By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Although Al Jolson was once one of America’s popular performers, his star has diminished. That’s partly due to the fact that he frequently performed in blackface (using burned cork or makeup to color his skin) – something frowned upon in contemporary times – and the fact that his appeal was best appreciated live where his overly dramatic gestures could reach the last row of the theater. Richard Bernstein’s biography of Jolson – “Only in America: Al Jolson and ‘The Jazz Singer’”(Alfred A. Knopf) – offers not only information about Jolson’s life, but about the times that created him. It also focuses on the history of his most successful film, “The Jazz Singer,” which in some ways mirrored Jolson’s life. What really interests Bernstein, though, is his belief that Jolson’s success could only have happened in the United States. 

The author sees Jolson’s life as an example of “the American immigration story at its best, the escape from a place where a rise to fame and fortune like his would have been impossible to a place where such a rise defined what the country considered special about itself.” Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania, a country not friendly to its Jews. He came to the United States at age 9 and quickly adapted to American culture. This was in spite of his father, who was a rabbi and disliked his son’s choice of career. Jolson began singing in the streets with his brother when they were young, yet somehow became one of the most popular and highly paid performers in the country. His personal life suffered: he was married four times to non-Jewish women. Bernstein notes how Jolson would pursue these women, but then lose interest after the marriage. According to the author, Jolson seemed the happiest in the company of men.

Bernstein places Jolson in context by writing about the Jews who ruled Broadway and created Hollywood. He notes that “Broadway was a place of American possibility. It was untrammeled, unregulated, absent of WASP aristocrats, where what counted was talent, ambition, and grit, not pedigree or family advantage. It was also a place where Jews gained power, and while Jews competed against other Jews and even sometimes stabbed them in the back, they didn’t discriminate against them.” Audiences – Jewish and non-Jewish – seemed to love comedy skits that showed Jews and Blacks in a less than progressive light. White and Black actors performed in blackface and gave the audience what it wanted in order to survive. Bernstein feels that Jolson portrayed his Black characters as more intelligent than did other comedians, but the basic format was impossible to escape.

The author also discusses the history of “The Jazz Singer,” noting it was first a short story and then a play. Its plots portrays the struggle between a singer who looks for success on the secular stage, and his cantor father who wants him to have a career as a religious singer. The melodramatic climax of the play features a difficult decision: when his father becomes dangerously ill on Yom Kippur, the singer is asked to take his place and sing Kol Nidre. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the night of the singer’s Broadway debut. The son decides to fulfil his father’s wish and spends the night singing at the synagogue. However, fortunately for him, this does not derail his career.

Bernstein notes that “The Jazz Singer” was the first serious film Hollywood made about Jews and Judaism. Up until that time, the Jews who owned the studios were not interested in portraying Jewish life, unless the film was a comedy and the religious aspects were not taken seriously. The author writes how “The Jazz Singer” offered a very different portrayal of Jewish life “with its scenes of caftan-clad rabbis and cantors, and real Torah scrolls and praying in Hebrew, and its emotional climax, the chanting of Kol Nidre in an actual Orthodox synagogue,.... going much deeper into Jewish religious life and observance than any other of the Jewish-themed movies that preceded it, and that Jewish life could be shown realistically.” The film’s success with Jewish and non-Jewish audiences proved that it was possible to produce a film with Jewish content that would make money for the studios. In fact, for the film to succeed, it needed to reach non-Jewish moviegoers. That success was helped by the fact that it was one of the first films to include sound: moviegoers were able to hear Jolson sing, something that would not have been possible years before.

The irony is that Jolson – a secular Jewish performer who did not observe Judaism in his private life – performed in a film that focused on the importance of religious connection. Bernstein notes that assimilation into American culture was not only allowed, but encouraged; that was how these immigrants became American. This allows the author to offer what he sees as “the great paradox of Jewish history,” which is that “the place Jews emigrated from, the Russian Pale of Settlement, with its ghettos, discrimination, blood libels, and pogroms, unwittingly preserved Jewish identity, which itself was a kind of fruit of stubbornness, while the dazzling freedom of America, where there was antisemitism but fewer barriers to success, threatened it with extinction.” For Jolson, being an American mattered as shown by his travels to entertain American troops during World War II and the Korean War, continuing his performances even after he became ill. If the U.S. would not pay for his visits to the troops, he used his own funds. 

Bernstein does an excellent job using Jolson and “The Jazz Singer” to explain Jewish American life. Sometimes the author pushes his points a bit far, making readers wonder about the extreme importance he gives to the singer and film, but that does fit with the grandiose way that Jolson felt about his life and career. “Only in America” is easy to read and offers a great deal of interest even to those unfamiliar with Jolson and his work.