Dates

• Existence: c1886 - 23 October 1950

Biography

Asa Yoelson aka Al Jolson (c1886 – 23 October 1950) was a Lithuanian born American singer, comedian and actor dubbed ‘the king of blackface’, who became America’s most famous and highest paid entertainer during the 1920s.

Al started his singing career on local street corners with his brother Hirsch in 1897 at the tender age of eleven. By 1902, he was singing at Walter L. Main's circus and a year later, he entered the music hall scene.

Early on in his career, Al started performing in blackface singing jazz and blues. He made a career of taking African-American music to white audiences at a time when black musicians could not break the race barrier specially in America but also in Europe. Perversely, in spite of his promotion and perpetuation of black stereotypes, many in the black community saw The Jazz Singer, starred by Al Jolson in 1927, as a vehicle to gain access to the stage and the integration of black culture as an essential part of American culture.

Al was also noted for fighting discrimination on Broadway as early as 1911, promoting the play Appearances by Garland Anderson, which became the first production with an all-black cast produced on Broadway and pushing for black Americans’ representation and equality in show business.

Al starred in many musical films through the 1920s and 1930s, the most famous of all being the very first talking picture, The Jazz Singer.

During the Second World War, Jolson enlisted in the United Service Organizations (USO), to entertain American troops serving overseas and was the first star to be deployed. While touring in the Pacific, he contracted pulmonary malaria and had to have his left lung removed.

In 1950, he again became the first star to entertain GIs on active service in the Korean War, performing 42 shows in 16 days. However this proved to exhausting and he died weeks after his return to American of a heart attack. Al was posthumously awarded the Medal of Merit by Defense Secretary George Marshall for his services during the war.

Jolson has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame contributions to radio, motion pictures, and the recording industry.

At the age of thirty five he became the youngest man in American history to have a theatre named after him.

In 2000, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.

Al is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

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