In a snit, Summit sued singer’s zinger
Al Jolson was America’s biggest star — by comparison, Sinatra was practically a piker and Lady Gaga is unknown. Jolson was the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the flea’s eyebrows, and all that other jazz from the 1920s.
When Jolson was heard belting ’em out in “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, America went wild. Delirious fans rushed the theaters. “Talkies” were born, and Jolson was on top of the world.
That made it all the more remarkable when the Summit Hotel – yes, THAT Summit — sued Jolson for $100,000 in 1935 – nearly $2 million in today’s currency.
Jolson was a big radio star in 1935, a seminal year in American history, the year the president of the United States proposed and Congress passed legislation establishing old-age pensions. Social Security was a life-changing event.
Amid the clamorous creation of Social Security and other depression-era politics such as steeply higher taxes on the wealthy, the Jolson-Summit imbroglio landed on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
The suit stemmed from a remark Jolson made on his weekly Saturday night radio program on NBC to Sam Parks. Sam Parks? Sam Parks was a professional golf, winner of that year’s U.S. Open, which had been played at the cathedral of golf, the Oakmont Country Club, outside of Pittsburgh, a few weeks before Jolson’s wounding remarks.
Parks was 25, an unknown in the world of golf. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where he captained the golf team, Parks was the professional at the South Hills Country Club in 1935.
A year earlier, however, he had provided instruction and supervised things at the Summit Hotel golf course; it was his first golf job; all of which meant he went, literally, from the Summit Hotel to the summit of American golf, crushing both Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen, two all-time greats who competed in the 1935 Open.
Parks was explaining his background to Jolson when he mentioned his job at the Summit. Jolson interrupted. “That’s a rotten hotel,” the singer said.
One imagines hotel manager Leo Heyn, following a long summer’s day attending to the needs of his guests, sitting comfortably in his favorite chair, his radio tuned to the Jolson show, and coming up out of his seat when he heard the entertainer’s scathing, off-hand comment about HIS hotel.
Maybe Heyn placed a call to a friend. Did you hear what Jolson just said? Did I hear him right? Did he just say the Summit Hotel was rotten? Did he really say that? to a nationwide audience? How many people do you figure were listening? Millions? I suppose that’s right. He’s not going to get with this! I don’t care who he is.
At some point he spoke to two lawyers, Walter L. Dipple and hotel barrister A.M. Oliver.
The attorneys quickly drew up the lawsuit. As the newspapers said, the suit was worth $25,000 a word — four words worth a total of $100,000.
Heyn got together a statement for the press in which he implored the Federal Communication Commission to issue a “cease and desist order” to Jolson and NBC. The hotel manager seemed especially incensed at the network.
“No newspaper in the country would accept or permit any advertising which would directly injure another man’s business,” he said. “The presses would be stopped immediately … Last Saturday night, however, NBC officials stood calmly by and allowed the program to continue after Jolson’s malicious attack on the Summit.
“The program should have been stopped,” Heyn declared. Calling Jolson “a smart-aleck comedian,” Heyn said both he and NBC needed to be taught a lesson in “ethics and good taste.” Heyn called on the government – then at a zenith of trust by the American people – to do a little housecleaning.
Heyn vowed never to rest until Jolson and “the big radio networks” got their comeuppance.
Since “no amount of money” could repair the damage the Jolson smear had done to the Summit’s reputation – its good reputation, Heyn pointed out, cemented by the likes of Warren Harding, Thomas Edison and scores of other notables who had stayed at the Summit – and because radio officials were so irresponsible, the hotel manager called on the U.S. House and Senate to launch investigations “of the whole matter of commercial broadcasting.”
Maybe that was a step too far. While faith in government was huge and distrust of capitalism was widspread, Congress did have its hands full, what with the Great Depression and all.
Despite everything, Jolson, NBC, and the Summit all survived and prospered. Jolson’s career would be revived in 1946 by a hugely successful biopic starring Larry Parks (no relationship to Sam Parks).
The entertainer died in 1950, just weeks after returning from Korea, where he performed for the troops. For his efforts during Korea and earlier in World War II, Jolson was posthumously awarded the nation’s highest civilian metal. Making the presentation to Jolson’s widow, fourth wife Erle, at a Washington, D.C., ceremony was none other than Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Of Uniontown.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.