REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


THE SINGING FOOL. Warner Brothers, 1928. Al Jolson, Betty Bronson, Josephine Dunn, Arthur Housman, Reed Howes, Davey Lee. Director: Lloyd Bacon. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

THE SINGING FOOL Al Jolson

   This enormous success (and Jolson’s second partially-talking film) is said to have been the biggest box-office grosser until Gone with the Wind, with a worldwide take of almost six million dollars.

   The song “Sonny Boy,” written by Jolson’s character for his son, was one of the performer’s major hits and there’s no gainsaying the fact that the song is tremendously effective in the film.

   Jolson’s over-the-top performance is a bit hard to take, with a sentimental plot (Jolson marries a gold-digger instead of the true-blue girl who loves him, and when his wife leaves him, taking their son with her, he falls apart) that has him on-screen for a recorded 106 minutes that somebody took the time to clock.

   That’s a lot of anybody and for such an over-the-top performer as Jolson, too much for one sitting. Or even two or three.