>From: Karen Mercedes Jolson reprised the song - >which came to be known as one of his "signature" tunes (along with "Mammy") >- in three movies, THE SINGING KID (1936; as part of a song medley), THE >JOLSON STORY (1946; a biopic in which Jolson dubbed the song for the >apparently unmusical Larry Parks, who portrayed Jolson), and JOLSON SINGS >AGAIN (1949, with Jolson again dubbing the song for Larry Parks with >chorus).
Actually, Larry Parks had a decent singing voice of his own, as displayed in "Down to Earth" a forgettable musical sequel to "Here Comes Mr. Jordan." But Jolson was heavily involved in the production of "The Jolson Story"; not only did he record the songs for the soundtrack, he also played himself in the long shots for the musical numbers! One could argue also that Jolson's singing voice was so familiar and distinctive to movie audiences at the time that anything else would have been distracting.
[A more contemporary example of this procedure occurs in "Sweet Dreams," in which Jessica Lange played Patsy Cline and lip-synched to Cline's recorded voice.]
Parks soon got caught in the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s, and rarely worked as an actor after that. He can be seen in "Freud" (1960), playing Dr. Josef Breuer.
Elizabeth Finkler San Jose, California mightymezzo@h... http://home.earthlink.net/~mightymezzo "This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach." --Groucho Marx
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