The Jam Jar Sessions took place in a mobile cinema in Writer’s Square Belfast. Part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, the aim was to harvest the stories of old cinemas, related via live music (‘Secret Love’, ‘Singing In The Rain’, ‘Bare Necessities’) and related memory drift. Some of the accounts were reasonable enough, but then a senior guy in the audience volunteered an astonishing tale. A long time ago, he had a relative who worked at the Hippodrome, and thus he found himself there on a Sunday, during wartime.
The locals weren’t allowed access to the pictures due the Sunday observance, but the American GIs were cool. So the boy was getting ready for this uncommon fun when a guy in a big coat asked him to nip out and buy him a copy of the Herald newspaper. He was heading out the door when a member of the military police asked him what his intentions where. When the guy explained, a further question was delivered.
“So you know who the guy in the coat is?”
“No.”
“That’s Al Jolson.”
And so one of the biggest names in popular culture took in a movie on a Sunday in Belfast, and entertained the troops after with a selection of his enormous hits. More than seventy years later and the chap who witnessed it was still smiling. Understandable.
