Le fou chantant

Herbert Goldman's recent biography of Al Jolson makes the case that with the release and success of The Singing Fool Jolson was at the height of his career. His big Broadway successes and all the songs associated with them were behind him and his future song hits would be identified primarily with film. And the incredible profits The Singing Fool was bringing to Warner Brothers because people could not get enough of the novelty of sound was giving Jolson new vistas for his talent. More people saw him in The Singing Fool than ever did on Broadway or all the road tours he made with his stage shows.

If The Jazz Singer was mawkish and sentimental, The Singing Fool doubled the bet in that pot. Jolson plays a singing waiter who gets a big break because a Broadway producer spots his act. A woman who is played by Josephine Dunn who wouldn't give him the right time of day before now sees success and its tied to Jolson. She and Al marry and they have a child whom we never hear identify as anything else, but Sonny Boy.

In fact the child is the only thing Jolson really cares about other than his career. When one is taken the other goes downhill.

A lot of Jolson's previous song hits were interpolated into The Singing Fool as in The Jazz Singer. Two new songs were written for him and became identified with him, There's A Rainbow Round My Shoulder which to me fits his style perfectly and is the best thing in the film. The other is Sonny Boy.

In the film The Best Things In Life Are Free there is a scene where Jolson played by impersonator Herbert Brooks calls Gordon MacRae, Ernest Borgnine, and Dan Dailey who play the songwriting team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson and asks them to write a maudlin sentimental ballad he has to sing to a child. They sit down and write one to those specifications and the three of them as well as Jolson are shocked it becomes a hit. Goldman's book says there's reason to believe the story is true.

For nearly the entire film Jolson plays it without blackface. Then the finale with him singing Sonny Boy again he dons the minstrel cork to me for no apparent reason. It will forever be a mystery to me why Jolson continued to use the blackface long after he didn't need to.

Fans of Al Jolson should see The Singing Fool and folks who want to know about his performing art should see it as well. It is mawkish, maudlin, and sentimental and all Jolson.

The movie is obviously designed as a Jolson vehicle. It is pretty obvious that the star came first, and everything else followed.

Despite being made in 1928, the film holds up remarkably well today, the humour being one aspect that hasn't dated. Jolson sings Sonny Boy to great effect three times, although he puts so much emotion into it that I was left wanting him to sing is straight just once. The film may seem oversentimental but if you engage with this and look at it from the point of view of a contemporary audience you will enjoy it more, and the film's shock ending is, in my opinion one of the bravest I have seen Hollywood do. In fact the only shock endings which I think compare with this are Terry Gilliam's Brazil or Doctor Who: Earthshock.

The supporting performances are sterling, but there's no other actor who has the Charisma of Jolson. It's apparent to me that nowadays, the film's leading lady, Josephine Dunn, playing a singer, would have been given one or two songs to sing, but the producers rightly realised that the audience was there to see Jolson and Jolson alone.

The film is also of historical interest, being one of the first talkies. It's apparent that synchronised sound is used sparingly, and, like its near-contemporary The Jazz Singer, the opening parts use caption slides in place of speech.

Enjoy it for its Jazz age settings, the grand costumes (Miss Dunn's gowns are particularly exquisite) and of course for Jolson's singing.

The Singing Fool" is relatively unknown compared to the previous year's "The Jazz Singer", probably because it was the first feature film with synchronized dialogue. However, 1928's "The Singing Fool" is important for a number of reasons. For one, it was the first talking picture many people ever saw. Remember that in order to exhibit a talking picture special equipment had to be installed in the theater, and theater owners weren't sure enough of the future success of talking pictures to invest in that equipment until well after "The Jazz Singer" came and went. Also, "The Singing Fool" was the top box office draw of 1928. In fact, with the Great Depression just over the horizon, no film made more money until "Gone with the Wind" in 1939. Finally it is one of the very few talking pictures that survive from the year 1928 due to the ease of breakage of the Vitaphone discs.

The story behind "The Singing Fool" is not that remarkable. It is overly sentimental and you can see from the start exactly where it is headed. Jolson plays singing waiter Al Stone who loves snobby Molly, a singer at the night spot where he works. Likewise, Al is loved in secret by the cafés's cigarette girl. When Al makes a big hit with an agent, Molly suddenly finds Al - and his money and fame - very attractive. Of course Al is blind to Molly's poisonous ways until it is too late. You have to remember that the whole purpose behind the film is to give you a chance to see and hear the world's greatest entertainer, Al Jolson, singing on screen in his prime. In this film you get that in bigger doses than you got in "The Jazz Singer". So, if you are a Jolson fan, you are in for a big treat. However, be warned this film is what was known in 1928 and 1929 as a "goat gland" movie. That is, it is part silent. The exact ratio is about 75% talking, 25% silent. How it is chopped into sound/silent portions is particularly baffling. Some dialogue is sound, then will abruptly transition to silent. Warner's had already made an all-talking picture, in fact they made the first - 1928's "The Lights of New York". That film was supposed to be a two reel short that grew to six reels when Jack Warner was out of town, but it was a huge hit and sent the march towards talking pictures into overdrive. With the technical challenges of making an all-talking picture behind them, you would have thought Warner Bros. would have made Jolson's second talking picture an extra special effort and given it the all-talking treatment too. They didn't, but it was still a huge success. In conclusion, if you are a Jolson fan and you are interested in the early sound era of motion pictures, you'll love this film.

Not all early talkies were all-talking. One of the most notable of the hybrid's is 1928's "The Singing Fool" in which Al Jolson makes a valiant attempt – despite a sticky script and Lloyd Bacon's uncertain direction – to outdo his "The Jazz Singer" (1927). The movie is about three-quarters talkie, one quarter silent. Aside from the jarring of sudden swings from spoken dialog to title cards and the camera fluidity of Bacon's direction in some of the silent sequences versus the static camera set-ups of the sound, the movie succeeds in holding attention thanks to the charisma of its two lead players, Al Jolson and the lovely Josephine Dunn, who, alas, was unable to capitalize on her success here because she was then cast in a series of either indifferent or silent vehicles (when the public was screaming for sound). Within a year, she ended up in support slots. In this movie, despite the magnitude and importance of her role, Miss Dunn is actually billed under Betty Bronson who not only has a minuscule part but a totally inept voice that lacks projection. She seems to be whispering her lines (some of her words are inaudible) rather than speaking them. But never mind, all the film's audio defects were of no importance to moviegoers. They loved Jolson's full-blooded singing and the sheer novelty of sound. Initial domestic rentals topped $5 million, supplanting the $4.5 million takings of 1921's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse". It wasn't until 1938 that this record was broken by Walt Disney's truly colossal $8 million domestic gross for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".

So said Cosmo Brown about effervescent Don Lockwood in talkie satire SINGIN IN THE RAIN....and so can be attributed with equal exuberance to Al Jolson in this prehistoric box office blockbuster gramophone talkie from 1928. It is famous for a dozen reasons... all of which you can read on the other posts which explain them in detail. I waded through THE SINGING FOOL for several reason of my own: I wanted to see such a successful film from 1928; the fantastic deco atmosphere of genuine flapper 20s in the nightclub scenes, the idea this film is part talkie and part silent is quite fascinating; and is a terrific example of emerging technology of the time. The clothes furnishings and art direction are easily enough to keep you watching. The music score does not quite fit in some parts but is a valiant attempt to fully orchestrate the entire film and lay a voice track on top. Jolson looks remarkably like Steve Martin in some scenes and perhaps this notion could work in a Jolson bio today. At times I thought I was watching an alternate version of DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID. The look and style of the deco 20s as modern film making and with talking acting scenes makes it a fascinating mix. The child who plays Sonny Boy (Davy Lee) is remarkable for a 4 year old kid, very natural and quite emotional. Jolson's often-scary possessed acting style is mostly pantomime maudlin or simpleton over-expressive, but I attribute that to the silent era acting zapped with electrical wiring. A TITANIC level grosser of its day, THE SINGING FOOL was the most successful film of all time up until 1939 so make sure read the other comments. All quite fascinating.