October 1, 2023
Having emigrated from a Lithuanian shtetl in 1894 to Washington, DC, where his father got a job as a rabbi, Al Jolson soon rose to become the best-known and best-paid entertainer in the United States. He's especially noted for the history-making The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with synchronized music and dialogue and a groundbreaker in its depiction of Jewish life. A new tact for Bernstein, long a New York Times foreign correspondent with numerous Asia-focused books to his credit. Prepub Alert.
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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2024
Journalist, book critic, and author Bernstein (China 1945) focuses on singer and actor Al Jolson and the creation of his 1927 film The Jazz Singer. The book considers how Jolson rose to success and how he shaped American culture, expanding it in many ways but also modeling its prejudices. Prepub Alert.
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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 20, 2024
Bernstein (China 1945) offers insight into the making of 1927's The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with synchronized spoken dialogue, and the problematic life of Jolson (1886-1950). The Jazz Singer was a fictionalized version of Jolson's life based on Samson Raphaelson's short story "The Day of Atonement" and introduced Jewish culture to many Americans. Bernstein traces the immigrant Jolson through his sojourn in Washington, DC, and his emergence as a vaudeville singing comedian. He provides background on fellow Jewish entertainers of Jolson's era, including George Jessel (who starred in The Jazz Singer on Broadway in 1925). Bernstein acknowledges that Jolson performed in blackface, which Black Americans correctly saw as a harmful racist caricature. Bernstein also faults the peripatetic performer for furthering a distorted vision of the South, perhaps as a longing for a settled place of his own. The reportedly bombastic, insecure, womanizing Jolson was, during his lifetime, idealized in the biopics The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949), which revived his popularity. Bernstein also evaluates remakes of The Jazz Singer from 1952, 1959, and 1980. VERDICT This fluidly written book illuminates an influential era, asserting that the United States is a singular space where things can happen on a grand scale.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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November 1, 2024
An exploration of Al Jolson, blackface, and Jewish migrants' transformative role in American culture. Today, Al Jolson (1886-1950) is famous mainly as the star of 1927'sThe Jazz Singer, the first feature-length synchronized-sound film. More specifically, he's famous for singing its showstopper, "My Mammy," in blackface, a performance that would be unthinkable today. But in his heyday, Jolson was the best-paid entertainer on Broadway (earning $5,000 weekly at one point). In Bernstein's thoughtful account, the author ofOut of the Blue (2003), China 1945 (2014), and other works, doesn't diminish blackface's offensiveness, but he strives to give it some meaningful context in terms of Jolson's life and Jewish American entertainers more generally. "In enlightened, post-civil-rights-movement America," Bernstein writes, "blackface has come to be like the swastika and the N-word, banned from public spaces. But at the time that Jolson adopted it, it was taken for granted; it was a sort of stock image, a clich�." Born in a Lithuanian shtetl as Asa Yoelson, Jolson arrived in America hungry to assimilate and was performing onstage by the time he was 12. At the start of the 20th century, Jolson was part of a wave of Jewish Americans leading an incursion into American culture, playing leadership roles in theaters and film. It's often forgotten thatThe Jazz Singer, based on a short story and play by Samson Raphaelson, was inspired by Jolson's own story: a young Jewish cantor torn between the allure of Broadway spotlights and the demands of his family's faith. Within that plot, Bernstein finds a rich allegory not just for Jolson's life but for the experience of Jews in America "who came nearly to dominate American popular culture, remaking themselves and remaking the country in the process." It's not a full-dress Jolson bio, but some elements--particularly his abusiveness toward women--are glossed over. A revealing study of a pioneering if problematic entertainer.
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