Motion Picture (Feb-Jul 1936)

'^OMr A] /?" don't one of ff',r'^ are Ruby is immensely proud of Al and is a constant inspiration to him. She is sure he'll surpass himself in The Swging Kid greatest entertainer. For Jolson, you know, has been known as such for many years. His reputation for being hard-boiled and his ballyhoo are really his defensive armor, which, when penetrated way down underneath, reveals him as the softest sentimentalist in Hollywood. He always was a sucker for sentiment-. The way he nurses a mammy song and builds up the heart touches in his pictures give away this sentimental twist to any observer. Springtime and puppy love and sentimental fire-side scenes have been gnawing away at Al's vitals all his life — and they always will. He can never outgrow them — and the tougher he grows outside, the softer he gets inside. Almost twenty years ago this writer got the low-down on Al one night in his theatre dressing-room — and from that day to this the mightiest entertainer of them all has never failed to run true to form. He is still hard-boiled, keen in business, tough in argument, but wide open for a sentimental left. Five minutes after he was vowing vengeance on anyone who started any more rumors concerning^ Ruby and himself, he was telling me the secret of his well-known high position in the Warner Brothers studios. He talked about the days when, with the Warner boys, they made a picture in the old shed that was their studio, and how mother Warner used to bring them hot food — and personally see to it that they ate it, then and there. And as he reminisced, no one could have failed to realize that it was the memory of those days, and not his wealth, or influence or ability, that is the force behind Jolson on the Warner lot. And if you had sat there and listened to him, you would have forgotten all about the Al Jolson of whom you have heard so much, and seen just the man that Ruby Keeler knows — sentimental Al. Back in 1927, after Jolson had won international fame on the stage, and from his vantage point in California, where he had come to make a picture, he began to sense the froth that had been his public life and the attitude of the people at large. He was fed up with night life and its merry-go-round — and was plain lonesome. Also, though not then aware of it, he was beginning to experience a decided attack of "second spring." He had reached the stage that so many other men have reached, when they suddenly realize that the romance and true love that they had always dreamed about had never really been theirs. And Al was the kind who could feel deeply. 'T'HEN, one day in Los Angeles he met Ruby Keeler, a serious-minded girl who was then -• playing in The Sidewalks of New York. Contrary to all reports, Al had not met Ruby in New York and he had never seen her in a night-club. Nor did he marry her in New YorkCity, as is commonly believed, but in Portchester, a Westchester suburb. But to get back to our story : there could be only one result when Jolson, used to the smart-cracking Broadwayites, met this big-eyed, soft-spoken girl whose sincerity and simplicity contrasted so vividly to the women he had known in his show life. He put her on a pedestal — and his oft-repeated dreams came back to him, stronger than ever. The romance he had always wanted and had never quite found was demanding recognition. His long years on tlie stage — for he had run away from his home in Washington years before as little Asa Yoelson — had only intensified his natural longing for home-ties and for loving people to wax sentimental over. Ruby Keeler, with her background of always having taken care of her younger sisters — the Irish family with its rabid loyalty and deep love — and her great background of "folks" appealed to Al. All his life he had wanted — romance, a fire-side, loyalty and "folks,"' together with sincerity, modesty and love. And what did Ruby see? Something even more wonderful to her eyes. She saw the famous star she had always admired — and discovered he was [Continued on page 84] 41