Movies: Al Jolson

After returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer struggles to maintain his sanity. Plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart as the world and people around him morph and twist into disturbing images. His girl...

A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical....

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression....

A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort....

Neurotic Broadway star Al Jackson faces professional ruin when he loses his voice. While recuperating in the country, he falls in love with farm girl Ruth Haines, the pretty aunt of precocious little Sybil Haines....

Harry and Inez are a dance team at the Wonder Bar. Inez loves Harry, but he is in love with Liane, the wife of a wealthy business man. Al Wonder and the conductor/singer Tommy are in love with Inez. When Inez finds out that Harry wants to leave Paris...

An irresponsible Broadway star gets mixed up with gambling and gangsters....

Gus, the trusty family retainer, has hopes of riding his boss' horse, Big Boy, to victory at the Kentucky Derby....

Joe Lane, radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that the manager of the studio, Arthur Phillips, has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine. Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. J...

Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War....

This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to...

This short traces the history of sound in the movies, beginning with French scientist Leon Scott's experiments in 1857. Featured are snippets from early sound pictures....

At the turn of the 20th century, young Asa Yoelson decides to go against the wishes of his cantor father and pursue a career in show business. Gradually working his way up through the vaudeville ranks, Asa — now calling himself Al Jolson — joins a bl...

In this sequel to The Jolson Story, we pick up the singer's career just as he has returned to the stage after a premature retirement. But his wife has left him and the appeal of the spotlight isn't what it used to be. This time Jolson trades in the s...

While a few Hollywood celebrities such as James Stewart and Clark Gable saw combat during World War II, the majority used their talents to rally the American public through bond sales, morale-boosting USO tours, patriotic war dramas and escapist film...

A New York tramp falls in love with the mayor's amnesiac girlfriend after rescuing her from a suicide attempt....

Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures....

Ice skating is the theme; at the Tropical Ice Garden, in Westwood Hills, are seen a flock of skating stars including Irene Dare and Phyllis Ann Thomoson, as well as Hollywood luminaries such as Franklyn Pangborn, Norma Shearer, Rita Hayworth, Mickey ...

Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway....

Swanee River is a 1940 American biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out. Typical of 20th Century Fox biopics of...