The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The First Real Story About the Universal Idol Who Is Less Known Than Any Star Save Greta Garbo The real face or rional fo his quick, to or seen by the gay crowd of stars and film folk who make up Hollywood's life outside the studio. I had never met Al Jolson until I walked into his office at Warner Brothers the other day to keep a luncheon engagement with him. Sitting at a cluttered desk, shouting rapidly into a telephone connected with New York, sat a slight, compact man, with a face tanned to mahogany by the California sun. His clothes were well-cut and worn with an air, but they were the unostentatious clothes of a business man rather than of an actor. His strong, nervous hand moved on the desk with continual gestures which it seemed a shame the man at the other end of the 'phone couldn't see. He would have understood Jolson so much better. I studied him for ten minutes while he wound up important business. The slightly graying hair gives him a distinguished look. The shape of his head reveals the thinker. All the sensitiveness, all the enormous emotional force of the man, lie written plainly in his fine mouth and responsive eyes. There is a weathered likableness about him that again reminded me of Will Rogers, though he is as quick in action and speech as Rogers is slow. XJEVER in my life have I seen such a dynamo of ■^ human energy compacted in one human being. As I talked with him, I understood for the first time exactly why Jolson is great beyond all other men who have attempted to do the same thing he does. I understood why he can take an audience and literally drag them to heights of feeling, often with cheap material. I have seen him sweep audiences into enthusiasm greater than any other star calls forth. There are two reasons. First, he is never afraid to let himself go to the very limit. He can't help but "shoot the works" in everything he does. The other is that of all the actors I have met, he has the most sensitive reactions. The man is like a tuning fork. He is like some highly sensitized mirror that catches every gleam of light and throws it back, or some amazing soundingboard that never misses the tiniest note sent against it. He talked three times on the telephone before we left the office. To his business manager in New York. Punching over instructions, dynamiting ideas and plans, forcing over his thoughts like a high-powered salesman. To Joe Schenck, head of United Artists and his best friend. Instantly, his face broke into smiles. You would have thought he hadn't talked to Joe for months, though they had played golf together the afternoon before in a pouring rain. He kidded Joe unmercifully about that golf game. His voice expressed, without any Al Jolson is little known because he hides behind black characterization. Yet all the sensitiveness, all the emorce of the man, lie written in his fine mouth and quick, responsive eyes. attempt at reserve or casualness, all his deep affection for the other man. And then to a man connected with his pictures who had let him down rather badly by getting drunk at a psychological moment. There was an agony of embarrassment and hurt in every word he spoke. When he turned away his hands were actually shaking. TPHE gamut of emotions, in a brief half hour of -*■ telephoning — all at top speed and high pressure. I heard him keenly alert to his rights in a matter touching phonograph contracts. Two minutes later he sent downstairs in an envelope, to be called for, a check for five hundred dollars, made out to a man he knew slightly, who was out of work. In the office were a number of men, helping him clean up matters in order that he might leave for a hurried trip to New York to see some plays. His secretary has been with him nine years, his chauffeur eighteen, his business manager twenty, his valet twelve. I like that. People do not stay long years with a man unless he is just and interesting and lovable to some extent. That night he was to sing some songs at the opening of the Los Angeles Automobile Show, the proceeds of which were to be turned over to Mary Pickford for the Motion Picture Relief Fund. "They offered me three thousand dollars to sing," he said, " but Mary took it right away from me. 'But, of course, you don't want it. We'll put it right back in the fund.' Never even gave me a chance to make a gesture. I might have offered them half of it — but what chance has anybody when Mary looks at them?-' You can imagine for yourself how many times Al 49