Why was it used? I understand Southerners would not have come to see a black actor but it didn't need to be a black actor anyway. The black face didn't even advance the story any.
sharei think that it was just stereotyping all black people to be jazz singers.
Dos have owners;cats have slaves
After the turn of the century, 'blackface' was merely a convention - it wasn't a consiously racist act. So Jolson did it because it was a standard thing to do, not because he had anything against black people.
shareBlackface advanced the story as much as the costuming and other stage makeup advanced the story. But it was Jolson's trademark.
Blackface mistrel acts were a dying art by the time Jolson became popular, but he revived it. In the book Broadway: The American Musical it describes how Jolson was rather insecure and was able to use the blackface.
"Here's this Lithuanian Jew from the shtetl singing about his homeland in Dixie and his lost mother. Well, of course the lost mother was very real to him, but the homeland was a homeland of the mind, a place where his sadness would be healed. Jolson never would have done on his own, his persona - but hiding behind the black mask he could go out there and audiences were intensely moved." (Kantor 72)
And there's the brief mention about how he would turn on all the faucets in his dressing room if he heard other acts getting applause. Very insecure... at least backstage anyway.
Blackface was a form of entertainment popular in Minstrel Shows, more likely beginning even earlier. The movie is about a Jewish boy wanting to be a Jazz Singer, part of the new world and culture. Georgie Jessel did the show on Broadway but wanted more money to do the movie. To his lifelong regret, he turned it down. Al Jolson took the role in exchange for a percentage of the profits and he made a great deal of money as a result.
Jolson used Blackface in his act early on but also was famous for appearing as himself. Probably half of his performing was not in Blackface, but he is remembered for this, his "Mammy" songs. There were plenty of mammy songs, songs about home, etc. Blackface was not racist, both blacks and whites wore it. Those who look for it little knowledge of culture and entertainment.
Al Jolson helped many black and white performers including Eubie Blake. His generosity is not generally known because he was egotistical and people prefer to dwell on that. His personality stemmed from a very difficult childhood which parallels THE JAZZ SINGER in some ways. His ego masked a lot of insecurity and he was often cruel or insensitive, but he was a complex man, considered the world's greatest entertainer in his own time and to some, for all time. That he was one of the primary influences for Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley, probably Sinatra too, says it all.
When you watch Jolson in any film his energy is omnipresent. He is like a race horse ready to go, even when he was older. Most people do not know this but he was one of the first entertainers to go overseas in WWII. When the Korean War began, Jolson's doctor told him not to go and perform for the troops as his heart and health were in jeopardy as a result of illness contracted on earlier trips. Nonetheless, he went to entertain the troops. He enjoyed a few years of renewed fame when THE JOLSON STORY debuted and became the idol of bobbysoxers who previously loved Sinatra.
Al died among friends at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco after a game of cards in his hotel room. He was in the city to appear with Bing the following day as part of ongoing appearances together on the Kraft Music Hall. He is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles and there is a statue of him which is beautifully rendered, almost life sized and worth seeing.
A sort of darkly, bitterly ironic thing about blackface was that quite a few *black* singers wore blackface too. The point of blackface is not to make the singer appear authentically like an African-American, after all, it's to put forward an image of the silly pickaninny, an image to be mocked and laughed at.
That said, I don't think the racism of this movie mars it to the degree Birth of a Nation (which glamorized the KKK, after all) does, but it's something that really needs to be dealt with and explained.
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"i never saw black face as racist to me there kind of like miyms but hay thats me"
Yes, that's just you...because most of us aren't *beep* idiots, Captain Oblivious. How could you NOT see blackface as racist? The make-up is used to greatly exaggerate things like the depth of skin color and the size of the lips; it's an offensive caricature of an African-American. Couple that with the fact that most actors who wore blackface, black or white, spoke in horribly broken English, which added even further to the caricature. It's so OBVIOUSLY racist, regardless of whether it became a convention of the time or not, that I'm starting to get a headache trying to understand how this dude doesn't understand that it's racist.
think about it, this movie was in the late 1920's, and it was very racist. african americans could not act, so they took a white actor and made his face black.
shareso what. shut up. its cool.
shareThe thing is, these days we are all so politically correct about everything, the slightest things can be construed as racist, sexist, ageist, whatever. Of course, today, Jolson's (and others') 'blackface' is seen as incredibly racist, but then, people didn't think black people should be on the stage..again very racist thinking in today's society. It was simply seen as a form of entertainment. The same way as men performing onstage in 'drag'. Why is that not seen as sexist? I really enjoy this film, the story, and Jolson's performance, but, yes it would be stupid and a HUGE mistake for 'blackface' to be used today. But instead of arguing over whether it is racist blah blah, should we just be glad that people these days are a lot more concious of others' feelings, the fact that things are so different, and people have a much better understanding of it all.
Then again, are we TOO politically correct.....?
A number of years ago, there was a televised Friars' Club "roast" celebrating Whoopi Goldberg.
At one point in the festivities, Ted Danson (whom Whoopi was dating at the time) appeared on stage in minstrel-like black cork makeup.
Well, there was an uproar over that, and one actor (I forget if it was Sydney Poitier or Samuel L. Jackson) stormed out of the theater and promptly resigned from the Friars' Club.
Really, it took an awful lot of chutzpah to perform a stunt like that nowadays and expect to be working in Hollywood the next day.
But Danson's career has persevered, even though his relationship with Whoopi ended.
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(I'm going to assume that you meant "mimes")
I really never saw wearing blackface so much as a specific racist act as it was a means of handling racial views of the time. At the time blacks did not generally perform before whites much as women did not perform in Shakspearean times.
While we see ourselves as being advanced today, we still accept such racial portrayals (e.g White Chicks). 75 years from now these may be seen in a different light therefore it may be best to be gentle when judging.
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I think the film Bamboozled really helped me to understand the severity of what blackface means to all of us as Americans. It shows the pain blackface can cause and how easily the line between what is funny and what is offensive can be confused. I never understood the concept of blackface. I thought I did. But Bamboozled shows you exactly what it's like and how it feels.
I see no beauty here, nor fit for breeding.
Yeah; blacking up, or corking up (using the burnt and blackened end of a cork to paint a face) is a carry-over of the minstrel shows of the late 1800s. They were a way for 'decent white folk' to indulge in 'primal black music' (although it was anglicised); the music of the 'savage African'. It was taboo to attend black performers, and so white performers blacked up to give the white audiences what they wanted. It was called 'coon-song' and was quite the rage for those wishing to be daring in the face of the (Eurocentric) establishment. By the 1910s, Scott Joplin had 'broken in' to white musical culture with his 'Maple Leaf Rag', without having to black up; but only as a curiosity. Ragtime is a derivative of the music of the enslaved African workers, and was adopted by white musicians and anglicised, in the same way that the black charts of the 1950s were plundered for white musicians playing to a white audience. Yes, there were two charts.
Mick Jagger was accused of singing coon-song in the early 1970s because of his stage act and the Stones' drawing on the black blues musicians of the 1930s and 40s. And, when was the first black artist played on MTV, and who was it? MTV began in 1977 (I believe), and it wasn't until Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' in 1884 that MTV was able to be pressured into playing a black musician. Even then, Sony had to threaten to withdraw its entire catalogue before MTV's racist wall crumbled. In the 1930s, black musicians couldn't perform along side white musicians, and so closed sessions were arranged for 'mixed' jam sessions. The music and the musician are not to blame for this state of affairs; it is, as always, the audience and those that cater to that audience.
Blacking up was racist, folks. It began as a way for white people to access black culture without having to deal with black people, and even black performers had to 'pretend' to be a white person blacked up. The exploitation of black musicians for white audiences by the 'music establishment' is a long and still-relevant history. Shoe-shine, boy?
Because of the tradition, many black performers used blackface even until the 1940's. One of the great stars of the Ziegfeld Follies, Bert Williams, a light-skinned West Indian, worked mostly in blackface. Try to see his two surviving silent shorts, FISH and A NATURAL-BORN GAMBLER, which he also wrote and directed. Others like Dusty Fletcher and Pigmeat Markham, "blacked up" until black audiences signaled they'd had enough. Seeing blackface in film can be a gut-twisting, weird experience for modern audiences.
shareWow. There sure are a lot of stupid people on this planet. I've read some really dumb things on this thread (and some intelligent one's as well) but the truth, in my opinion, is far more complex than can be stated here.
Racist? Define it.
In my seventeen years of research into the life and career of Al Jolson, I have not found ONE report, incident, statement, remembrance, quote, person, that found the use of blackface BY JOLSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES as racist. Not one.
Certainly, the use of blackface TODAY would be heinous, as our society has a far different view of it. It was not that way in 1927, and as much as we don't want to believe that, it is the truth. No one saw Eddie Cantor, George Burns, Al Jolson, etc, etc, etc, as continuing a tradition of minstelsy, in that a negative stereotype was created. This is a fallacy that was expounded years later, by politically correct, angry, civil rights advocates, who looked for ANY reason to vilify the past. Not so.
First, blackface was in use far BEFORE "American Blackface Minstrelsy." It was used in England, for example, when an actor needed to portray a black character. Something wrong with that? The ignorant person will say, "Of course! Why didn't they use a black actor!? They were racists!" This, answer is, of course, nonsense.
Later, EXAGGERATED STAGE MAKE-UP of various kinds became popular, particularly in the US Northeast, because of poor theatrical lighting. Heellloooooo!!! Then, four men blacked up to perform popular songs at the Bowery Amphitheater in NYC on January 31, 1843. They called themselves, The Virginia Minstrels, and Mistrelsy was born. It was the MUSIC, NOT THE STEREOTYPES that made minstrelsy so popular. Yes, the roles were negative, but remember, this was a NORTHERN entertainment, in which the audience thought they were seeing what was to them a somewhat "exotic" character: the Southern Black man. There were relatively few blacks in NYC at the time so it was possible to think this way.
Minstrelsy, of this form, began to die out SHORTLY AFTER THE CIVIL WAR! It was done. STick a fork in it. Blackface continued on only as a means of theatricality, like the Greek mask, it was a way of "taking on" characteristics of another. It meant, "show business." It meant, "I'm a performer." By the time Jolson came on the scene Minstrelsy was dead, and Jolson, contrary to popular belief, NEVER PERFORMED IN IT. He was with a group called Dockstader's Minstrel's for about eight months. They were ANYTHING BUT a traditional (Tambo and Bones) show. This was a sophisicated Broadway level revue, that picked popular subjects to parody. Jolson used blackface before Doctstaders, and he used it afterward, as did hundreds of others, both black and white.
Now, this nonsense of Bert Williams or other great black performers using blackface because they "had to" is, again, revisionist doody. (forgive the strong language). Everybody did it in one way or another, that is, exaggerated stage make-up. One man painted himself green, another painted a question mark on the top of his head, and another exaggerated his eyebrows and mustache. Can you guess who that was?
So please can the "blackface was racist" talk. It's silly and uniformed.
Now, as far as Jolson, well, he was something of a hero in the black community. If you want to know the details e-mail me, and I'll be happy to supply THE FACTS.
Have a nice day.
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How do you explain the topic of my post- the music?
🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.
"but it's something that really needs to be dealt with and explained".
How do you "deal with" a convention of 80 years ago? You don't. You take it for what it was...
Minstrel shows showed blacks as silly and objects of stereotypical humour, perhaps, but Jolson never did. Which is probably one of the reasons Blacks from his time never complained about him doing blackface. In fact, Jolson advanced the cause of Blacks in show business, so anyone who wants to get on their high-horse about his blackface numbers is being overly sensitive - or simply not paying attention to history.
"How do you deal with a convention of 80 years ago? You don't."
Now THAT is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Sir, you deal with it the way you deal with any issue or historical event. YOU DO RESEARCH. You study. Some of us, like me, spend years studying a subject in order to glean the truth.
It is not easy. But "EASY" is what a pea-brain like you can handle: "don't deal with it," just accept the knee-jerk opinion of the day, and pat yourself on the back as if you actually KNOW something.
You are an embodiment of all that is wrong with America today. Lazy and stupid, while thinking you're smart.
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Here's my view, for what it's worth:
Apart from just being PAINFULLY embarassing at times, I was rather surprised that far from being racially offensive to blacks (since apart from simply wearing blackface Jolson does nothing at all stereotypical -his act is the same white or black), the film is actually more embarassing to Jews because of the very broad Jewish caricatures and dialect.
The Cantor is perhaps the most terrifying image of an Orthodox Jew ever put on screen outside of an anti-Semetic propaganda film.
His mother speaks (via title cards) in broken english suggestive of stereotypical Jewish dialect.
Moishe Yudelson is the most aggregious Jewish stereotype I've ever seen on screen outside The Merchant of Venice. He also speaks in stereotypical Jewish dialect; further aided by all the smiles, winks and nods associated with the "scheming" Jewish stereotype.
The scenes of the ghetto council are particularly offensive for all the stated reasons.
These stereotypes and their depiction become more astounding when contrasted with the almost loving detail given to the depiction of the minutia of Judaica throughout the film (the settings, seder candles, vestments etc) and the fact that the majority of the people invilved with the making of the film were themselves Jewish.
"If you don't know the answer -change the question."
It's obvious from your post that you're just a web troll opportunist and found a nice target in one of few movies ever made with insight into the Jewish faith. Your description displays your seething animosity and it's doubtful you even saw this movie. If you did you probably hid your face inside a ski mask.
shareIn my posting I did not make unsubstantiated claims or broad generalities; I offered specific instances with facts, instances and details to support them. My description, therefore, demonstrates a knowledge and familiarity with the film.
Nothing in my posting was, is, nor should be construed as derogatory toward either the black or Jewish populations. Most certainly nothing in the nature of the "seething animosity" you claim.
A previous poster did, however, point out my error in context between what is "accepted" versus what is "racist" as regards the blackface scene.
My post expressed perplexity at the contradiction in stereotypical Jewish charachterizations in a film which dwelt in such loving detail on the inner workings of Judaica -and in a film made by predominantly Jewish filmmakers.
It was, is not, nor should be in any way distorted as being anti-Semetic in any way.
With regard to the broad gernerality you make with regard to my being "a bald-face liar" "fraud" and "web troll opportunist" you offer no solid instances or examples, so I will have to defer my argument on that one for lack of evidence.
The royal corkscrew finds me twisted?
Wow, so much ignorance in this topic.. And you people need to make a difference between something being accepted and something being racist.
Yes, blackface was accepted simply because America was more racist back then, but that doesn't make the use of blackface any less racist.
Something doesn't just start being racist one day, it just stops being accepted. Which is what happened with blackface.
If it is racist today, it was racist 100 years ago. Simple as that.
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Oh you mad cuz I'm stylin on you
Just because blackface was considered acceptable circa 1927 and beyond, doesn't mean it can't come under scrutiny by modern audiences. I understand the context that Jolson, Eddie Cantor, James Barton, etc. worked in. But viewing it now gives me the creeps. I even have a copy of a Bert Willaims short and seeing a black guy corking up is stranger yet. Several years ago, while channel surfing I came across the 1939 film BABES IN ARMS with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. I was having a good time until the cast suddenly blacked up and digressed into a 12-15-minute minstrel show. WTF??! I turned to another channel.
share[deleted]
Wow , so much ignorance in this topic..
And you people
need to make a difference between something being accepted and something being racist.
Yes, blackface was accepted simply because America was more racist back then, but that doesn't make the use of blackface any less racist.
If it is racist today, it was racist 100 years ago. Simple as that.
IMO the Blackface used in MANY of the movies from the early days of cinema (I just saw Fred Astaire doing a blackface number in Swing Time as a homage to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson), only reflects the daily reality of USA back then.
I mean until the 60's and even 70's, black people couldn't use the same toilettes and seats in public transport than Whites. Of course they couldn't enter to certain bars, restaurants, nightclubs, etc. (african-americans, latinos, asians, still "can't" enter to some of those places in certain regions)
That happened in the late 60's and early 70's. Now just imagine how bad was the situation in the 20's.
Having said that I am sure Al Jolson wasn't racist. Jolson himself said that the man who taught him how to talk, sing and move as a blackman was a friend of him (obviously an african-american).
A lot of water have passed under the bridge since those days. Racism still exists. It's still a huge problem not only in USA but also in practically every country on earth. In some places is worse, in some other places is not that bad. But exists everywhere.
Take The Jazz Singer as a document of its era. With a grain of salt. At least Al Jolson's "blackface" wasn't nearly as offensive as The Birth of a Nation and similar films.
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re: by Kinematico
Well said. I can understand how some non-racist actions, like Jolson's work, can now serve to hurt people because of how the techniques have been perverted, but I wish people would actually pay attention before casting stones. Intent is an important fact, and at least a mitigating one even when it has a more serious effect. Al Jolson was not a racist. The Jazz Singer was not a racist movie. If anything, it was quite the opposite.
Well said.
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