Distributor:
Columbia Entertainment Jolson Story (1946 | 128 minutes | No Extras)
Jolson Sings Again (1949 | 96 minutes | No Extras)
With Larry Parks as Al Jolson Extras: No
One of the best musical biopics of the 1940’s was
1946’s The Jolson Story and Columbia
have now released this stirring
story in a double bill with its
1949 reprise Jolson Sings Again.
Shooting Larry Parks to stardom The
Jolson Story told the life
story of the legendary Al Jolson,
growing up as Asa Yoelson son to
a Cantor of a Washington
Synagogue, dreaming of a life on
stage young Asa become Al Jolson
a star of Broadway
“Blackface” musicals before
going down in history as the
first person to talk in a motion
picture (1927’s The Jazz
Singer with Jolson’s cry of
“You Ain’t Seen Nothing
Yet”).
Jolson Sings Again
picks up the story with Jolson going through a painful divorce that
sends him into a kind of breakdown before finding new meaning in life
entertaining the troops during World War II.
Both of these movies are classic Hollywood, shot
in glorious Technicolor on a high budget (The Jolson Story budget
eventually topped $2.5 million – a huge amount for the 1940’s and
Larry Parks is just great as Jolson (Jolson incidentally voiced all of
the songs in the movies, songs which include almost all of the Jolson
standards such as Sonny Boy, Toot-Toot-Tootsie, Swanee, You Made Me Love
You, et al).
Despite some whitewashing of some of the more dodgy aspects
of Jolson’s life (as all biopics did back then) these are still great
feelgood flicks and for any fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood a must
for the collection, only downside is the complete lack of extras but the
two movies on a single disc goes someway to making up for that.
