Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, 1843

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface.

Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted,^[1] lazy,^[1] buffoonish,^[2][1] superstitious,^{[citation needed]} happy-go-lucky,^[1] and musical.^{[citation needed]} The minstrel show began with brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form in the next decade. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience.^[3]

By the turn of the 20th century, the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former popularity, having been replaced for the most part by vaudeville. It survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur performances continued until the 1960s in high schools, and local theaters. As African-Americans began to score legal and social victories against racism and to successfully assert political power, minstrelsy lost popularity.

The typical minstrel performance followed a three-act structure. The troupe first danced onto stage then exchanged wisecracks and sang songs. The second part featured a variety of entertainments, including the pun-filled stump speech. The final act consisted of a slapstick musical plantation skit or a send-up of a popular play. Minstrel songs and sketches featured several stock characters, most popularly the slave and the dandy. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy, her counterpart the old darky, the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically black, although the extent of the black influence remains debated. Spirituals (known as jubilees) entered the repertoire in the 1870s, marking the first undeniably black music to be used in minstrelsy.

Blackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American theatrical form. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry, and for several decades it provided the lens through which white America saw black America. On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and broad awareness of what some whites considered significant aspects of black-American culture to be.^[4][5]

Although the minstrel shows were extremely popular, being "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group",^[6] they were also controversial. Racial integrationists decried them as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were "disrespectful" of social norms, portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine the southerners' "peculiar institution".^[7]

History[link]

Early development[link]

Thomas D. Rice from sheet music cover of "Sich a Getting Up Stairs", 1830s

Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604,^[8] the minstrel show as such has later origins. By the late 17th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as "servant" types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief.^[9] Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr'actes in New York theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface "Sambo" character came to supplant the "tall-tale-telling Yankee" and "frontiersman" character-types in popularity,^[10] and white actors such as Charles Mathews, George Washington Dixon, and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. Author Constance Rourke even claimed that Forrest's impression was so good he could fool blacks when he mingled with them in the streets.^[11]

Thomas Dartmouth Rice's successful song-and-dance number, "Jump Jim Crow", brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice's success, The Boston Post wrote, "The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria and Jim Crow."^[12] As early as the 1820s, blackface performers called themselves "Ethiopian delineators";^[13] from then into the early 1840s, unlike the later heyday of minstrelsy, they performed either solo or in small teams.^[14]

Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York's less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway, the Bowery, and Chatham Street.^[15] It also appeared on more respectable stages, most often as an entr'acte.^[15] Upper-class houses at first limited the number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theatre, much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material,^[16] and rowdy audiences eventually prevented the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all.^[17] Typical blackface acts of the period were short burlesques, often with mock Shakespearean titles like "Hamlet the Dainty", "Bad Breath, the Crane of Chowder", "Julius Sneezer", or "Dars-de-Money".^[18]

Meanwhile, at least some whites were interested in black song and dance by actual black performers. Nineteenth-century New York slaves shingle danced for spare change on their days off,^[19] and musicians played what they claimed to be "Negro music" on so-called black instruments like the banjo.^{[citation needed]} The New Orleans Picayune wrote that a singing New Orleans street vendor called Old Corn Meal would bring "a fortune to any man who would start on a professional tour with him".^[20] Rice responded by adding a "Corn Meal" skit to his act. Meanwhile, there had been several attempts at legitimate black stage performance, the most ambitious probably being New York's African Grove theater, founded and operated by free blacks in 1821, with a repertoire drawing heavily on Shakespeare. A rival theater company paid people to "riot" and cause disturbances at the theater, and it was shut down by the police when neighbors complained of the commotion.^[21]

White, working-class Northerners could identify with the characters portrayed in early blackface performances.^[22] This coincided with the rise of groups struggling for workingman's nativism and pro-Southern causes, and faux black performances came to confirm pre-existing racist concepts and to establish new ones. Following a pattern that had been pioneered by Rice, minstrelsy united workers and "class superiors" against a common black enemy, symbolized especially by the character of the black dandy.^[23] In this same period, the class-conscious but racially inclusive rhetoric of "wage slavery" was largely supplanted by a racist one of "white slavery". This suggested that the abuses against northern factory workers were a graver ill than the treatment of black slaves—or by a less class-conscious rhetoric of "productive" versus "unproductive" elements of society.^[24] On the other hand, views on slavery were fairly evenly presented in minstrelsy,^[25] and some songs even suggested the creation of a coalition of working blacks and whites to end the institution.^[26]

Among the appeals and racial stereotypes of early blackface performance were the pleasure of the grotesque and its infantilization of blacks. These allowed—by proxy, and without full identification—childish fun and other low pleasures in an industrializing world where workers were increasingly expected to abandon such things.^[27] Meanwhile, the more respectable could view the vulgar audience itself as a spectacle.

Height[link]

Sheet music cover for "Dandy Jim from Caroline", featuring Dan Emmett (center) and the other Virginia Minstrels, c. 1844

With the Panic of 1837, theater attendance suffered, and concerts were one of the few attractions that could still make money.^{[citation needed]} In 1843, four blackface performers led by Dan Emmett combined to stage just such a concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre, calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels. The minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment was born.^[28] The show had little structure. The four sat in a semicircle, played songs, and traded wisecracks. One gave a stump speech in dialect, and they ended with a lively plantation song. The term minstrel had previously been reserved for traveling white singing groups, but Emmett and company made it synonymous with blackface performance, and by using it, signalled that they were reaching out to a new, middle-class audience.^[29]

The Herald wrote that the production was "entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features, which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas."^[30] In 1845, the Ethiopian Serenaders purged their show of low humor and surpassed the Virginia Minstrels in popularity.^[31] Shortly thereafter, Edwin Pearce Christy founded Christy's Minstrels, combining the refined singing of the Ethiopian Serenaders (epitomized by the work of Christy's composer Stephen Foster) with the Virginia Minstrels' bawdy schtick. Christy's company established the three-act template into which minstrel shows would fall for the next few decades. This change to respectability prompted theater owners to enforce new rules to make playhouses calmer and quieter.^{[citation needed]}

Minstrels toured the same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European itinerant entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. Life on the road entailed "endless series of one-nighters, travel on accident-prone railroads, in poor housing subject to fires, in empty rooms that they had to convert into theaters, arrest on trumped up charges, exposed to deadly diseases, and managers and agents who skipped out with all the troupe's money."^[32] The more popular groups stuck to the main circuit that ran through the Northeast; some even went to Europe, which allowed their competitors to establish themselves in their absence. By the late 1840s, a southern tour had opened from Baltimore to New Orleans. Circuits through the Midwest and as far as California followed by the 1860s.^{[citation needed]} As its popularity increased, theaters sprang up specifically for minstrel performance, often with names such as the Ethiopian Opera House and the like.^[33] Many amateur troupes performed only a few local shows before disbanding. Meanwhile, celebrities like Emmett continued to perform solo.^{[citation needed]}

The rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement. Many Northerners were concerned for the oppressed blacks of the South, but most had no idea how these slaves lived day-to-day. Blackface performance had been inconsistent on this subject; some slaves were happy, others victims of a cruel and inhuman institution.^[34] However, in the 1850s minstrelsy became decidedly mean-spirited and pro-slavery as race replaced class as its main focus.^[35] Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.)^[36] The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and largely white in origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful. The message was clear: do not worry about the slaves; they are happy with their lot in life.^[37] Figures like the Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that blacks did not belong, nor did they want to belong, in Northern society.^[38]

Minstrelsy's reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin is indicative of plantation content at the time. Tom acts largely came to replace other plantation narratives, particularly in the third act. These sketches sometimes supported Stowe's novel, but just as often they turned it on its head or attacked the author. Whatever the intended message, it was usually lost in the joyous, slapstick atmosphere of the piece. Characters such as Simon Legree sometimes disappeared, and the title was frequently changed to something more cheerful like "Happy Uncle Tom" or "Uncle Dad's Cabin". Uncle Tom himself was frequently portrayed as a harmless bootlicker to be ridiculed. Troupes known as Tommer companies specialized in such burlesques, and theatrical Tom shows integrated elements of the minstrel show and competed with it for a time.^[39]

Minstrelsy's racism (and sexism) could be rather vicious. There were comic songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes.^[40] On the other hand, the fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps more significant than the racist manner in which it did so.^[41] Despite these pro-plantation attitudes, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities.^[42] Its association with the North was such that as secessionist attitudes grew stronger, minstrels on Southern tours became convenient targets of anti-Yankee sentiment.^[43]

Non-race-related humor came from lampoons of other subjects, including aristocratic whites such as politicians, doctors, and lawyers. Women's rights was another serious subject that appeared with some regularity in antebellum minstrelsy, almost always to ridicule the notion. The women's rights lecture became common in stump speeches. When one character joked, "Jim, I tink de ladies oughter vote", another replied, "No, Mr. Johnson, ladies am supposed to care berry little about polytick, and yet de majority ob em am strongly tached to parties."^[44] Minstrel humor was simple and relied heavily on slapstick and wordplay. Performers told nonsense riddles: "The difference between a schoolmaster and an engineer is that one trains the mind and the other minds the train."^[45]

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, minstrels remained mostly neutral and satirized both sides. However, as the war reached Northern soil, troupes turned their loyalties to the Union. Sad songs and sketches came to dominate in reflection of the mood of a bereaved nation. Troupes performed skits about dying soldiers and their weeping widows, and about mourning white mothers. "When this cruel war is over" became the hit of the period, selling over a million copies of sheet music.^[46] To balance the somber mood, minstrels put on patriotic numbers like "The Star Spangled Banner", accompanied by depictions of scenes from American history that lionized figures like George Washington and Andrew Jackson. Social commentary grew increasingly important to the show. Performers criticized Northern society and those they felt responsible for the breakup of the country, who opposed reunification, or who profited from a nation at war. Emancipation was either opposed through happy plantation material or mildy supported with pieces that depicted slavery in a negative light. Eventually, direct criticism of the South became more biting.^[47]

Decline[link]

Poster for Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels

Minstrelsy lost popularity during the war. New entertainments such as variety shows, musical comedies, and vaudeville appeared in the North, backed by master promoters like P. T. Barnum who wooed audiences away. Blackface troupes responded by traveling farther and farther afield, with their primary base now in the South and Midwest.^{[citation needed]}

Those minstrels who stayed in New York and similar cities followed Barnum's lead by advertising relentlessly and emphasizing the spectacle of minstrelsy. Troupes ballooned; as many as 19 performers could be on stage at once, and J. H. Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels had over 100 members.^[48][49] Scenery grew lavish and expensive, and specialty acts like Japanese acrobats or circus freaks sometimes appeared.^{[citation needed]} These changes made minstrelsy unprofitable for smaller troupes.^[50]

Other minstrel troupes tried to satisfy outlying tastes. Female acts had made a stir in variety shows, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels ran with the idea, first performing in 1870 in skimpy costumes and tights. Their success gave rise to at least 11 all-female troupes by 1871, one of which did away with blackface altogether. Ultimately, the girlie show emerged as a form in its own right. Mainstream minstrelsy continued to emphasize its propriety, but traditional troupes adopted some of these elements in the guise of the female impersonator. A well-played wench character became critical to success in the postwar period.^[51]

Many later minstrel troupes, such as this one in 1910, tried to project an image of refinement. Note that only the endmen are in blackface.

This new minstrelsy maintained an emphasis on refined music. Most troupes added jubilees, or spirituals, to their repertoire in the 1870s. These were fairly authentic religious slave songs borrowed from traveling black singing groups. Other troupes drifted further from minstrelsy's roots. When George Primrose and Billy West broke with Haverly's Mastodons in 1877, they did away with blackface for all but the endmen and dressed themselves in lavish finery and powdered wigs. They decorated the stage with elaborate backdrops and performed no slapstick whatsoever. Their brand of minstrelsy differed from other entertainments only in name.^[52]

Social commentary continued to dominate most performances, with plantation material constituting only a small part of the repertoire. This effect was amplified as minstrelsy featuring black performers took off in its own right and stressed its connection to the old plantations. The main target of criticism was the moral decay of the urbanized North. Cities were painted as corrupt, as homes to unjust poverty, and as dens of "city slickers" who lay in wait to prey upon new arrivals. Minstrels stressed traditional family life; stories told of reunification between mothers and sons thought dead in the war. Women's rights, disrespectful children, low church attendance, and sexual promiscuity became symptoms of decline in family values and of moral decay. Of course, Northern black characters carried these vices even further.^[53] African American members of Congress were one example, pictured as pawns of the Radical Republicans.^[54]

By the 1890s, minstrelsy formed only a small part of American entertainment, and by 1919 a mere three troupes dominated the scene. Small companies and amateurs carried the traditional minstrel show into the 20th century, now with an audience mostly in the rural South (although community amateur blackface minstrel shows persisted in northern New York State into the 1960s [1]), while black-owned troupes continued traveling to more outlying areas like the West. These black troupes were one of minstrelsy's last bastions, as more white actors moved into vaudeville.^[55]

Black minstrels[link]

In the 1840s and 50s, William Henry Lane and Thomas Dilward became the first African Americans to perform on the minstrel stage.^[56] All-black troupes followed as early as 1855. These companies emphasized that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance, with one advertisement describing a troupe as "SEVEN SLAVES just from Alabama, who are EARNING THEIR FREEDOM by giving concerts under the guidance of their Northern friends."^[57] White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting "spontaneously" and "naturally."^[58] Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT."^[59] Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked the faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as "mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. . . . The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork."^[60] The minstrels themselves promoted their performing abilities, quoting reviews that favorably compared them to popular white troupes. These black companies often featured female minstrels.

Plantation scenarios were common in black minstrelsy, as shown here in this post-1875 poster for Callender's Colored Minstrels

One or two African American troupes dominated the scene for much of the late 1860s and 1870s. The first of these was Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels, who played the Northeast around 1865. Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels formed shortly thereafter and toured England to great success beginning in 1866.^[61] In the 1870s, white entrepreneurs bought most of the successful black companies. Charles Callender obtained Sam Hague's troupe in 1872 and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. They became the most popular black troupe in America, and the words Callender and Georgia came to be synonymous with the institution of black minstrelsy. J. H. Haverly in turn purchased Callender's troupe in 1878 and applied his strategy of enlarging troupe size and embellishing sets. When this company went to Europe, Gustave and Charles Frohman took the opportunity to promote their Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels. Their success was such that the Frohmans bought Haverly's group and merged it with theirs, creating a virtual monopoly on the market. The company split in three to better canvas the nation and dominated black minstrelsy throughout the 1880s.^[62] Individual black performers like Billy Kersands, James A. Bland, Sam Lucas, and Wallace King grew famous as any featured white performer.^[63]

Racism made black minstrelsy a difficult profession. When playing Southern towns, performers had to stay in character even off stage, dressed in ragged "slave clothes" and perpetually smiling. Troupes left town quickly after each performance, and some had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired out whole trains or had cars custom built to sleep in, complete with hidden compartments in which to hide should things turn ugly.^[64] Even these were no haven, as whites sometimes used the cars for target practice. Their salaries, though higher than those of most blacks of the period, failed to reach levels earned by white performers; even superstars like Kersands earned slightly less than featured white minstrels.^[65] Unsurprisingly, most black troupes did not last long.^[66]

In content, early black minstrelsy differed little from its white counterpart. As the white troupes drifted from plantation subjects in the mid-1870s however, black troupes placed a new emphasis on it. The addition of jubilee singing gave black minstrelsy a popularity boost as the black troupes were rightly believed to be the most authentic performers of such material.^[67] Other significant differences were that the black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from them, and that the black companies commonly ended the first act of the show with a military high-stepping, brass band burlesque, a practice adopted after Callender's Minstrels used it in 1875 or 1876. Although black minstrelsy lent credence to racist ideals of blackness, many African American minstrels worked to subtly alter these stereotypes and to poke fun at white society. One jubilee described heaven as a place "where de white folks must let the darkeys be" and they could not be "bought and sold".^[68] In plantation material, aged black characters were rarely reunited with long-lost masters like they were in white minstrelsy.^[69]

African Americans formed a large part of the black minstrels' audience, especially for smaller troupes. In fact, their numbers were so great that many theater owners had to relax rules relegating black patrons to certain areas.^[70] Theories as to why blacks would look favorably upon negative images of themselves vary. Perhaps they felt in on the joke, laughing at the over-the-top characters from a sense of "in-group recognition".^[71] Maybe they even implicitly endorsed the racist antics, or they felt some connection to elements of an African culture that had been suppressed but was visible, albeit in racist, exaggerated form, in minstrel personages.^[72] They certainly got many jokes that flew over whites' heads or registered as only quaint distractions.^[73] Another draw for black audiences was simply seeing fellow African Americans on stage;^[72] black minstrels were largely viewed as celebrities.^[74] Formally educated African Americans, on the other hand, either disregarded black minstrelsy or openly disdained it.^[75] Still, black minstrelsy was the first large-scale opportunity for African Americans to enter American show business.^[76]

Structure[link]

The Christy Minstrels established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s.^[77] A crowd-gathering parade to the theater often preceded the performance.^[78] The show itself was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song.^[79] Upon the instruction of the interlocutor, a sort of host, they sat in a semicircle. Various stock characters always took the same positions: the genteel interlocutor in the middle, flanked by Tambo and Bones, who served as the endmen or cornermen. The interlocutor acted as a master of ceremonies and as a dignified, if pompous, straight man while the endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs.^[80][81] Over time, the first act came to include maudlin numbers not always in dialect. One minstrel, usually a tenor, came to specialize in this part; such singers often became celebrities, especially with women.^[82] Initially, an upbeat plantation song and dance ended the act;^{[citation needed]} later it was more common for the first act to end with a walkaround, including dances in the style of a cakewalk.^[79]

The second portion of the show, called the olio, was historically the last to evolve, as its real purpose was to allow for the setting of the stage for act three behind the curtain. It had more of a variety show structure. Performers danced, played instruments, did acrobatics, and demonstrated other amusing talents. Troupes offered parodies of European-style entertainments, and European troupes themselves sometimes performed. The highlight was when one actor, typically one of the endmen, delivered a faux-black-dialect stump speech, a long oration about anything from nonsense to science, society, or politics, during which the dim-witted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. All the while, the speaker moved about like a clown, standing on his head and almost always falling off his stump at some point. With blackface makeup serving as fool's mask, these stump speakers could deliver biting social criticism without offending the audience,^[83] although the focus was usually on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' ability to make sense of them.^[84] Many troupes employed a stump specialist with a trademark style and material.

	"A Meeting of the Limkiln Club" A blackface stump speech by the American Quartet, 1902
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The afterpiece rounded out the production. In the early days of the minstrel show, this was often a skit set on a Southern plantation that usually included song-and-dance numbers and featured Sambo- and Mammy-type characters in slapstick situations. The emphasis lay on an idealized plantation life and the happy slaves who lived there. Nevertheless, antislavery viewpoints sometimes surfaced in the guise of family members separated by slavery, runaways, or even slave uprisings.^[37] A few stories highlighted black trickster figures who managed to get the better of their masters.^[85] Beginning in the mid-1850s, performers did burlesque renditions of other plays; both Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights were common targets. The humor of these came from the inept black characters trying to perform some element of high white culture. Slapstick humor pervaded the afterpiece, including cream pies to the face, inflated bladders, and on-stage fireworks.^[86] Material from Uncle Tom's Cabin dominated beginning in 1853. The afterpiece allowed the minstrels to introduce new characters, some of whom became quite popular and spread from troupe to troupe.

Characters[link]

This reproduction of a 1900 minstrel show poster, originally published by the Strobridge Litho Co., shows the blackface transformation from white to "black".

Jim Crow, the archetypal slave character as created by Rice

The earliest minstrel characters took as their base popular white stage archetypes—frontiersmen, fishermen, hunters, and riverboatsmen whose depictions drew heavily from the tall tale—and added exaggerated blackface speech and makeup. These Jim Crows and Gumbo Chaffs fought and boasted that they could "wip [their] weight in wildcats" or "eat an alligator".^[87] As public opinion toward blacks changed, however, so did the minstrel stereotypes. Eventually, several stock characters emerged. Chief among these were the slave, who often maintained the earlier name Jim Crow, and the dandy, known frequently as Zip Coon. The two formed a dichotomy of blackness, both equally ludicrous.^[88]

The white actors who portrayed these characters spoke an ersatz, exaggerated form of Black Vernacular English. These characters were stupid and silly at best, grotesque and alien at worst. The blackface makeup and illustrations on programs and sheet music depicted them with huge eyeballs, overly wide noses, and thick-lipped mouths that hung open or grinned foolishly; one character expressed his love for a woman with "lips so large a lover could not kiss them all at once".^[89] They had huge feet and preferred "possum" and "coon" to more civilized fare. Minstrel characters were often described in animalistic terms, with "wool" instead of hair, "bleating" like sheep, and having "darky cubs" instead of children. Other ludicrous claims were that blacks had to drink ink when they got sick "to restore their color" and that they had to file their hair rather than cut it. They were inherently musical, dancing and frolicking through the night with no need for sleep.^[90]

Thomas "Daddy" Rice introduced the earliest slave archetype with his song "Jump Jim Crow" and its accompanying dance. He claimed to have learned the number by watching an old, limping black stable hand dancing and singing, "Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so/Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow." Other early minstrel performers quickly adopted Rice's character.

Slave characters in general came to be low-comedy types with names that matched the instruments they played: Brudder Tambo (or simply Tambo) for the tambourine and Brudder Bones (or Bones) for the bone castanets or bones. These endmen (for their position in the minstrel semicircle) were ignorant and poorly spoken, being conned, electrocuted, or run over in various sketches. They happily shared their stupidity; one slave character said that to get to China, one had only to go up in a balloon and wait for the world to rotate below.^[91] Highly musical and unable to sit still, they constantly contorted their bodies wildly while singing.

Tambo and Bones's simple-mindedness and lack of sophistication were highlighted by pairing them with a straight man master of ceremonies called the interlocutor. This character, although usually in blackface,^[92] spoke in aristocratic English and used a much larger vocabulary. The humor of these exchanges came from the misunderstandings on the part of the endmen when talking to the interlocutor:

Interlocutor: I'm astonished at you, Why, the idea of a man of your mental calibre talking about such sordid matters, right after listening to such a beautiful song! Have you no sentiment left?

Tambo: No, I haven't got a cent left.^[93]

Tambo and Bones were favorites of the audience, and their repartee with the interlocutor was for many the best part of the show. There was an element of laughing with them for the audience, as they frequently made light of the interlocutor's grandiose ways.^[45]

The interlocutor was responsible for beginning and ending each segment of the show. To this end, he had to be able to gauge the mood of the audience and know when it was time to move on. Accordingly, the actor who played the role was paid very well in comparison to other non-featured performers.^[80]

There were many variants on the slave archetype. The old darky or old uncle formed the head of the idyllic black family. Like other slave characters, he was highly musical and none-too-bright, but he had favorable aspects like his loving nature and the sentiments he raised regarding love for the aged, ideas of old friendships, and the cohesiveness of the family. His death and the pain it caused his master was a common theme in sentimental songs. Alternatively, the master could die, leaving the old darky to mourn. Stephen Foster's "Old Uncle Ned" was the most popular song on this subject.^[94] Less frequently, the old darky might be cast out by a cruel master when he grew too old to work. After the Civil War, this character became the most common figure in plantation sketches. He frequently cried about the loss of his home during the war, only to meet up with someone from the past such as the child of his former master.^[36] In contrast, the trickster, often called Jasper Jack, appeared less frequently. By outsmarting his white master, he exemplified antislavery sentiment.^[95]

Female characters ranged from the sexually provocative to the laughable. These roles were almost always played by men in drag (most famously George Christy, Francis Leon, and Barney Williams), even though American theater outside minstrelsy was filled with actresses at this time. Mammy or the old auntie was the old darky's counterpart. She often went by the name of Aunt Dinah Roh after the song of that title. Mammy was lovable to both blacks and whites, matronly, but hearkening to European peasant woman sensibilities. Her main role was to be the devoted mother figure in scenarios about the perfect plantation family.^[96]

Minstrel show performers Rollin Howard (in wench costume) and George Griffin, c. 1855

The wench, yaller gal, or prima donna was a mulatto who combined the light skin and facial features of a white woman with the perceived sexual promiscuity and exoticism of a black woman. Her beauty and flirtatiousness made her a common target for male characters, although she usually proved capricious and elusive. After the Civil War, the wench emerged as the most important specialist role in the minstrel troupe; men could alternately be titillated and disgusted, while women could admire the illusion and high fashion.^[97] The role was most strongly associated with the song "Miss Lucy Long", so the character many times bore that name. Actress Olive Logan commented that some actors were "marvelously well fitted by nature for it, having well-defined soprano voices, plump shoulders, beardless faces, and tiny hands and feet."^[98] Many of these actors were teen-aged boys. In contrast was the funny old gal, a slapstick role played by a large man in motley clothing and large, flapping shoes. The humor she invoked often turned on the male characters' desire for a woman whom the audience would perceive as unattractive.^[99]

1906 postcard advertisement featuring dandy-type characters

The counterpart to the slave was the dandy, a common character in the afterpiece. He was a northern urban black man trying to live above his station by mimicking white, upper-class speech and dress—usually to no good effect. Dandy characters often went by Zip Coon, after the song popularized by George Washington Dixon, although others had pretentious names like Count Julius Caesar Mars Napoleon Sinclair Brown. Their clothing was a ludicrous parody of upper-class dress: coats with tails and padded shoulders, white gloves, monocles, fake mustaches, and gaudy watch chains. They spent their time primping and preening, going to parties, dancing and strutting, and wooing women. Like other urban black characters, the dandies' pretentiousness showed that they had no place in white society while sending up social changes like nouveau-riche white culture.^[100]

The black soldier became another stock type during the Civil War and merged qualities of the slave and the dandy. He was acknowledged for playing some role in the war, but he was more frequently lampooned for bumbling through his drills or for thinking his uniform made him the equal of his white counterparts. He was usually better at retreating than fighting, and, like the dandy, he preferred partying to serious pursuits. Still, his introduction allowed for some return to themes of the breakup of the plantation family.^[101]

Non-black stereotypes played a significant role in minstrelsy, and although still performed in blackface, were distinguished by their lack of black dialect. American Indians before the Civil War were usually depicted as innocent symbols of the pre-industrial world or as pitiable victims whose peaceful existence had been shattered by the encroachment of the white man. However, as the United States turned its attentions West, American Indians became savage, pagan obstacles to progress. These characters were formidable scalpers to be feared, not ridiculed; any humor in such scenarios usually derived from a black character trying to act like one of the frightful savages. One sketch began with white men and American Indians enjoying a communal meal in a frontier setting. As the American Indians became intoxicated, they grew more and more antagonistic, and the army ultimately had to intervene to prevent the massacre of the whites. Even favorably presented American Indian characters usually died tragically. The message conveyed was that such people had no place in American society.^[102]

Depictions of East Asians began during the California Gold Rush when minstrels encountered Chinese out West. Minstrels caricatured them by their strange language ("ching chang chung"), odd eating habits (dogs and cats), and propensity for wearing pigtails. Parodies of Japanese became popular when a Japanese acrobat troupe toured the U.S. beginning in 1865. A run of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in the mid-1880s inspired another wave of Asian characterizations.^[103]

The few white characters in minstrelsy were stereotypes of immigrant groups like the Irish and Germans. Irish characters first appeared in the 1840s, portrayed as hotheaded, odious drunkards who spoke in a thick brogue. This portrayal was a reaction to both the Catholicism of the Irish and their willingness to work for cheap wages, which frightened non-Irish workers.^[104] However, beginning in the 1850s, many Irishmen joined minstrelsy, and Irish theatergoers probably came to represent a significant part of the audience, so this negative image was muted. Germans, on the other hand, were portrayed favorably from their introduction to minstrelsy in the 1860s. They were responsible and sensible, though still portrayed as humorous for their large size, hardy appetites, and heavy "Dutch" accents.^[105] Part of this positive portrayal no doubt came about because some of the actors portraying German characters were German themselves.^[106]

Music and dance[link]

Music and dance were the heart of the minstrel show and a large reason for its popularity. Around the time of the 1830s there was a lot of national conflict as to how people viewed African Americans. Because of that interest in the Negro people, these songs granted the listener new knowledge about African Americans who were different from themselves, even if the information was prejudiced. Troupes took advantage of this interest and marketed sheet music of the songs they featured so that viewers could enjoy them at home and other minstrels could adopt them for their act.

How much influence black music had on minstrel performance remains a debated topic. Minstrel music certainly contained some element of black culture, added onto a base of European tradition with distinct Irish and Scottish folk music influences. Musicologist Dale Cockrell argues that early minstrel music mixed both African and European traditions and that distinguishing black and white urban music during the 1830s is impossible.^[107] Insofar as the minstrels had authentic contact with black culture, it was via neighborhoods, taverns, theaters, and waterfronts where blacks and whites could mingle freely. The inauthenticity of the music and the Irish and Scottish elements in it are explained by the fact that slaves were rarely allowed to play native African music and therefore had to adopt and adapt elements of European folk music.^[108] Compounding the problem is the difficulty in ascertaining how much minstrel music was written by black composers, as the custom at the time was to sell all rights to a song to publishers or other performers.^[109] Nevertheless, many troupes claimed to have carried out more serious "fieldwork".^[110]Similar to American people who come from all over the world creating one big ‘melting pot,’ it is only fitting that some of the first forms of truly American music and drama are composed of elements from many different places

Early blackface songs often consisted of unrelated verses strung together by a common chorus. In this pre-Emmett minstrelsy, the music "jangled the nerves of those who believed in music that was proper, respectable, polished, and harmonic, with recognizable melodies."^[111] It was thus a juxtaposition of "vigorous earth-slapping footwork of black dances … with the Irish lineaments of blackface jigs and reels."^[112] Similar to the look of a blackface performer, the lyrics in the songs that were sung have a tone of mockery and a spirit of laughing at black Americans rather than with them. The minstrel show texts sometimes even mixed black lore, such as stories about talking animals or slave tricksters, with humor from the region southwest of the Appalachians, itself a mixture of traditions from different races and cultures. Minstrel instruments were also a mélange: African banjo and tambourine with European fiddle and bones^[113] In short, early minstrel music and dance was not true black culture; it was a white reaction to it.^[114] This was the first large-scale appropriation and commercial exploitation of black culture by American whites.^[115]

In the late 1830s, a decidedly European structure and high-brow style became popular in minstrel music. The banjo, played with "scientific touches of perfection"^[116] and popularized by Joel Sweeney, became the heart of the minstrel band. Songs like the Virginia Minstrels' hit "Old Dan Tucker" have a catchy tune, energetic rhythm, and melody and harmony;^[117] minstrel music was now for singing as well as dancing. The Spirit of the Times even described the music as vulgar because it was "entirely too elegant" and that the "excellence" of the singing "[was] an objection to it."^[118] Others complained that the minstrels had foregone their black roots.^[119] In short, the Virginia Minstrels and their imitators wanted to please a new audience of predominantly white, middle-class Northerners, by playing music the spectators would find familiar and pleasant.

Despite the elements of ridicule contained in blackface performance, mid-19th century white audiences by and large, believed the songs and dances to be authentically black. For their part, the minstrels always billed themselves and their music as such. The songs were called "plantation melodies" or "Ethiopian choruses", among other names. By using the black caricatures and so-called black music, the minstrels added a touch of the unknown to the evening's entertainment, which was enough to fool audiences into accepting the whole performance as authentic.^[120]

Detail from an 1859 playbill of Bryant's Minstrels depicting the final part of the walkaround

The minstrels' dance styles, on the other hand, were much truer to their alleged source. The success of "Jump Jim Crow" is indicative: It was an old English tune with fairly standard lyrics, which leaves only Rice's dance—wild upper-body movements with little movement below the waist—to explain its popularity.^[121] Dances like the Turkey Trot, the Buzzard Lope, and the Juba dance all had their origins in the plantations of the South, and some were popularized by black performers such as William Henry Lane, Signor Cornmeali ("Old Corn Meal"), and John "Picayune" Butler. One performance by Lane in 1842 was described as consisting of "sliding steps, like a shuffle, and not the high steps of an Irish jig."^[122] Lane and the white men who mimicked him moved about the stage with no obvious foot movement. The walkaround, a common feature of the minstrel show's first act, was ultimately of West African origin and featured a competition between individuals hemmed in by the other minstrels. Elements of white tradition remained, of course, such as the fast-paced breakdown that formed part of the repertoire beginning with Rice. Minstrel dance was generally not held to the same mockery as other parts, although contemporaries such as Fanny Kemble argued that minstrel dances were merely a "faint, feeble, impotent—in a word, pale Northern reproductions of that ineffable black conception."^[123]

The introduction of the jubilee, or spiritual, marked the minstrels' first undeniable adoption of black music. These songs remained relatively authentic in nature, antiphonal with a repetitive structure that relied heavily on call and response. The black troupes sang the most authentic jubilees, while white companies inserted humorous verses and replaced religious themes with plantation imagery, often starring the old darky. Jubilee eventually became synonymous with plantation.^[124]

Legacy[link]

The minstrel show played a powerful role in shaping assumptions about blacks. However, unlike vehemently anti-black propaganda from the time, minstrelsy made this attitude palatable to a wide audience by couching it in the guise of well intentioned paternalism.^[125] Blacks were in turn expected to uphold these stereotypes or else risk white retaliation.^[126]

Popular entertainment perpetuated the racist stereotype of the uneducated, ever-cheerful, and highly musical black well into the 1950s. Even as the minstrel show was dying out in all but amateur theater, blackface performers became common acts on vaudeville stages and in legitimate drama. These entertainers kept the familiar songs, dances, and pseudo-black dialect, often in nostalgic looks back at the old minstrel show. The most famous of these performers is probably Al Jolson, who took blackface to the big screen in the 1920s in films such as The Jazz Singer (1927). His 1930 film Mammy uses the setting of a traveling minstrel show, giving an on-screen presentation of a performance. Likewise, when the sound era of cartoons began in the late 1920s, early animators such as Walt Disney gave characters like Mickey Mouse (who already resembled blackface performers) a minstrel-show personality; the early Mickey is constantly singing and dancing and smiling.^[127] The face of Raggedy Ann is a color-reversed minstrel mask, and Raggedy Ann's creator, Johnny Gruelle, designed the doll in part with the antics of blackface star Fred Stone in mind.^[128] As late as 1942, in the Warner Bros. cartoon "Fresh Hare", minstrel shows could be used as a gag (in this case, featuring Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny leading a chorus of "Camptown Races") with the expectation, presumably, that audiences would get the reference. Radio shows got into the act, a fact perhaps best exemplified by the popular radio shows Two Black Crows, Sam and Henry, and Amos 'n' Andy,^[129] A transcription survives from 1931 of The Blue Coal Minstrels , which uses many of the standard forms of the minstrel show, including Tambo, Bones and the interlocutor. The National Broadcasting Company, in a 1930 pamphlet, used the minstrel show as a point of reference in selling its services.^[130]

As recently as the mid-1970s the BBC screened The Black and White Minstrel Show on television, starring the George Mitchell Minstrels. The racist archetypes that blackface minstrelsy helped to create persist to this day; some argue that this is even true in hip hop culture and movies. The 2000 Spike Lee movie Bamboozled alleges that modern black entertainment exploits African American culture much as the minstrel shows did a century ago, for example.^[131]

Meanwhile, African American actors were limited to the same old minstrel-defined roles for years to come and by playing them, made them more believable to white audiences. On the other hand, these parts opened the entertainment industry to African American performers and gave them their first opportunity to alter those stereotypes.^[132] Many famous singers and actors gained their start in black minstrelsy, including W. C. Handy, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Butterbeans and Susie. The Rabbit's Foot Company was a variety troupe, originally founded in 1900 by an African American, Pat Chappelle,^[133] which drew on and developed the minstrel tradition while updating it and helping to develop and spread black musical styles. Besides Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, later musicians working for "the Foots" included Louis Jordan, Brownie McGhee and Rufus Thomas, and the company was still touring as late as 1950. Its success was rivalled by other touring variety troupes, such as "Silas Green from New Orleans".^[134]

The very structure of American entertainment bears minstrelsy's imprint. The endless barrage of gags and puns appears in the work of the Marx Brothers and David and Jerry Zucker. The varied structure of songs, gags, "hokum" and dramatic pieces continued into vaudeville, variety shows, and to modern sketch comedy shows like Hee Haw or, more distantly, Saturday Night Live and In Living Color.^{[135][136][137]} Jokes once delivered by endmen are still told today: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?"^[138] Other jokes form part of the repertoire of modern comedians: "Who was that lady I saw you with last night? That was no lady—that was my wife!"^[84] The stump speech is an important precursor to modern stand-up comedy.^[139]

Another important legacy of minstrelsy is its music. The hokum blues genre carried over the dandy, the wench, the simple-minded slave characters (sometimes rendered as the rustic white "rube") and even the interlocutor into early blues and country music incarnations through the medium of "race music" and "hillbilly" recordings. Many minstrel tunes are now popular folk songs. Most have been expunged of the exaggerated black dialect and the overt references to blacks. "Dixie", for example, was adopted by the Confederacy as its unofficial national anthem and is still popular, and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" was sanitized and made the state song of Virginia until 1997.^[140] "My Old Kentucky Home" remains the state song of Kentucky. The instruments of the minstrel show were largely kept on, especially in the South. Minstrel performers from the last days of the shows, such as Uncle Dave Macon, helped popularize the banjo and fiddle in modern country music. And by introducing America to black dance and musical style, minstrels opened the nation to black cultural forms for the first time on a large scale.^[141]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Blackface minstrelsy

• Blackface
• List of blackface minstrel songs
• List of blackface minstrel troupes
• Coon song
• The Black and White Minstrel Show, a British television and theatre show of the American traditional genre in the 1960s and 1970s

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Cantwell, Robert (1984), Bluegrass Breakdown : The Making of the Old Southern Sound, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-306-80495-6 . Reprinted 2003.
• Cockrell, Dale (1997), Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World, Cambridge University Press / Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama, ISBN 0-521-56828-5 .
• Jackson, Ronald L., II (2006), Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media, Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-306-80495-6 . Reprinted 2003.
• Lenz, Beth (1989), The Bones in the United States: History and Performance Practice . M. A. Thesis, University of Michigan.
• Lott, Eric (1993), Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-509641-X .
• Malone, Bill C.; Stricklin, David (2003), Southern Music/American Music (Revised ed.), Lexington: University Press of Kentucky .
• Marc, David (1997), Comic Visions: Television Comedy & American Culture (2nd ed.), Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc. .
• Nathan, Hans (1962), Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press .
• "Official Song of the State of Virginia". 50states.com. Retrieved September 3, 2006.
• Oliver, Paul (1972), The Story of the Blues, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-003509-5 .
• Paskman, Dailey; Spaeth, Sigmund (1928), Gentlemen, Be Seated!, Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company . The relevant excerpt is available online: "A Working Model". Retrieved September 8, 2005.
• Sacks, Howard L.; Sacks, Judith (1993), Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press .
• Smith, Peter Dunbaugh (2006) (PDF), Ashley Street Blues: Racial Uplift and the Commodification of Vernacular Performance in Lavilla, Florida, 1896-1916, Florida State University, http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03312006-171940/unrestricted/pds_dissertation.pdf, retrieved 2009-05-03 
• Sotiropoulos, Karen (2006). "Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America" Cambridge: (Harvard University Press).
• Stark, Seymour (2000), Men in Blackface: True Stories of the Minstrel Show, Xlibris .
• Strausbaugh, John (2006). Black Like You. Tarcher. ISBN 1-58542-498-6
• Sullivan, Megan (2001), "African-American music as rebellion: From slavesong to hip-hop", Discoveries 3: 21–39 .
• Sweet, Frank W. (2000). A History of the Minstrel Show. Backintyme. ISBN 0-939479-21-4.
• Toll, Robert C. (1974), Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America, New York: Oxford University Press .
• Toll, Robert C. (April/May 1978), "Behind the Blackface: Minstrel Men and Minstrel Myths", American Heritage 29 (3), http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1978/3/1978_3_93.shtml .
• Watkins, Mel (1994), On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor, New York: Simon & Schuster .
• Watkins, Mel (1999), On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books, ISBN 1-55652-351-3 .
• Wald, Elijah (2004), Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, New York: Amistad, ISBN 0-06-052423-5 .

External links[link]

• "Minstrel Potpourri" performed by the Edison Minstrels (possibly The Haydn Quartet)
• "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" performed by the Heidelberg Quintet (from the Internet Archive)
• Ruckus! American Entertainments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• The Frank Dumont Minstrelsy Scrapbook 1850-1902, compiled by minstrel performer and manager Frank Dumont, containing more than 50 years of documentation about minstrelsy and its origins is available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
• The JUBA Project: Early Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain, 1842-1852
• Historical Notes for Collection 1: African-American and Jamaican Melodies, includes biographical sketches of many black minstrel composers and access to their music.
• Metropolitan Police Minstrels - from the 1920s
• Guide to American Minstrel Show Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University

Al Jolson
Background information
Birth name	Asa Yoelson
Born	(1886-05-26)May 26, 1886(?) Seredžius, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	October 23, 1950(1950-10-23) (aged 64) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Genres	Vaudeville Pop standards Jazz Pop
Occupations	Actor Comedian Singer
Years active	1911–1950
Labels	Victor, Columbia, Little Wonder, Brunswick, Decca
Website	The Al Jolson Society

Biography portal

Al Jolson (May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was an American singer, comedian, and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer".^[1]

His performing style was brash and extroverted, and he popularized a large number of songs that benefited from his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach".^[2] Numerous well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing Crosby^[3] Judy Garland, rock and country entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bob Dylan, who once referred to him as "somebody whose life I can feel".^[4] Broadway critic Gilbert Seldes compared him to "the Greek God Pan", claiming that Jolson represented "the concentration of our national health and gaiety."^[5]

In the 1930s, he was America's most famous and highest paid entertainer.^[6] Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international tours. Although he's best remembered today as the star in the first (full length) talking movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927, he later starred in a series of successful musical films throughout the 1930s. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with the 1946 Oscar-winning biographical film, The Jolson Story. Larry Parks played Jolson with the songs dubbed in with Jolson’s real voice. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was released in 1949, and was nominated for three Oscars. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jolson became the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II, and again in 1950 became the first star to perform for G.I.s in Korea, doing 42 shows in 16 days. He died just weeks after returning to the U.S., partly due to the physical exertion of performing. Defense Secretary George Marshall afterward awarded the Medal of Merit to Jolson's family.

According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, "Jolson was to jazz, blues, and ragtime what Elvis Presley was to rock 'n' roll". Being the first popular singer to make a spectacular "event" out of singing a song, he became a “rock star” before the dawn of rock music. His specialty was building stage runways extending out into the audience. He would run up and down the runway and across the stage, "teasing, cajoling, and thrilling the audience", often stopping to sing to individual members, all the while the "perspiration would be pouring from his face, and the entire audience would get caught up in the ecstasy of his performance". According to music historian Larry Stempel, "No one had heard anything quite like it before on Broadway." Author Stephen Banfield agrees, writing that Jolson's style was "arguably the single most important factor in defining the modern musical…"^[5]

He enjoyed performing in blackface makeup—a theatrical convention since the mid-19th century. With his unique and dynamic style of singing black music, like jazz and blues, he was later credited with single-handedly introducing African-American music to white audiences.^[1] As early as 1911 he became known for fighting against anti-black discrimination on Broadway. Jolson's well-known theatrics and his promotion of equality on Broadway helped pave the way for many black performers, playwrights, and songwriters, including Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters.

Early life[link]

Al Jolson, circa 1916

Al Jolson was born as Asa Yoelson in the Jewish village of Srednik (Yiddish: סרעדניק, now known as Seredžius) near Kaunas in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He was the fifth and youngest child of Moses Reuben and Naomi (Cantor) Yoelson; his four siblings were Rose, another sister who died in infancy, Etta and Hirsch (Harry). Jolson did not know the date of his birth, so he later chose to celebrate it as May 26, 1886.^[7]:17-18 In 1891, his father, who was qualified as a rabbi and cantor, moved to New York to secure a better future for his family. By 1894, Moses Yoelson could afford to pay the fare to bring Naomi and his four children to America. By the time they arrived, he had found work at the Talmud Torah Synagogue in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where the family was reunited.^[7]:21-22

Hard times hit the family when his mother, Naomi, died in late 1894. Following his mother's death, young Asa was in a state of withdrawal for seven months. Upon being introduced to show business in 1895 by entertainer Al Reeves, Asa and Hirsch became fascinated by the industry, and by 1897, the brothers were singing for coins on local street corners, using the names "Al" and "Harry". They would usually use the money to buy tickets to shows at the National Theater.^[1] Asa and Hirsch spent most of their days working different jobs as a team.^[8]:23-40

Stage performer[link]

Burlesque and vaudeville[link]

In the spring of 1902, he accepted a job with Walter L. Main's Circus. Although Main had hired Jolson as an usher, Main was impressed by Jolson's singing voice and gave him a position as a singer during the circus' Indian Medicine Side Show segment.^[8]:49-50

By the end of the year, however, the circus had folded, and Jolson was again out of work. In May 1903, the head producer of the burlesque show, Dainty Duchess Burlesquers, agreed to give Jolson a part in one show. Asa gave a remarkable performance of "Be My Baby Bumble Bee", and the producer agreed to keep him for future shows. Unfortunately, the show closed by the end of the year. Asa was able to avoid financial troubles by forming a vaudeville partnership with his brother Hirsch, now a vaudeville performer who was known as Harry Yoelson. The brothers worked for the William Morris Agency.^[8]:50-60

Asa and Harry also eventually were teamed with Joe Palmer. During their time with Palmer, they were able to get bookings in a nationwide tour. However, live performances were fading in popularity, as nickelodeon theaters captured audiences; by 1908, nickelodeon theaters were completely dominant throughout New York City as well. While performing in a Brooklyn theater in 1904,^[9] Al decided on a new approach and began wearing blackface makeup. The conversion to blackface boosted his career and he began wearing blackface in all of his shows.^[8]:61-80

In the fall of 1905, Harry left the trio, following a harsh argument with Al. Harry had refused Al's request to take care of Joe Palmer—who was in a wheelchair—while he went out on a date. After Harry's departure, Al and Joe Palmer worked as a duo, but were not very successful together. By 1906,^[9] the two agreed to separate, and Jolson was on his own.^[8]:68-70

Al became a regular at the Globe and Wigwam Theater in San Francisco, California, and remained successful nationwide as a vaudeville singer^[9] He took up residence in San Francisco, saying the earthquake-devastated area needed someone to cheer them up. In 1908, Jolson—needing money for himself and his new wife Henrietta—returned to New York. In 1909, Al's singing caught the attention of Lew Dockstader, who was the producer and star of Dockstader's Minstrels. Al accepted Dockstader's offer, and became a regular blackface performer.^[8]:70-81

Broadway playhouses[link]

Winter Garden Theater[link]

According to Esquire magazine, "J. J. Shubert, impressed by Jolson’s overpowering display of energy, booked him for La Belle Paree, a musical comedy which opened at the Winter Garden in 1911. Within a month Jolson was a star. From then until 1926, when he retired from the stage, he could boast an unbroken series of smash hits."^[10]

On March 20, 1911, Jolson starred in his first musical revue at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City, La Belle Paree, which also greatly helped launch his career as a singer. The opening night drew a huge crowd to the theater, and that evening Jolson gained audience popularity by singing old Stephen Foster songs in blackface. In the wake of that phenomenal opening night, Jolson was given a position in the show's cast. The show closed after 104 performances, and during its run Jolson's popularity grew greatly. Following La Belle Paree, Jolson accepted an offer to perform in the musical Vera Violetta. The show opened on November 20, 1911, and, like La Belle Paree, was a phenomenal success. In the show, Jolson again portrayed the role of a blackface singer, and managed to become so popular, that his weekly salary- which he earned from his success in La Belle Paree- of $500 was increased to $750.^[8]:98-117

After Vera Violetta ran its course, Jolson starred in another musical, The Whirl of Society, propelling his career on Broadway to new heights. During his time at the Winter Garden, Jolson would tell the audience "you ain't heard nothing yet" before performing additional songs. In the play, Jolson debuted his signature blackface character, "Gus."^[9] The play was so successful, that Winter Garden owner Lee Shubert agreed to sign Jolson to a seven year contract with a salary of $1,000 a week. Jolson would reprise his role as "Gus" in future plays and by 1914, Jolson achieved so much popularity with the theater audience that his $1,000 a week salary was doubled to $2,000 a week. In 1916, Robinson Crusoe, Jr. was the first musical where he was featured as the star character. In 1918, Jolson's acting career would be pushed even further, after he starred in the hit musical Sinbad.^[8]:123-141

1919 "Swanee" sheet music with Jolson on the cover. For the full sheet music, see Wikisource.

Swanee Al Jolson's hit 1920 recording of George Gershwin and Irving Caesar's 1919 "Swanee". Problems listening to this file? See media help.

It became the most successful Broadway musical of 1918 and 1919. A new song was later added to the show that would become composer George Gershwin's first hit recording, "Swanee". Jolson also added another song to the show, "My Mammy". By 1920, Jolson had become the biggest star on Broadway.^[8]:143-147

Jolson's own theater[link]

His next play, Bombo, would also take his career to new heights and became so successful that it went beyond Broadway and held performances nationwide.^[8]:171 It also led Lee Shubert to rename his newly built theater, which was across from Central Park, as Jolson's Fifty-ninth Street Theatre. Aged 35, Jolson became the youngest man in American history to have a theatre named after him.^[11]:117

But on the opening night of Bombo, and the first performance at the new theatre, he suffered from extreme stage fright, walking up and down the streets for hours before showtime. Out of fear, he lost his voice backstage and begged the stagehands not to raise the curtains. But when the curtains went up, he "was [still] standing in the wings trembling and sweating". After being physically shoved onto the stage by his brother Harry, he performed and received an ovation that he would never forget: "For several minutes, the applause continued while Al stood and bowed after the first act". He refused to go back on stage for the second act, but the audience "just stamped its feet and chanted 'Jolson, Jolson', until he came back out." He took thirty-seven curtain calls that night, and told the audience "I'm a happy man tonight."^[11]:118

In March, 1922, he moved the production to the larger Century Theater for a special benefit performance to aid injured Jewish veterans of World War I.^[12] After taking the show on the road for a season, he returned in May, 1923, to perform Bombo at "his first love", the Winter Garden. The reviewer for the New York Times wrote, "He returned like the circus, bigger and brighter and newer than ever. ... Last night's audience was flatteringly unwilling to go home, and when the show proper was over, Jolson reappeared before the curtain and sang more songs, old and new."^[13]

"I don’t mind going on record as saying that he is one of the few instinctively funny men on our stage", wrote reviewer Charles Darnton in the New York Evening World. "Everything he touches turns to fun. To watch him is to marvel at his humorous vitality. He is the old-time minstrel man turned to modern account. With a song, a word, or even a suggestion he calls forth spontaneous laughter. And here you have the definition of a born comedian."^[11]:87

Performing in blackface[link]

The Jazz Singer, 1927

Performing in blackface makeup was a theatrical convention used by many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel show.^[14] Al Jolson was the most famous performer to wear blackface makeup when singing.^[14] Working behind a blackface mask "gave him a sense of freedom and spontaneity he had never known"^[9] According to film historian Eric Lott, for the white minstrel man "to put on the cultural forms of 'blackness' was to engage in a complex affair of manly mimicry...To wear or even enjoy blackface was literally, for a time, to become black, to inherit the cool, virility, humility, abandon, or gaité de coeur that were the prime components of white ideologies of black manhood."^[15]

As metaphor of mutual suffering[link]

Jazz historians have described Jolson’s blackface and singing style as metaphors for Jewish and black suffering throughout history. Jolson’s first film, The Jazz Singer, for instance, is described by historian Michael Alexander as an expression of the liturgical music of Jews with the "imagined music of African Americans," noting that "prayer and jazz become metaphors for Jews and blacks."^[16]:176 Playwright Samson Raphaelson, after seeing Jolson perform his stage show, "Robinson Crusoe," stated that "he had an epiphany: 'My God, this isn’t a jazz singer,' he said. 'This is a cantor!'" The image of the blackfaced cantor remained in Raphaelson’s mind when he conceived of the story which led to The Jazz Singer.^[17]:502

Upon release of the film, the first full-length sound picture, film reviewers saw the symbolism and metaphors portrayed by Jolson in his role as the son of a cantor wanting to become a "jazz singer":

"Is there any incongruity in this Jewish boy with his face painted like a Southern Negro singing in the Negro dialect? No, there is not. Indeed, I detected again and again the minor key of Jewish music, the wail of the Chazan, the cry of anguish of a people who had suffered. The son of a line of rabbis well knows how to sing the songs of the most cruelly wronged people in the world’s history."^[17]:502

According to Alexander, East European Jews were uniquely qualified to understand the music, noting how Jolson himself made the comparison of Jewish and African American suffering in a new land in his film "Big Boy": In a blackface portrayal of a former slave, he leads a group of recently freed slaves, played by black actors, in verses of the classic slave spiritual "Go Down Moses." One reviewer of the film expressed how Jolson’s blackface added significance to his role:

"When one hears Jolson’s jazz songs, one realizes that jazz is the new prayer of the American masses, and Al Jolson is their cantor. The Negro makeup in which he expresses his misery is the appropriate talis [prayer shawl] for such a communal leader."^[16]:176

Many in the black community welcomed The Jazz Singer, and saw it as a vehicle to gain access to the stage. Audiences at Harlem's Lafayette Theater cried during the film, and Harlem's newspaper, Amsterdam News, called it "one of the greatest pictures ever produced." For Jolson, it wrote: "Every colored performer is proud of him."^[18]

Relations with African Americans[link]

Jolson first heard African-American music, such as jazz, blues, and ragtime, played in the back alleys of New Orleans, Louisiana. He enjoyed singing the new jazz-style of music, and it's not surprising that he often performed in blackface, especially songs he made popular, like Swanee, My Mammy, and Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody. In most of his movie roles, however, including a singing hobo in Hallelujah, I'm a Bum or a jailed convict in Say It With Songs, he chose to act without using blackface. In the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, he performed only a few songs, including My Mammy, in blackface, but the film is concerned in part with the experience of 'donning a mask' that the young Jewish singer embraces in performing popular songs onstage.

As a Jewish immigrant and America's most famous and highest paid entertainer, he may have had the incentive and resources to help break down racial attitudes. For instance, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) during its peak in the early 1920s, included about 15% of the nation's eligible voting population, 4-5 million men.^[19] While D.W. Griffith created the blockbuster movie The Birth of a Nation, which glorified white supremacy and the KKK, Jolson chose to star in The Jazz Singer, which defied racial bigotry by introducing American black music to white audiences worldwide.^[1]

While growing up, he had many black friends, including Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, who later became a legendary tap dancer."^[10] As early as 1911, at the age of 25, he was already noted for fighting discrimination on the Broadway stage and later in his movies:^[20]

• "at a time when black people were banned from starring on the Broadway stage,"^[21] he promoted the play by black playwright Garland Anderson,^[22] which became the first production with an all-black cast ever produced on Broadway;
• he brought an all-black dance team from San Francisco that he tried to feature in his Broadway show;^[20]
• he demanded equal treatment for Cab Calloway, with whom he performed a number of duets in his movie The Singing Kid.
• he was "the only white man allowed into an all black nightclub in Harlem;"^[20]

Jolson once read in the newspaper that songwriters Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, neither of whom he had ever heard of, were refused service at a Connecticut restaurant because of their race. He immediately tracked them down and took them out to dinner "insisting he'd punch anyone in the nose who tried to kick us out!"^[23] Subsequent to their meeting, according to biographer Al Rose, Jolson and Eubie became friends. Rose writes:

This didn’t have anything to do with the theater, because they never worked together. Rather, they both had a love of prize fighting and used to go to boxing matches together, engaging in jocose discussion of the relative merits of Negro with Jewish pugilists. They would occasionally wager a bottle of whisky on these bouts.^[24]

Film historian Charles Musser notes that "African Americans' embrace of Jolson was not a spontaneous reaction to his appearance in talking pictures. In an era when African Americans did not have to go looking for enemies, Jolson was perceived a friend." ^[25]

Jeni LeGon, a black female tap dance star,^[26] recalls her life as a film dancer: "But of course, in those times it was a 'black-and-white world.' You didn't associate too much socially with any of the stars. You saw them at the studio, you know, nice—but they didn't invite. The only ones that ever invited us home for a visit was Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler."^[27] Brian Conley, former star of the 1995 British play Jolson, stated during an interview, "I found out Jolson was actually a hero to the black people of America. At his funeral, black actors lined the way, they really appreciated what he’d done for them."^[28] Noble Sissle, then president of the Negro Actors' Guild, represented that organization at his funeral.^[29]

Jolson's physical expressiveness also affected the music styles of some black performers. Music historian Bob Gulla writes that "the most critical influence in Jackie Wilson's young life was Al Jolson." He points out that Wilson's ideas of what a stage performer could do to keep their act an "exciting" and "thrilling performance" was shaped by Jolson's acts, "full of wild writhing and excessive theatrics." Wilson felt that Jolson, along with Louis Jordan, another of his idols, "should be considered the stylistic forefathers of rock and roll."^[30]

According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture: "Almost single-handedly, Jolson helped to introduce African-American musical innovations like jazz, ragtime, and the blues to white audiences.... [and] paved the way for African-American performers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters.... to bridge the cultural gap between black and white America."^[1] Jazz historian Amiri Baraka wrote, "the entrance of the white man into jazz...did at least bring him much closer to the Negro." He points out that "the acceptance of jazz by whites marks a crucial moment when an aspect of black culture had become an essential part of American culture."^[31]:151

In a recent interview, Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, one of the most popular and respected jazz singers of New Orleans, said, "Jolson? I loved him. I think he did wonders for the blacks and glorified entertainment."^[32]:307

Movies[link]

[edit] The Jazz Singer

movie poster, 1927

The Jazz Singer

In the first part of the 20th century, Al Jolson was without question the most popular performer on Broadway and in vaudeville. Show-business historians regard him as a legendary institution. Yet for all his success in live venues, Al Jolson is possibly best remembered today for his numerous recordings and for starring in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first nationally distributed feature film that included synchronized sound dialogue sequences as well as music and sound effects.

Jolson had actually starred in a talking film before The Jazz Singer: a 1926 short subject titled A Plantation Act. This simulation of a stage performance by Jolson was originally presented in a program of musical shorts, demonstrating the Vitaphone sound-film process. A Plantation Act was not preserved for posterity and was considered lost as early as 1933.

Music historian John Shepherd, discussing The Jazz Singer, notes that the title "reflected the contemporary popularity of the idea of jazz, but not its actuality. . . . and had no direct connection with the kind of performance that could then be found in clubs, dance halls and theaters."^[33]

Warner Bros. had originally picked George Jessel for the role, as he had starred in the Broadway play. However, Jessel refused the offer and Jack L. Warner then offered the role to Jolson, who, according to Jessel, also helped finance the film.^[34]

Story synopsis

A New York Times review of the movie in 1927 described the basic storyline: "There is naturally a good deal of sentiment attached to the narrative, which is one wherein Cantor Rabinowitz is eager that his son Jakie shall become a cantor" and carry on five generations of family traditions. "The old man’s anger is aroused when one night he hears that Jakie has been singing jazz songs in a saloon. The boy’s heart and soul are with the modern music. He runs away from home and tours the country until, through a friend he is engaged by a New York producer to sing in the Winter Garden," a major theater on Broadway.^[35]

But an unfortunate set of coincidences then take place: the opening of his first Broadway show is also on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Then, on the day of the show, he learns that his father is seriously ill, so returns home to find him on his deathbed, imploring him to take his place at the synagogue as cantor for the holiday service. After a tormenting emotional tug-of-war between his desire for stardom, his family, and religious tradition, he chooses to perform the evening service at the synagogue in place of his father.

Having no choice, the Broadway show's producer had postponed the show for the next evening, and Jakie went on to become a smash success. Writer Neal Gabler called the story "an assimilationist fable," but the story was "close to the true story of Al Jolson," notes author Helen Epstein, "as well as a paradigm for a generation of sons of all kinds of immigrants."^[36]

The movie premiere[link]

Harry Warner's daughter, Doris Warner, remembered the opening night, and said that when the picture started she was still crying over the loss of her beloved uncle Sam, who was planning to be there but died suddenly, at the age of 40, the day before. But halfway through the eighty-nine minute movie she began to be overtaken by a sense that something remarkable was happening. Jolson's 'Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet...' provoked shouts of pleasure and applause. After each Jolson song, the audience applauded. Excitement mounted as the film progressed, and when Jolson began his scene with Eugenie Besserer, "the audience became hysterical."^[37]:129

According to film historian Scott Eyman, "by the film's end, the Warner brothers had shown an audience something they had never known, moved them in a way they hadn't expected. The tumultuous ovation at curtain proved that Jolson was not merely the right man for the part of Jackie Rabinowitz, alias Jack Robin; he was the right man for the entire transition from silent fantasy to talking realism. The audience, transformed into what one critic called, 'a milling, battling mob' stood, stamped, and cheered 'Jolson, Jolson, Jolson!'"^[37]:140

At the end of the film, Jolson rose from his seat and ran down to the stage. "God, I think you're really on the level about it. I feel good" he cried to the audience. Stanley Watkins would always remember Jolson signing autographs after the show, tears streaming down his face. May McAvoy, Jolson's costar remembered that "[the] police were there to control the crowds. It was a very big thing, like The Birth of a Nation."

Introduction of sound[link]

The film was produced by Warner Bros., using its revolutionary Vitaphone sound process. Vitaphone was originally intended for musical renditions, and The Jazz Singer follows this principle, with only the musical sequences using live sound recording. The moviegoers were electrified when the silent actions were interrupted periodically for a song sequence with real singing and sound. Jolson's dynamic voice, physical mannerisms, and charisma held the audience spellbound.

Costar May McAvoy, according to author A. Scott Berg, could not help sneaking into theaters day after day as the film was being run. "She pinned herself against a wall in the dark and watched the faces in the crowd. In that moment just before 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie,' she remembered, 'A miracle occurred. Moving pictures really came alive. To see the expressions on their faces, when Joley spoke to them . . . you'd have thought they were listening to the voice of God.'"^[38] "Everybody was mad for the talkies," said movie star Gregory Peck in a Newsweek interview. "I remember 'The Jazz Singer,' when Al Jolson just burst into song, and there was a little bit of dialogue. And when he came out with 'Mammy,' and went down on his knees to his Mammy, it was just dynamite."^[39]

This opinion is shared by Mast and Kawin:

...this moment of informal patter at the piano is the most exciting and vital part of the entire movie...when Jolson acquires a voice, the warmth, the excitement, the vibrations of it, the way its rambling spontaneity lays bare the imagination of the mind that is making up the sounds ...[and] the addition of a Vitaphone voice revealed the particular qualities of Al Jolson that made him a star. Not only the eyes are a window on the soul.^[40]:231

Jewish meanings[link]

Cultural historian Linda Williams notes that "The Jazz Singer represents the triumphs of the assimilating son over the old-world father ... and present impediments to an assimilating show-biz success....[and] when Jakie's father says, 'Stop', the flow of "jazz" music (and spontaneous speech) freezes. But the Jewish mother recognizes the virtue of the old world in the new and the music flows again."^[41]:186 According to film historian Robert Carringer, even the father eventually comes to understand that his son's jazz singing is "fundamentally an ancient religious impulse seeking expression in a modern, popular form".^[42]:23 Or as the film itself states in its first title card, "perhaps this plaintive, wailing song of jazz is, after all, the misunderstood utterance of a prayer."^[42]

Film historian Scott Eyman also describes the cultural perspective of the film:

[It] marks one of the few times Hollywood Jews allowed themselves to contemplate their own central cultural myth, and the conundrums that go with it... The Jazz Singer implicitly celebrates the ambition and drive needed to escape the shtetls of Europe and the ghettos of New York, and the attendant hunger for recognition. Jack, Sam, and Harry let Jack Robin have it all: the satisfaction of taking his father's place and of conquering the Winter Garden. They were, perhaps unwittingly, dramatizing some of their own ambivalence about the debt first-generation Americans owed their parents.^[37]:142

Other feature films[link]

Poster for Hallelujah, I'm a Bum with unused title

The Singing Fool (1928)

With Warner Bros., Al Jolson made his first "all-talking" picture, The Singing Fool (1928) — the story of a driven entertainer who insisted upon going on with the show even as his small son lay dying, and its signature tune, "Sonny Boy," became the first American record to sell one million copies. The film was even more popular than The Jazz Singer, and held the record for box-office attendance for 10 years, until broken by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Jolson continued to make features for Warner Bros., very similar in style to The Singing Fool, Say It with Songs (1929), Mammy (1930), and Big Boy (1930). A restored version of Mammy, which includes Jolson in some Technicolor sequences, was first screened in 2002.^[43] (Jolson's first Technicolor appearance was in a cameo in the musical Show Girl in Hollywood (1930) from First National Pictures, a Warner Bros. subsidiary.) The sameness of the stories, Jolson's large salary, and changing public tastes in musicals contributed to the films' diminishing returns over the next few years. As a result of this, Jolson decided to return to Broadway, and starred in a new show, entitled Wonder Bar, which was not very successful.^[8]:231-235

[edit] Hallelujah, I'm a Bum/Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp

Despite these new troubles, Jolson was able to make a comeback after performing a hit concert in New Orleans after "Wonderbar" closed in 1931. Warners allowed him to make one film with United Artists, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, in 1933 (the film had to be retitled Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp in the UK and other English-speaking countries where 'bum' means 'butt' and where the slang word for a vagrant is 'tramp' rather than 'bum'). It was directed by Lewis Milestone and written by noted screenwriter Ben Hecht. Hecht was also active in the promotion of civil rights: "Hecht film stories featuring black characters included Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, co-starring Edgar Connor as Al Jolson's sidekick, in a politically savvy rhymed dialogue over Richard Rodgers music."^[44]

As the title suggests, the film was a direct response to the Great Depression, with messages to his vagabond friends equivalent to "there's more to life than money" and "the best things in life are free". A New York Times review wrote, "The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no Mammy song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director, Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny.... a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire..."^[45] Another review added, "A film to welcome back, especially for what it tries to do for the progress of the American musical..."^[46]

[edit] Wonder Bar (1934)

In 1934, he starred in a movie version of his earlier stage play, Wonder Bar, and co-starred Kay Francis, Dolores del Río, Ricardo Cortez, and Dick Powell. The movie is a "musical Grand Hotel, set in the Parisian nightclub owned by Al Wonder (Jolson). Wonder entertains and banters with his international clientele."^[47]:97

Reviews were generally positive: "Wonder Bar has got about everything. Romance, flash, dash, class, color, songs, star-studded talent and almost every known requisite to assure sturdy attention and attendance... It's Jolson's comeback picture in every respect.";^[48] and, "Those who like Jolson should see Wonder Bar for it is mainly Jolson; singing the old reliables; cracking jokes which would have impressed Noah as depressingly ancient; and moving about with characteristic energy."^[49] Returning to Warners, Jolson bowed to new production ideas, focusing less on the star and more on elaborately cinematic numbers staged by Busby Berkeley and Bobby Connolly. This new approach worked, sustaining Jolson's movie career until the Warner contract lapsed in 1935. Jolson co-starred with his actress-dancer wife, Ruby Keeler, only once, in Go Into Your Dance.

[edit] The Singing Kid (1936)

Jolson's last Warner vehicle was The Singing Kid (1936), a parody of Jolson's stage persona (he plays a character named Al Jackson) in which he pokes fun at his stage histrionics and taste for "mammy" songs—the latter via a number by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen titled "I Love to Singa", and a comedy sequence with Jolson doggedly trying to sing "Mammy" while The Yacht Club Boys keep telling him such songs are outdated.^[32]

According to jazz historian Michael Alexander, Jolson had once griped that "People have been making fun of Mammy songs, and I don't really think that it's right that they should, for after all, Mammy songs are the fundamental songs of our country." In this film, he notes, "Jolson had the confidence to rhyme 'Mammy' with 'Uncle Sammy'", adding "Mammy songs, along with the vocation 'Mammy singer', were inventions of the Jewish Jazz Age."^[16]:136

The film also gave a boost to the career of black singer and bandleader Cab Calloway, who performed a number of songs alongside Jolson. In his autobiography, Calloway writes about this episode:

I'd heard Al Jolson was doing a new film on the Coast, and since Duke Ellington and his band had done a film, wasn't it possible for me and the band to do this one with Jolson. Frenchy got on the phone to California, spoke to someone connected with the film and the next thing I knew the band and I were booked into chicago on our way to California for the film, The Singing Kid. We had a hell of a time, although I had some pretty rough arguments with Harold Arlen, who had written the music. Arlen was the songwriter for many of the finest Cotton Club revues, but he had done some interpretations for The Singing Kid that I just couldn't go along with. He was trying to change my style and I was fighting it. Finally, Jolson stepped in and said to Arlen, 'Look, Cab knows what he wants to do; let him do it his way.' After that, Arlen left me alone. And talk about integration: Hell, when the band and I got out to Hollywood, we were treated like pure royalty. Here were Jolson and I living in adjacent penthouses in a very plush hotel. We were costars in the film so we received equal treatment, no question about it.^[50]:131

The Singing Kid was not one of the studio's major attractions, (it went out under the subsidiary First National trademark,) and Jolson didn't even rate star billing. The song "I Love to Singa" later appeared in Tex Avery's cartoon of the same name. The movie also became the first important role for future child star Sybil Jason in a scene directed by Busby Berkeley. Jason remembers that Berkeley worked on the film although he is not credited.^[47]:103

[edit] Rose of Washington Square (1939)

His next movie—his first with Twentieth Century-Fox—was Rose of Washington Square, in 1939. It starred Jolson, Alice Faye and Tyrone Power, and included many of Jolson's most well-known songs, although a number of songs were cut to shorten the movie's length, including "April Showers" and "Avalon". Reviewers wrote, "Mr Jolson's singing of Mammy, California, Here I Come and others is something for the memory book."^[51] and "Of the three co-stars this is Jolson's picture ... because it's a pretty good catalog in anybody's hit parade."^[52] The movie was released on DVD in October 2008. Twentieth Century-Fox hired him to re-create a scene from The Jazz Singer in the Alice Faye-Don Ameche film Hollywood Cavalcade. Guest appearances in two more Fox films followed that same year, but Jolson never starred in a full-length feature film again.

[edit] The Jolson Story

After the success of the George M. Cohan film biography, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky believed that a similar film could be made about Al Jolson—and he knew just where to pitch the project. Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures, loved the music of Al Jolson. He knew that Jolson had been one of America's most well-known and popular entertainers.

Skolsky pitched the idea of an Al Jolson biopic and Cohn agreed. It was directed by Alfred E. Green (best known today for the pre-Code masterpiece Baby Face), with musical numbers staged by Joseph H. Lewis. With Jolson providing almost all the vocals, and veteran Columbia contractee Larry Parks playing Jolson, The Jolson Story (1946) became one of the biggest hits of the year.^[53]

Larry Parks wrote, in a personal tribute to Jolson, "Stepping into his shoes was, for me, a matter of endless study, observation, energetic concentration to obtain, perfectly if possible, a simulation of the kind of man he was. It is not surprising, therefore, that while making The Jolson Story, I spent 107 days before the cameras and lost eighteen pounds in weight."^[54] From a review in Variety, "But the real star of the production is that Jolson voice and that Jolson medley. It was good showmanship to cast this film with lesser people, particularly Larry Parks as the mammy kid... As for Jolson's voice, it has never been better. Thus the magic of science has produced a composite whole to eclipse the original at his most youthful best."^[55]

Parks received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and the film became one of the highest-grossing films of the year. Although Jolson was too old to play himself in the film, he persuaded the studio to let him appear in one musical sequence, "Swanee", shot entirely in long shot, with Jolson in blackface singing and dancing onto the runway leading into the middle of the theater. In the wake of the film's success, Jolson became a top singer among the American public once again.^[8]:311 Decca Records signed Jolson and he recorded for Decca until his death.

Critical observations[link]

According to film historian Krin Gabbard, The Jolson Story goes further than any of the earlier films in exploring the significance of blackface and the relationships that whites have developed with blacks in the area of music. To him, the film seems to imply an inclination of white performers, like Jolson, who are possessed with "the joy of life and enough sensitivity, to appreciate the musical accomplishments of blacks".^[56]:53 To support his view he describes a significant part of the movie:

While wandering around New Orleans before a show with Dockstader's Minstrels, he enters a small club where a group of black jazz musicians are performing. "Jolson has a revelation, that the staid repertoire of the minstrel troupe can be transformed by actually playing black music in blackface. He tells Dockstader that he wants to sing what he has just experienced: 'I heard some music tonight, something they call jazz. Some fellows just make it up as they go along. They pick it up out of the air.' After Dockstader refuses to accommodate Jolson's revolutionary concept, the narrative chronicles his climb to stardom as he allegedly injects jazz into his blackface performances ... Jolson's success is built on anticipating what Americans really want. Dockstader performs the inevitable function of the guardian of the status quo, whose hidebound commitment to what is about to become obsolete reinforces the audience's sympathy with the forward-looking hero."^[56]:54

This has been a theme which was traditionally "dear to the hearts of the men who made the movies."^[56]:54 Film historian George Custen describes this "common scenario, in which the hero is vindicated for innovations that are initially greeted with resistance ... [T]he struggle of the heroic protagonist who anticipates changes in cultural attitudes is central to other white jazz biopics such as The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and The Benny Goodman Story (1955)".^[57]:147 "Once we accept a semantic change from singing to playing the clarinet, The Benny Goodman Story becomes an almost transparent reworking of The Jazz Singer ... and The Jolson Story."^[56]:54

[edit] Jolson Sings Again

The Jolson Story and its sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949) introduced a new generation to Jolson. Jolson Sings Again opened at Loew's State Theatre in New York with positive reviews: "Mr. Jolson's name is up in lights again and Broadway is wreathed in smiles", wrote Thomas Pryor in The New York Times. "That's as it should be, for Jolson Sings Again is an occasion which warrants some lusty cheering ...".^[11]:287 Jolson did a tour of New York film theaters to plug the movie, traveling with a police convoy to make timetables for all showings, often ad libbing jokes and performing songs for the audience. Extra police were on duty as crowds jammed the streets and sidewalks at each theater Jolson visited.^[11]:286-287 In Chicago, a few weeks later, he sang to 100,000 people at Soldier Field, and later that night appeared at the Oriental Theatre with George Jessel where 10,000 people had to be turned away.^[11]:287

In Baltimore, Maryland, he took his wife Erle to see St Mary's Catholic School where he was confined for a while as a boy and treated for tuberculosis. He introduced her to the same priest, Father Benjamin, who watched over him. That night, Jolson took over two hundred of the church's kids to see Jolson Sings Again at the Hippodrome Theatre. A few weeks later, the Jolsons were received by President Harry Truman at the White House.

Radio shows[link]

Jolson had been a popular guest star on radio since its earliest days, notably on NBC's The Dodge Victory Hour (January 1928), singing from a New Orleans hotel to an audience of 35 million via 47 radio stations. His own 1930s shows included Presenting Al Jolson (1932) and Shell Chateau (1935), and he was the host of the Kraft Music Hall from 1947 to 1949, with Oscar Levant as a sardonic, piano-playing sidekick. Despite such singers as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Perry Como being in their primes, Jolson was voted the "Most Popular Male Vocalist" in 1948 by a poll in Variety.

The next year, Jolson was named "Personality of the Year" by the Variety Clubs of America. When Jolson appeared on Bing Crosby's radio show, he attributed his receiving the award to his being the only singer not to make a record of Mule Train, which had been a widely covered hit of that year (four different versions, one of them by Crosby, had made the top ten on the charts). Jolson even joked that he had tried to sing the hit song: "I got the clippetys all right, but I can't clop like I used to."

Planned television and movie[link]

When Jolson appeared on Steve Allen's KNX Los Angeles radio show in 1949 to promote Jolson Sings Again, he offered his curt opinion of the burgeoning television industry: "I call it smell-evision." Writer Hal Kanter recalled that Jolson's own idea of his television debut would be a corporate-sponsored, extra-length spectacular that would feature him as the only performer, and would be telecast without interruption. In 1950, it was announced that Jolson agreed to appear on the CBS television network. However, he died before production could be initiated. In 1950, Columbia was thinking about a third Jolson musical, and this time Jolson would play himself. The project, tentatively titled You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet, was to dramatize Jolson's recent tours of military bases. The film was never made.

World War II and Korean War tours[link]

World War II[link]

Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor shook Jolson out of continuing moods of lethargy due to years of little activity and "... he dedicated himself to a new mission in life.... Even before the U.S.O. began to set up a formal program overseas, the excitable Jolson was deluging War and Navy Department brass with phone calls and wires. He demanded permission to go anywhere in the world where there is an American serviceman who wouldn’t mind listening to ‘Sonny Boy’ or ‘Mammy’.... [and] early in 1942, Jolson became the first star to perform at a GI base in World War II".^[58]:43-44

with General Patton, World War II

From a New York Times interview in 1942: "When the war started... [I] felt that it was up to me to do something, and the only thing I know is show business. I went around during the last war and I saw that the boys needed something besides chow and drills. I knew the same was true today, so I told the people in Washington that I would go anywhere and do an act for the Army."^[59] Shortly after the war began, he wrote a letter to Steven Early, press secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, volunteering "to head a committee for the entertainment of soldiers and said that he "would work without pay... [and] would gladly assist in the organization to be set up for this purpose". A few weeks later, he received his first tour schedule from the newly formed United Services Organization (USO), "the group his letter to Early had helped create".^[11]:253

He did as many as four shows a day in the jungle outposts of Central America and covered the string of U.S. Naval bases. He paid for part of the transportation out of his own pocket. Upon doing his first, and unannounced, show in England in 1942, the reporter for the Hartford Courant wrote, "... it was a panic. And pandemonium... when he was done the applause that shook that soldier-packed room was like bombs falling again in Shaftsbury Avenue."^[60]

From an article in the New York Times: "He [Jolson] has been to more Army camps and played to more soldiers than any other entertainer. He has crossed the Atlantic by plane to take song and cheer to the troops in Britain and Northern Ireland. He has flown to the cold wastes of Alaska and the steaming forests of Trinidad. He has called at Dutch‑like Curaçao. Nearly every camp in this country has heard him sing and tell funny stories."^[59] Some of the unusual hardships of performing to active troops were described in an article he wrote for Variety, in 1942: "In order to entertain all the boys ... it became necessary for us to give shows in foxholes, gun emplacements, dugouts, to construction groups on military roads; in fact, any place where two or more soldiers were gathered together, it automatically became a Winter Garden for me and I would give a show."^[11]:256 After returning from a tour of overseas bases, the Regimental Hostess at one camp wrote to Jolson, "Allow me to say on behalf of all the soldiers of the 33rd Infantry that you coming here is quite the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to us, and we think you're tops, not only as a performer, but as a person. We unanimously elect you Public Morale Lifter No. 1 of the U.S Army."^[11]:257

Jolson was officially enlisted in the United Service Organizations (USO), the organization which provided entertainment for American troops who served in combat overseas.^[8]:285 While serving in the USO, he received a Specialist rating due to his age, which would permit him to wear a uniform and have the same standing as an officer. During his time entertaining troops he caught malaria and lost a lung.

In 1946, during a nationally broadcast testimonial dinner in New York City, given on his behalf, he received a special tribute from the American Veterans Committee in honor of his volunteer services during WWII.^[3] And in 1949, the movie Jolson Sings Again recreated some scenes showing Jolson during his war tours.^[61]

Korean War[link]

In 1950, Michael Freedland^[32] writes, when "the United States answered the call of the United Nations Security Council ... and had gone to fight the North Koreans. ... [Jolson] rang the White House again. 'I'm gonna go to Korea,' he told a startled official on the phone. 'No one seems to know anything about the USO, and it's up to President Truman to get me there.' He was promised that President Truman and General MacArthur, who had taken command of the Korean front, would get to hear of his offer. But for four weeks there was nothing. ... Finally, Louis A. Johnson, Secretary of Defense, sent Jolson a telegram. 'Sorry for delay but regret no funds for entertainment-STOP; USO disbanded-STOP.' The message was as much an assault on the Jolson sense of patriotism as the actual crossing of the 38th Parallel had been. 'What are they talkin' about', he thundered. 'Funds? Who needs funds? I got funds! I'll pay myself!'"^[32]:283-284

Performing in Korea