Word: jolson
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Manhattan's garishly grand Roxy Theater offered Al Jolson $40,000 a week to appear six times daily on the Roxy stage. Last week he turned it down...
...Chicago, the once adored Vagabond Lover took a flyer at a nightclub comeback, though he didn't call it that ("You can't come back from where you haven't been"). Unlike Oldtimer Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee hadn't learned that his future was in his past. Still looking like a college boy-but of the class of '25, Rudy said: "People have me returning from the zombie dead. I don't look or act 45. I try to keep my stuff up-to-date. Nostalgia doesn't mean much...
...Time" with a short speech, and is followed by Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse, and Pete Smith, and at least one other comical feature. This procession of humor is overpowering: all but ardent Pluto fans are advised to synchronize their entrance to the U.T. with the beginning of "The Jolson Story" and their exit with the end of the "March of Time...
...Again, although there is the usual trumped up battle between the hero's music and his wife, it is less ferocious and more human than in the Gershwin and Porter epics, and ends on a breakup instead of in a clinch. Best of all is the tasteful portrayal of Jolson's mother and cantor father, who are given some dimensions instead of being molded into a minority group comedy type...
Part of the overall effect of intelligence was undoubtedly achieved by restrained script-writers; much of it is due to the fact that an entertainer's life lends itself better to movies than does a composer's. Both "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (Cohan was primarily an entertainer) and now "The Jolson Story" illustrate the point. Where composers are just composers, and neither necessarily nor usually dramatic personalities, entertainers can entertain in biography as well as in person, and their lives generally have something public and spectacular about them...