‘The King of Broadway’

Pearl Sieben: “This was 1911 and vaudeville was enjoying its golden era . . . Caruso signed a new contract with the Met. for $660,000 . . . In Monterey, California, they were showing ‘Moving Pictures and Illustrated Songs’ . . .
“In New York 5,000 members of the Boy’s Knee Breeches Makers Union went on strike and the Salvation Army conducted a two-month siege to ‘seek the lost and win drunkards, harlots, moralists and all kinds of sinners.’”

Living in a hotel suite in the heart of New York, Henrietta was finding it ever harder to compete with Al’s audiences. She wanted a husband not a show business star and would turn down invitations to parties thrown for him to celebrate his success. At the end of his touring engagements the couple left for California to see her parents whom she hadn’t seen for two years. Henrietta had never met Al’s father and stepmother.
Pearl Sieben: “Like a penniless urchin standing before a candy counter, Jolson wanted what he couldn’t have, and once he tasted it, he wasn’t interested.”

After covering the Jack Johnson-James J. Jeffries World Heavyweight boxing match in Reno, Nevada, as a reporter for Variety, Al opened a tour of the Orpheum Circuit in Seattle. Meanwhile Art Klein opened negotiations with the Shubert brothers who were building a new theatre on the site of the old Horse Exchange on Broadway called the Winter Garden and Jerome Kern was asked to produce a complete score for the theatre’s first production - La Belle Paree. It was agreed that Jolson would appear in the show at a lower salary than he was getting in vaudeville - Klein had convinced him that it was time for him to be in a Broadway show.
Art Klein: “I went out and bought Al a fur coat. I think the fur was otter. He was living at the Grant Hotel, Chicago, and he just clowned around there, showing the coat off to all performers.”
Shubert brothers: “Jolson’s from vaudeville, Art. We’re legit. This is going to be the classiest musical theatre on Broadway.”

On the night of the opening of the new Winter Garden, 20 March, 1911, the traffic along Broadway was jammed. With thirty principals in the cast of La Belle Paree - Jolson was about tenth in importance in the billing - it was chaos backstage. There were too many acts with little direction. Out front, the audience seemed more interested in an auditorium that was latticed and carpeted with roomy, comfortable chairs, a blue Dutch cafe, a wine room, and a ‘flowered’ ceiling centrepiece to give a garden effect. It was almost midnight by the time Jolson came on for his speciality act. He got through his monologue and sang ‘That Lovin’ Traumerei’ to only moderate applause. Jolson had ‘laid an egg’. Disconsolate, Jolson got drunk and “walked to 96th Street instead of 54th Street, where I was living, before I realised what I was doing”.
Broadway ‘wag’: “The Winter Garden is on the site of the old horse exchange. Judging by the smell of last night’s show, things haven’t changed much.”

Two morning papers, the New York Times and New York Herald, favourably singled out Jolson’s comic turn with Stella Mayhew, and the second night of La Belle Paree was the start of a Broadway legend. Jolson demanded an earlier spot in the show and broke through to the audience of the Winter Garden with a loud shrill whistle. Now they laughed, applauded, rose and cheered.
Jolson had arrived.

The Morning Telegraph: “Al Jolson sang, talked, and whistled the audience into a frenzy of approval. He began with ‘Piano Man’ . . . talked about the girls he had loved and the way he had loved them. When the girls had nearly laughed themselves into hysterics, Al struck a sort of Romeo pose and pleaded soulfully: ‘Girls, look me in the face . . . He announced his intention of singing a new song. It was about ‘Missouri Joe,’ a fellow you had to know. The audience boisterously brought Al back for an encore . . .”

La Belle Paree was a sell-out and Jolson became known as the ‘Winter Garden Comedian’ - a favourite with the audiences. Folks came from Park Avenue, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and some even by train from Chicago to catch this new marvel in blackface. There was no slipping out to the Wine Room, or to the concessionary stand for a 75 cent ‘Winter Garden Ice Cream’ when Al was on stage. And what they saw was an ever-changing routine. Not wanting to be like anybody else, Jolson was going to sing his own songs in whatever way he felt like singing them - despite what the composer Jerome Kern hoped. Jolson revelled in it, even though the musicians were often completely thrown. It certainly sold tickets.
Al Jolson: “I’ve never given the same performance twice for three reasons - I’m always trying something new; I’m a believer in spontaneous humour and I’d go insane if I had to do the same thing every night.”

Al loved his success but even more he wanted his peers, especially those who had thumbed their noses at him a few years earlier, to acknowledge his success. Though theatrical performances were illegal on Sundays, producers got round the law by calling them ‘sacred concerts’ where actors played in evening clothes without make-up. A religious hymn sometimes closed the show. Jolson inaugurated the very first Winter Garden Sunday Night Concert on 26 March 1911. Appearing in whiteface, he sang and ad-libbed in front of an audience composed of actors and managers on their night off. Winning them over completely, he proved that he could dominate a theatre without the aid of any props. He was the entertainers’ entertainer.
Variety: “The Shuberts may run the Winter Garden, but Al Jolson owns it. That dandy performer does as well with the audience, whether Sunday or on weekdays. He had to sing three songs with his ad lib stuff thrown in for good measure then close with the melodrama.”

Winter Garden Sunday Night Program Al Jolson Willie & Eugene Howard Fanny Brice Irene Franklin & Burt Green Charlie Ruggles Frank Fay Fred & Adele Astaire Hale & Patterson & Original Dixieland Jazz Band The Winter Garden Beauties

With his growing success, Henrietta received less and less attention from her husband, who preferred going to the racetracks, and she returned home to her parents in Oakland. When La Belle Paree closed for the traditional summer break, Al joined her in Oakland but played engagements in San Francisco and Los Angeles where he was described as ‘extremely funny’. Henrietta didn’t think it so funny when Al returned to New York without her, more concerned with his career.

“Why not take the show on the road?” Al said to the Shubert brothers. “We’ll take the same scenery and cast and use all the same songs. It won’t cost very much.” La Belle Paree went out on tour - the first time a Broadway show had gone on the road and the first chance people had to see a Broadway show in their own backyard.
The Shuberts brothers signed Harry Jolson for The Revue of Revues at the Winter Garden. The star of the show, Mlle. Gaby Deslys, was the sensation of the Paris music halls after being romantically linked with King Manuel II of Portugal. It was an artful attempt by the Shuberts to keep Al in line by using Harry as competition to his brother - the show closed within weeks.

In November 1911, Vera Violetta opened at the Winter Garden featuring Mlle. Gaby Deslys and set at a skating rink. Playing a coloured waiter, Jolson took second billing in a cast that included Jose Collins, the darling of London’s Gaiety theatre, singing her famous cockney number ‘Tar-Rar-Rar-Boomdiay’. Also in the cast for a short time playing Mlle. Angelique was a buxom eighteen-year-old named Mae West. On opening night, Al danced, marched and hopped up and down the Winter Garden’s aisles, singing and whistling as he went from the front of the stage to the back of the theatre. He stole the show. Though Gaby Deslys’ name was above Jolson’s on the credits, it was Jolson the audience came to see, not the Parisienne star. This greeting was placed in the New Year issue of Variety: “Everybody likes me, those who don’t are jealous! Anyhow, here’s wishing those that do, and those that don’t, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - Al Jolson.”

During Christmas week, Jolson cut his first record with the Victor Talking Machine Company - ‘Rum-Tum-Tiddle’ and ‘That Haunting Melody’. To ensure he sang without moving away from the big acoustic horn, they had to sit him in a chair with his coat buttoned back-to-front like a straitjacket. The record helped Vera Violetta run for 136 continuous performances.

The Whirl of Society opened in March 1912 with Al playing a black-faced character named ‘Gus’ who lived by his wits - an underdog, ‘Gus’ enjoyed a private joke with the audience - the perfect character for Jolson. The newly-crowned King of Broadway now found that the aisles weren’t big enough to contain him. “Why not perform on a runway right through the middle of the theatre, like the burlesque houses?” Al suggested to the Shuberts. “That way I could get close to the audience while still remaining on stage.”
“Are you crazy? The runway will take up valuable seats,” they argued but had to agree when Al told them that the show would run that much longer. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” Al called from the runway and the audience roared. More songs usually followed, including ‘Ragtime Sextette’ written by Irving Berlin the new ‘Ragtime King’, and then more patter - none of it related to what was in the script. Song pluggers, publishers and writers pestered Jolson to introduce their songs and Al solved the problem by devoting two mornings a week to hearing new songs. In this way ‘Waiting for the Robert E. Lee’ and ‘Row, Row, Row’ found their way into The Whirl of Society. The ‘Winter Garden’ became synonymous with ‘Jolson’.
Sime Silverman: “Jolson probably takes more chances at the Garden than any one else dare do. Sunday night, dressed in a tuxedo, he removed his collar and tie after the first few minutes, remaining neckless thereafter.” Al Jolson said: ‘This is just like playing pinochle.’”

When The Whirl of Society closed for the summer, Al was leisurely driven by his new chauffeur in his new Packard touring car to Oakland where Henrietta was waiting. Al was trying to save their failing marriage - when he had the time. Bronzed and healthy by September, Al began a tour with The Whirl of Society in Chicago. Early in his career, hard as it is to believe, Jolson suffered from interview fright. Fidgety and nervous, he told his first interviewer: “I don’t remember one line about mah past.” He soon got over it and his tongue “wagged faster than any other tongue in show business”.

When The Whirl of Society reached Washington, Al called home.
“Congratulations, I hear you are a big manager,” Moses said to Al.
“Pop, I’m not the manager, I’m the star. The manager gets $75 a week, I get $500.”
“But you are not the manager . . . it’s very disappointing.”
Hoping to be a grandfather, Moses did ask if Henrietta was pregnant, though he would not agree to meet her. “God be with you, Asa,” Moses would always say when Al departed.

In Honeymoon Express, Gaby Deslys was still the female lead but Al Jolson as ‘Gus’ the butler was the star of the show and so his name was billed above hers. Fanny Brice, the original ‘Funny Girl’, played a domestic. First night nerves were always a problem for Jolson. Sometimes his stomach would be so knotted that he was physically sick though once on stage he could play the mood of the audience. On opening night with the show already running late and only two-thirds of the way through, he called out to the audience: “Do you want to hear the rest of the story - or do you want hear me?” They shouted that they wanted to hear him. Al had already made a hit with the song, ‘My Yellow Jacket Girl’, so he let rip, singing the songs from his previous shows.

When the show went on tour, Jolson sang ‘You Made Me Love You’ which he had just recorded for Columbia Records. During the song he went down on one knee and cried: “Gimme, gimme, what I cry for.” It created a sensation. They wouldn’t let him sing anything else and he gave them one chorus after another. Jolson once dismissed the cast altogether while Gaby Deslys was still on stage. She stormed off to the sound of her crashing high heels.
Al sang all the new numbers from Honeymoon Express at the Winter Garden Sunday Concerts and one of them, ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’, written by Billy Merson, an English music hall star, was a bigger hit than in the show. Singing it in a succession of dialects, Jolson aroused shrieks of laughter. It didn’t matter what he sang to the audience, they just wanted him to go on singing.

New York Evening World: “Everything he touches turns to fun. To watch him is to marvel at his humorous vitality . . . he calls forth spontaneous laughter and here you have the definition of a born comedian.”

Morning Telegraph: “Jolson has made his audiences laugh and applaud at the Winter Garden and other places, but at the Shubert Theatre in Boston the audience yelled.”
Toledo Blade: “Jolson of course was the hit of the evening. He sang after a fashion of his own, acting them out and putting odd kinks into them. And best of all, he has a good voice.”

After severing his contract with Art Klein, Jolson signed his first ‘big money’ contract with the Shubert brothers for five years. Guaranteed $1,000 a week for 35 weeks a year, he also had 10% of the profits on the shows.

Now a familiar figure at the racetrack, Jolson gambled on races almost every day. He also became obsessed with medicine. As a small child he had once told his mother he wanted to be a doctor. “I like to see the smiles of the people when the village doctor made them well,” he told her. Dogged by sore throats himself throughout his life, he patronised a small army of doctors, even though he usually told them that they didn’t know what they were talking about. A small satchel full of bottles of pills, liquids and assorted home medicines were a permanent part of his baggage and he was always first to obtain any new ‘miracle drug’ that came on the market. He always opened Time magazine at the medicine page. To him a perpetual suntan denoted good health and he sat out for hours on the white sand of Miami Beach soaking up the sun.
Harry Akst, pianist and friend: “Al knew enough about medicine to get himself into trouble, but not enough to get himself out.”

When Honeymoon Express closed for the summer, Al travelled by car to Oakland. Henrietta went by train. Despite a failing marriage, Henrietta was a very patient woman who saw it as a duty to be a good wife. It would take years of neglect and humiliation to make her change her mind. Al was often indifferent to her and when he did come home after being out with the boys, barely a word passed between them. He was like a child demanding care and attention - when it suited him. Frequently he would totally remorseful, apologise to her and promise to reform his bad behaviour, and was no doubt truly sorry at the time, but it didn’t prevent him repeating his cruel actions. He appeared to give more money to bellhops than he gave to Henrietta. The entertainer was married to the sound of people queuing up at the box office and an audience shouting for more.

While in San Francisco, Jolson was so impressed by two youngsters in an act called ‘Kid Kabaret’ at the local Orpheum Theatre that he took the pair of them, Eddie Cantor and George Jessel, to a kosher dinner.
Eddie Cantor: “It was the craziest dinner you ever heard. George and I, the two big mouths, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Jolson did a monologue.”

Henrietta did accompany Al when Honeymoon Express went on tour. At their first stop, Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, Al met up with his old partner, Fred E. Moore, who was the house manager. At the Belasco Theatre, Washington, Al invited his father Moses, stepmother Hessi, and their four children to the performance. They all sat in the balcony - Rabbi Yoelson had refused the offer of orchestra seats. After the show Al sent an usher to bring them backstage.
Moses refused: “Tell Asa that a father does not go to a son.”
Al was shaken and hurried to see his father.
“How was I?” Al asked, looking for approval.
“You must have been good,” his father told him, “Every time you weren’t on stage, the people read their programmes.”
Al had tears in his eyes.

In Toronto, the dancing team of Doyle and Dixon came off stage to prolonged applause holding up Jolson’s entrance. “Don’t let that happen again,” he told them. Jolson didn’t like competition. In Kansas City, he was encored so extravagantly, and was so generous in his responses that he was almost exhausted when he exclaimed toward the end of the show: “Haven’t you folks got any homes to go to?”

After only doing moderately well in England, Harry Jolson returned to play Brooklyn billed as ‘AL JOLSON’S brother - Harry’. He didn’t like the billing but with a wife to support he had to accept it. It was that or no billing at all.
Harry Jolson: “There were two Jolson brothers appearing on stage and Al was both of them.”

After Henrietta had her appendix removed in June 1914, Al sailed with her, along with a few friends, to England as part of a European holiday. Travelling on to France, Venice and the Swiss Alps, they sailed back home in late July.
New York Review: “Every manager and agent in London made Jolson offers of record salaries for appearances in the music halls of London . . .”

Jolson received top billing on opening night of Dancing Around in what was another Winter Garden hit. The hit songs weren’t necessarily those of the show’s composer Sigmund Romberg. Jolson sang ‘Its A Long Way To Tipperary’ imported from England and the war in France, and an English tongue twister: ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers’, after which Jolson offered $10 to anyone in the audience who could sing the chorus through without a break. For the matinees, Irving Caesar provided another tongue twister - ‘Brother Bennie’s Baking Buns for Belgians’. Theatre folk, even in vaudeville, were expected to keep their place behind the footlights, but defying tradition, Jolson sat on the edge of the stage with his legs dangling in the pit, loosened his collar and tie, and went into a routine of songs and patter. Playing ‘Clarence’ in the show was a young Clifton Webb. Still king of the Winter Garden Sunday Concerts, Jolson would close the show and hold the audience for half an hour or more after all the other acts had gone before. He always appeared to be having a good a time as the house.

Dancing Around went on tour in February 1915 and reached San Francisco in June where Henrietta was staying with her parents. Jolie spent little time with Henrietta and was seen dancing at the Pacific-Panama Exposition with Kitty Doner (pictured right). Rumours were rife that Jolson shouted at Henrietta and called her names. She told friends: “A wife does not enjoy being insulted by a husband who is a star any more than if he is a failure.”

In October the touring show ran into trouble. A bad spot on Jolson’s lung became inflamed and for a few days he had to check into a sanatorium. Doctors told him he needed a long rest and a despondent Al wired Henrietta to join him in Baltimore. Al wanted sympathy but Henrietta was more concerned at his gambling.
“If you’re so sick,” Henrietta asked him, “why are you going to the races?”
Al explained: “Dr. Outdoors is the best medicine in the world.”

Just as Jolson shared his joy with audiences, he now inflicted his misery, and his performance at Baltimore’s Academy of Music was second rate. Henrietta told him straight: “Yes, you’re a big star now, but you keep giving performances like that and you won’t be for long.” A stand-in took over for the last two performances. An angry letter to the Baltimore Sun read: “Mr. Jolson proceeded to kid the audience unmercifully, saying that he sometimes sang, but wasn’t going to sing tonight. Two of the scenes from the last act were cut out, and the entire performance given with an arrogant indifference that was insulting to the last degree.”

A few days later in Washington, Jolson had mysteriously recovered and treated the Belasco Theatre audience to a flat-out, rip-roaring Jolson performance. It was while he was in Washington that Jolson received a message on White House note paper from President Wilson asking him to meet him for breakfast the next day.
“I’m Al Jolson and I want to see the President.”
“I am the President,” said Wilson, holding out his hand. “I’ve heard some of your records and I’ve read of your great success on Broadway, but I haven’t seen you perform.”
“Wait a minute,” said Al, rolling his eyes, “wait a minute - you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” He sang ‘You Made Me Love You’ to Woodrow Wilson as he sat with his aides.

The half a dozen tickets that Al sent to his father for the evening’s performance at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, weren’t used.
“Why didn’t you come?” Al asked his father afterwards.
“On Shabbes eve? I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t you make an exception? I was singing for the President?”
“I was singing for God!”

For the opening of Robinson Crusoe Jr. early in 1916, Al Jolson was not just billed as the star but as ‘America’s Greatest Entertainer’. He played Man Friday but it soon became clear that the plot would not be allowed to interfere with his domination of everything on stage; and the ridiculous scenario provided ample opportunities for comedy - in one scene, hunted by cannibals, Jolson popped out of a tree trunk to ask: “Anybody got any aspirin?”
Jolson would ask the audience: “Well, what do you want to hear? . . . Wait a minute - you want ‘You Made Me Love You’? . . . Professor, pass the mustard . . . ‘You Made Me Love You’”.
“This show’s a lot of bunk,” Jolson told the Shuberts. “Let’s get a Negro chorus to sing in the background and I’ll do a couple of spirituals . . . I’d like that.” The Shuberts agreed. Wasn’t Jolson the star?

In an attempt to revive his crumbling marriage, Al promised to take Henrietta to Hawaii when the show closed for its summer break. After driving to Los Angeles to see a brilliant Eddie Cantor starring in a show called Canary Cottage, Al changed his mind. Competition had to be faced. He cancelled Hawaii, left Henrietta with her parents at Oakland and began a national tour with Robinson Crusoe. The show toured for fifteen months in mostly one-nighters, though he did manage to fit the Chicago World Series Baseball between dates. The tour appeared to be part of Al’s increasing great search for something up ahead at the next outpost. Newspaper adverts now began to refer to him as ‘The Worlds Greatest Entertainer’. Jolson would remark on stage: “If those three-dollar seats are filled we are out of trouble already.”

The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat and America entered the war. Jolson began to joke about being called up for service: “I know two guys who ain’t going - me and the guy they send to get me.” Nevertheless he began to devote time to American servicemen, singing to the troops leaving New York, touring training camps and hospitals, and meeting hospital ships returning from Europe. Often he would stop a show in order to appeal for Liberty Bonds.

The comedy-singer had now gathered the trappings of a star - a valet, a chauffeur, a wife in California, and a new manager named Louis Epstein, who some years earlier had taught Jolson how to whistle using two fingers. Epstein was managing the Majestic Theatre in his native Scranton, Pennsylvania, when Jolson offered him the job, and ‘Eppy’, as Al affectionately called him, remained his manager until Al’s death. Al liked a song called, ‘N’ Everything’, and took a liking to the writer, a young ukulele player named Buddy DeSylva who was playing in an Hawaiian band. Jolson sang it in his next Winter Garden show Sinbad and within six months it earned the young songwriter $20,000.