So well said!!! 😊😊

Do you mean JOLSON? Please give my love to daughter Lucy, and grandchildren Max and Jemima in Melbourne. Regards from England, February, 2024.

Yep.

As an extra. A free lunch too!

As an extra. A free lunch too!

As an extra. A free lunch too!

As an extra. A free lunch too!

As an extra. A free lunch too!

Too that may explain the popularity of Ethel Merman, whose voice I find too strident.

@@JudgeJulieLit: Loved Jolson, Merman always annoyed me. Not just because of her singing voice but because her overall persona, (and speaking voice, too) seemed crass to me.

J

He also sang with just 1 lung in his later career. Amazing!

Tony Bennett . " I will show you how they did it in old days.." He belted it out.. I saw him twice in a Theater built 1928 .Ohio..

He did respect black entertainers tremendously, as did Eddie Cantor, who also performed in blackface early in his career. Both men loathed racism.

Yeah, there are real good reasons this is considered offensive in this day and age... but I don't see the faintest sign Al meant any harm with it. He was a product of the times, working with the culture we had. We have to move on from that, but there's no sense in punishing him for it.

Jolson wore blk face 2 expose WHT audiences 2 blk music. He also insisted on blk musicians being hired during his performances. IMO as a WHT person, blk culture and history is all part of American History.

I suspect I do. The big sanctimonious American flag and the blackface explain it all.

@@NB-gu9rsso….you hate America and have zero understanding of our cultural history. I’m assuming you’ve been handed your worldview by people who know better but are using you as a useful idiot. I’m also assuming your age as well. I could be wrong. It’s possible that you actually know better but resentment, atheism and ideology have swept you along to their inevitable destination. America must be a sanctimonious fraud and the only explanation for Jolson’s popularity has got to be racism. If these things are NOT the case I imagine things looking a little bleak for you. If you are an American I’d say you are an ungratefully ignorant malcontent who is utterly out of his depth when discussing culture. I feel comfortable describing you as a person on the internet attempting to put forward an opinion on music, human nature, and sociological motivations for taste. You are attempting to float a biting social critique, a musical and historical hot take and an indictment of both Jolson and the OP. I’m going to call it L’s all down the line. Your comment did nothing but shine a floodlight on all the ways you are wholly unqualified and laughably inadequate to eavesdrop on a conversation like the one you have attempted here. That you intended your…..sentences….as ….rhetorical fisticuffs …hahaha…well, it’s just funny. Out here taking shots at the hegemony like a good little pipe wrench eh? Haha…God bless the United States, Al Jolson and you. I’ll pray for you. Lil’ scrapper…haha. Look out commenters! We got a freedom fighter in here exposing all the reeeeeeesiasts and boogats!

Is it though….

"Listen you ain't heard nothing yet folks"

My experience…exactly…❤️

Yes I get you.

he was

People complained about "newfangled" jazz back then too, and how it wasn't "real music." Quite a lot, actually. Read a damn book someday, Jimbo, and maybe you'll start to notice how much history repeats itself.

Sex is NOT "dirty"! Now go wash out your mouth with Fels Naptha!

Perfectly put Jack!

@@margaretthomas8899 So glad. Thanks! I'll always defend Mr. Jolson from these unfair--and mostly uninformed--attacks!

@@jackbuckley7816 Exaclty jack I can take Jolie with or without Blackface, and Larry Parks, It is the Great Entertainment value I get out of it nothing else. YES times were different, but that does not mean they were all bad.There should be more Jolie. There is a big chance Movies of his will be out on Blu ray with extras. Go to Criterion to get the Jolson Story on Blu Ray and/ or the several Jolson fcebook sites for links

Thank you for your kind words about Al Jolson!! I first heard him in the Jolson Story when I was around 11 years old......I'm 67 now and have loved him ever since!!

Priceless??

Did you know that Frawley introduced the song, My Manny

He did black face wtf

@@dichheng344He entertained American troops in three wars and was one of the first to stand up for rights for blacks.

@@dichheng344 yes, and?

@@dichheng344 it wasn't the mock black people it was to bring black songs and culture of the black people to an extremely segregated society would not have ever known about it otherwise. You can never reply today's standards to history. It's art not anything political.

Ask some black people how they perceive it hmmmmm

I wasn't yet born when Mr. Jolson passed away.

@@Juliaflo Me neither, not for another 52 years. I own a bunch of his Columbia records from the teens and twenties, great music.

"Listen you ain't heard nothing yet folks"

Jerry Lewis tried also but-- failed...

So did Connie Francis .

He was old there too ! LOL.

More like slave master…

Liberals, no doubt.

@@jaelge cuz of black face obviously. I don't think conservatives are cool with that either, at least i hope not.

@@jaelge personally, i think people just aren’t generally okay with blackface no matter how they lean politically.

@@ibrahimalee23: I don't see anything wrong with it. It´s not being used to mock or deride Blacks but is paying homage. Im Italian on my father´s side and Irish/German/Indian on my mother´s side. Am I supposed to be offended when I see a pizza box with the stereotypical Italian w/ the big nose and mustache or Italians being depicted as mobsters? Am I supposed be outraged when I see a cowboy and Indian movie or a sport team´s name paying homage to the American Indian? Or Irish being depicted as drunken gingers? This whole racial issue is a bunch of bullshit fabricated by Marxist Liberals and does nothing but divide people.

@@jaelge it's literally made to mock blacks, not pay homage. Where did you get that info from? The literal reason for black face was to play into the racist stereotypes associated with Black Americans. Black Americans (and people in general) are allowed to be offended by black face if they choose too.

Did he douse himself in shoe polish first?

@@thejollyrancher6713: Seriously, STFU.

Ignore that dickhead, Wayne.

Not really. Actually he didn't like the way Jolson sang and called him a "Coney Island beer singer, not for us". Obviously he cost his company tons and tons of money. Edison had no clue about popular artists! He even hated Caruso!!!! ("To much tremolo, no good")! The genius wasn't a genius when it came to talent.

Were Jolson's soundtrack songs in the film The Jazz Singer (1927) the first ever video recording of singing?

@@JudgeJulieLit no. Warner brother did a test with Jolson a year before and ordered all the copies to be destroyed so they could promote The Jazz Singer as the “first talkie”. Luckily a tape of “A Plantation Act” was found in tacked in the 90s and you can see it here on KZfaq. So 1926

@@cjc4765 I can only agree with that. Edison was a brilliant inventor, but he saw no talent at all.

you are on NOTICEEEE

@@cameronmorck8510: NOTICE for what???

@@varietyguy shoe polish face!!!! lolololol

Al Jolson was a God when I was growing up. He was celebrated as a great entertainer, great singer and a man who did more to advance the centuries long battle between Jews and Gentiles. He was the first 20th Century Superstar who was loved by Christians as well as Jews. He logged thousands of miles entertaining servicemen during World War II. He was responsible for many black performers finding work through his efforts. Now he is vilified as a racist. Perhaps you can see what a fucked up world we live in when such a great man as Al Jolson is now raked over the coals.

@@varietyguy its white people being upset for black people which in and of it self is offensive im right there with you guy

Seems so unnessesary, he's clearly extremely talanted and doesn't seem to be trying to mock anyone (seems like a serious performance) so why the need to paint his face? What's the point, he surely must have known it could be hurtful to people?

@Tarnell Lol to make himself unique this is minstrel performing

​@@teijaflink2226 it was to add pathos to the song and bring black culture and music to the audience. In a light song like Toot Toot Tootsie he doesn't wear this make-up.

Don't have to be politically correct.. It's art..

@@teijaflink2226 so u can c his eyes n mouth better from the back of the theatre. Like clown makeup but for srs stuff.

William Frawley was the same age for 50 years!! Great character actor!!

He loved black people and their music so much that he participated in a practice that was used to stereotype, belittle, and replace them in American entertainment. Yeah umm, maybe that was his justification, but it's not an excuse. Black face then and now isnt okay. I'm sure Al never asked a single black person how they felt about him impersonating them and singing their songs. He wasn't honoring them. He was replacing them. Why was his voice more valuable than the black people who wrote it? Honoring black people would've been actually giving them a platform to perform as themselves instead of the racist charactures they were relegated to. Don't forget that he was pulling this in an age where black people were barred from the success Al enjoyed because of their skin color. I don't see any respect here. There's no such thing as respectful black face

Fu"cken racist

Its racist

To some everything is racist. The word has been so overused by the left to represent everything they don't agree with. The swear words come from illiterates who haven't got the vocabulary for extended comments. You don't like it, leave and take your filthy mouth with you.

Newman black face goes a long with the root of racism, this isnt an ideology of racism, it just is.

Blackface was just a trend and al Jolson did a lot of stuff for black people we have a lot of bad trends and in 100 years people will look back and call us bad people even though we were just being who we are

ITS NOT TRADITION YOU BUM STFU BRUH LEAVE YOUR LONG PARAGRAPH TRYNA EXPLAIN RACIST PASTTIMES IN THE DRAFTS MY GUY NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE

@@evanbruce9737 - Pardon???

@@evanbruce9737 "Margaret" is a lady, you lout.

Australian Abroriginals were doing that long before white people came to their continent. It was never intended to mock or offend them. Blackface was meant to mock and offend black people. That history can’t be changed to fit your narrative.

@@RapRants They may have well done it before Adam and Eve, or Apes evolved into humans, however you want it? All I know is, because I have seen it with my own eyes, unless my TV set is tuned different to everybody else's in Australia, or something? and I am like talking in the last 12 months, at big sporting events, and likely other big occasions? DREAM TIME AT THE G for our Australian football a fine example. They paint on, some full face, a lot of white, other stripes of it over their faces,on their arms and legs and dance around, sing etc etc, It could be seen as an aboriginal minstrel show mocking white people, I CERTAINLY DON"T. I JUST ACCEPT IT AS THEIR CULTURE, OR A WAY OF CELEBRATION WHATEVER! and I thought that way too when I went to the some Church as the Pastor Nicholis Family in Australia, and experienced him as a minister.There will always be people that won't judge anybody by color, or any other trait about them, and. unless they do something bad, insulting, or intimidating to them,give them the benefit of the doubt, even though they may not understand or even like what they do. What they won't do is be bullied brainwashed into contemporary or mob mass hysteria to protect something of mass interest like the anti old stuff! EVER hear of a guy in Germany in the 1930's, who wanted to change the whole world order, was against this and that because it was not his way etc etc, and got the masses with him, brainwashed, this is what the control all's are doing here, Painting something, fabricating it, Thousands of times worse than it was! TO PROTECT THE CONTEMPORARY HIP POCKET PROFIT MARGIN, and fools who are worried about there contemporary image fall for it! THAT is not doing anything to help anybody!

He also recorded "My Mammy" before Al Jolson.

Stuff the woke.