The rest of the story. They called it an industrial school for boys, and yet to be its
residence ages 7 to 21 who referred to themselves as inmates, St. Mary's, four miles from downtown
Baltimore, was more a prison than anything else. Asa was 12 years young and wandering the streets,
when authorities nabbed him and sent him to St. Mary's. He was a bright energetic young fellow,
and his pals at the school, Georgian Bill, were always delighted by Asa's tall tales,
one of them in particular, about the night in New York City when he was walking down Broadway
and heard a voice that seemed to come from nowhere. Tell it again Georgian Bill would say, and so
the rest of the story. Little Asa heard this voice, it was a woman's voice singing and enchanting
melody, looking down an alleyway alongside a big theater building, saw an open door with light
pouring from it. This was also the source of that beautiful sound. And Asa stood there for a long
time listening and drinking in the magic of the music and the lyrics, and finally he got up the
courage to approach the lighted doorway, and he looked inside, and there on the stage was a statuesque
blonde rehearsing her song. From a stage hand, the boy learned that her name was Faye Templeton,
the song itself was called Rosie. Long after Asa had left the theater and was walking back toward
the bowlery, that tune kept echoing in his ears, and the longer the little fellow walked the
hungrier he got. Through the window at McCurk's restaurant, he watched keeping place of steaming hot
food being brought from the kitchen, and then he got an idea, and he went inside and he made a deal
with a proprietor something to eat for a song. Well, the proprietor was a kindly man, and he had
seen more than his share of starving boys, the proprietor said it to deal. The air was filled with
smoke and the clatter of dishes and the chatter of cacophonous conversation, but little Asa
strode out there into the middle of it all, and he opened his mouth and out came the tune that he had
heard on the moments before for the very first time. Rosie, you are my posee, the song began.
Before he'd finished a little restaurant in the bowlery had fallen silent, only upon the last note
to burst into enthusiastic applause, and so delighted once more did Georgie and Bill, the young
friends of St. Mary's industrial school, who had also fallen under the spell of 12-year-old Asa Yolson.
Asa Yolson, one day to be recognized and revered worldwide as entertainer Al Jolson.
Now incidentally this story with which he so charmed his buddies at St. Mary's, the story that
I've just told you was completely true. It was in fact Al Jolson's first indoor public performance,
and singing a song with which he was forever after to be identified. And the young friends at St. Mary's,
whom he had so inspired Georgie and Bill? Oh yes, you know them too. For Bill was himself to mature
and go on to enthrall Broadway audiences on his own, dancing and entrancing under the name of
O'Jangles, Bill Robinson. Georgie, whatever happened to him? Well,
another fellow at this halfway house for young juvenile delinquents was George Herman Ruth,
but then after a while nobody ever called him anything but Babe Ruth, and now you know the rest of
the story.
