Al Jolson
3 credits on HibingeTV
American singer and entertainer, born in 1886. One of the biggest stars of the first half of the 20th century, he began in vaudeville and minstrel shows and became a Broadway headliner. He starred in The Jazz Singer (1927), the film that announced the arrival of synchronized sound, and The Singing Fool (1928). His performing style, with its direct address to the camera and the audience, set the template for early talkie musicals. He also performed in blackface throughout his career, a practice central to his act that is now understood as a defining example of its racism.
Acted In
Drama, Musical
A 1929 American pre-Code musical drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring Al Jolson and Davey Lee. Joe Lane (Jolson), a radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that studio manager Arthur Phillips has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine (Marian Nixon). Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison and insists that Katherine divorce him for her and their son's sake. When Joe is released, he visits his son, Little Pal (Lee), at school — but the boy follows him downtown and is struck by a truck, causing paralysis of his legs and loss of his voice. This was a follow-up to The Singing Fool (1928), reuniting Jolson with child star Davey Lee, and was the first film in which Jolson did not appear in blackface.
Drama · Musical
Say It with Songs
1929 - as Joe Lane
Drama, Musical
The Jazz Singer is the film that ended the silent era. It was the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized music and lip-synchronous speech, and its release in 1927 announced that sound had arrived. Al Jolson plays a young man torn between his father's wish that he become a cantor and his own dream of singing on the Broadway stage. Most of the film is silent, with intertitles, but Jolson's songs and a few spoken lines stop the show. The moment he ad-libs, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet," is one of the most famous in cinema history. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.
Drama · Musical · Music
The Jazz Singer
1927 - as Jakie Rabinowitz / Jack Robin
Musical, Drama
The follow-up to The Jazz Singer, and the film that actually proved the talkie was a business. Al Jolson plays a waiter who becomes a singing star, marries a woman who leaves him, and loses himself in grief over his young son. The plot is melodrama, but the film's real draw was Jolson singing, and "Sonny Boy" became one of the first songs from a movie to become a hit record on its own. Where The Jazz Singer was mostly silent with a few sung sequences, The Singing Fool leans harder into synchronized dialogue and music, and it outgrossed its predecessor. Warner Bros. built its early sound strategy on films like this, and Jolson's stage-trained, directly-to-camera performing style set the template for early talkie musicals. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.
Musical · Drama
The Singing Fool
1928 - as Al Stone