Jolson would have appreciated the comedic aspect of the celebration, as he regularly demonstrated a sense of humor of his own — he was the diner at the restaurant ordering dessert before dinner; he wanted to make sure he had room for the best part of the meal! Franklin, who says he became infatuated with Jolson when he heard him on the radio at the age of seven, first met Jolson when he was a guest on Martin Block’s Make Believe Ballroom; Franklin was Block’s record picker. “One night [Jolson] was on his radio show broadcasting from California,” says Franklin, recalling Jolson’s penchant for a good joke. “He said he would be staying in New York the following week at the Martha Washington Hotel. I waited out front for seven days in a row in the rain and the snow, hoping to get to see him, and what do you think I found out? He was only kidding. It was a ladies-only hotel!”

“There are hundreds of remembrance societies out there, but I think the Al Jolson Society has got the most avid members,” says Franklin. “Like myself, they worship him. I never did a radio show in my life (and there were thousands) during which I didn’t play a couple of Jolson records. If I didn’t play him, I would have been booed out by the public.” A current personality for Bloomberg Radio Network, he remembers wanting to get into radio so that he could share Jolson with the rest of the world. “This festival is the most ingenious and glorious idea."

Franklin’s stories are of the same ilk that can be heard being passed around at the festival, especially throughout the Society auction, in which one-of-a-kind memorabilia is coveted and sold. “There are albums, CDs, DVDs, pictures, photos with signatures of Jolson,” says Hernstat. “We’ve had lobby cards which were used in front of the movie theaters, and we’ve had statues of Jolson, so many amazing things. We’ll have a lot of good stuff this time around also.”