i was doing the other jolson.a different jolson. ♪ when you were sweet when you were sweet 16 ♪ it was a beautiful jolson. but they didn't know that. they wanted mammy. so three prizes. majorette wins. she dropped that thing three times. the fat guy, he came in second with the buttens flying all over. the little black kid, he did all right. he got third. three prizes. i got nothing. but i was determined. and so i kept -- finally, i went to the borscht belt and to the resorts in the mountains and i learned my craft. i was a busboy and i was a waiter and i was all kinds of things. finally, somebody got sick. i was a utility actor and i took over. unfortunately, the part -- he was a district attorney. he was about 70 years old. so they put a wig on me. they put a beard on me. they put lines, you know, to make me old. i'm supposed to say, there, there, harry, have a glass of water and tell me in your own words exactly what happened that night. okay, i can do that. but i got to do it a little older. not so fast. right.

starting al jolson. jews are already been involved in combating questions of anti-semitism that were in the movies. we talked about that when we talked about the formation of the adl. but we also have jews using the movies as a platform for their own ideals and, to some degree, this is the psychologist couch in which they work out some of their issues quite publicly. "the jazz singer" is perhaps one of the best known of these in that it is the first talkie, the first film, major film that's with sound, but it is not meant just for jewish audience. it is really meant for a popular audience and it is the tale of jews by jews of a jewish can ii of a synagogue singer. everybody is telling him he's wasting it in a synagogue and he should really go out into the world and become a popular singer and have wealth and fame and all the things that are associated with america, including a mono-jewish love interest, mary. okay? so here we have these questions of how much can you assimilate to america being played out