so there's no Al Jolson thread?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUjj-PbC5Ec

sweetness.

Is trying to separate Jolson's brilliance (particularly wrt things like Jazz Singer) from his blackfacing, most iconic location of this kind of racism (part. as a Jew vis-a-vis Rogan) like trying to separate Hitler killing Jews from Hitler painting paintings? Cause I love Jolson completely and without irony in the first form, even as the second gives me discomfort.

Search: "Blue Skies," "Toot Toot Tootsie," "Back in Your Own Backyard..." basically the entire Jazz Singer album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28hk97-vZdQ

I love that short so much. (God. I'm a racist, aren't I?)

Is trying to separate Jolson's brilliance (particularly wrt things like Jazz Singer) from his blackfacing, most iconic location of this kind of racism (part. as a Jew vis-a-vis Rogan) like trying to separate Hitler killing Jews from Hitler painting paintings?

oh, for fuck's sake. minstrelsy isn't that bad.

I wasn't saying minstrelsy is morally equivalent to genocide.

Artur Knight's Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film has a fantastic chapter on Jolson's use of blackface and black musical tropes in his hopefully no long obscure Hollywood musicals.

Arthur Knight, that is

have you ever seen Hallelujah I'm a Bum? Neo-socialist neo-operetta!

I hadn't! but now I'm all psyched. Onto Netflix it goes.

Saw HIAB at the Film Forum recently, along with some Vitaphone shorts. Whole thing was amazing.

Among one of the many amazing things was that the score of HIAB was by Rodgers and Hart.

Teenage Jolson impersonating in the '70s:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/05/physical-evidence.html

so tired of all the brain-scratching about blackface. dude was an amazing stylist.

I come to this thread to recommend the book The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930, by Scott Eyman.

fine, now go away.

xpost Yeah that's a great book. Thanx for bringing it up here, jrb.

The Jolson musicals are pretty easy to acquire now via Warner Archive. In another fantastic book about the era, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, Richard Barrios rips mercilessly on The Singing Fool, Jolson's first feature after The Jazz Singer. Dramatically, yeah, it's the pits. But A LOT of it is just Jolson performing so...well, how bad is that?

rewatched Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, where Al is king of the Central Park tramps... songs by Rodgers & Hart, and this one's neat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNFSftTwXwM