Al Jolson - Culver City, CA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

“I'll tell you when I'm going to play the Palace. That's when Eddie Cantor and George Burns and Groucho Marx and Jack Benny are on the bill. I'm going to buy out the whole house and sit in the middle of the orchestra and say, 'Slaves, entertain the king!'”
- Al Jolson

So, was Al Jolson the ‘World’s Greatest Entertainer?’ Well, based on the above quote, he certainly thought he was. As he once told an audience that had just listened to several songs performed by the great tenor Enrico Caruso, “Folks, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

Al Jolson (real name: Eizer Yoelson) immigrated to the United States from Lithuania in 1894 with his family when he was about nine or ten years old. While still in his teens, he began performing with his brother Harry on the streets and in minstrel shows, vaudeville acts and circus side shows. His big break came when he was cast in the Broadway Musical ‘La Belle Paree’ in 1911 which made him a star.

Throughout the 1910s and early 1920s, Jolson performed and had starring roles in a string of Broadway hits. He even got a theater named after him: Jolson’s 59th Street Theater (now the New Century Theater). In 1927, Warner Bros. cast Jolson in the lead role of the first ever ‘talkie:’ “The Jazz Singer.” Starring in this movie, which represented the transition from the silent era to the sound era, is what Al Jolson is best known for today.

Al Jolson went on to appear in about twenty films, made numerous appearances on various radio shows, performed for the troops in both World War II and in Korea but died suddenly of a heart attack in 1950 just before his first scheduled television performance. He was laid to rest in Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City.

I’ve visited a lot of the gravesites of Hollywood movie stars and television personalities and I must say that for a group of folks who tend to be flamboyant and self-absorbed, their grave markers are often unobtrusive. But not so with Al Jolson. His is the most elaborate gravesite I’ve seen with a domed structure covering the sarcophagus, a multi-tiered waterfall, special landscaping and a statue of Jolson in his classic pose: fitting I guess for the ‘World’s Greatest Entertainer.’
(Sources: wikipedia.org, ferris.edu.)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 05/26/1886 Date of death: 10/23/1950 Area of notoriety: Entertainment Marker Type: Tomb (above ground) Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm; closed Saturdays Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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