Say It with Songs (1929)

I love this movie so much

Touches You

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Jolson's third feature, Say It With Songs (1929), was actually his first all-talkie presentation. Obviously made to cash in on the surprising success of The Singing Fool, the movie re-unites Jolson with director Lloyd Bacon and child actor, Davey Lee. Once again, Bacon starts off most promisingly, this time with a satiric montage of crummy presenters on a radio station (although the singers are actually not all that bad). This promise looks like being realized when presentable heel, Kenneth Thompson, comes on screen and tries to seduce Marian Nixon (though what he sees in mousey Marian, I don't know. A Josephine Dunn she most certainly is not. Nor can she handle unconvincing dialogue with any degree of skill). Unfortunately, although he's by far the best actor in the movie, Thompson is killed of early in the piece. I'll admit that Marian Nixon, does improve as the film progresses. But maybe she only seems to get better because Jolson gets worse. All told, the soggy script, the cheese-paring art direction, Jolson's over-emoting, the third-rate score and Bacon's talentless no-direction add up to a most disappointing Warner DVD.

The 4 reviews that precede mine are fair. This film really is for buffs only. I wouldn't have missed it, but it's poorly done at all the important levels. And Jolson really is a ham here. At times he makes fluffs in his lines, as if he just barely had them memorized. I was surprised at how shoddy the film was, in writing and in set design. The courtroom scene has a stark set which looks like the kind of empty sets that Monogram used in the 40s. The songs are subpar for Jolson, with lame lyrics that have you guessing ahead to each rhymed line ending. Two really cheesy scenes gave me the most entertainment. First, in the prison, the (unseen) orchestra starts playing and Jolson sings verse after verse of "Why Can't You?" to his fellow cons. The burden of the lyric is, if caged birds can sing, why can't you? Picture this in a modern prison -- he'd be lucky not to get shanked before the bridge. Second, and even more deranged, he is told by the first attending doctor that his son, who has just been hit by a truck, has spine damage. In the next scene, Jolie carries his son to another doctor for treatment! They had some tough spines in '29. The big message of "Say It With Songs" was in the box office -- Warners learned that all-talkers did not guarantee profits.

This was my first time to view this film, having only heard about it by reading the book A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, which painted a totally unflattering portrait of this film, to say the very least. This film is not as bad as you would gather by reading other reviews on the subject. In the first place, Al Jolson was a great entertainer, but he never was a great actor. Also, you have to understand that Jolson's films were mainly just made as vehicles for audiences to see and hear what Al Jolson did best - sing his heart out. His films were never meant to be competition with "All Quiet on the Western Front".The problem here is that this film is obviously recycling parts of "The Singing Fool" - primarily the big love Jolson's character has for his little son, "Little Pal", again played by Davie Lee. Jolson plays ex prize fighter Joe Lane, now a radio star married to a devoted wife who is losing patience with Joe's continued love for gambling. At the same time, the manager of the radio station where Joe works is infatuated with Joe's wife and puts the moves on her. Of course Joe's wife tells him what happened. Joe then confronts the guy and an argument between the two ends in Joe landing an all too effective punch that results in Joe going to prison for manslaughter.The plot is thin even for 1929, but as over-the-top as Jolson's acting style could be in these early films, he is still much more natural before the camera than many other full-fledged movie actors of the time. That and the fact that it is always a pleasure to hear and see Jolson sing makes this worth watching. I only wish that the songs could have been a bit more memorable. Only "Seventh Heaven" really sticks with you. Also note that this is one of very few Warner Brothers films that still survive from 1929. I think there are only seven in all that are still with us in their entirety. My recommendation would be that this is a definite must-see if you are a Jolson fan - I am. If you are not, then you probably won't enjoy it at all.

Due to the surprise gross receipts of The Singing Fool, Director Bacon, Star Jolson and Sidekick Lee were rushed back to WB to produce something worthy of the former. What they produced was a weak imitation of The Singing Fool and SIWS bombed. It was a bomb then, it still is 80 years later. Rarely does lightning ever strike twice. SIWS is a really good example of that.I have been a huge Jolson fan for 30 years, since I was a teenager. He may be the world's greatest entertainer, but he really shows his acting limitations here. His upbeat scenes are fine but anytime he is supposed to show some emotion, and that's most of the time, none of it is genuine. It's forced, certainly nothing organic. I've seen better acting in high school productions... or in an Ed Wood movie.In his defense, he was given some really crappy dialog. "Early talking" is no excuse. They had great writers on b'way. Why not bring 'em over to H'wood? Oh that's right, WB was too cheap for that back then.SPOILER One of the many examples of bad dialog and bad acting is when Little Pal gets hit by a car, Jolson with wide eyes exclaims "Oh my God, it's MY baby!" is truly an unintentional hysterical moment in the history of film. The reaction I had was, to be sure, not the one Bacon had in mind when he was directing this turkey.I'm not sure if Davey Lee can act. He certainly was cute and lively. He had the best moments in the movie, the courtroom scene being one. I do think that there was genuine fondness between Jolie and Lee and that rings loud and clear here. This was the only thing that was successfully carried over from the first film to the second. I'll give Bacon the credit for that. In fact, years later in The Singing Kid, his scenes with another child actress, Sybil Jason, are even more phenomenal. So Jolie had some panache working with children. He should have done more that.It would have been nice to have, in these first few Jolson films, some A list co-stars. Imagine Helen Morgan as his wife and Adolph Menjou as the doctor!! Most of his early films tend to suffer from being "all about Jolson". Imagine a Jolson and Morgan duet!! I suppose that at this stage in his career that Jolson didn't want to share the marque with anybody on his level, hence, the forgettable supporting actors. In the long run, that was a bad decision on his part as Jolson's infamous ego has hurt the watch-ability of the early films today.Speaking of mediocre, the songs are just that. Little Pal did stay in his rep for the rest of Jolson's life. Not sure why, it's too much like Sonny Boy, which is the better of the two and its by no means a pop masterpiece.The best scene in the film is a brilliantly directed dream sequence of Little Pal dreaming his father is singing... Little Pal... (what else?) to him. It's a really, really nice, very imaginative scene.In conclusion, I still love Jolie. By far, this is the worst film he ever made. It is a curiosity only for Jolson fans like me. The good news is that as the years progress, the scripts got better and he got better and more relaxed as an actor. His ego was more or less in check when worked with A list people like Dick Powell, Frank Morgan, Kay Francis, Don Ameche, Alice Faye, Ruby Keeler and ... Helen Morgan. (Still no duet though - what a loss!) It is a shame that Jolson went out of style, or something, by the end of the '30 as we lost what could have been a wonderful fatherly character type actor in the '40s.