The best Al Jolson’s movies
Today we present the best Al Jolson’s movies. If you are a great movie fan, you will surely know most of them, but we hope to discover a movie that you have not yet seen … and that you love! Let’s go there with the best Al Jolson’s movies.
The Jazz Singer
6.4/10
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.
Hollywood Cavalcade
6.5/10
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.
Wonder Bar
6.5/10
Harry and Inez are a dance team at the Wonder Bar. Inez loves Harry, but he is in love with Liane, the wife of a wealthy business man. Al Wonder and the conductor/singer Tommy are in love with Inez. When Inez finds out that Harry wants to leave Paris and is going to the USA with Liane, she kills him.
Show-Business at War
7/10
A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.
Rhapsody in Blue
7/10
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
Go Into Your Dance
6.1/10
An irresponsible Broadway star gets mixed up with gambling and gangsters.
Hallelujah I'm a Bum
6.9/10
A New York tramp falls in love with the mayor's amnesiac girlfriend after rescuing her from a suicide attempt
Rose of Washington Square
6.7/10
Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.
Mammy
5.9/10
Mammy features Al Jolson as the star of a travelling minstrel show, appearing in a small Southern town. Jolson falls in love with an actress in the troupe (Lois Moran), but she loves another. One of Jolson's fellow minstrels (Lowell Sherman) is shot backstage, and it is assumed thanks to several plot convolutions that Jolson is guilty of the deed.
Say It with Songs
4.9/10
Joe Lane, radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that the manager of the studio, Arthur Phillips, has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine. Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison for a few years, and when he is released he visits his son, Little Pal, at school and is begged by him to run away together.
Swanee River
6.2/10
Swanee River is a 1940 American biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out. Typical of 20th Century Fox biopics of the time, the film is more fictional than factual biography.
The Golden Twenties
6.6/10
Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
7.1/10
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
The Singing Fool
6.2/10
After years of hopeful struggle, Al Stone (Jolson) is on his way. "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World", he sings to an appreciative speakeasy crowd. But, as Al discovers, getting there is one thing. Staying there is another. Singing waiter Stone gets his huge break on a magical night when his song wows a big-time producer and a gold-digging showgirl he fancies. Broadway success and marriage follow, but sure enough, hard times are on the way. Al's fickle wife abandons him, taking the beloved son he calls Sonny Boy with her. Heartbroken, Al becomes a devastated loner until friends from the speakeasy that launched his career rescue him from a life on the streets. Soon, Al is back in lights. But another crisis awaits: Sonny Boy is in the hospital and dying....
Screen Snapshots Series 18, No. 8
1.7/10
Okay for Sound
6.1/10
This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to sound movies and acknowledges the work of Lee De Forest. Brief excerpts from the August 1926 exhibition follow. Clips are then shown from a number of Warner Brothers features, four from the 1920s, the remainder from 1946/47.
The Voice That Thrilled the World
6.6/10
This short traces the history of sound in the movies, beginning with French scientist Leon Scott's experiments in 1857. Featured are snippets from early sound pictures.
New York Nights
5.5/10
Show girl Jill Deverne is married to song writer Fred Deverne, and everyone is involved in the Broadway night life and endless parties. Jill is being pursued by a gangster, and she leaves her husband after he spends the night with a floozie. Jill ends up as the gangster's moll, but she soon gets tired of the lifestyle.
Take It or Leave It
5.1/10
A young husband becomes a game-show participant in the hopes of winning the cash to pay his pregnant wife's doctor.
Hollywood Handicap
5.2/10
A group of stable hands is given a race horse when its owner retires from the business. They raise money to run the horse in the Hollywood Derby at Santa Anita race track. Many Hollywood personalities attend the event.
