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...
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