Reception
The Singing Fool solidified Jolson's position atop the movie world; not until Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would any sound era film be more financially successful than this audience-pleasing blend of sentiment and show biz. With a worldwide gross of $5.9 million, it would remain the most successful film in Warner Bros. history until the release of Sergeant York in 1941.
For the majority of movie audiences, The Singing Fool became their first experience with a talking film, since few movie theaters had been equipped with a sound system in 1927. The film's positive reception was also viewed as a signifier that sound films were here to stay. One trade paper commentator stated that The Singing Fool "will be to talking pictures what The Birth of a Nation has been to silent pictures". For a time, it also made Davey Lee, Jolson's 31⁄2 year old co-star, the most popular child star since Jackie Coogan. Lee was re-teamed with Jolson in Say It With Songs and starred in a few other films—including 1929's Sonny Boy—until his parents pulled him out of the movie business.
"Sonny Boy" became the first song from a movie to sell over a million copies. It eventually sold over 3 million copies of sheet music, piano rolls and phonograph records.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)