The New Pictures, Oct. 7, 1946

The Jolson Story (Columbia) is a fine, noisy celebration of Hollywood’s two decades of talking movies. To the embarrassment of Warner Bros., currently whooping up the 20th anniversary of sound (which they started) with some none-too-skillful pictures, this splashy, expert piece of entertainment was made by a rival studio.

A Technicolor biography of Al Jolson, with all the nostalgic music plugged in, might easily have turned out to be an unpalatable mixture of chestnuts and corn. This movie succeeds in blending the inevitable flavors so smoothly that very young cinemagoers who never heard Jolson —and oldsters who were never enthusiastic about him—may now understand why he was one of America’s favorite entertainers during the frenzied ’20s.

A combination of biography and backstage musical, the picture demonstrates conclusively that box-office silk can be made out of dog-eared formulas. It is loud, costly ($2½ million), overlong, occasionally trite, lushly sentimental and pretty as new brass. More important than anything else, it is uncommonly entertaining.

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The Jolson Story is the first production job of an amateur: bantam-sized (5 ft. 2 in.) Hollywood gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky. While insisting that journalism is his profession, Skolsky has dabbled in picture-making for years, occasionally walking through bit parts as a gag or tossing out a helpful suggestion to studio executives.

After a six-month tryout as a Warner assistant producer, Skolsky was asked if he had any picture ideas. “Yes,” said Skolsky, “the life of Al Jolson.” Jack Warner, not believing his ears, cried, “The life of Al Jolson? We’ve done that.” (Warner’s 1927 The Jazz Singer, starring Jolson in the first talkie, was a thinly disguised Jolson biography.) “Nobody,” Warner decided, “wants to see or hear Jolson any more.”

Skolsky, in his stubborn, amateur way, explained his idea to Columbia: “I want to use the Jolson voice, but I want it to come out of a young man’s face.” The result is as clever a synchronization job as Hollywood ever turned out. Jolson himself sang the sound track, but the camera watched a 30-year-old actor named Larry Parks, who pored over old Jolson records and films until he could reproduce every gesture, genuflection and grimace.

The plot gave Skolsky some trouble. The logical love interest for a sweetened-up biography was Jolson’s third wife, Ruby Keeler, ex-cinemactress and Ziegfeld star who long since divorced him, remarried and retired from show business. Skolsky admits, “It was tough. We had to please Al, Ruby and ourselves. In a mild way, we tried to psychoanalyze Al and Ruby . . . and make ourselves believe it could have happened.” Ruby was cooperative, accepted $25,000 but insisted that her name be kept out of it.

To Jolson, 60, restless and not very busy for the last decade, the obviously smash picture means new fame, new excitement and a bulging pocket (50% of the profits). Having recovered some of his oldtime exuberance, he has married for the fourth time. While the picture was being previewed in Santa Barbara, he sat shaking with emotion and clutching Skolsky’s hand. Afterwards, in the theater lobby, he overheard an elderly woman remark to her companion, “My, that was a wonderful picture! Too bad Al Jolson couldn’t have lived to see it.” Al burst into tears and enjoyed a really good cry.

Three Little Girls in Blue (20th Century-Fox), a schoolgirl’s syrupy-sweet daydream, is a triple-scoop rainbow sundae munched to jukebox accompaniment.

The little girls (June Haver, Vivian Blaine and Vera-Ellen), all three of them singing and dancing for dear life, are chicken-farming sisters who long for city lights and rich husbands (song cue: A Farmer’s Life Is a Very Merry Life—but Not for Me). They scrape together all their money and set out, in Technicolored 1902 fancy dress, for a swank seaside hotel (song & dance cue: On the Boardwalk—in Atlantic City). There is just enough cash on hand for one girl at a time to fish for a wealthy suitor, so the pretty sisters move into a costly suite disguised as heiress, secretary and maid. This harmless deception involves them in a series of sentimental tunes and lyrics, kisses by moonlight, one big ballet production number and a colorful, red-coated fox hunt across a Maryland plantation. It is plain, toward the end, that there will be true love for everyone concerned—and quite enough money to get along on, too (song cue: This Is Always).

Three Little Girls in Blue is more than half over when the whole picture suddenly develops sparkle. Unmistakable source of this refreshing new element is Celeste Holm, a singing comedienne who charmed Broadway several seasons ago in Oklahoma ! and Bloomer Girl. Playing a predatory Southern belle, Miss Holm makes a howling success of her movie debut. In a mere supporting role and in spite of being no great beauty, she manages to make the three highly Technicolored leading ladies look comparatively pale.

Hollywood moved cautiously in making up its mind about Celeste Holm, but its mind has now been made up. She was put through the most expensive, elaborate screen test on record (in Technicolor, directed by Gregory Ratoff). Some eight months later, winding up a U.S.O. tour in Norway, she finally got a cable to report for work at once.

Miss Holm, wife of American Airlinesman A. Schuyler Dunning, is expecting a baby in December. Meanwhile 20th Century-Fox is expecting an important 1947 star and is rolling up its heaviest publicity guns.

Gallant Journey (Columbia) is a belated tribute to one of aviation’s neglected pioneers. Back in 1883, a young Californian named John J. Montgomery took off from a hillside cow pasture in a homemade glider. According to his own records, he stayed off the ground for some 600 feet, an achievement which some experts regard as the world’s first controlled flight in heavier-than-air craft.*

With just about enough material for a good two-reel short, Gallant Journey is padded out to feature length. It is an interesting movie only so long as it sticks to scientific experiment, apparently the only subject that really interested John J. Montgomery. There are excellent shots of the young inventor (Glenn Ford) dreamily studying the flight of gulls and deciding that a man-made plane ought to have curved wings. Some of the cloud-filled photography also has excitement. The rest is padding. The routine romance with an intense young woman named Regina (Janet Blair) appears to have hastened the attack of vertigo which caused the flyer’s early death.

Since Montgomery’s first experiments were witnessed by neither scientists nor press, he never enjoyed due fame or fortune. Forgetful historians may be less impressed by this earnest, plodding movie biography than by the $10,000 concrete-and-granite Montgomery memorial now being erected by San Diego’s Junior Chamber of Commerce.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Sister Kenny. Well-made pro-Kenny biography that blends fact, fiction and propaganda (TIME, Sept. 30).

The Killers. Hemingway’s short story, hopped up with a complex plot of violence and doublecross (TIME, Sept. 9).

The Big Sleep. Humphrey Bogart & wife (Lauren Bacall), in Raymond Chandler’s thriller (TIME, Aug. 26).

Notorious. Ingrid Bergman and Gary Grant stalk Nazis with Director Alfred Hitchcock (TIME, Aug. 19).

* Authenticated records give the honor to another glider enthusiast, Germany’s Otto Lilienthal (1891). More than a century before the Wright brothers combined engine and wings (1903), France’s Montgolfier brothers had sent human passengers aloft in a balloon (1783). But man’s incorrigible yen to imitate a bird is centuries older. Outstanding unsuccessful experimenters: Greece’s mythical Icarus, who flew disastrously high for his wax-stuck feathers; Britain’s mythical tenth ruler, King Bladud (father of Lear), who tried it with plumes and knitted wings but had fatal air-current trouble; Leonardo da Vinci, who designed a theoretically workable aerial propeller, parachute and helicopter, but whose wing-flapper plane (1489) made a permanent cripple of his assistant, Zoroastro.