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The Jolson Story Movie Review

The Jolson Story is a 1946 biographical musical film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Larry Parks. It is a very mediocre biopic.

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“I heard some music tonight.

Something they call jazz.

The fellows just make it up as they go along.

They pick it out of the air“

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This movie shows the idealized career of the singer Al Jolson, a little Jewish boy who goes against the will of his father in order to be in showbiz. He becomes a star, falls in love with a non-Jewish dancer, and marries her. In the end, he chooses success on the stage. This is by far one of the most dated movies from this Hollywood period for multiple reasons.

One is the subject matter at hand. Al Jolson was a huge star back in the day, but most of his shtick involved doing blackface, so of course this did not age well regardless of your political orientation. A better movie would have dealt a bit more with that element of his career and just how impactful he was to the black community back in the day, but this movie failed to even do that, mostly focusing on his boring personal life.

And that is another issue here – it’s a standard biopic musical that aged horribly. There is not a single sequence here that is engaging in any shape or form. The songs are okay, but they also did not age well as I find Jolson’s singing style overly dated, uninteresting and samey. Thus, most of the musical numbers lacked momentum and/or energy here, making for a slog to sit through.

The Jolson Story was nominated for six Academy Awards. Needless to say, this was probably the worst choice that the Academy made this year. None of the nominations were earned whatsoever, especially the acting ones. William Demarest is fine, but hardly worthy of a nomination. As for Larry Parks, he was pretty solid in the role, but his character lacked depth and the movie was both historically inaccurate and emotionally uninvolving, so ultimately I did not care for the protagonist and main actor at all.

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This is a very odd movie that was lost to time as none of the actors are well-known nowadays and Jolson himself is hardly talked about anymore. The technical aspects are fine as the color photography is good and the production design is solid. The movie also has a couple of at least somewhat memorable musical scenes with the Mammy one being the highlight. But the editing nod was ludicrous as the film was and felt overlong and monotonous.