to contort himself a bit in defending why it’s still okay to write a book about Jolson in spite of it. To his credit, he doesn’t wave it away as simply something that seemed okay at the time but isn’t today. He attempts to frame it within the same context as the rest of the book: adopting what was then a trope of white entertainers was a way for Jewish performers to assimilate and be accepted by gentile audiences, he argues. It was a way for oppressed Jews to show solidarity with oppressed Blacks. And nostalgic Southern songs, performed in blackface, he portrays as a stand-in for Jews’ own songs, traditions and memories. It remains unclear if Bernstein’s arguments will convince everyone that a book about Jolson in this day and age is worth their time and attention.
After a couple of very quick chapters that cover Jolson’s entire post-Jazz Singer career, his marriages, and his death, Bernstein returns to The Jazz Singer in the final chapter, in order to consider its numerous remakes, and their shifts in tone and focus from the original. So there's little about Jolson himself by this point, as Bernstein tackles broader themes (and, as a presidential history fan, I had to cringe at one mention of the Johnson-Reed Act restricting immigration, passed “during the presidency of Warren G. Harding” in 1924 - long after Harding was dead.)
So Bernstein packs a lot into a very short (just over 200 pages) book. I would have liked a much longer and more detailed narrative, with more of Jolson’s biography, more about the nascent film industry he worked in and how he influenced its development, in addition to the broader sociological study that is Bernstein’s main emphasis here. But the book’s narrow focus and quick read time evokes the entertainers’ old phrase, “always leave them wanting more.” Jolson himself couldn’t have said it better.
Thanks to publisher Knopf for the book, and sorry I forgot I entered the giveaway!
It’s been decades since the last Al Jolson biography was published - understandably, since his legacy has become a lot more complicated and controversial. The first thing, and maybe only thing, that anyone thinks about Jolson today is his performances in blackface. They might know his The Jazz Singer as the answer to a trivia question about the first feature-length talkie, but little about his performance or the plot. So while other legends of his time, like Babe Ruth, or Charlie Chaplin, or Harry Houdini, remain famous today, Jolson “has faded considerably from the public consciousness,” Bernstein writes, “his style outmoded, some features of it retrograde, cringeworthy.”
So why a new book about Jolson, and why now? There are biographical elements to the book, but this is not a biography. There is context and criticism about the use of blackface, but this is not a dissertation about the practice. Jolson’s performances are chronicled, but this is not a study of his career. Instead, Bernstein zeroes in on Jolson’s Jewishness, the Jewish themes of The Jazz Singer, and how “only in America” could the son of poor ethnic immigrants have achieved his level of success.
In the preface and the acknowledgements, Bernstein discusses his own father, Herbert, an impoverished Russian Jew who escaped to America, fought bitterly with his father in disagreement about whether to live a traditional Jewish lifestyle, and was burdened by guilt after his death for not living up to his expectations. Herbert Bernstein’s story, then, sounds very similar to the story of The Jazz Singer’s Jakie Rabinowitz, or of Al Jolson himself.
So Bernstein almost seems to be using Jolson as an avatar in telling his own father’s story, or the story of so many other oppressed Jews of the era who immigrated to this country, forged their own path and achieved success in a way that could happen “only in America.”
While large swaths of Jolson’s life and career are skimmed over, Bernstein gives the most thorough treatment to Jolson’s early years. While Jolson’s rebelliousness and autonomy at an extremely young age is shocking to us today (he and his brother began hustling for jobs in the theater as mere children, and he even ran away to New York to chase his dreams at the age of 12!), Bernstein notes that other sons of Jewish immigrants at the time, like George Burns and Groucho Marx, did very much the same thing. The book frequently invokes Jolson’s Jewish contemporaries, like Burns and Marx and those who are lesser-known today like George Jessel and Eddie Cantor, to illustrate that Jolson was a “type” and his story not necessarily unique.
But his talent and fame were. Jolson ultimately became the biggest star of his era, though Bernstein can’t help but wonder, if we watch his performances and judge him by today’s standards, “he's certainly good, but is he that good?” He acknowledges that Jolson comes across as “a talented amateur” on screen, but his greatest success came on the stage. So in some ways, you just had to be there.
Lest it go unnoticed that the book’s subtitle is “Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer” (emphasis added), the book’s central focus is only partly on Jolson himself, but also on his most famous work. Bernstein provides a detailed history of the story’s conception - inspired partly by Jolson’s own story - its creation, stage production and success long before Jolson became attached to the filmed version. Up to that point, Jolson was known for light entertainment, jokes and songs, but The Jazz Singer was a serious story with echoes of his own upbringing, of Bernstein’s father’s, and of so many others’.
So Bernstein is far more interested in the story and context of The Jazz Singer, and its themes of Jewishness and assimilation, than in its status as a talkie or its place in film history. The film’s final scene may be its most famous - and infamous - featuring Jolson performing “Mammy” in blackface. So Bernstein is forced to confront that issue. He certainly doesn’t excuse it, though he seems to contort himself a bit in defending why it’s still okay to write a book about Jolson in spite of it. To his credit, he doesn’t wave it away as simply something that seemed okay at the time but isn’t today. He attempts to frame it within the same context as the rest of the book: adopting what was then a trope of white entertainers was a way for Jewish performers to assimilate and be accepted by gentile audiences, he argues. It was a way for oppressed Jews to show solidarity with oppressed Blacks. And nostalgic Southern songs, performed in blackface, he portrays as a stand-in for Jews’ own songs, traditions and memories. It remains unclear if Bernstein’s arguments will convince everyone that a book about Jolson in this day and age is worth their time and attention.
After a couple of very quick chapters that cover Jolson’s entire post-Jazz Singer career, his marriages, and his death, Bernstein returns to The Jazz Singer in the final chapter, in order to consider its numerous remakes, and their shifts in tone and focus from the original. So there's little about Jolson himself by this point, as Bernstein tackles broader themes (and, as a presidential history fan, I had to cringe at one mention of the Johnson-Reed Act restricting immigration, passed “during the presidency of Warren G. Harding” in 1924 - long after Harding was dead.)
So Bernstein packs a lot into a very short (just over 200 pages) book. I would have liked a much longer and more detailed narrative, with more of Jolson’s biography, more about the nascent film industry he worked in and how he influenced its development, in addition to the broader sociological study that is Bernstein’s main emphasis here. But the book’s narrow focus and quick read time evokes the entertainers’ old phrase, “always leave them wanting more.” Jolson himself couldn’t have said it better.
Thanks to publisher Knopf for the book, and sorry I forgot I entered the giveaway!
February 9, 2025
I'll admit I grumbled a little to myself about the price (over $30 US after brutal Milwaukee sales tax), not least because I am at present a jobless bum (much like "de bums vat sing dem ragstime songs", as Al's old man Moshe would say), but it only took the first chapter for me to vindicate myself, saying, It was worth every red sumbitchin' cent.
This is not a "life" of Al Jolson, of which there are a few only... and of questionable worth. It's just a short work the purpose of which is to answer, more or less, the very question many of us ask ourselves upon seeing videos of Al's performances for the first time. I can't express it any better than the author does himself, starting on page 57:
What was it that made him so successful? Watching footage of him today - and there are plenty of videos on YouTube - he's certainly good, but is he that good? Of course, the fact that he mostly performed in blackface already makes him seem like a historical curiosity, an artifact of a discredited era rather than a cultural monument. Others from his era, like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin ... seem somehow to have left a more permanent legacy. Some of the songs that were among Jolson's biggest hits - "Swanee," "My Mammy," "Toot Toot Tootsie," and "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody" - seem corny, and, in the case of "Mammy," schmaltzy by today's standards... And yet, from the early 1910s to the late 1940s, there was nobody more beloved, more in demand, more celebrated, bigger than Al Jolson."
And he does answer that question here, to the extent that it can be. Of course, we allow for the same mystique that solves the riddle of how, for example, Bob Dylan was so successful over a span of decades in spite of having the voice of a narcotized mule.
Bernstein writes critically and sensibly, without relying on any kind of banal sympathies he might well have done on behalf of his subject's shared "Yiddishkeit". His predilection for the word "fraught" is quickly forgiven (for we all have our pet words), and the only glaring mistake on the editorial side (to be found on page 32) ain't no big deal.
This is not a "life" of Al Jolson, of which there are a few only... and of questionable worth. It's just a short work the purpose of which is to answer, more or less, the very question many of us ask ourselves upon seeing videos of Al's performances for the first time. I can't express it any better than the author does himself, starting on page 57:
What was it that made him so successful? Watching footage of him today - and there are plenty of videos on YouTube - he's certainly good, but is he that good? Of course, the fact that he mostly performed in blackface already makes him seem like a historical curiosity, an artifact of a discredited era rather than a cultural monument. Others from his era, like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin ... seem somehow to have left a more permanent legacy. Some of the songs that were among Jolson's biggest hits - "Swanee," "My Mammy," "Toot Toot Tootsie," and "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody" - seem corny, and, in the case of "Mammy," schmaltzy by today's standards... And yet, from the early 1910s to the late 1940s, there was nobody more beloved, more in demand, more celebrated, bigger than Al Jolson."
And he does answer that question here, to the extent that it can be. Of course, we allow for the same mystique that solves the riddle of how, for example, Bob Dylan was so successful over a span of decades in spite of having the voice of a narcotized mule.
Bernstein writes critically and sensibly, without relying on any kind of banal sympathies he might well have done on behalf of his subject's shared "Yiddishkeit". His predilection for the word "fraught" is quickly forgiven (for we all have our pet words), and the only glaring mistake on the editorial side (to be found on page 32) ain't no big deal.
October 28, 2024
This book is more of a 3.5 than 4 stars but I am feeling generous because it better than 3 stars. This is in essence two different books intertwined. Neither story could exist on it's own. Al Jolson was one of the biggest stats of the first half of the 20th century but would dwell in obscurity if it was for The Jazz Singer. The Jazz Singer exists only because there was an Al Jolson. The biography portion is life lived lite, all sizzle, little steak. Hits all the high points but nothing in depth or riveting. The discussion of the movie is entirely the opposite. It's cultural significance is explored to the fullest as well as its impact on society as a whole.
January 22, 2025
Not long ago, I found myself watching the 1927 film “The Jazz Singer” online. I don’t recall why I was watching, but I do recall my surprise at finding the film quite compelling, something I didn’t expect. After all, today we remember it mainly for two things—its historic significance as the first full-length feature talkie, and the use of blackface by Al Jolson, its star. Yet it’s far more than the sum of these parts; its story is a quintessentially American story that was rooted in the still-recent immigrant experiences of the era and has resonance today.
Richard Bernstein has written the book I wanted to read after watching the film. Only in America: Al Jolson and the Jazz Singer, dives into this important artifact and considers all aspects of the film with insight and sensitivity. Bernstein details the extraordinary rise of Al Jolson, born in a shtetl in 1886 in the Russian Empire, who became America’s most celebrated entertainer. He puts Jolson in the context of the other Jewish entertainers and entrepreneurs who revolutionized the theatrical and film industries. And he makes clear that the story of “The Jazz Singer,” based on a play that was loosely inspired by Jolson’s own life story, is a story that reflects the journeys of many immigrants, especially Jewish ones, who had to choose between the sea of opportunities that existed in America and adhering to the traditions of their faith. Unlike most Hollywood films, it films inside real temples and features beautifully sung Jewish prayers.
Jolson may be largely forgotten by the public today, but until his death in 1950 he was a beloved figure. He got his start in vaudeville as a singer and comic, developing an expressive, boisterous style that audiences loved. Bernstein addresses his use of blackface in the context of the entertainment standards of the time—of course minstrel shows were racist, but they were so popular that even Black entertainers used it to perform. Jolson himself was popular with Black audiences, and he clearly was sympathetic to their plight as second-class citizens. While none of this excuses the use of blackface, it helped me understand the period.
It’s clear from this book that Jolson was a larger-than-life public figure but a very human and fallible man. He worked relentlessly but frustrated his theatrical producers with erratic and unpredictable performances. He failed at marriage multiple times, losing interest as soon as he’d “won” the girl (and she was always a very young woman, even in his last marriage). Yet his performance in “The Jazz Singer” stands up—not for brilliant acting, but for showing Jolson as both charismatic and conflicted. It���s a convincing story of the battle between the old and the new and is still worthy of our attention. Bernstein’s book is an excellent source for anyone interested in exploring the world behind “The Jazz Singer” and why it still matters to us today.
Richard Bernstein has written the book I wanted to read after watching the film. Only in America: Al Jolson and the Jazz Singer, dives into this important artifact and considers all aspects of the film with insight and sensitivity. Bernstein details the extraordinary rise of Al Jolson, born in a shtetl in 1886 in the Russian Empire, who became America’s most celebrated entertainer. He puts Jolson in the context of the other Jewish entertainers and entrepreneurs who revolutionized the theatrical and film industries. And he makes clear that the story of “The Jazz Singer,” based on a play that was loosely inspired by Jolson’s own life story, is a story that reflects the journeys of many immigrants, especially Jewish ones, who had to choose between the sea of opportunities that existed in America and adhering to the traditions of their faith. Unlike most Hollywood films, it films inside real temples and features beautifully sung Jewish prayers.
Jolson may be largely forgotten by the public today, but until his death in 1950 he was a beloved figure. He got his start in vaudeville as a singer and comic, developing an expressive, boisterous style that audiences loved. Bernstein addresses his use of blackface in the context of the entertainment standards of the time—of course minstrel shows were racist, but they were so popular that even Black entertainers used it to perform. Jolson himself was popular with Black audiences, and he clearly was sympathetic to their plight as second-class citizens. While none of this excuses the use of blackface, it helped me understand the period.
It’s clear from this book that Jolson was a larger-than-life public figure but a very human and fallible man. He worked relentlessly but frustrated his theatrical producers with erratic and unpredictable performances. He failed at marriage multiple times, losing interest as soon as he’d “won” the girl (and she was always a very young woman, even in his last marriage). Yet his performance in “The Jazz Singer” stands up—not for brilliant acting, but for showing Jolson as both charismatic and conflicted. It���s a convincing story of the battle between the old and the new and is still worthy of our attention. Bernstein’s book is an excellent source for anyone interested in exploring the world behind “The Jazz Singer” and why it still matters to us today.
January 25, 2026
There are a lot topics discussed here. You have the Al Jolson story. You have the history of Jewish people in America. There is the old minstrel show and blackface controversies.
The author has a theory on how Jewish entertainers from the Northeast of the US have such a happy image of antebellum South. Stephen Foster was never south of Pennsylvania. Al Jolson had no Southern line. Yet they made songs and movies about the South.
The author has theories of why blackface persisted. There is no record of Jolson being this big racist. There are pictures of Jolson with a black band (in blackface). So why would an oppressed Jewish person do blackface? There are many attempts at answers.
Jolson lives long enough to be passé. Yet the Jazz Singer is remade several times. The tale of Jewish assimilation persists while Jolson is fading from view.
A good book about a tough subject. The author had a lot of thoughts on. Some big topics.
The author has a theory on how Jewish entertainers from the Northeast of the US have such a happy image of antebellum South. Stephen Foster was never south of Pennsylvania. Al Jolson had no Southern line. Yet they made songs and movies about the South.
The author has theories of why blackface persisted. There is no record of Jolson being this big racist. There are pictures of Jolson with a black band (in blackface). So why would an oppressed Jewish person do blackface? There are many attempts at answers.
Jolson lives long enough to be passé. Yet the Jazz Singer is remade several times. The tale of Jewish assimilation persists while Jolson is fading from view.
A good book about a tough subject. The author had a lot of thoughts on. Some big topics.
January 4, 2025
I thoroughly this biography. I knew VERY little about him but this was a great educational book about his life.
I won this in a giveaway a while ago and I'm glad I finally read it.
I won this in a giveaway a while ago and I'm glad I finally read it.
December 27, 2024
This is an overly scholarly book about Al Jolson and his influence in American arts and culture. The sections that deal in detail about the various iterations of The Jazz Singer are particularly fascinating. I recommend the book with the caveat that skimming will make it better.
November 10, 2025
I get the impregnate the author doesn't like Jolson.As a person he might right,but as an entertainer he is totally wrong.
For example he claims that Jolsons singing of various songs seems outraged now.How absurd.He then compared Jolson unfavourably to the coolness and alertness of popular. music fashion.There is no logic to what he writes.
He says that there are under 500 members of the IJS.Just how is this relevant? He spends page after page discussing blackface.He is right to mention it but to spend pages on it is a bore.
He acknowledged The success of The Jolson Story in a rather curmudgey manner only giving him credit for entertaining the troops in WW2 and Korea.
This is not really a biography as so many things are left out.
I am sure that Jolsons memory will survive the trafficking it received here.
For example he claims that Jolsons singing of various songs seems outraged now.How absurd.He then compared Jolson unfavourably to the coolness and alertness of popular. music fashion.There is no logic to what he writes.
He says that there are under 500 members of the IJS.Just how is this relevant? He spends page after page discussing blackface.He is right to mention it but to spend pages on it is a bore.
He acknowledged The success of The Jolson Story in a rather curmudgey manner only giving him credit for entertaining the troops in WW2 and Korea.
This is not really a biography as so many things are left out.
I am sure that Jolsons memory will survive the trafficking it received here.
November 27, 2024
Although Al Jolson was once one of America’s popular performers, his star has diminished. That’s partly due to the fact that he frequently performed in blackface (using burned cork or makeup to color his skin) – something frowned upon in contemporary times – and the fact that his appeal was best appreciated live where his overly dramatic gestures could reach the last row of the theater. Richard Bernstein’s biography of Jolson – “Only in America: Al Jolson and ‘The Jazz Singer’”(Alfred A. Knopf) – offers not only information about Jolson’s life, but about the times that created him.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
January 4, 2025
In addition to the immigrant-to-celebrity American Dream, the discussion of blackface is particularly interesting and insightful regarding racism and antiSemitism.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews