This blog will be mainly for the Jolsonmania! podcast but I'll also post other things of interest to Jolson fans.
If you are a big fan of the World's Greatest Entertainer you'll likely know of 20th Century Fox's October release of Hollywood Cavalcade and Rose of Washington Square as part of the Alice Faye Collection Volume 2 boxset. Both films from 1939 have Al only in cameo (in Cavalcade he appears only in a recreation of The Jazz Singer (1927) Kol Nidre scene) or supporting roles but its great to see them particularly Rose because he sings many of his biggest hits and the disc is full of extras including the cut Avalon/April Showers medley.
The Faye boxset includes 3 other Fox musicals which are good fun. The most famous is Hello,Frisco,Hello (1943) which introduced the classic standard You'll Never Know.
Its good value at $49.98 for the set though I'm sure it will be available cheaper online. If you are interested only in the Jolson films those can be bought on their own for $19.98 each.
A commentary on Rose might have been the icing on the cake though maybe we are lucky to see it at all. I hope I'm wrong though as you see above it appears the PC brigade meant Fox had to change the cover of Rose from a blackface to whiteface image which doesn't look right. For one thing Al's head looks too big for his body. To me it just looks ridiculous. I mean if you are buying the film its unlikely you will be hung up on the blackface anyway.
Still apart from this a great effort from Fox, now we just need Swanee River (1939) being optimistic I'd love to see it with a documentary all about minstrelsy seen as it should be in the context of its times and with some emphasis on its importance as a precursor of white and black vaudeville. I wonder if anyone would have the courage to make something like that today ?
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