Say it with Songs (Warner Bros.) (1929)

10 ou AL JOLSON in “SAY IT WITH SONGS”—Warner Bros. Latest All-Talking, All-Singing Vitaphone Picture FEATURES FOR NEWSPAPERS | “Why doesn’t Daddy tum to see my twee?” |TALKING PICTURES COMPLETE TRANSFORMATION OF JOLSON oe Scene from” Say it With Songs"Starring Al JolsonA Wermer Bros.Product ion ~~ Production No. 15—-Cut or Mat It is a new and different Al Jolson that now confronts audiences from the screen. The difference is not confined to his physical appearance; the medium through which he works is different. In his adolescent days, Asa Yoelgon ran away from his home in Washington, D. C., where his father, Cantor Yoelson, had taught him to sing the haunting, plaintive Jewish chants, to join a circus as a barker. Later he went into vaudeville. One day the old negro man who helped him dress said “Boss, if you’s black, they always laugh.” Al Jolson took the hint. He made up in blackface. Not long afterward he was engaged to appear as end-man with Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels. Neil O’Brien was the other end-man. Jolson’s singing won him great popularity. When the Shuberts were about to open the Winter Garden and were casting about town for talent, J. J. Shubert heard Jolson sing with the minstrels and hurried to engage him for the Winter Garden show. Made up in blackface, he soon became known as_ the “Mammy” singer. In 1914 he was featured in “Dancin? Around.’ Two years later he was starred in “Robinson Crusoe Jr.” then in “Sinbad,” “Bombo,” and “Big Boy.’ He had won his big success in blackface and continued to use burnt cork. One night a performer at the Sunday concert at the Winter Garden failed to show up. Jolson was in the audience and was drafted to fill in. He went on without makeup. There was no lessening of the applause. When Warner Bros. engaged Jolson to star in the Vitaphone picture “The Jazz Singer,” the plot called for him to appear partly in blackface, partly in white. The public loved him in both. In “The Singing Fool” Jolson appeared without burnt cork make-up in at least two-thirds of the production, putting on blackface only in the theatre climax scenes. In “Say It With Songs,” his third Vitaphone picture on the third anniversary of the introduction of Vitaphone to the public at the same theatre, blackface is definitely abandoned by the star. Not once does he appear in the make-up in which he won his great popularity. He has joined the ranks of great entertainers whose art is not dependent upon accidentals of makeup or costume. This does not mean that he will never again don burnt cork if a story calls for it. He will probably do so for certain scenes in his next Warner Bros. Vitaphone picture, “Mammy.” Accompanying the transformation from blackface to white has been another deeper, more significant transformation. Jolson black in OFF THE SET WITH THE AMAZING AL JOLSON The leisurely life of ease accredited to the motion picture actor in fictional accounts of Hollywood is sheer legend. Ask Al Jolson. Although he is the highest paid camera actor, he will admit that the demands of his art are always exacting, often arduous. He will tell you with a smile that the profession of histrionics is far easier on Broadway than it is on Sunset Boulevard. If there is any protracted luxury or idleness about an acting career, take it from Al Jolson, that footlight stars get the bigger share. Al Jolson’s Hollywood day begins at six o’clock in the morning. Half an hour for dressing and breakfast is followed by an hour of tennis. Then Al jumps into his automobile (yes, it is a Rolls-Royce, and drives from his hotel on Wilshire Boulevard to the Warner Studio on Sunset, a distance of some two miles but an invigorating spin in the early hours of asunny California day. At eightthirty, then, the star is in his dressing room. By ten minutes of nine his make-up is intact and he is ready on the set. Make-up for “Say It With Songs” was not a difficult matter. For the first time in his professional career—or more acecurately, for the first time in a dozen years, Al Jolson did not don black-face at any point in the story. Moreover, the new type of panchromatic film used exclusively at the Warner Studio, coupled with the demands of the new type of incandescent lighting, calls for.only a light layer of powder and a mere dash of darkening below the eyes. Vitaphone pictures have meant a complete readjusting of working hours for the stars who have been raised, professionally speaking, on Broadway. So Jolson who always started his business day at the rise of an eight-thirty curtain—twothirty on Wednesdays and Saturdays —is now waiting for the director’s word to go at the same inevitable nine a.m. which summons the working world throughout the land. And in emergencies, he is sometimes hard at it until late at night. ' No, the life of the motion picture actor is far from a slothful one. To gauge Al Jolson’s real relation to the success of “Say It With Songs,” it is necessary, in fact, to go back before the actual camera work on the picture started. Unlike many stars who regard their duties confined solely to “emoting,” Jolson takes an intense interest in every phase of production and is bending all his energies to its success many weeks before he makes the first scene. When “Say It With Songs” was in its preliminary stages, there were, for instance, conferences with Darryl Zanuck, associate executive of the Warner Studio, who wrote the story. There were weeks of work on the original song numbers which Al Jolson himself composed for the most part with B. G. DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. And there was the choice of the cast. All of the players in “Say It With Songs” were personally selected by the star. Marian Nixon was chosen when Al Jolson saw her work in another Vitaphone talking picture, “In the Headlines.” And when he read in the script that there was a place for a five-year-old child, he named, of course, none other than Davey Lee for the part. It was equally as inconceivable to Jolson as it would have been to the great picture-going public, that any other youngster should have the _ role. The whole world remembers Davey as Sonny Boy in “The Singing Fool” and knows that it was Jolson who discovered the little lad and tutored him in the ways of the camera and the microphone. Those who see Davey as Little Pal in “Say It With Songs,” will say that his work, thanks to the tutelage of his “Unele Al,” is more remarkable than ever before. To absorb the proper technique of a radio artist, Jolson spent a great deal of time in Warner Bros. broadeasting station, KFWB in Hollywood. Then there were long talks with Lloyd Bacon, the director of “Say It With Songs,” to whom the star offered numerous suggestions to improve the action with little touches of pathos and humor which he felt would carry extra appeal. All along the line, author, director, technicians and players are not only willing but eager to have Jolson’s opinion. No actor understands audience psychology so well. No actor knows better how to win a laugh or summon a tear with an added word or an added gesture. Any day during the filming of “Say It With Songs,’ you might have seen Jolson imparting some improving bit to the production, some touch that is not obviously credited to him. Because he made the first revolutionizing Vitaphone picture, “The Jazz Singer,” it is natural that he soon became an expert of microphone technique. Jolson Trailed By “Voice Chasers”’ “Voice chasers” are the gentlemen who drag the microphone after a moving actor. Perched high above the camera angle, among lights and pulleys armed with a long, lean pole with a velvet-padded hook on the end the “voice chaser” stands ready to push or pull the sensitive microphone along over the head of an actor if he moves as he -talks, thus greatly widening the range which can be used. Al Jolson was much amused by these attentive gents while making Warner Bros. “Say It With Songs’—now at the Theatre. face was first and last a comedian despite the plaintive undertone in his songs. With his appearance in talking motion pictures, Al Jolson, the e™motional actor, has emerged. Hr «as proved himself adept at dramatic, emotional—even tragic—acting. He does not always want to make his audiences laugh. It is when he appears in whiteface that he grips the emotions of his hearers and works upon their heartstrings. Al Jolson the emotional actor is felt to be a greater actor than was Al Jolson the comedian. His audience is without doubt a million-fold bigger than it was when he was a blackface comedian. It was Vitaphone that developed Jolson’s genius for emotional acting and brought him the world-wide popularity which he enjoys today. JOLSON EXTRA CLAIMS OVERPAY A one-day wonder in Hollywood, is an extra who believed herself over-paid, has been found on the Warner Brothers lot. Employed as “office atmosphere” in the _ early scenes of “Say It With Songs,” Al Jolson’s new all-talking-Vitaphone DICHUTE PMOWes BO LNCS (2.5 + 2eigmeen « Theatre, this extra girl had to be there, and nothing more. But it happened that Jolson was to rehearse some of the songs for this picture, with the orchestra on the set. The star was in fine mettle and was showing both the orchestra and the working crew a good time. The extra girl, “registering atmosphere” in that one set could see and hear Jolson perfectly through several hours of entertainment. “T didn’t have much to do, and what I did do I enjoyed. I saw a six dollar show and drew seven dollars and a half pay and I’m overpaid, thank you!” But she didn’t offer to return the seven-fifty. | ANYTHING TO PLEASE LITTLE PAL | weene. from" Say it With Songs"Starring Al JolsonA Warner Bras. Procuction Fan) Production No. 16—Cut or Mat