Manhattan's garishly grand Roxy Theater offered Al Jolson $40,000 a week to appear six times daily on the Roxy stage. Last week he turned it down.

No one who had ever heard his shamelessly sentimental braying of Tin Pan Alley ballads would believe it, but to hear Al Jolson tell it, he still has stage fright. Said he: "I die every time I go on the stage. . . . What's the use of falling on my face?" He didn't have to. At 61, Mammy-Man Jolson was in the chips. Two years ago he was sick, and though not broke, afraid that he soon might be. He had developed an abscessed lung while entertaining troops overseas, and ended up in a Los Angeles hospital. When he recovered, Hollywood Gossip Sidney Skolsky, who had decided to film Jolson's life, had Al sing the sound track while young Larry Parks impersonated him on the screen (TIME, Oct. 7). Jolson estimates that his half-share of The Jolson Story profits will be $3,500,000 (before taxes).

And that wasn't all. His brassy-voiced renderings of 20-year-old Jolsoniana (My Mammy, Sonny Boy, April Showers) were issued by Decca, and turned out to be the biggest selling album of all time (800,000). His single record of the Anniversary Song (from The Jolson Story) was a best-seller in the U.S. and is currently No. 1 on England's hit parade. His guest appearances on the Bing Crosby show shot it to its highest Hooper rating. A patter record he and Bing Crosby made of Alexander's Ragtime Band and The Spaniard That Blighted My Life has sold 300,000 copies in two weeks.

Jolson is grey-haired now, and looks more like a double-breasted businessman than the skinny, blackface comedian that the U.S. remembers. The Jolson Story was obviously having a happy ending. Said Old Hoofer Jolson (whose fourth wife is 24): "If there weren't such a thing as years nobody would think I'm old. I may not be alive in ten seconds, but I feel better than I have in 20 years."

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