"talkie" with dialogue and to cast Jessel in the lead role. However, the studio refused his salary demands, so Jessel turned down the movie role, which was eventually played by Al Jolson. According to Jessel during an interview around 1980, Warner Bros. still owed Jessel money for earlier roles and lacked enough funds to produce this movie with a leading star. Jolson, the biographical inspiration for the movie, became the movie's main financial backer. Jessel's next movie role was in Private Izzy Murphy (1926). Whereas Jolson's film career skyrocketed after the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer, Jessel remained in smaller movie roles, often intended for audiences fond of Jewish and other "ethnic" humor. He was elected to The Lambs Theatre Club in 1942. In the middle 1940s, he began producing musicals for 20th Century Fox, producing 24 films in all in a career that lasted through the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time he became known as a host on the banquet circuit, famous for his good-natured wit aimed at his fellow celebrities. In 1946, he was one of the founding members of the California branch of the Friars Club. (A recording exists of an example of his "blue" work in front of a stag audience, although it was actually recorded at a roast hosted by the Friars' rival, the Masquers Club.) He also traveled widely overseas with the USO entertaining troops. As he grew older, he wrote eulogies for many of his contemporaries in Hollywood. He wrote three volumes of memoirs, So Help Me (1943), This Way, Miss (1955), and The World I Lived In (1975). Jessel produced a number of Hollywood films, including The Dolly Sisters (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), Golden Girl (1951) and The I Don't Care Girl (1953). In the early 1950s, he performed on the radio in The George Jessel Show, which became a television series of the same name from 1953 to 1954. Jessel was the emcee on the short-lived The Comeback Story, a 1954 reality show on ABC in which mostly celebrities shared stories of having overcome adversity in their personal lives. After he was replaced as emcee by Arlene Francis, the program soon folded. Thereafter, Jessel guest-starred on NBC's The Jimmy Durante Show. In 1968, he starred in Here Come the Stars, a syndicated variety show. However, his attempt to extend his career was undermined by a perception that his