[Dixielandjazz] "King Of Jazz" Re-Release

[Robert Ringwald]

‘King of Jazz’ Is Back, Burnished for a New Generation of Movie Fan  
by J. Hoberman
New York Times, May 11, 2016


A significant movie restoration not only can return a film’s patina of newness but its place in film history as well. That may be the case when the musical revue “King of Jazz” (1930), brought back to something of its original splendor, emerges from the vaults in the soft, shimmering red and green tones of early Technicolor.


The refurbished “King of Jazz,” which was elevated to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2013, will have its world premiere on Friday at the Museum of Modern Art, the opening attraction in the series “Universal Pictures: Restorations and Rediscoveries, 1928-1937.”


An old-fashioned prestige picture, “King of Jazz” required a newfangled prestige restoration that was thought by some close to the project to be among the most expensive ever.


Material from a partly complete original negative was digitally matched with material culled from three other prints. “We don’t comment on specific costs,” Peter Schade, who leads Universal’s preservation team, said, while allowing that, compared with other restorations, the one for “King of Jazz” was “definitely on the higher side.”


Looking like a million, as might have been said in 1930, “King of Jazz” celebrates the truism that Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were America’s gifts to 20th-century world culture, even as the film revels in the unexamined prejudices and show-business segregation of the day.


The movie -- which takes its title from the sobriquet attached to its star, the portly bandleader Paul Whiteman -- is an entertainment spectacular that, among other things, features the first Technicolor animation, a novelty act in which “The Stars and Stripes Forever” is played on a bicycle pump, and the Whiteman orchestra performs perhaps the most famous of symphonic jazz compositions, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” (Because “blue” was not an option in two-color Technicolor, the performance is shot in shades of silvery teal.)


The first reviews were generally positive. The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall praised the director John Murray Anderson, a Broadway producer and first-time filmmaker, calling “King of Jazz” a “marvel of camera wizardry, joyous color schemes, charming costumes and seductive lighting effects.” But, released six months after the stock market crash, with a glut of musical revues, “King of Jazz,” which cost around $2 million and was likely Universal’s most expensive production to date, did poorly at the box office. It was recut for rerelease and fell into obscurity.


Financial fiasco or not, “King of Jazz” is a remarkable artifact. Whiteman was one of the nation’s most popular entertainers, responsible for furthering the careers of many white jazz musicians, including Bing Crosby, who appears in the movie as part of the Rhythm Boys trio. He was also a celebrity, according to the jazz critic Gary Giddins, comparable to Babe Ruth or Mickey Mouse.


Mr. Giddins calls the film “a Rosetta stone of early American pop,” emphasizing that the musicians were “all top professionals,” and pointing out that Mr. Anderson’s elaborate stagings anticipate the production numbers associated with Busby Berkeley. (Nevertheless, Berkeley had greater film savvy and was more inclined to move the camera than rotate the set.)


“King of Jazz” also preserves the attitudes of 1930. Many of the movie’s comedy skits are anxious projections of female sexual independence. No less pathological is the guilty coyness with which “King of Jazz” simultaneously acknowledges and effaces jazz’s African-American origins.


Barely has the movie begun before a cartoon Whiteman travels to Africa, charms a lion into shouting “Mammy” and is consequently crowned king. Later, the film’s only individuated black performer, a girl around 5, appears perched on Whiteman’s capacious lap. The joke is a creepy one.


Whiteman introduces “Rhapsody in Blue” by proclaiming that “jazz was born from the African jungle to the beating of voodoo drums,” but the movie’s grand finale, “The Melting Pot of Music,” is a lengthy series of acts that attribute the art form to an amalgam of British, Italian, Scotch, Irish, Austrian, Spanish, Russian and French sources.


This Eurocentric origin story is sung and danced on a set that, with its Doric columns and smoking caldron, suggests a cross between Albert Speer’s design for the Nazi Party Nuremberg rally and Maria Montez’s altar in the later Universal movie “Cobra Woman.” It also contradicts an earlier number in which the Rhythm Boys sing “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together,” which can be interpreted as a confused plea for integration.


“King of Jazz” is not the only restored musical in the MoMA series. “Broadway” (1929), by Paul Fejos, is included -- complete with Technicolor final reel. Both films, along with Universal’s 1930 adaptation of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” were part of the ambitious slate of Universal movies initiated by Carl Laemmle Jr.


The son of the studio’s co-founder, Carl Laemmle, Junior Laemmle, as he was called, is a largely forgotten figure who facilitated some of Hollywood’s most audacious films. Taking charge of Universal production on his 21st birthday in 1928, he was often compared to another so-called boy genius, Irving Thalberg, who had worked at Universal before joining MGM.


The MoMA curator Dave Kehr, who organized the series, considers Junior Laemmle the “anti-Thalberg.” Mr. Kehr points out that where Thalberg made his reputation reining in the imperious and profligate Erich von Stroheim, Laemmle began his career by hiring Fejos, another art-minded, free-spending European.


While the middlebrow Thalberg looked to the Broadway stage for inspiration, Laemmle was drawn to more sensational fare, producing “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” as well as the adultery melodramas directed by John M. Stahl. Laemmle also sought out literary Europeans like Stefan Zweig for material, and allowed an offbeat director like James Whale to flourish.


Many of these pictures made money, but Laemmle also overspent, and it was another lavish, ambitious musical, Universal’s 1936 version of “Show Boat,” directed by Mr. Whale, that proved his Waterloo. “Show Boat” (included in the series) ran over budget, burdening Universal with additional debt. The elder Laemmle lost control of the studio and Junior was fired.

  Not yet 30, his career was essentially over; although he lived out his remaining 43 years in Hollywood, he never made another movie. MoMA’s series, it would seem, is not only about the “King of Jazz” restoration but Junior Laemmle’s rehabilitation.
-30-



Bob Ringwald piano, Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet 
Fulton Street Jazz Band (Dixieland/Swing)
916/ 806-9551
Amateur (ham) Radio Station K6YBV

I joined a health club last year, 
spent about 400 bucks.
Haven't lost a pound.
Apparently you have to go there. 
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