Word: jolson
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Larry Parks, 60, journeyman film actor who became a celebrated casualty of McCarthy-era antiCommunism; of a heart attack; in Studio City, Calif. A B-movie player in the early 1940s, Parks' fortunes rose sharply after his brilliant performance as Singer Al Jolson in the 1946 hit The Jolson Story, which earned Columbia Pictures more than $8 million and brought him several more starring roles. But his career was shattered in 1951 when he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating Communist influence in Hollywood. Parks became the first of dozens of actors...
...asked, "What movie musical even worth noting has been produced under any auspices except Hollywood's?" There was no answer. There never has been. American movies learned to sing at the same moment they learned to talk: the first sound movie, The Jazz Singer, in 1927 starring Al Jolson, was a musical and a smash...
Thank Your Lucky Stars, with Bogart, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, at 8 p.n.: and Go Into Your Dance, with Helen Morgan, Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson, at 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday...
Sadly, the book does not reflect the enormous contribution that foreigners have made to the development of music. Only two of the 36 songs--"Frere Jacques" and "Au Clair de la Lune"--were not written by Americans. The book, for example, includes the work of Al Jolson ("California Here I Come") but ignores that of Wolfgang Mozart ("Symphony No. 39 in E flat," "The Marriage of Figaro"). Nowhere in the songbook is the music of Ludwig van Beethoven ("The Fifth Symphony," "Missa Solemnis"), another talented foreigner. In fairness to editor Michael Scheff, it must be noted that Beethoven disliked...
...After Al Jolson got through with it, Gershwin could stop plugging other people's songs. His own style-spirited, harmonically rich, melodically simple but full of pungent surprises-was crystalized in a string of subsequent hit songs (Somebody Loves Me, Stairway to Paradise, The Man I Love) and Broadway musicals (Lady, Be Good!, Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, Girl Crazy, Of Thee I Sing). By his late 20s, when Gershwin sought (unsuccessfully) to take some composing lessons from Maurice Ravel, the popular question was why he would want to be an imitation Ravel when he was already...