Radio: The Switcheroo

Only last spring, Al Jolson vowed that he would never have a radio show of his own. Why should he bother? The Technicolor movie based on his life (Columbia’s The Jolson Story) was wowing the box office. His records were selling better than they had at the height of his first career in the ’20s. And he could get all the radio work he needed as a guest star.

This week he had changed his mind. Mammy-Singer Jolson, 61, had joined the regulars in one of radio’s plushiest assignments: star of NBC’s Kraft Music Hall (Thurs. 9 p.m., E.S.T.). Why? Jolson himself was ready with a long-winded explanation. He had tried to persuade the sponsor to let him supply the punch the Music Hall has lacked since Crosby left the show last year. He had been turned down cold. Al’s version of it sounded like the lyric of an oldtime Jolson song:

“So I told the sponsor, ‘I’m the guy that can do it. Just give old Al the chance and he’ll do it.’ And what did they say? ‘You’re too old.’ And I says to myself, ‘Al, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doin’.’

“But after The Jolson Story came out, they did a big switcheroo. ‘Please, Mr. Jolson, don’t sign with anybody else for ten minutes. Just give us ten minutes, please.’ Sign, ha, ha! I didn’t want to sign with nobody, so I tell-’em $7,500 a week. They say yes and I almost drop dead.”

If Jolson is half as lively in front of a microphone as he is in conversation around his Hollywood swimming pool, Kraft need not worry. The agency is spending at least $20,000 a week on the show, in which Al is supported by acid-tongued Pianist Oscar Levant. Kraft offered Al a fat four-year contract, without options, 39 weeks a year, with two weeks off in every 13.

“I didn’t wanna do it. I didn’t wanna do it!” screams Al. “I was swindled into it by this tremendous ego of mine. I’m like a chile, I tell yah! ‘Al,’ I said, ‘Al, old fella, they wantcha again. They finally seen the light.’ Oh Lawdy, I got ’em good. And I just couldn’t resist rubbing their noses in it. . . .”