[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Bio Movies

[pat ladd]

 bio movies, jazz or otherwise are like TV news Just entertainment.>>

TV News, just entertainment?  What a seditious idea.  What do you expect, 
facts?.

Seriously though, it is quite obvious from the replies that people approach 
the films from different viewpoints. From the well informed who criticize 
the music (disgraceful, did you hear that, they played it in E flat when 
everyone knows is written in F)  to the knowledgeable who dispute the facts 
( the lead tenor was born in August not September) to the ( it was a 
beautiful love story) or (I`d like to get inside the knickers of that June 
Allyson).
Similarly different film goers take away different things as  the posts 
show. Someone became a jazz enthusiast, you learned to play `DYKWIM`, 
someone else dicovered the Glenn Miller sound. Dammit, I wanted to be Tom 
Mix, but the film maker wants to take away money, and he is not going to do 
that with a film of Buddy Rich cursing his sidesmen.
Calling these films `bio`s is not fair. They do not pretend to be. Films are 
not documentaries. It is the `Glen Miller STORY`,  the `Benny Goodman STORY` 
etc not the GM Biography. Real life is not well ordered enough to make a 
good story. In a film an action has to have a trigger or a motivation. In 
real life we lurch from crisis to crisis in a pretty unscripted sort of way. 
I am sure that if any of us sat down to write the story of our lives we 
would pretty soon edit great chunks of it.
When I started this thread with my observation about a great clip of Jimmy 
Stewart and June Allyson visiting the club to see Louis and commenting about 
seeing Teagarden, Krupa etc I was alluding to that clip, not the whole film 
which I would rate as agreeable entertainment. Similarly in `High Society`, 
an enjoyable film, in spite of Grace Kelly, who couldn`t act her way out of 
a paper bag, the high spot is watching Bing and Louis interact and seeing 
Trummy Young and Barret Deems etc `le toute ensemble`

Let us just be thankful that however they distort the facts these film 
makers made it possible for us to see and hear musicians of whom little 
record exists except as an un named sidesman on a scratchy 78.

Cheers

Pat